YouTube enlists Google+ to fix the world's worst comments

YouTube’s comments section, that notorious bastion of hostility toward women, people of color, rational thought, empathy, and the English language, is finally getting a makeover. In a series of sweeping changes that begin rolling out today, the space below YouTube videos will transform to what Google is calling "conversations that matter to you." But they will also be tied to the commenter’s Google+ account — a step that could alienate users even as it promises to supply the social network with timely new content.

Beginning this week, the new design will start appearing on the discussions tab for existing channels. The goal for comments, say YouTube's product designers: relevance, not recency. Before now, comments appeared on YouTube in reverse chronological order, with the most recent posts appearing at the top of the feed. The result is a largely undifferentiated stack of comments that often displays the internet hive mind at its worst. On popular videos, comment threads stretch into the thousands, and getting through all of them is practically impossible. "We’ve always been excited about the opportunity that comments give us," says Nundu Janakiram, a YouTube product manager, in an interview with The Verge. "We also know we have a lot of room for improvement."