Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

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A lot of the hate I've seen for Google+ centred around being badgered constantly to 'use my real name' on things. YouTube was a particularly egregious example. Every time I logged in, it would say 'Hey, do you want to use your real name? How great would that be!' When I said no, it would reply with 'Hey, are you sure you want to not use your real name?', and if I then confirmed that no, I didn't want to, it would say 'Okay, well we'll ask you later then.'

If they had just said that 'Okay, your Google profile is now called Google+, and your YouTube account attached to your Google Profile is now your Google+ profile, and you can go to your settings to complete the migration', it wouldn't have been so bad. What they didn't do is offer anyone any reason to change.

All the benefits they hawked for YouTube's Google+ comment integration were actually such huge drawbacks that many top YouTubers turned off comments entirely. Unsurprisingly, YouTube comments had gone from the mindless, racist, misspelled prattling of the internet's ignorant masses to giant spam-filled, link-filled dumping grounds of (varyingly) penis enlargement spam and giant ASCII dicks, and YouTube comments went from bad to worse, a feat no one thought possible.

It really feels like the decision was made for the YouTube team by someone else (Page? Gundotra?), and the YouTube team just had to roll with it, with their input being ignored and the Google+ team saying 'No it'll be great, don't worry, you'll see, everything is better with Google+!'

To this day, people invite me by gmail address to threads, which I cannot leave unless I tie my Google account to a Google+ account so I can join the thread so I can leave the thread.

The entire thing was a clusterfuck from start to finish, and everything that they wanted out of it could have been accomplished by providing value, rather than extrinsic rationalization.

I finally gave up and just blocked all cookies from youtube.com

It nicely solved the annoying google+ problem, with the added benefit that I haven't seen a youtube ad since.

Apparently if you block youtube cookies, the ad server mostly just gives up.

Odd. I have cookies disabled period, and only enable them for specific domains where I want to log in to something. I still get constant ads on youtube unless I use an ad blocker.

FWIW I still get that annoying "real name" popup almost daily on YouTube. I'm going to try the fix mentioned below (blacklisting all cookies from YouTube)

Really? At a certain point (months ago, at least), it finally just consented to creating a Google+ profile based on my current Youtube username. As far as I'm concerned, it was a no-op, since I don't really care what system they're using on the backend for my YT acct.

Google doesn't support how you are doing things. You say you are using Google products but haven't created a Google identity so therefore you get emailed when the services that you use, are interacted with. Well, create a Google identity problem solved forever.

I don't get why you guys fight it so hard. It asked me to enter a name one time. It was clear that it was asking me because it was part of my profile and I had never entered my name on a Google product before. So I entered my name and you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing forever.

Apparently everyone else has been "hassled" endlessly for years to give their name to Google. They already know who you are. You should be appreciative of the transparency. Type in the name. It immediately sorts everything out for you. Google needs to keep moving forward as a company and with their products. They cannot support legacy use cases forever. You need a Google account to use their services. The Google account requires your name, well ok so big deal that isn't a big ask most companies ask for that.

Entering the name carries a risk, which varies from person to person: the risk that Google might decide your name is not "real enough".

It also publicises your name, which may be a big risk for some people.

Ah I think I finally am starting to understand. It is a thing about some people not wanting to use their real name on Google products.

Isn't that a bit of a problem whether you are using a alias or not, since a co worker or anyone will eventually come across your alias while doing whatever it is on Docs or Hangouts or similar. Then look you up using that? I use Google apps constantly it seems that would happen quickly.

Is it possible to use Android without a Google+ account?

Use one name at work and another at home? The whole point would be to keep those spheres separate.

There is also the issue of (for example) the person with the surname "Yellow Horse" having her account closed down by the policy, as Google didn't believe it was a real name.

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