I actually think Google+ was a good idea and it's a shame google now has a dozen different products with completely different social identities. Facebook does this right, you have one profile.

Youtube comments might not be a cesspool if they were tied to your "Google identity".

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taeric 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Has been said many times, but Google+ was hoping to be as good as Google Reader and Google Buzz already were for people. Was a surprisingly good social layer on top of article aggregation that largely worked by leveraging GMail.

What they were not, of course, was a replacement for the "town hall" dream of social capture that places like Facebook are hoping for.

And, I'm a bit hazy, but didn't Youtube try and force comments to be tied to your google identity?

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rockskon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm always puzzled by such a claim. One can look at Facebook to see the comments people put up tied to their real name and find no shortage of utterly abhorrent comments. Not sure why there's such a pervasive memory-holing of this when people talk of wanting to tie the ability to comment publicly to peoples' identities.

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stickfigure 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Comments in Facebook may not be perfect, but they are vastly better than youtube comments. This is a false equivalence.

	▲	rockskon 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Our experiences differ in that regard. And no it isn't a false equivalence since Facebook's "use your real ID" commenting system is directly comparable to any proposed system to mandate use of someone's ID to post on other platforms.

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aleph_minus_one 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm always puzzled by such a claim. One can look at Facebook to see the comments people put up tied to their real name and find no shortage of utterly abhorrent comments. Not sure why there's such a pervasive memory-holing of this when people talk of wanting to tie the ability to comment publicly to peoples' identities.

This should give insanely obvious evidence that clear-name policy does not lead to a more civilised discussion. I mean, everybody who went to a public school [in the American sense of the word] already knows this well: "everybody" knew the names of the schoolyard bullies.

The political wishes of clear-name policies are rather for surveillance and to silence critics of the political system.

	▲	rockskon an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It does change people's behavior. Perhaps the average person will use more polite language? But it's not uncommon for me to see dehumanization, threats, and calls for literal mass-murder-of-entire-demographics genocide promoted with polite language. Sometimes used by journalists. Sometimes by academics. Sometimes by podcast hosts. Sometimes by their fans. Sometimes by politicians. All using their real names. I frequently encounter people using their real name saying my family deserves to die. Who would, in a heartbeat, threaten my employer by dint of a relative's place of birth. Not having my real identity behind my posts is my only means of keeping myself safe from extremely sick people online who have a culture of intimidating into silence those that express views or belong to a demographic they detest.

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veqq 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Youtube comments have been nice and constructive for a few years now

	▲	Telaneo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe this is just me only subscribing to channels where people behave in the comments and the channel owner actually does some moderation, but I actually kind of agree. Sure, you find disagreements and arguments, but you don't get the 'ur mum gae', the reductio ad Hitlerum, the dongers, and the outright insane takes and paragraphs of all caps that I would expect from Youtube comments. Meanwhile, every time I open Facebook because of some event I need to press 'going' on, I get a glimpse of some inane take or someone writing in all caps because reasons. There have been a few waves of comment spam, but maybe Youtube actually managed to curb that now? Only took them two or so years.