you know what I don't want? Everything connected and all in one place. Tech companies keep telling me I want this, and I really, really don't. I like my separations, my partitions, especially as a trans person who is not out to most of the world and currently lives in a relatively conservative area of the world, if everything I had was connected I could lose a lot of working relationships. Google's implementation of Google + into youtube really made me upset for this reason.
oh for sure, I'm aware, but I have had my singular youtube account for 6 years or so, and so It's got a bunch of videos on it, and it's got a long list of subscriptions that I can't be assed to move to another account. I'm lucky that my username was grandfathered in to the new system, and it does not display my real name, and any comments I make aren't shared to my real name google + . That said however, it's a problem that I shouldn't have had to solve. The integration did nothing to "improve the comment section" as it was claimed, it was just a way to force google + on all of their users. It was a business decision to get more people to use google + (more "butts in seats", as they say), i get it, but it frankly - if I lived in somewhere like virginia, or Texas, or Louisiana, or california 1 2, I could be in some danger if certain people found out I was trans. Facebook's "Real Name" policy - honestly an even bigger problem - has already been used to "out" trans people by assholes who found out about them and decided that they needed to tell the world all about it, and attempt to shame those people. As a trans woman, I have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. If I was a trans woman of colour, the number is 1 in 8. This is not exactly small potatoes, friend, this is serious shit. All that to say, I like to keep my separations in place and I have good reasons for doing so. I am lucky, other people have not been so.
Google hasn't really ever forced you to use your real name, and allows you to create a new/fake google plus account to link to your youtube one. It doesn't seem like an issue at all to me, especially when I follow the same policy of "never mix internet and real life". Facebooks "real name" policy has lost them someone using their service. They literally want a picture ID before they let me use my old account. What google wants is to make every google account work for every possible service. So far as I am aware they do not want to force you to link all your currently existing google accounts under one name, and aren't forcing you to.
2 things: When google plus was first implemented into youtube, it was a forced link. the reason it exists in the system it does now is because even the "1 million + " subscriber club of hooligans was complaining about it, making videos complaining about it, etc. It was a PR nightmare for what was already an unpopular move for an unpopular social media service. In theory this is correct, and for most situations is. As I said before, I don't suspect malice, it's just a business move. moving everyone wholesale into a new system is much easier than encouraging people to switch a la carte. The problem came when you had accounts on several separate google services using the same email. They all became bundled together, because "same account, same person." There were ways you could force a continued separation (which became a little easier to do as they saw how unpopular their decision was), but there was little information for the average user on how to do it - most of it in tiny light grey print at the bottom of the white page. No one was "forcing you" in a literal sense, moving your hands for you, but they were putting the burden of work onto the people who desired (or as I showed before, might need) the separation, the "status quo." therein lies the problem. Youtube in particular is guilty of changing its interface in ways that its users hate, but makes youtube more ad revenue ( which is admittedly much less than it could be because of how google decides to run), rather than actually fixing any of the issues the users actually complain about (the subscription box has been junk for years now - to the point that some of my favourite youtubers use an email list to notify people of new videos instead). It's always easier to crop this change on everyone - think "New and Improved" pizza sauce on your average frozen pizza, which a few months later becomes "Original Sauce is Back!" when the original ingredients are more cost-effective.What google wants is to make every google account work for every possible service. So far as I am aware they do not want to force you to link all your currently existing google accounts under one name, and aren't forcing you to.