[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]
One could conclude from this that people who use a service don’t want it changed, and try to avoid forcing it on them when there isn’t any real purpose.
[/quote]You could also conclude that your average rando online doesn’t like change, and also doesn’t know as much about design or the motivations behind it or changes in design that a company has made as they think they do.
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]
Or one could express contempt for their users, constantly adjust things without regard to proper design, and have people like Vi Hart walk.
[/quote]Contempt for their users? Oh fuck off. They Told you about this. They told you about linking accounts months before they did it, and they told you about this change a month before they made any sort of change. They made it very clear this was going to happen, and they made it clear the whole time they’ve had linked accounts that they were linked. This was never hidden, it was never secret, it was never unannounced.
If they just changed it with zero notice, maybe then you’d have a point. But they didn’t. They put it out there in multiple ways, the tech press talked about it, and then everyone forgot about it. You forgetting you were told, and freaking out when things change does not indicate contempt on the part of others.
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]
There are more levels of vulnerability than needing an all-out witness protection program. For instance, someone might feel the need to express themselves on-line under a pseudonym, yet still have a professional e-mail account.
[/quote]Well no shit. Stating the obvious doesn’t change the point. If you require or wish for a pseudonym, then why are you doing anything online under your real name that you don’t want under your real name? And if you need to use your real name professionally, why are you attaching that to things you don’t want to be seen linked to your professional name? You make your choices, and you cop it sweet. It’s not Google’s job to cover your ass because you say dumb shit under your professional identity, or your personal one, or both. What’s next, do you expect Twitter to take the fall for the Ocean Marketing guy, because he was stupid enough to say what he said, where he said it?
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]
Having what is linked to what change is serious for a lot of people, whether or not you care about them.
[/quote]No, I care about them. What I don’t care about are the people who are too stupid to realize that saying things online, pseudo-anonymous or not, might actually have some consequences. Again, it’s not Google’s job to cover your ass, it’s YOUR job. If you can’t take responsibility for the things you say, then that’s nobody’s problem but yours.
And really, if you thought your youtube comments were anything more than cheap, easily penetrated pseudo-anonymity, then you’re a fool.
And to head off the inevitable indignant objections - No, this does not infringe freedom of speech, because freedom of speech has always come with responsibility for that speech. No, this does not mean that everybody else can do what they like to you without consequences - it just means that you have the same responsibility for what you say as anyone else. If you can’t or don’t want to deal with the consequences of what you say, hide yourself appropriately, or don’t say it.
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]Right, no criticism at all.[/quote]Alright, I’ll cop to hyperbole, so allow me to rephrase. There were very few serious complaints, and absolutely nothing compared the absolute (metaphorical)parade of (metaphorical)wailing and hand-wringing that this has produced.
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]You know, for someone so anxious to defend google, you don’t seem particularly good at using it.[/quote]And now you’re trying to project an emotional state and motivation on me. If you want a response to that, just imagine an incredibly sarcastic slow clap.
And no, I’m finding very little in the way of wailing, hand-wringing, promising to leave google and/or youtube and other assorted tantrums that remotely resemble this current round of whinging. Do pardon me if I somehow didn’t uncover some amazing revelation twelve pages deep using some obscure and near-godlike google-fu.
[quote=“chenille, post:24, topic:14185”]
But it is true that far more people will complain when they actually see a change in practice and can tell what it means for them than when it is just a plan explained on blogs, I’ll give you that.
[/quote]Since even I can’t be an asshole all the time, let me tell you something interesting as to why they’ll probably ignore the complaints.
See, there’s this funny thing that facebook discovered - when you change the interface or a particular functionality, people go fucking apeshit, and demand a rollback, the way they’d tell it, they’d just about give their right leg for it. They threaten to leave in droves, they talk shit about you in blogs and comments sections and forums, internet-wide, talking about the end of facebook, dire consequences, and how this will negatively affect things.
But Facebook ignores it. Completely, which would almost certainly be indicative of that contempt for their customers/product that you mentioned. Here’s the reason - Their userbase doesn’t actually drop significantly. It doesn’t even drop with much statistical significance. The dire consequences rarely-if-ever come to pass, and all the pissing and moaning tends strongly to vanish within a month, when everyone gets used to it. And people - once they get over the shock of the change and re-learn the system - get to like it. When the next change comes, they demand they are returned to exactly what they complained about bitterly in the first place.
That’s one of the biggest reasons we’re going to be ignored - because we HAVE a precedent for this, and that precedent says “minimal negative effect.” The precedent says that everybody’s dire predictions won’t come true, and that they won’t lose a significant number of users. On top of that, consider how they will benefit in light of that - despite all the negative sentiment right now, that’ll mostly vanish in a month or so(again, precedent), they will come out on top in the end. And we can’t really say it’s at a cost to us, because frankly, Google plus is the price of admission now, and we don’t complain that, say, Disneyland is charging at the gate is a cost to us, because we know that’s what you pay to get in. Don’t want to pay the price? Don’t go to Disneyland, and vomit on a rollercoaster elsewhere.
Really, it’s not likely to change, and plus, we’ve had it for all of…Four days? Three? So they’re not going to take your complaints seriously anyway, because it’s been three or four days. Give it a month or two and see how it all comes out in the long run. If I was in the habit of making bets with random strangers on the internet(and I am certainly not), I’d have a hundo saying nothing that bad will actually happen in the long run.
