Youtube Real Name Policy

[Will E Worm]

YouTube Asks Users to Post Real Names in Bid to Clean Up Comments

Google is trying to clean up YouTube’s comments section by encouraging users to post their real names.

When a YouTube user now tries to comment on a video, a box pops up asking that person to start using their "full name" at the video sharing site. The "full name" is taken from the person’s Google+ account since Google requires the real name of someone signing up for a Google+ account.

After the "start using your full name" box appears, you can refuse to start using your real name. If you do that, another pop up appears asking you to justify your decision. Choices offered by Google include:

My channel is for show or character.
My channel is for a music artist of group.
My channel is for a product, business or organization.
My channel is well-known for other reasons.
My channel is for personal use, but I cannot use my real name.
I'm not sure, I'll decide later.

Google offers to help you review your YouTube content before your full name begins to be displayed on the service. It also makes clear that you can switch back to your username at any time.

Whether this step will improve the discourse in YouTube’s comments section remains to be seen. People who leave constructive comments are likely to embrace the new policy, but others will continue to hide behind anonymity and revel in their vile comments.

Google’s requirement that people sign up for Google+ is a policy one Google executive compared to a dress code for a restaurant. That characterization may be true for most YouTube users, but for social and political activists living in repressive regimes, the policy could be a ticket to prison or worse. That Google+ policy was eventually revised after Google was deluged with user complaints.

That's not to say that Google isn't sensitive to the dangers some of its users face in the pursuit of social justice. For example, it recently added a feature to YouTube that allows people who post videos to the site to automatically blur out the faces of the subjects in their footage.

In June, Google revealed at its developers conference that it was working on improvements in YouTube's comments section. So this latest development could be just a baby step in a longer strategy leading to a vast reduction of anonymous comments on YouTube. Such a reduction could take some liveliness out of the offering, but it could improve the site's appeal to businesses, which could contribute to Google's bottom line.

oldschoolh4ck3r
Bad comments? There's a BLOCK button for that!

The real reason Google wants your real name is the same reason they pester you for your mobile phone number for 'security verification': they want your personal data so they can make money off of it.

I'm staying as anonymous as possible on there. If I'm forced not to, I'll delete my popular channel and move elsewhere.

Article



I was asked this today.

Is youtube trying to lose people? A mandatory real name policy and I am gone.

The real world is not nice. Why should the net be nice? :flame:

 

[BigSwede]

I ignored it and it works just fine.

 

[Sam Fisher]

It's happening...

Drones over cities

Cameras at every intersection

Strip search to board a plane

Yahoo Mail wants your phone number and wants you to use a new name and password on your current email

Google is acting up

youtube is asking me to change my user name to "something more recognizable".

IT'S HERE......

 

[DJCowboy]

I do think that some douchebags go a little too far with their comments (though some a pretty funny) but the internet was practically built around anonymity

 

[luis1972]

Bullshit

 

[STDiva]

Yall are paranoid.

 

[JasonCook78]

It's so stupid.

 

[DP_LOVER]

How will this stop people posting comments, if anyone is desperate enough to troll youtube etc then they just set up a false google+ account, this wont do anything but give more valuable data to google to sell on

 

[ban-one]

So, how do they know the name you gave is actually your real name, and not someone else's or made up? Like, say, Dale Gribble and his standard alias of Rusty Shackleford. Or like Bart Simpson prank calling Moe Szyslak.

 

[JasonCook78]

I'm changing my name to Winnie The Pooh just to see if anyone will take me seriously.

 

[Will E Worm]

Yall are paranoid.

Goo reason to be.

It's so stupid.

Very.

How will this stop people posting comments, if anyone is desperate enough to troll youtube etc then they just set up a false google+ account, this wont do anything but give more valuable data to google to sell on

There's many fake accounts all over the net. People like Google want to control the net.
We can't let them do that.

So, how do they know the name you gave is actually your real name, and not someone else's or made up? Like, say, Dale Gribble and his standard alias of Rusty Shackleford. Or like Bart Simpson prank calling Moe Szyslak.

They don't know. Unless they are doing something illegal. Which they might just be doing.

I'm changing my name to Winnie The Pooh just to see if anyone will take me seriously.

Professor Pooh might work better.

Not really, but you can try it.

 

[Ravenholm]

I've noticed this a few times and I've not been back at Youtube in over a month now. No real feeling of wanting to go back either. They wont be forcing anything upon me against my will. That is the idea of the internet, to be anonymous on forums and places like Youtube. Not for your name to be known by everyone that reads that particular article or video or comment. Fuck that. It's an invasion of privacy in a place where hackers and crooks are a dime a dozen. And they want our real names on show. FUCK THAT!. Youtube need to get out of that mentality before it costs them their userbase. Same with Facebook and how they are fucking about with their privacy settings thing I've been reading about in the news lately. Facebook IS SHIT! I got nothing but grief from that shite... sorry I mean site... when I joined. Pricks don't know how to run the fucking thing. Twitter's far more user friendly.