Is youtube & google+ integration a way to silence dissent...or just gross incompetence?

I can't see this being suited better in any online forum then here, but if it belongs somewhere else...bla bla bla wth do I know?

Woke up early this morning to read my "morning paper" (news, YT, etc) and somehow, through the magic of the interwebs managed to come across the idea of youtube "astroturfing". I think when most ppl hear of astroturfing, they remember Pelosi's bs comment about calling the TP astroturf. (yet remember how most ppl had made home made signs, etc compared to the "designed" signs that were clearly bought & paid for by someone with money & an agenda, who then (probably) paid these ppl to march) That's what I first thought when I read it.

So I looked into it, the idea, what were the implications, what were the realities, etc.

FYI: In the "good old days" of YT, the top comment was the one that had the most up votes, and through this way, it usually had something to do with the video. Not only THAT, but it was also easier in the regards that you didn't have to wade through 20 pages of garbage to read something that was noteworthy, etc.

Those days are gone, with YT's new comment message system. (And you can see evidence of this by the tank (war) posted in the comments, and if you were anything like me, you were "wth" has this to do with anything?"

NOW, it isn't about upvotes, it's about the most replies to your comment, (regardless what the content of your comment is) that gets pushed to the top. Upvotes aren't #1 anymore.

Here's where the subject really started to come into focus for me. reddit column

I don't do reddit, I know it's not a column, this is just where I finally started to get the idea.

The video at the top, has the guy explaining it quite while also.



I'm quite sure that alot of you will say it's simple marketing, nothing more, a way to target for ads & stuff. Google bought out YT, therefore it's just a way to compete against facebook. Or others perhaps, may say it's a marketshare "bump" for whatever reason so they (Google) can sell short. (Which I don't get, b/c it's Google. They don't have to sell, and why would they?) Lastly, that it's all part of the 3 letter agencies plans, to make it easier to compile info. (This is a conspiracy website after all)

And please forgive my rambling, this is my thought process at 6 in the morning over coffee.

The POINT is, Google, and others know/understand about the BASE NATURE of man. He LOVES to argue over BS things that make absolutely NO DIFFERENCE to anybody. It's like that old joke about winning an argument on the internet.

People have been using the comment section to "fight back" against the MSM for years. How many times have YOU read in the comments where the top vote was usually 100% against the main story, or something showing the exact opposite of the column?

Now? Upvotes don't matter, it isn't about how many "agree" with your comment, it's about arguing with that idiot whose a racist or knocks/believes in religion, whether hitler was right, or who was the best teletubby. The number of replies beats upvotes, therefore, the killing of agreement,the squashing of the silent majority. (It takes nothing to click an upvote, it does however take something to type a rebuttal to your internet troll.)

Man is a base creature, so is this being done on purpose, to further kill ourselves & our collective majority by our complaining over idiotic & stupid crap? Or is it simple shoddy engineering by a couple hundred IT nerds at Google?

Neither. Corporate for profit assholery.

How are they going to get people to use google+ without forcing them to?

reply to post by schadenfreude


Just so you know: Google bought out YouTube well before Facebook launched.

I dont see the appeal in Youtube, but I stopped watching TV when YT was still built around a Macromedia product.

reply to post by schadenfreude


Eh, I'm not that worried about it. Way, way, way too much effort is being put into web manipulations. It results in things like sock puppet accounts on ATS and other sites to vote up posts that make a certain point, and it will result in similar BS with Youtube. But the main thing is this: savvy independent thinkers don't change their opinion because a website tells them its popular, or dismiss a larger thing because some idea that is associated with it. The thinking errors that make the manipulations of perception popular are becoming rarer and rarer in the population at large, as they adapt to the mass amounts of BS they encounter on the Internet. That means manipulations are less common, and it also means people really don't care if a certain comment got a lot of "votes". Its better to communicate with people at a more fundamental level.

I guess I'm just the oddball to have never paid attention to, let alone used the like/thumb up system YT has. The whole backslapping nonsense has always seemed childish to me anyway, but that's just me.

Since Google bought them and brought the full resources only Google can bring to the effort, YT has graduated beyond being a service of children showcasing their farts lit for an audience as party material, to one of the most powerful and vast collections of knowledge ever formed in one spot across our history. The librarians of the great collection of Alexandria would feel unworthy by comparison.

It's taken seeing YT used as a solid and regular tool in college classes to realize just how much of it now IS commercial quality and value. It's also one of the largest search engines in the world by activity ranking, in it's own right. Google would have a dangerous competitor there, if they didn't own it.

I think you have to have a G+ account to comment now. No anon comments.

I think it's to slow down spam but really the intention is there but the result is the complete opposite where spam and hateful comments (like in that video) ends up at the top instead of what's useful. Google is a lot like Microsoft in the sense that it's so big that it decides what's best for people, and don't get me wrong, Apple is the king of this philosophy.

They will shove G+ down everyone's throats and people will still use it. Some might quit, maybe a few tens of thousands but that won't do too much damage to their wallet. I honestly think it's just a corporate thing, and something that didn't get planned out too well. We think Google is big, bright and almighty but realistically there are some stupid project managers at Google. I worked on a project there once, and I have some friends that work there in mountain view. It's not all cupcakes and rainbows like those reviews of working there claim it to be which is why a lot of people quit Google to go work someplace else that pay less.

The whole NSA / Google thing probably benefited Google by a bit but now that the cat is out of the bag, they have to act like the victim and then the hero, which now they are suing the NSA. However, they do claim more encryption, but that means nothing when those passwords are freely given to the NSA. My last point is that Google's motto is "do no evil" but at the same time they want the entire world to be united in one nation, under a fascist government ruled by socialists. This is not something I made up, this is actually the mindset of Google. I'm looking for the interview video of Larry Page talking about just that but it's an old video and hard to find at the moment. I hope someone can help me find it.

I don't know what Google really aims to become one day, but I do know that a lot of people have quit the company because it is disorganized and no longer follows its original vision. Perhaps the whole G+ ordeal is just them being disorganized.

No conspiracy here, just somebody's "great big idea that is super awesome".

It seems youtube changes format like every year now. Personally I prefer the retro youtube, but I like some of the newer features.