Hello, and welcome to "Hank Green Talks About YouTube!" Today, Hank Green's gonna talk about YouTube. On YouTube, looking at YouTube, isn't it... pretty? Uhm, we're gonna talk about comments, and how they're different today than they were yesterday, uh.. and why that is and how that is.

The first thing we're gonna look at, is the fact that I can switch between accounts right now. I can switch accounts to a number of accounts. Uhm, this is a test page I did, this is the Crash Course Google+ page, this is the Hankgames channel, this is Hankschannel, this is Nerdfighteria, I don't even know what Nerdfighteria... I think that's a Google+ page, and this is Hank Green, this is just my Gmail account, that, of course, because all account at Google have a Google+ account, has my Google account. And it is in fact the Google account, the G+ account that I use for G+ stuff. Now, uh, that's not what I want to use generally, I wanna use Hankschannel when I'm commenting on stuff, because Hankschannel is the- is the social presence that I have on YouTube, it is the place where I upload my personal videos, the place where you are in fact watching this video right now. Now, uh, if we head over to the comments, let's look at how his works. So, I'm gonna turn off the volume. Yes, I got it before he started making a noise. Uhm, so now we're looking at some top comments on John's most recent video. And the first thing that you'll notice, is that only some of them have replies enabled on them, and, in fact, most of them do not. The other thing that you'll notice is that many of these comments are from a day ago and some of them are from 5 hours ago; they are out of order, because they are based on this thing called ''top comments'', and ''top comments'' rates the comment based on the number of thumbs up it has, the social presence of the commenter and how many people, uh... how many people have... they have following them and also whether or not you are connected to those people in your social networks, uh, particularly your Google+ social network, so that you can see comments from people that you theoretically care about before you see comments from people that you don't care about. If you don't want it sorted that way, you can go to ''newest first''. I would like for it to have a way where I could set that to be the default, but there is no current way to do that. Now, what you'll notice is that if I go to ''newest first'' is that I can reply to all of these comments. The reason for that is that the reason I can't comment on those older comments, is because they were made before the January... January? Uh, before the November 7th switch to the Google+ification of the YouTube comment system. You can no longer ever ever ever reply to a comment that was made before January 7th. That's a total freaking bummer and I don't know how they couldn't fix that problem, but they couldn't. So, that is the case. As they say: everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Uh, I think that was Mark Twain and that is still the case, except this time it's YouTube, and the reason nobody does anything about it is because we can't. You cannot control them. So, situation, uh, is that we're just gonna have to deal with it. Uh, now let's look at what it's like when I leave a comment on a Vlogbrothers video. ''John Green is an amazing guy with an amazing idea." That is how I feel about this video, and I post that. I'm posting it and it is now the most recent comment. Let's look at the top comments. It is now also the most- the top, the toppest comment. Now, I think that it is the toppest comment, because it is my comment and I'm looking at the comment feed and so this is what it looks like to me. It's not gonna be what it looks like to other people. That's something to take into account: you don't really know where your comment is, because it is in a different place for every person, which is weird. Uh, so if we go back to ''newest first''. I can also leave a reply on this and say: ''I totally agree with you, me.'' And then reply. Now, uh, what we'll see, is that if I go back to the Hank Green Google+ page, Google+... Hank Green... Google+, uhm... that, uh, it's... wait. Hmmmm... ah. Not here, because this is the Hankschannel thing, not Hankgreen, so we have to go the the Hankschannel Google+, which I don't know where that is. Where did it go? Hankschannel, me. Click on that. Does that take me to the Google+? It does! Everybody look, okay. Here, we found it. This wasn't the Hankschannel Google+. This was, this was not even created by me, that was created by somebody else. This is the Hankschannel Google+ page. It has 1,240 followers and a stock cover, of course it does. This is John Green, he has- he is an amazing guy with an amazing idea, and then Hankschannel leaving a comment. Now I'm gonna leave a comment- wait, let's check this out. Now I can switch from my Hankschannel account to my Hank Green Google+ account, because Hank Green is ho- oh no, don't make me leave though! Because Hank Green is how I use Google+. So now I'm still Hankschannel. I wanna be Hank Green, switch account. No, stop that! Okay, now maybe if I click on this... Hello?! Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?! This takes me to the Hankschannel YouTube, which is good. I'm glad it takes me to the Hankschannel YouTube. Oh my god, where... where is it? Wai- I- I wanna leave a comment as.. not as Hankschannel. Uh... aaah... Well, I'm glad to see that there's an ethnics, like a racial slur on the top of... right there just sitting there, like Google isn't taking the fact that there's a racial slur in the comments into account at all. Anyway, what I wanted to show you is that, uhm, what did I wanna show you? The Hankschannel page please. No! I don't wanna edit my name! I wanna go to the Google+ page! Of that! Of Me! So I can- No! God! [sighs] Why is this so confusing? I wanna go to the- I wanna go to my Google+ page! That's not that- My Google+, but a different Google+! This one! That one, the Hankschannel Google+ page, yes this! And now I can leave a comment here, and say ''OH GOD, OH GOOOD''. Then I can post that comment, and then I go back to this video... but still have it paused. That comment is now also here! So, just to- Okay, so now let's go, let's go to the AFC Wimbly Womblys video and you can see, uh,  that the top comment here is John on Google+, posting on his Google+ page: ''ANNOUNCEMENT: I have become the (virtual) manager of the AFC Wimbledon Wombly Womblys''. Uh, that's kind of annoying, that's not a comment, that's a po- that's a Google+ post; it is a post to John's Google+ followers, not a comment, and that's... that's, yeah, that should be, that should be a co- that shouldn't be a comment. And then there are lots of other comments here, that are fine and lovely. Uh, but I find that a little bit annoying. Now, let's go to Mental Floss video. Whoa, I can't spell. And I've caps-locked. Mental Floss video. And check out some videos over there. So let's look at this most recent video; it's doing very well, it was just on the front page of YouTube. Uh, and if we look at here, we have... at the first comment is me, saying ''I'm honestly just trying to figure out comments right now.'' Because I was- that was what I was doing six hours ago. I was trying to figure out how comments work, so I could make this video. Uh, and then uh, lots of people responded and there's a conversation there. Now the thing I wanna point out is first that's the number one comment, because I'm Hank Green, I have a large Google+ following, and also I'm socially connected to this- this world. Now, the other thing that I want to point out is that that's Hank Green, this is Hankschannel and I can switch between those up here. I can switch account and I can go to Hank Green, and theoretically I will stay on the same video and it will still be needed muted, and now I'll be able to comment as Hank Green, uh, here as well. That's kind of annoying, because if I'm uploading YouTube videos sometimes I accidentally upload a YouTube video to the wrong thing even though I'm logged in to the same account that I always was, but now it has two accounts with two different YouTube channels and two different Google+ accounts. Uhm, not ideal. The other thing that I wanted to point out here, is that the second comments down for me anyway, is this thing from this company or YouTube channel called Plethrons and it says: ''Make sure to check out our channel for some pretty interesting videos.'' With 46 up votes. Now I... That to me is... It's spam. It's like, it's not hard-core terrible spam, but it's like that shouldn't be most thumbed up comment on this. It should be a good comment about the video, not me- like I got me or- and all my friends or I got, uh, a bunch of my fake accounts to vote up this comment and spam the vide- I- Like, the whole point of having a new system is that hopefully it will treat spam better and it will do a better job of not promoting spam, but now the second comment is spam, because... but. So those are some of the bad things; the good things are that in fact the conversations are much better and we have all of this conversation going on here, and large- and like that's nice that there's a big conversation going on with regards to my one comment. Uhm, the- but- and so that is nice. The other nice thing is, now that I'm logged in to the Hank Green instead of the Hankschannel, I can edit this comment. That's pretty amazing, for like if I have a typo or if som- if I said something that it turns out to be wrong or, uh, or if I just wanna delete it. Now the thing is that if I change this, all, like a lot of this- if I change it to a completely different comment, the this whole... this whole comment stream under it won't make any sense, or I could delete it and that would delete everybody's everything. I can also just delete the comment, then it would delete it from the video, but contin- but keep the conversation on Google+ or I could delete both of those things. Now that's actually pretty cool. Uh, I'm perfectly happy with that. It- It's a system that might not be ideal in some circumstances, but in general I'm happy to have the ability to have robust, uh, long conversations and actually have those things get pulled out into, uh, into a conversation there. Oh, Lesliefoundhergrail: ''Yep, working on the comments.'' Just trying to figure out comments. She has been helpful, uh, to me in understanding comments, I reblogged something that he had wrote about it earlier today, so we're all trying to figure this out together right now.

Now you know, uh, mostly how I feel about the new comments. I'm a little bit afraid that because, uh, because YouTube is picking out, uhm, sort of the highest, like the- the top voted comments either because of the social reach of the person commenting or because they commented earlier and got a lot of thumbs up, that newer comments will never get seen, and so I'm gonna be pretty committed myself to go into the ''newest first'' page for the most part in the beginning. Uhm, and I also find it pretty annoying that I can't reply to old comments, but, you know, that will be something that gets less annoying as time goes on, because I will spend more- less time replying on comments that are old.

Alright, this has been a long video where I talk about the comments and walk you through all that, I hope that is was useful and interesting to you and you will not see me and I'll not see you but you'll hear me net time on ''Hank Green talks about YouTube''.