YouTube’s new comments section has come under fiery criticism from users, who suddenly find themselves forced to give up their anonymity and sign up for Google+ to leave a comment on the global video-sharing site.

Starting last week, YouTube now requires an account with Google’s social network service to leave a comment on videos as part of efforts to “turn comments into conversations that matter to users.”

The shift toward “conversation” means that comments will be placed according to “relevance” through Google+ votes and user profiles, which will help it compete with social network rivals such as Twitter and Facebook.

Many users who enjoyed the shield of anonymity, however, slammed the change, calling for the removal of Google+ from YouTube comment threads.

“I don’t want, nor do I need, to go to Google+ to deal with my comments. They should be happening within the confines of YouTube. That’s exactly why I set up that account for video sharing,” a user wrote on the Google Product Forums.

YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim also jumped into the controversy by questioning the Google+-powered comments section: “Why the f― do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?”

A petition launched under the title “Google: Change the YouTube comment section back to its original form” on campaign site Change.org drew more than 110,000 supporters as of Thursday.

The search giant claimed the overhaul helps users to see posts from the video’s creator, popular personalities and people in the users’ Google+ circles at the top of the list and enables users to have conversations privately with certain groups they choose.

Some observers argue that Google+, which is lagging behind Twitter and Facebook, is trying to artificially boost its users through the comment integration with YouTube, which has more than 800 million unique monthly users.

Although Google+ is linked with other Google products such as Gmail and the Android operating system, its monthly users stand at 300 million, which is far lower than Facebook’s 1.2 billion users.

According to U.S. tech media CNET, YouTube offered an apology for the dispute on Thursday but it has no plan to return to the old comments system.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)