Am I the only one who's sick and tired of the ceaseless tirade all the annoying ASCII art of "Bob" on virtually every comment section on YouTube? Just goes to show how many people on the internet have a sheep mentality. If you are reading this and are one of "Bob's Soldiers" please (though I doubt it because I prefer to believe that a majority of the e621 user base has more intelligence than grapefruit), read the next paragraph carefully.

You are not helping. You are only making the YouTube comment section worse. Google will not change the comment section back to the way it was, nor will they terminate Google+ just because you spam a bunch of videos with your pathetic copy paste attempt at slacktivism. If you really want to make a difference and get your precious comment section back to the way it was, you should either send Google letters about how you don't like the changes and why they should be undone (just as you would contact your senator about an important political issue and persuade them to take your side) or boycott Google entirely. Nothing less will get their attention. Please stop posting Bob Spam.

And yes, e621 users, this problem affects us negatively also. Quite often people here on the forums will post links to relevant or funny YouTube videos. When I finish watching it and scroll down to the Top Comments to see a metric ass ton of Bob Spam with 5+ upvotes, I die a little inside.

What I ask of you is to do what I have begun doing.
Whenever you see Bob Spam in the comment section of any YouTube video, do not hesitate to flag it for what it is, spam. We can make YouTube and the videos we link to here slightly less shitty, one comment at a time.

Google changed the comments back to normal so you won't be seeing this anymore.
☻/
/▌
/ \

☻/
/▌
/ \

Bob is offended with this forum thread.

Creating Spam about Spam, the Terrorists™ have already won.

TheHuskyK9 said:
Google changed the comments back to normal...

Um, what? No they didn't. I'm on YouTube right now. I even logged out and logged back in and nothing changed.

FatherOfGray said:
Um, what? No they didn't. I'm on YouTube right now. I even logged out and logged back in and nothing changed.

Yes they did. I'm also on Youtube and they changed the comment section from that atrocious format they were using a couple days ago

░░░░░░███████ ]▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ Bob is building an army.
▂▄▅█████████▅▄▃▂ ☻/ This tank & Bob are against e621
Il███████████████████]. /▌ Copy and Paste this all over
◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙◤.. / \ e621 if you are with us

@Seven_Twenty:
The tank got over Bob! D:

TheHuskyK9 said:
Yes they did. I'm also on Youtube and they changed the comment section from that atrocious format they were using a couple days ago

Nnnnope, they didn't. It's still the same.

I wonder what was in their minds when they changed the comments to this...

I don't understand, they made replies appear under the comment they're in reply to, made people you're friends with appear on top of the comments section, and allowed google+ comments in addition to youtube ones.
How is any of this a bad thing?
The actual format doesn't look any different since the last time I saw it.
This feels like more people resisting change simply because it's change.

I just noticed they went back to the old format.

Thanks Bob.

Halite said:
I don't understand, they made replies appear under the comment they're in reply to, made people you're friends with appear on top of the comments section, and allowed google+ comments in addition to youtube ones.
How is any of this a bad thing?
The actual format doesn't look any different since the last time I saw it.
This feels like more people resisting change simply because it's change.

Problem is they now allow links to work in comments, which has people posting virus links under false names and having their own comment upvoted by bots or alt accounts. Last time I checked this is a huge problem.

So, for those of you arguing about whether the comments were back to normal or not: google runs experiments to test out certain new types of layout of features, and this is managed by account. I'm not sure if they test things by IP or even MAC or not but I wouldn't be entirely surprised...

When they moved the title to below the videoplayer (this was done for the sake of mobile devices not being able to see the whole video without scrolling), and everyone was freaking out about it, I had already been living with that modification for weeks and weeks on my main account.

For those of you who don't have the comments rolled back yet, try this:
logout of your youtube and google accounts or change to an alternate account. Go load a vid-page. See if it looks any different. I'm currently still stuck with the new changes, I believe because I often give feedback on how things are broken. This means they'll probably be making refinements to the google-plus integration for a while before they bring them back in.

Halite: The reason people were and are upset over the layout changes is for a number of reasons...

• links could be placed in vid-comments, allowing users to be deceived into viewing screamers or pornography
• the determination of what "top comment" is quite arbitrary and often top comment would be something negative because there would be lots of replies to it, plenty often things like users calling overweight vloggers hambeasts and such
• top comment ordering is arbitrary
• Comments were/are autogenerated everytime someone re-posts a video via google plus. For whatever reason these were more likely to be displayed toward the top (so you'd get a bunch of useless comments like "HEY LOOK AT THIS GREAT VIDEO I'M RE-POSTING.")
• character limits were inconsistent; some users were able to post entire books in the comments. Even though these would be collapsed by default, they would still take up more space and furthermore could potentially cause lag
• Upvotes and downvotes on comments were inconsistent; some comments could not be rated anymore, even if they were garbage.
• Replies to G+ comments were inconsistent; some comments could not be replied to
• Report-comment/flag-as-spam controls were being monkied with and would not always be accessible, even when needed.

Patchi said:
>implying youtube isn't shitty already lel

I admit that on highly popular videos the comments-section is quite useless, however in special cases it's good that they functioned atleast moderately well, to determine say, the real name of a song mislabeled by OP, or what movies or shows were used in a fan-trailer or such. On these sorts of videos it wouldn't be uncommon for the most informational comments to be the highest-rated.

Patchi said:
☻/
/▌
/ \

Bob is offended with this forum thread.

implying youtube isn't shitty already lel

As a side note, my youtube account is still a total clusterfuck.

Halite said:
I don't understand, they made replies appear under the comment they're in reply to, made people you're friends with appear on top of the comments section, and allowed google+ comments in addition to youtube ones.
How is any of this a bad thing?
The actual format doesn't look any different since the last time I saw it.
This feels like more people resisting change simply because it's change.

Popular comments are sorted by replies not upvotes, and replies are hyperlinked. So in order to look at what comment a person is replying to you have to open the video again in another tab and it just puts the comment at the top of the page and the video just starts playing agian. It's completely idiotic.

Ahh the glorious youtube spams over the years
ⓗⓞⓦ ⓓⓞ ⓑⓤⓑⓑⓛⓔ ⓑⓐⓛⓛ ⓣⓧⓣ
ＳＨＵＴ　ＵＰ　ＡＮＤ　ＥＮＪＯＹ　ＴＨＥ　ＭＵＳＩＣ！ ╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
ＴＨＩＳ ＫＩＮＤ ＯＦ ＣＯＭＭＥＮＴ = ＦＵＣＫＩＮＧ ＡＮＮＯＹＩＮＧ
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
etc.

Heh... this'll be turning into a youtube thread... we'll just need the video frame at the top.

I've been unable to see any comments since the change. No comments anywhere, even when the counter says that there should be thousands.

Ah well. At least the videos still work.

AnonDrawFag said:
Popular comments are sorted by replies not upvotes, and replies are hyperlinked. So in order to look at what comment a person is replying to you have to open the video again in another tab and it just puts the comment at the top of the page and the video just starts playing agian. It's completely idiotic.

Those are old-system comments, kept for posterity but not reply-able to. New (since G+) comments function as normal.

123easy said:
Those are old-system comments, kept for posterity but not reply-able to. New (since G+) comments function as normal.

But why would they make it so that the majority of comment threads on the site cannot be used anymore suddenly? It's ludicrous.

Genjar said:
I've been unable to see any comments since the change. No comments anywhere, even when the counter says that there should be thousands.

Ah well. At least the videos still work.

Did you update the flash? The new comment format makes the comments load slower

ragswift said:
But why would they make it so that the majority of comment threads on the site cannot be used anymore suddenly? It's ludicrous.

Its not ludicrous....its google+

I find it amusing that people are so anti-google+ when Facebook, which is so much worse, is so popular.
Get over it people, Google has been slowly integrating it's properties over the past few years and it's not going to stop any time soon.
Since youtube belongs to google, they integrate them.

Halite said:
I find it amusing that people are so anti-google+ when Facebook, which is so much worse...

Nice joke, the only reason they're barely fusing google+ with yt is because google+ sucks and does not even have half the views, popularity and use that yt has.

Halite said:

Since youtube belongs to google, they integrate them.

Right, it's not YouTube. It's GoogleTube.

:P

furballs_dc said:
Right, it's not YouTube. It's GoogleTube.

:P

No it's youtube, but Google bought it 7 years ago.

Butterscotch said:
Nice joke, the only reason they're barely fusing google+ with yt is because google+ sucks and does not even have half the views, popularity and use that yt has.

Not a joke, there's nothing particularly wrong or bad about google+.
It's just another social networking site, and one that is less invasive and horrible to it's customers that FB is.

Do you have any actual specific problems with Google+, or does it just "suck"?

What if this is an attempt to popularize the google+ features, by someone who works for google? Because google's PR department saw all the hate, and feared the worse, they developed a simple spam to circulate the hate for google, with bob. However Bob may seem anti google+, it's really a way to prey upon the hateful, and really they are only hurting themselves. They could easily collect the data, and bend it to their will, so with every post of Bob, it only shows as a number for how many comments are generated, and there for, show that the system works since there are soooo~ many comments posted, showing the system works and needs funding for maintenance and fine tuning.

That and the Bob spam allows for easy banning of dumb people, since it's spam.

IwannabAnnon13 said:
What if this is an attempt to popularize the google+ features

X

Halite said:
I find it amusing that people are so anti-google+ when Facebook, which is so much worse, is so popular.

Facebook has nothing to do with Google, and Facebook is simpler to use. 

Halite said:
That and the Bob spam allows for easy banning of dumb people, since it's spam.

Youtube is so lenient with bans, you can practically troll a user for years before they actually take action.

Halite said:
Not a joke, there's nothing particularly wrong or bad about google+.
It's just another social networking site, and one that is less invasive and horrible to it's customers that FB is.

Do you have any actual specific problems with Google+, or does it just "suck"?

What's with you and Facebook dude? I can give you 20 reasons why Google+ is not good, but I don't know if you want to read them or not...

TheHuskyK9 said:
Facebook has nothing to do with Google, and Facebook is simpler to use. 

Youtube is so lenient with bans, you can practically troll a user for years before they actually take action.

What's with you and Facebook dude? I can give you 20 reasons why Google+ is not good, but I don't know if you want to read them or not...

And I can give you about 100 reasons Facebook is bad, what's your point?

Halite said:
And I can give you about 100 reasons Facebook is bad, what's your point?

My point is Facebook is no where near as bad as Google+. Why are you defending a certain social networking site if you don't even like ANY social networking sites?

Yeah, this thread didn't serve a purpose at creation and it isn't serving one now.

And seeing how the last couple posts have been starting to become aggressive I'll lock it before I have to slap people.