Weekly NDM Story ..

Open thread: why is YouTube's new comments system causing such anger?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/12/open-thread-youtube-new-comments-system-causing-anger-google

YouTubes commenting section has now been changed to squeeze out trolls in favour of "conversations that matter to you". In the days since, there's been a considerable backlash against the changes, which appears to be gathering pace, and it's all about the way YouTube's comments section is now tied to the Google+ social network.

More than 95,000 people have so far signed a Change.org petition calling for YouTube to change the comments section back to its original form: "Google is forcing us to make google+ accounts and invading our social life to comment on a youtube video and trying to take away our anonymous profile. They are also trying to censor us unless we share the same worldview as they do," claims the petition, which is aiming to get 150,000 signatures.

• YouTube's official video introducing the comments changes has also been catching flak, and not just in its comments. At the time of writing, 2,127 people have given the video a thumbs-up, while 40,450 have given it a thumbs-down.
• The site's own co-founder Jawed Karim hit out at the changes late last week, posting a message on his channel asking: "Why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"
• Meanwhile, YouTube's biggest star PewDiePie – more than 15.6 million subscribers and 2.8bn total views – has disabled comments on his channel, albeit for different reasons: he claimed that his top comments were overrun with "Links to virus sites, advertisers, self-advertisers, spam, copy and paste pics of dogs (I'm OK with those though)."

Changes to any big social media service often attract a lot of criticism when they happen, before it settles down. This feels more serious, but I personally don't think its not that big of a problem. Eventually everyone will get over it, its a better system now because it blocks out and stops trolls and jealous people.