When YouTube revamped its comments section earlier this month, the emphasis was on squeezing out trolls in favour of "conversations that matter to you". Given the often-toxic nature of YouTube comments, it sounded like a smart move.

In the days since, there's been a considerable backlash against the changes, which appears to be gathering pace, and it's all about the way YouTube's comments section is now tied to the Google+ social network.

More than 95,000 people have so far signed a Change.org petition calling for YouTube to change the comments section back to its original form:

"Google is forcing us to make google+ accounts and invading our social life to comment on a youtube video and trying to take away our anonymous profile. They are also trying to censor us unless we share the same worldview as they do," claims the petition, which is aiming to get 150,000 signatures.

YouTube's official video introducing the comments changes has also been catching flak, and not just in its comments. At the time of writing, 2,127 people have given the video a thumbs-up, while 40,450 have given it a thumbs-down.

The site's own co-founder Jawed Karim hit out at the changes late last week, posting a message on his channel asking: "Why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"

Meanwhile, YouTube's biggest star PewDiePie – more than 15.6 million subscribers and 2.8bn total views – has disabled comments on his channel, albeit for different reasons: he claimed that his top comments were overrun with "Links to virus sites, advertisers, self-advertisers, spam, copy and paste pics of dogs (I'm OK with those though)."

Changes to any big social media service (see also: Facebook) often attract a lot of criticism when they happen, before it settles down. This feels more serious, but what do you think? Are you angry or happy with YouTube's changes? What have your experiences been linking Google+ to YouTube so far, if you've done it, and what do you think the company should do next?

The comments section is open for your views, if not for your dog pics...