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What's the deal with the suspicious usernames on youtube? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by Duamerthrax to c/asklemmy

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been seeing a lot of usernames formatted "[lowercase][fourdigits]" or "user-[randomletternumbers]".

Normally, I'd assume that that just means the name was already taken and the numbers are manually entered to make it unique, but the formatting is too consistent. Is that something google is doing automatically?

The other one is real weird. Is that something some proxy sites are doing for anonymous posting?

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[–] dustyData 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No, actually real users. YouTube used to use user names. When they tried to force Google+ integration they gave the option to use your real name or split your account and have two "profiles". One with your username and one with your G+ name. When G+ was unceremoniously brought to the backyard and old yellered, the G+ profile was changed to your old YouTube username plus a bunch of random numbers. Some time later they fused all profiles, leaving a bunch of people with just a word and random numbers. It can be changed now, I think, but most people don't bother.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah I remember that now.