The real reason for this isn't to improve comment quality; it's so they can store information on you more effectively and then sell it to the government. Facebook has a leg up on this because of how it started, but Google wants to level the playing field more and more.
Sell it to the government? Using it to better target ads (which translates directly into more revenue for Google) seems a lot more likely them some secret government profiling conspiracy.
Certainly that's a motive too. And it's no secret that the government (in particular the NSA) has been amassing large swathes of data on what could be the entire population of the US.
Wow. That's a mighty impression tin foil hat you wear.
I'm sure the government can already tie people's names to their browsing history (including youtube) via the dns lookups and project echelon. I doubt they'd need anyone's assistance beyond the isp wiretaps, which they already have, for something as simple as this.
ok, what I said was based on something I heard Julian Assange said in an interview from about a year ago. Apparently he hasn't given any proof for his statement (namely, that Facebook has an interface for government intelligence to use). I tend to believe what Assange has to say, but who knows.
Two counter-arguments. First, it's not "sell", but "give for free under a subpoena". Second, it's not causation (they're doing it so they can gather info), it's correlation (they will gather info when they're able to).
In addition, it seems like this is as much about real names for video uploaders as for commenters. My guess is that's what they really care about, not the comments cesspool.
