Google+



  • I just discovered there's a Google+ account associated with my YouTube account, and some of my friends are already following me on there! I didn't even know I had G+! I tried to delete it but it informed me I would lose my YouTube account as well. So I decided to just remove all email notifications and left a nice note saying something like "YouTube made this G+ account for me and won't let me delete it. Don't talk to me here because I don't use this account." Which then got LIKED AND COMMENTED ON BY PEOPLE I DON'T EVEN KNOW!!!! And even though I disabled all kinds of notifications I STILL GET G+ NOTIFICATIONS VIA YOUTUBE!!!!

    This all happened because I tried to change my YouTube profile picture because it's a screencap of RuneScape which I haven't played in many years. So I changed my picture and somehow ended up signing up for G+ instead, changing my G+ picture instead, and leaving my YouTube picture as an image of RuneScape.

    Pre-post edit: Just poked through YouTube's settings and found a fairly hidden button to disconnect my YouTube account from G+ and delete the G+ account. I've used malware that's less sneaky than this! Totally reminds me of some phishing attempts I've seen where an advertisement escapes its bounding box and fakes the rest of the webpage it's on.



  • @mott555 said:

    Pre-post edit: Just poked through YouTube's settings and found a fairly hidden button to disconnect my YouTube account from G+ and delete the G+ account.

    Care to tell us where this button is? Please? I've just been through all the YouTube settings and didn't find it.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    @mott555 said:

    Pre-post edit: Just poked through YouTube's settings and found a fairly hidden button to disconnect my YouTube account from G+ and delete the G+ account.

    Care to tell us where this button is? Please? I've just been through all the YouTube settings and didn't find it.

    Surprisingly, the page with settings about accounts is the account settings page. The link is the second of the group of three at the bottom (the section on deleting stuff)



  • @Ben L. said:

    @HardwareGeek said:
    @mott555 said:
    Pre-post edit: Just poked through YouTube's settings and found a fairly hidden button to disconnect my YouTube account from G+ and delete the G+ account.

    Care to tell us where this button is? Please? I've just been through all the YouTube settings and didn't find it.
    Surprisingly, the page with settings about accounts is the account settings page. The link is the second of the group of three at the bottom (the section on deleting stuff)
    That's it. Except it doesn't seem to work. Just gives me a 500 error every time.

     



  • @Ben L. said:

    @HardwareGeek said:
    @mott555 said:
    Pre-post edit: Just poked through YouTube's settings and found a fairly hidden button to disconnect my YouTube account from G+ and delete the G+ account.

    Care to tell us where this button is? Please? I've just been through all the YouTube settings and didn't find it.
    Surprisingly, the page with settings about accounts is the account settings page. The link is the second of the group of three at the bottom (the section on deleting stuff)
    Ah! That's why I couldn't find it. I was looking in YouTube settings, not Google settings (which I'm not sure I've ever even looked at before, since I try to have as little personally identifiable contact with Google as possible).@El_Heffe said:
    That's it. Except it doesn't seem to work. Just gives me a 500 error every time.

    Yeah, I get the 500, too. Google pretends to let you disconnect the accounts.


  • @HardwareGeek said:

    Ah! That's why I couldn't find it. I was looking in YouTube settings, not Google settings (which I'm not sure I've ever even looked at before, since I try to have as little personally identifiable contact with Google as possible).
    You can get there from YouTube also.

    Click on your username in the upper right corner of the screen <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> settings <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Scroll to the bottom of the page.@HardwareGeek said:

    Yeah, I get the 500, too. Google pretends to let you disconnect the accounts
    Well, there is that.



  • I simply ditched both the YouTube and the G+ account, when Google was starting to get too greedy to my taste. Next time I want to upload a video, I'll look for another service. Until that time, all budding amateur sopranos can suck Google's, erm, something.

    I had an account with a few opera karaoke videos, orchestral accompaniment and all. One of them, Der hölle Rache, had a couple of thousands of views per month, (and was used in a Danish theatre production and in a graduation project of a Canadian arts student). Now, you would think that YouTube somehow knows that that particular song is not under copyright, since the creators died some 200 years ago. But no, posting a video with that title "triggers YouTube Content Management System" or something like that, and gives you a "third party matched content" warning, which gives some obscure party the right to show ads with the video, unless you oppose.

    Who the fuck are they kidding? There are hundreds of performances by different groups of artists. How can some unknown little entity claim to have the rights to all performances of this song? I guess the answer is: YouTube doesn't care. They may preach on ethics and copyright, but they don't really care, as long as they get their ads revenue and can pretend to have something DMCA compliant.

    Originally, I thought only facebook was an experiment in trying to see at which point people get upset enough to stop using a free service, but now I think Google's in on it too.



  • @TGV said:

    I simply ditched both the YouTube and the G+ account, when Google was starting to get too greedy to my taste. Next time I want to upload a video, I'll look for another service. Until that time, all budding amateur sopranos can suck Google's, erm, something.

    I had an account with a few opera karaoke videos, orchestral accompaniment and all. One of them, Der hölle Rache, had a couple of thousands of views per month, (and was used in a Danish theatre production and in a graduation project of a Canadian arts student). Now, you would think that YouTube somehow knows that that particular song is not under copyright, since the creators died some 200 years ago. But no, posting a video with that title "triggers YouTube Content Management System" or something like that, and gives you a "third party matched content" warning, which gives some obscure party the right to show ads with the video, unless you oppose.

    Who the fuck are they kidding? There are hundreds of performances by different groups of artists. How can some unknown little entity claim to have the rights to all performances of this song? I guess the answer is: YouTube doesn't care. They may preach on ethics and copyright, but they don't really care, as long as they get their ads revenue and can pretend to have something DMCA compliant.

    Originally, I thought only facebook was an experiment in trying to see at which point people get upset enough to stop using a free service, but now I think Google's in on it too.

    TRWTF is that people keep forgetting that 99.9% of youtube copyright claims are either posted automatically by some kind of matching script or by trolls

    unless you can devise a better system you may wish to tone down the hate. the only thing that deserves hate is the opaqueness of the system

     



  •  Yeah damn. Google is sneaky like hell. I now suddenly have a Google+ account too...somehwo through gmail. Probably did not read something well enough and bang: account created. It's now recommending people as friends I have never heard of. 



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    That's it. Except it doesn't seem to work. Just gives me a 500 error every time.
    It seems to work for me, but warns me that if I delete my G+ account, it'll make my YouTube videos private (and the only way to make them public again is to recreate a channel, which automatically creates an associated G+ account).



  • @ratchet freak said:

    unless you can devise a better system you may wish to tone down the hate. the only thing that deserves hate is the opaqueness of the system
     

    The hate? Aren't you being a bit too sensitive?

    And of course I can devise a better system, at least from my point of view. If only they would punish those who make unjust claims, or had some real people judging all these claims, it would most likely be better. They just allow a party to put a claim on a video based on a string match, without considering if that party truly has the rights.

    But that's even beside the point. Why would I have to be able to make a better system before criticizing? If that's your rule, then you can't criticize anything anymore. You'll even have to shut up when they imprison you, because "you didn't come up with a better judicial system".

     



  • @TGV said:

    @ratchet freak said:

    unless you can devise a better system you may wish to tone down the hate. the only thing that deserves hate is the opaqueness of the system
     

    The hate? Aren't you being a bit too sensitive?

    And of course I can devise a better system, at least from my point of view. If only they would punish those who make unjust claims, or had some real people judging all these claims, it would most likely be better. They just allow a party to put a claim on a video based on a string match, without considering if that party truly has the rights.

    But that's even beside the point. Why would I have to be able to make a better system before criticizing? If that's your rule, then you can't criticize anything anymore. You'll even have to shut up when they imprison you, because "you didn't come up with a better judicial system".

     

     I see a lot more hate against yt's copyright system elsewhere than just here (mostly on yt), I'm just venting ;)

     

     devising a better system and having it properly implemented in a way that can deal with the shear scale of youtube are 2 different things

     

    I didn't say you couldn't criticize but just that you should tone down the hate. But really that was addressed more to all the other ranters that don't even attempt to appreciate the complexity of needing to worry about copyright in the way that youtube needs to 

     



  • I have a g+ account by choice and I don't have any problems. Mostly I don't understand what you're all complaining about and I think you're making a fuss over nothing.

    If you have a problem with g+ notifications, change them. If you posted something and people you don't know commented/liked it, you posted it publicly. If people are expecting you to respond to them on g+ when you have made no indication of using it, the problem is with them not you, otherwise there is no problem.

    Frankly I'm glad g+ exists because FB is less likely to go full-monopoly on us.

    Admittedly, I don't use my youtube account much so I've no idea how they interact, and I can understand a legitimate concern you have over being spammed with g+ notifications.



  • @ratchet freak said:

    I didn't say you couldn't criticize but just that you should tone down the hate. But really that was addressed more to all the other ranters that don't even attempt to appreciate the complexity of needing to worry about copyright in the way that youtube needs to

    Ranting rarely helps, that's true. But the way YT has implemented the system that, basically, just has to keep liability at a distance, is sloppy. But my thorough dislike is for the G+ accounts. How much longer before YT only runs in HD on Chrome?

     



  • @Shoreline said:

    I have a g+ account by choice and I don't have any problems. Mostly I don't understand what you're all complaining about and I think you're making a fuss over nothing.

    Well, I don't understand why you're making a fuss over facebook. If you have a problem with fb's <insert vaguely related feature>, then you just <something>. Frankly, I'm glad fb exists, so Google can't yet go full-monopoly on us.

    Or: G+ is just another way to suck in data from guinea pigs and we don't like it.

     



  • I believe the reason people are complaining is that they want to keep YouTube an anonymous/pseudonymous place, and Google is trying its best to link everything there to Google+ profiles (which includes people's real names and info). I don't know if that's accurate, I never used YouTube (with an account) or G+.

    So basically this.

    Also, the new comment system is definitely worse than the older one in every way (except for the lack of character limit on comments), even if you don't care about the names.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Shoreline said:

    fuss over nothing
     

    Right from the start, G+ had a significant number of unwritten and arbitrary rules that, if you violated (or seemed to violate) any one of them, your G+ account was shut down and suspended. And it took all your other accounts with it. Including your gmail account.

    The risk to rward ratio was WAY off, and so I instantly had zero desire to have anything to do with G+. I barely use Facebook. Why would I want to sign up for a useless social service that I wouldn't use, that no one I knew used-- and burden the risk of losing my gmail account?

    That's where we're starting from-- disinterest and lack of trust.

    Then came the pushiness. Notifications started showing up all over the place, "punch the monkey" style. JOIN G+!  JOIN G+!  JOIN G+!!! JOIN G+ MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!  Everywhere I went on any Google service, I was being harassed to join.  If I said No, it just popped up again later. If I adblocked it, it would show up somewhere else. Eventually the "no" options started being called something else (like "Later, thanks"), so I'd have to hunt for the right button. Then the "no" options disappeared, and the only way I could get away from it was refresh the page.

    At this point, it was STILL a useless service. I wouldn't use it. No one I know uses it. I already would have to put my other accounts at risk. And now I'm being harassed to join a service I don't want from a company that can't take "no" for an answer.  Even if G+ magically became useful overnight, I've already built my negative associations. I'm being to hate and despise is on sight. I adblock and noscript plus.google.com out of spite.

    And it just rolls downhill from there. After that came the "link G+ to everyfuckingthing" policies, so my gmail account is at risk. And my Youtube account. And (at the time) my Google Docs account, etc, etc.  And then came the asinine decision to force a realname policy onto formerly anonymous accounts-- where one of those accounts is for a site littered with trolls, hate-videos and sex stuff that I probably don't want showing up on my "Lorne Kates (formerly anonymousguy567) recently viewed" list for all the world to see!

    So there's zero reason to use a service that went from useless to harassing to actively hostile.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    Snipped.. if you want to read it, scroll up one...

    I couldn't have said this better myself, but it reflects my attitude perfectly.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    At this point, it was STILL a useless service. I wouldn't use it. No one I know uses it.

    I guess you don't know these people.



  • I just went to the settings for G+ from the youtube header, where I was known as mininukes4ever, and it's like there's no connection at all with my other Google stuff.

    When I click Ben's links, though, I am known as myself at google.

    So clearly there is a separation of sorts there.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ben L. said:

    I
     

    Available on TDWTF Twitter feed. Or the site's RSS feed itself.

    @Ben L. said:

    guess

    I don't have any of my co-workers on my Facebook, either.

    @Ben L. said:

    you

    The only thing posted there is:

    Alex: Can anyone recommend any apps like Tweet Deck for Google+?
    One Useless Reply: Switch your browser to Chrome

    @Ben L. said:

    don't

    No, I don't personally know Remy.

    @Ben L. said:

    know

    I get enough of you here. I also can't tell if anything you post is useless, because the layout is shit. First, it's in two columns. Fuck that instantly. Second, there's no date/time on any of the posts there. I can't tell if you posted it a day ago or a year ago. Why would I want to invest time in a possibly dead account?

    @Ben L. said:

    these

    I literally have no idea who this person is. The account just seems to be a whole bunch of Youtube video game videos that no other G+ person has commented on. Yay?

    @Ben L. said:

    people.

    Unless she's the person I keep getting email for because she's too dense to learn how to type in her own email address-- no, I don't know her. And she has zero content.

    ...

    So in other words: G+: still completely useless. And worse than I thought, because the layout of G+ is complete shit. And also, half the links you posted are in the format of 'plus.google.com/1897682763816234/'.  I can't tell who owns that link without clicking on it. Username in the URL, why would we do that?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Ben L. said:

    know

    I get enough of you here.


    Chuckle.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    At this point, it was STILL a useless service. I wouldn't use it. No one I know uses it. I already would have to put my other accounts at risk ... And it just rolls downhill from there

    This is pretty much exactly why I'm now paying Fastmail a pittance to use their excellent mail service. $100 for three years costs me less than Google's effect on my blood pressure, and I don't have to apply endless blocking and restyling nonsense to Fastmail to keep it looking nice. The Fastmail webmail page also loads a shitload faster than Gmail (it's about as fast as Gmail used to be when I first started using it seven years ago) and its mail composition window completely fails to suck. I like it.



  • @TGV said:

    Or: G+ is just another way to suck in data from guinea pigs and we don't like it.

    Now we're talking. If you're going to give up your soul... or data or whatever, for a company, you want to know something useful is going to come out of it for the human race. I can understand that.



  •  @Shoreline said:

    Now we're talking. If you're going to give up your soul... or data or whatever, for a company, you want to know something useful is going to come out of it for the human race. I can understand that.

    Precisely. So if Google and facebook are actually run by Pterofylians from the Charnuka nebula (*) to run an experiment on humans, fine, but I do want to know the results. And of course, we have the obligation to behave as if we don't know; otherwise the experiment is tainted, and futile, and might provoke a war amonst the Pterofylians which will result in the destruction of our planet. So, if you feel peeved by G+, by all means act it out. The future of our race might depend on it.

    (*) Names have been altered to protect the nocent.

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    And it just rolls downhill from there. After that came the "link G+ to everyfuckingthing" policies, so my gmail account is at risk. And my Youtube account. And (at the time) my Google Docs account, etc, etc.
    Google is lagging far behind other social media sites like Facebook and Twiiter so now they're using the dominance of Google search and YouTube to brute-force their way in. Force everyone to have a G+ account whether they want one or not, and tie together YouTube and G+ comments. It inflates the number of users and comments but doesn't change the fact that G+ is still useless. @Lorne Kates said:
    And then came the asinine decision to force a realname policy onto formerly anonymous accounts
    Unless you're a celebrity, then you can still be Kid Rock or Lady Gaga. Or the Google executive who runs Google+ and created the Real Name Policy, who also uses a fake name.

     



  • @ender said:

    @HardwareGeek said:
    That's it. Except it doesn't seem to work. Just gives me a 500 error every time.
    It seems to work for me, but warns me that if I delete my G+ account, it'll make my YouTube videos private (and the only way to make them public again is to recreate a channel, which automatically creates an associated G+ account).
    Google is a big A/B test.

    This is all I got from https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts :

    I'd expect to have my YT account there, at least.

    Hmm... the latest state of affairs seems to be that my Google account doesn't have a G+ profile, but my YT account (which is linked to my Google account, as demonstrated by the "what do you want to be known as" prompt) does. Weird shit.  Edit: to be fair, the G+ account is named after the YT account, so it makes sense. Still doesn't explain why my Google account doesn't have any connected accounts.

     

    Huh. I just realized that if you get your password wrong when signing in to Google, the "Stay signed in" checkbox mysteriously gets checked. Sneaky sneaky.
    Wait, actually this only seems to happen when I'm in a Firefox incognito window. Weird weird shit.

     

    @Ben L. said:

    I guess you don't know these people.
    Nice mix of friendly and unfriendly URLs there. And I also don't know the last two, btw.



  • Heh.

     

    Okay, I believe some context is in order. This is the result of sgining in to an account I haven't accessed in about 1.5 years; an account which forwards to the account I use daily.
    It seems these emails are generated on the fly.



  • @ratchet freak said:

    I see a lot more hate against yt's copyright system elsewhere than just here (mostly on yt), I'm just venting ;)

    I think you'll be seeing a lot more soon: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/youtube-goes-nuts-flagging-game-related-content-as-violating-copyright/

     





  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Shoreline said:

    fuss over nothing
     

    Right from the start, G+ had a significant number of unwritten and arbitrary rules that, if you violated (or seemed to violate) any one of them, your G+ account was shut down and suspended. And it took all your other accounts with it. Including your gmail account.

    Wow, your experience seems pretty bad. I guess mine has been very positive by comparison. I've never been locked out of my google account, but I can certainly appreciate how inconvenient that would be, especially when the rules are arbitrary - I've used other things which lock you out with seemingly arbitrary rules.


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