There's a major issue of clarity here though. It doesn't matter what really happens, if the user is unsure they'll opt for not doing it. The only thing I remember for sure about +1 was that Google made me hyper aware that my +1's were public. Which is why I almost never +1 anything except those that reflect well on me professionally (ie. it's about projecting an image of myself, nothing to do with what I actually like). Ironically a few weeks ago somebody +1's one of my Google Code projects and I was quite surprised that I couldn't find out who it was. It turns out that +1's are public but in a very confusing way. I suppose on that person's profile somewhere the +1 is visible, but I have no way to find it.

how was the user sure what happened before? with the old system, you were thumbs-upping a video from your google account. your thumbs ups were probably visible somewhere on youtube, and the things that you thumbed up were reported back to google and probably influenced your search results.

now, you're +1ing a video from your google account. your +1s are visible somewhere in google+ and are reported back to google and influence your search results.

it's the exact same thing, the button just looks different.

> it's the exact same thing, the button just looks different.

For me, a crucial difference is that Google+ is linked publicly to my real name, while YouTube was always confined to a pseudonym.

You're splitting hairs.

The OP is correct; while technically slightly different (perhaps closer to tweeting to a protected twitter account), its basically the same thing:

Your votes are publicly viewable by your social network friends.