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Care to comment on the change to online comments?

Molly Wood Sep 25, 2013
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Care to comment on the change to online comments?

Molly Wood Sep 25, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

At long last, a tech company has promised to tackle head on a problem it created. Google says it is making tweaks to the commenting on YouTube. The comment threads on the video sharing site have long been considered the seedy underbelly of self expression online. 

The company’s proposed solution is three-pronged. Chris Taylor, deputy editor for Mashable, says YouTube will grant the person who posted a video more control over the comments section. It will also leverage Google’s massive data powers to give people browsing a more custom view. 

“This is YouTube doing its darndest to try and show you the comments that it thinks you will like — from people you know, celebrities you like, the video creators themselves,” he says. 

And Google isn’t the only company making a move to change its commenting system. The magazine Popular Science has announced it will stop accepting comments altogether on it’s website. The magazine’s content director said “comments can be bad for science.”

Chris Taylor, deputy editor for Mashable, joins Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson to discuss. Click on the audio player above to hear more. 

**CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post referred to Chris Taylor as Mashable’s San Fancisco bureau chief. Taylor is Mashable’s Deputy Editor.

 

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