Even YouTube’s co-founder hates the new Google+ commenting integration

By Andrew Couts Published November 8, 2013

Eight years after posting the first-ever video on YouTube, co-founder Jawed Karim has returned from the shadows … to complain about the new requirement that YouTube users login to Google+ to leave a comment.

Karim, who goes by the name Jawed on YouTube, left the following comment about a week ago – his first comment ever. Just a warning, the comment is NSFW:

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“why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?” Karim wrote.

The comment has struck a chord with YouTube users, who have reposted his comment repeatedly on the video “Me at the zoo,” which shows Karim at the San Diego Zoo making a coy joke about elephants’ “really long … trunks.” The video was posted by Karim in April of 2005, and is the only video Karim ever posted.

Originally announced in September, YouTube’s Google+ comment integration was finalized earlier this week. By requiring users to link their YouTube comments with their Google+ profile, the company hopes to bring a level of civility to the notoriously horrendous comments often found on the video sharing site. The change also allows highly rated comments to appear at the top by default, while pushing less popular comments further down the page.

Like Karim, many YouTube users despise the new Google+ comment integration feature, and see it as a blatant attempt by Google, which owns YouTube, to link YouTube comments with users’ real identities for the purposes of data collection.

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Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…

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