Tired of All of the Profanity on YouTube? That's About To Change

Do this: click on ten videos on YouTube and go down to the comment section. I am willing to thrown down some money to bet that at least six of them will either have: offensive comments; arguments that have nothing to do with the video itself; someone telling another to die. It never fails.

Ah, YouTube. What started out as a place for people to openly upload favorite videos and share amongst others has become a haven of negativity, ignorance and disgust thanks to thousands of users (only known by their user name) who can't seem to behave. It really is appalling, and I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so.

YouTube announced this week that they will begin to ask user's on YouTube if they want to sync their account with their Google Plus account (Google is the owner of YouTube). In effect, this will reveal the true names of people who post comments on YouTube, so the anonymity goes right out the window. Of course, YouTube can not force this to happen, but they are hoping and are confident that many users will go along for the ride.

This ability to change how you are shown on YouTube actually started about three weeks ago, where users openly had the option to change how they would be shown. But to be prompted by YouTube when you leave a comment has only recently begun.

As PC World has shown, this prompt is not just a simple “yes” or “no” question. YouTube does not make it obvious what their goal is, but they make it an encouraging exchange with you in why you should connect with Google Plus.

If you decide to refuse the offer, YouTube will first ask of your reasoning, in which the responses range from your channel being a show or character, to just wanting to decide later.

It should be made clear that this is an initial effort by YouTube and Google, and there really is no guarantee that it is going to work at all. The commentary that can be made however points to how impatient the YouTube community has become with individuals and their content that seems to have no limit or taste in realms of racism, homophobia and so on. The website already makes it so that owner's of the video can disable the ability for any users to leave any comments. You will usually see this when the video contains controversial subject matter.

Hopefully this move is just one of many that will clean up the website, but with internet rights that users get to maintain, there is only so much that can be done. Many online communities like NPR and New York Times make it clear that any form of verbal abuse will not be tolerated and can result from anything to comment deletion to banishment from the site. While those sites are big, it is hard to manually moderate a mammoth site like YouTube.

Hopefully in the future, more developments will be made so YouTube can go back to a civilized sharing site.

Author Bio – Mike Lamardo is an active writer in the blogosphere, writing for sites like Tech Genial, Tech Wire News,DX3, as well as many others.