We’ve all been force fed our vegetables by mom in our younger days. Coincidentally, we’ve also all been in that horribly awkward situation when visiting a friend’s house for dinner only to find they are having a foreign meal that couldn’t be pronounced by your most multilingual of friends. But of course out of respect, we hold our breath and choke down whatever exotic animal the dinner contains anyway. Being forced to enjoy (or pretending to enjoy) things that life throws our way does not stop in our angsty and awkward teenage years. Google has taken this pushiness to an entirely new level with their Google+ and YouTube integration.
In case you’ve missed the news lately, let me explain: Google in its most recent temper tantrum over its social network’s success rates, or lack there of, has forced YouTube users to link their accounts with a Google+ account. This means no more user anonymity. Though Google claims the move was an effort to provide a better user experience for the comments section of the popular video-sharing site, we all know the truth. Google just really wants to force us to use Google+, whether we like it or not. If I wanted to chat with random people on social media with links to my entire life story, I’d go to Facebook. Thanks though.
However, as with any drastic shift in life norms, not all change is bad. With this new YouTube-Google integration, some wonderful things have surfaced. Users can now easily follow conversation in the comment section via threaded replies (finally!).
Along with a new conversation format, comes the new organization of the entire comment section. Users in your Google+ circles, popular personalities such as actors or singers, and any comments with a high number of likes will all appear at the top of the thread.
So sure, the merge may not be the start of the apocalypse (although from the response levels on reddit, you may think otherwise) but everyone is entitled to their own opinions. What’s your stance?
” Users can now easily follow conversation in the comment section via threaded replies (finally!).”
Wat? Before you could reply to posts. Now you can only reply to people.
Before the thread could branch. Now it can only drag on.
The current “one level thread” sucks. If you notice something in the middle of the thread you cannot reply to it. You can’t visibly downvote it.
At best you can quote it and speak at the bottom of the thread - leading several conversations on one thread is grand.
Letting you write a comment before it tells you you’re not allowed is even grander.
The whole notifiation thing is a mess, very inconvenient to open in a new tab.
G+ does not allow dislike - the dislike comment button does not serve any function that I can see (google claims it works in mysterious ways, though, idk).
No way to set “newest first” as default option for comments.
No way to set “do not also share on g+”.