Okay. . . . so, remember all that talk of YouTube ending its partnership with Google+ and the comments system will supposedly go back to normal?
Apparently that's already happened.
Or, so YT says . . . I've been trying to test it out on my GroverKent channel, which I never opted to sync a Google+ account to, yet YT still continues to try to force me to add a Google+ account to that channel whenever I try to post a comment. So I posted on the Google Product Help Forums to inquire about this: if the YT/Google+ merger is officially over, then why is it still trying to force me to add a Google+ account to that channel? Well, after a number of days (of prodding), I finally got a response, and they're now saying that it could take a really long time (perhaps even upwards of a couple of years, since that's how long it took Google to code everything for the merger to begin with) for the split to be completed.
Well. . . . at least we can say that YT, for once, is trying to make an effort to do something for its users.
But now get this: we've all discussed copyright strikes before in this thread, but I read about something that is absolutely and truly scary: some guy recently got a copyright (more accurately, a trademark) strike for his entire channel - not just a video he uploaded, his entire channel got a strike; evidentally, the username of his channel just happens to coincidentally be the same as a Canadian media company, and the owner of said company filed the strike because he felt that person's channel was interfering with the search results for their content, thus doing damage to their brand. Can you believe that? I mean, copyright strikes on videos you upload are bad enough, but can you imagine getting a strike on your entire channel all because of your username?
Oh, and get this: you know all of those commercials on videos that we all hate so much? YT is, once again, trying to relieve itself of responsibilty and saying that have no control over those commercials being put on videos, it's the creators of the videos and the content who put those commercials on. That is a big, fat, dirty, stinkin' lie right there: nobody I know, irregardless if they're a partner channel, or even just an average joe, would willingly put commercials on their videos. I mean, I tried opening a Dailymotion channel to go with my official YouTube channel, and people told me they were unable to watch what I posted because DM kept interrupting the videos every few minutes with commercials: I had absolutely no control over that whatsoever, so I deleted my Dailymotion channel altogether.
On another related not, I see ZippCast is evidentally back up and running again; I've been debating giving them another try, but they've been so sketchy in the past, so it's making me reluctant to do so (even though I see they now offer videos up to 480p, which they didn't previously). Same with UploadSociety: I was doing pretty good over there for a little while and getting some attention from people outside my YT circle, but they kept getting hacked by Google spies, and they kept disabling our ability to upload content, so I eventually deleted that channel as well because it wasn't helping me.