I know people are creeped out by Google sometimes, but I have a story to that will make your skin crawl. Aside from being disgusted by what I am about to write, chances are, it might start to wake some people up on how nothing on the web is anonymous.
YouTube Videos Auto Post Themselves
The other day, I posted a video to YouTube and before I knew it, I had people +1’ing it on Google+. I was intrigued because I know I didn’t actively post it there. Turns out, I have a setting on somewhere, that I can’t for the life of me find, that allows YouTube that automatically posts my videos to Google+. 
I have written about understanding your permissions before, so this is nothing new. In this instance, I tried to undo these settings following Google’s own directions, but I can’t seem to figure out how to remove this setting which leads me to believe it’s much deeper ingrained in Google+ than a simple permission setting. In fact, it seems that the point is for the two to play off each other based on the feature list I found. Why am I telling you this? It’s all part of the inter-connectedness of the web, right? Yes. But in this instance, it has just cost someone their job.
Someone Lost Their Job Because of Nasty YouTube Comments
Well, he didn’t lose his job, but he certainly didn’t get it. A friend of mine, had a job opening available and received many submitted applications for said job. One particular applicant for said job seemed like a completely normal guy on the surface. That is until you click on his Google+ profile which he has connected to his Gmail account. You have to understand, the majority of this company is Jewish-Israeli. In the case of this applicant, he is Arab-Israeli, which to be clear has nothing to do with the decision not to hire him. In fact, my friend has no problem hiring Arabs and does hire. I am even friends with one of them and hes a great guy! The decision to not even entertain this candidate came down to a simple bit of information, found publicly, because he “chose” to connect his YouTube and Google+ accounts, which exposed his hateful and horrible speech towards Jews. If nothing more, it demonstrated that he may not have been the best cultural fit in the majority Jewish company.
In order that this doesn’t get taken any further, I have completely anonymized his information but have a look for yourself:
And it wasn’t just one post that was hard to find. It seems as though he spends all his time commenting on YouTube videos and bashing Israelis.
I want to be extremely clear about something; this is not about who is right or wrong politically, or who did what or what Zionists do or don’t do. This is about hateful language that wouldn’t be tolerated in any work force. This individual was not hired because he is an anti-Semite, and for no other reason. Well, I guess you could say that it was also because he was too stupid to cover his tracks and hide his hate.
So, I guess the lesson here is to be more careful what you post, and where else it gets posted. Because if you aren’t careful, you might get exposed for the anti-Semitic scum you are.
A Closing Thought To Ponder
It’s actually kind of a scary thought to think what would have happened if he was smarter and found a way to hide this information.