Amidst the rising anger from YouTube users over Google’s decision to integrate Google+ with its comments feature, the company has announced new measures to combat the deluge of spam that’s arisen as a result of the new system.

YouTube users have been pretty vocal in their opposition to the changes over the last few weeks, saying that the new system is confusing and removes their anonymity. An online petition begging Google to revert back to the old commenting system has already garnered more than 215,000 signatures, while the official video announcing the new system has received 54,325 ‘tumbs downs’ at the time of writing.

The integration of Google+ with YouTube is part of Google’s master plan to take on Facebook, by tying its social network into every service it has going – including Gmail, Google Drive, Search, Picasa, Places etc. Previously it met little opposition, but the decision to merge it with YouTube has met with stern opposition, and that’s hardly surprising considering that the video site was already successful in its own right. Many users’ identities have already been long established – not necessarily tied to their own names – and now they’re being forced to change just because Google wants to know more about them.

Google has so far been unresponsive to demands to revert back to the old way of doing things, but to appease users it now claims to be doing something about the untold amounts of spam that have plagued YouTube since the change was made.

“Thanks for your feedback. We know there are issues with spam and abuse in the new system and we’re working hard to fix them. Click here to learn more,” said Google on the YouTube video that first detailed the changes.

The link redirects users to a post on the YouTube Creators blog, dated November 6, which further acknowledges the problems with spam and says it’s working on a fix.

YouTube’s spam problem

Google might not have the gall to admit that the comments change has been a disaster, but its plain for all to see that it didn’t think this through, giving users the ability to post links to other sites and include random text in their comments.

In a blog post today, security researcher Graham Cluley writes that while YouTube used to have “some of the most unpleasant, purile and single-braincelled comments in the universe,” link spam is a brand new problem because the older system didn’t allow for clickable links to be posted.

Link spam isn’t the only problem however… There’s also lots of nonsense too, with users able to leave picture comments via ASCII text, which is hardly the kind of “high quality” feedback Google was hoping for. Previously, it said that by removing the ability to comment anonymously, the changes would lead to better feedback for users – the thinking being that fewer people would be willing to do so while using their real names.

But clearly, this isn’t the case. One of the main problems is that Google+ gives added weight to those comments that receive the most replies, and with many users quick to respond to them (thereby feeding the troll), negative and abusive posts often rise to the top.

Now though, Google says that its begun implementing some changes that will make things harder for spammers. In a new post on the YouTube Creators blog, Google announced new changes including “better recognition of bad links ”; “improved ASCII art detection”; and “changing how long comments are displayed,”

Google added that more changes are coming, including features like bulk moderation, formatted comments and threaded conversations. Meanwhile, the company said it’s still working to improve its comment ranking algorithm, although there’s no word on when this might be implemented.