Earlier this year, Google revamped the comments section of YouTube, integrating it with its Google+ social network. And now, more than 47,000 people are petitioning YouTube to revert the comments section to its original form.

The petition, hosted on Change.org, says Google is forcing users into creating accounts for a social network they don’t want to use with the new comments section. The change has also stripped users of their ability to post comments anonymously, the petition says.

“They have completely RUINED a great thing. Comments were the number one reason why I checked my YouTube account daily. Now that desire is gone,” says the top comment posted in response to the petition on Change.org. (As a side note, that comment, which has received nearly 900 ‘likes,’ appears to have been left anonymously under the name “James Gandolfini,” the late star of the hit HBO series “The Sopranos.”)

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Change.org said the YouTube petition is currently the most active one on the website. It was posted on Thursday. Change.org said there are several other petitions that also ask YouTube to change back its comments section.


Google introduced the new YouTube comments section in September as a way to curtail the amount of hateful comments left by users, who often posted anonymously.

The new comments section was also designed to display comments that would be relevant to every individual user. Rather than simply display the last comment left as YouTube previously did, the new comments section emphasizes comments left by users’ friends, the creators of videos, celebrities or comments left by others that have received a lot of interaction.

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