Youtube Fixes Its Comments

YouTube comments are rough. They dabble in all forms of trolling, bullying, racism, sexism and other offensive -isms, interspersed with endless spurts of nonsensical chatter. Any thoughtful comments are typically lost in a roiling sea of "LOLs," insults and spam. Thousands of these comments can follow a popular video, in order of when they were posted but with a handful of the most upvoted comments on top. "If some of these comments were spray-painted on homes, buildings or at schools, there would be consequences. But online there are almost none," said Benny and Rafi Fine, the filmmakers behind the popular Fine Brothers YouTube channel. Now YouTube has a new plan to pull its infamous comments out of the muck and make them more constructive and personalized. "When it comes to the conversations happening on YouTube, recent does not necessarily mean relevant. So, comments will soon become conversations that matter to you," said the company in a blog post. "In the coming months, comments from people you care about will rise up where you can see them, while new tools will help video creators moderate conversations for welcome and unwelcome voices." Since YouTube is a Google property, it will start by integrating its existing commenting system into Google+, the identification platform and social network Google has been tirelessly trying to make happen since 2011. YouTube commenters will now have to tie their current accounts to a Google+ account. 'Don't feed the trolls': Racism on YouTube The first major difference is that relevant comments will now automatically float to the top. If the maker of a video posts something in the comments, or even just on their Google+ page, it will automatically be highlighted and placed right under the video. The new system also will automatically surface comments from popular personalities and quality threaded discussions. "We're moving from comments to actual conversations," said YouTube product manager Nundu Janakiram, who compared the new nested comments to a conversation in Gmail. YouTube also is using Google+ to customize what each person sees based on who their friends are and which other commenters they interact with the most. Conversations can be made private, so you and your three best friends can analyze the latest Beyoncé video on YouTube without anyone else seeing.