Google to YouTube Users: Don't Be Evil
Google is trying to clean up the Web, one comment at a time. Earlier this week it introduced a new feature designed to drain the online cesspool better known as YouTube comments.
YouTube has long been the repository of anonymous, illiterate, hateful, and just plain brain-dead comments since its inception. Now Google is trying to gently urge people to post videos and comments using their real names -- more specifically, their Google+ identities -- in the quaint notion that if people are held accountable by name, they might possibly act a little less like jerks. Maybe.
It is, however, purely voluntary. You can still post things to YouTube under a pseudonym like deadpuppies666 or singledigitIQ, but now you need to tell them why first -- like you're posting as a fictional character for a show, a music artist, a business, or you need to remain anonymous for some other reason. It's less of a stop sign and more of a speed bump on the road to rudeness.
