Google’s big YouTube goof-up

The comments section on YouTube is ackowledged to be a terrible place. Or, as humour site cracked.com puts 

YouTube comments broadly fall into four groups: a small number of comments on the actual video in question; comments and arguments about religion; homophobic insults, and spam. To combat this issue - and to increase usage of Google Plus - the search provider made it mandatory for YouTube commenters to sign in with their Google Plus accounts before posting. The idea was that people would be more civil if their comments were made without the mask of anonymity. 

Unfortunately, the plan seems to have backfired. Believing that the link to a real name and persona would regulate behaviour, Google also relaxed limits on comment length and the posting of hyperlinks. The result: an explosion of spammy links, and ASCII (character) porn art. 

"To compound the problem, Google greatly underestimated the ability of YouTube commenters to produce what qualifies as 'engaged conversation' while managing to be also disgusting, offensive, NSFW, irrelevant, or all of the above," writes Casey Johnston at Ars Technica. 

Now Google is frantically working on algorithms that can detect ASCII porn, bad links and impersonation attempts. In this battle against obscenity and obnoxiousness, it looks that the YouTube comments troll is winning, and easily at thatit, "[It] is generally regarded as a black hole of intelligence in the space-time continuum of the internet."