Google has completely redone the way YouTube incorporates Google+ into its profiles, but users are not happy, to say the least. What does this mean for the YouTube community as a whole?

Google, in hopes of streamlining their various media platforms into one all-encompassing super-platform, has recently updated YouTube with a slew of new features, including full Google+ integration and a redone comments section. Although this is the logical progression of Google’s vision, there has been a large outcry against the new features.

Google has been trying to get YouTube users to sync their Google+ accounts with Youtube for awhile now, though there has been resistance along the way. YouTubers criticized the fact that once this sync was made, instead of having their personal YouTube nom de guerre that their subscribers were familiar with, it updated to their real name. This was seen as a significant privacy issue by many, and so the prompt to merge accounts was simply ignored.

As of November 6th, however, this once optional preference became mandatory. In order to run a YouTube channel, which is many user’s full-time profession, their Google+ name (their real name) must now be displayed to all their subscribers. The same goes for anyone who wants to comment on a video, which has led to the issue of duplicate names. Now, anyone can choose any name, regardless of it’s availability, which troublemakers have put to irritating use. The character count cap on comments has been removed, allowing commenters to post full works of fiction or ASCII art on videos, effectively nuking the comments section.

The list goes on, just watch this video from a passively disgruntled YouTuber on the many new features:

It seems users are refusing to sit idly by and accept these changes. Various petitions have gone up, some receiving hundreds of thousands signatures within a few days. There is no word yet from Google on this, but it is expected that they will have to rework the update or face massive loses in their userbase.