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Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

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Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#121

Post by jszymborski »

bartbutler wrote: post #110
jszymborski wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bad, will edit accordingly. The in-browser, over-the-wire javascript crypto implementation still makes me nervous. I'd love to hear some compelling evidence to the contrary, but as I understand most of what has been stated before about in-browser crypto hasn't changed much [0]. [0] https://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with-webcrypto

It's going to be less secure than native clients, for sure. ProtonMail has native mobile clients though, and will have a desktop one (IMAP/SMTP bridge) soon, which should alleviate webmail concerns.

That's awesome to hear about the desktop app. It's certainly a project with important goals :)

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#122

Post by tazard »

seabird wrote: post #11
billsmithaustin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than ascribing this to Google's maliciousness or overzealous use of power, is it possible that the shutdown was accidental?

You're missing the point entirely; even if it was accidental, would you have access to your accounts? Would your email be a reliable way to reach you or verify your ownership of another account? Would people able to access the content you've posted? The answer is quite obviously "no," and that doesn't cut it for people need rely on services like these for their everyday workflow. We wouldn't consider "accidental" AWS…

Wouldn't using ones own domain and gsuite alleviate some of these issues? If Google were to shut down your account, you could update your mx records to a different mail server such as fastmail or self hosted as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and be back up and running relatively soon (of course you still wouldn't have your connected YouTube/G+ etc accounts).

Although as I write this it occurred to me, you would likely loose all your contacts and calendar unless they were backed up prior...

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#123

Post by weberc2 »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #56
weberc2 wrote: post #15

It seems like this is probably an accident, and not an attempt to censor reasonable political views. I would hope they learned their lesson last time.

An accident that they even shut down his blog? Perhaps a mistake, but definitely no accident.

It seems reasonable to me that Google's banhammer is largely algorithmic, and that the algorithm made an error. I can't think of any reason for Google to ban him intentionally.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#124

Post by CaptSpify »

alexdowad wrote: post #116

Why doesn't he say which of Google's terms of service he supposedly violated? He just spends the whole 3 pages saying that he hasn't done anything wrong, without even once saying what he is alleged to have done wrong. Seems a bit dishonest.

It's my understanding that he doesn't know what he did wrong. Google won't tell him.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#125

Post by throwaway613834 »

theWatcher37 wrote: post #8
xiaoma wrote: post #2

No idea what all was on his blog and other google accounts, but according to the article they were used for his work at the university. Also some credible sites like the NYT linking into the disabled blog: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/business/the-stock-market... Google may have had some good reasons or it may have just been an example of ML discriminating against a name like Salil. Either way, it's very distur…

This type of behavior + AMP has pushed me off google completely. I'm determined to cut them out of my technical life entirely, I've even switched myself and everyone I know/support off their DNS. I can't support their shady practices anymore.

What is the benefit of not using their DNS?

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#126

Post by peterwwillis »

ancarda wrote: post #108
theWatcher37 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of behavior + AMP has pushed me off google completely. I'm determined to cut them out of my technical life entirely, I've even switched myself and everyone I know/support off their DNS. I can't support their shady practices anymore.

Any suggestions for alternatives to 8.8.8.8? Is OpenDNS any good?

4.2.2.[1-6] is easy to remember, but IIRC they don't want people to use them anymore. Here's a list of harder to remember addresses: https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#128

Post by gragas »

gaius wrote: post #112
gragas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the supposed infiltration of Marxism into culture and ideas like White Privilege and Cultural Appropriation You can't argue that "white privilege" hasn't infiltrated culture. An alarming amount of people have openly disparaged white people when talking to me, even though I am white myself. If you're not white, it's almost socially acceptable to say "fuck white people" in cities like SF, NYC, and Chicago. I think it'…

If you're not white, it's almost socially acceptable to say "fuck white people" in cities like SF, NYC, and Chicago I'm sure Google, CloudFlare, PayPal etc will be shutting down that blatant hate speech too.

Those companies shouldn't be monitoring ideologies and morality.

If they want to do that, it's their right. But I will purposefully avoid companies that ban any hate speech. I've already cut ties with Google and it feels great.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#129

Post by hacktothefuture »

jerf wrote: post #97
philipodonnell wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not the mail server, its deliverability. If you can set up a $5/month server to send email so can every spammer ever and the big mail providers know this. Mail sent like this won't be delivered anywhere with even the most basic spam filtering which includes blacklists of known spam-source IP address blocks like Digital Ocean/AWS/Heroku.

I have a personal mail server that collects my mail, but use my "default" Comcast MX to send. I'm sure metric craptons of email flow through that, but a lot of ham does too, so I've never been blacklisted. I'd suggest that rather than the goal being to instantly leave this service or that the instant that they offend you, that you envision your policy as one of being ready to leave if you ever need to. The biggest ke…

Great advice! Exactly what I'm doing as we speak after reading this. I'm such a cheerleader for Google but after hearing about this a few times its starting to scare the crap out of me. F that. Not a good idea to let a multi-national entity control my access to EVERYTHING with zero customer service options.

Re: Statistics Professor Just Banned by Google: Here Is His Story

#130

Post by mirimir »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #120
b4ux1t3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they have _millions_ of users that have never had a problem. It's far more likely this is a mistake than any kind of malicious act, just given the sheer number of customers they have.

If it only happens to one out of millions, why can't they have an actual responsive human being to respond to queries? "We have so many zillion customers that we're forced to use bots for customer service" and "Only one out of a zillion customers has this kind of problem" would seem to be mutually exclusive.

Well, I've read that Google customer service is quite responsive, for paid accounts. And regarding non-paid accounts, determining algorithmically which queries merit human replies is arguably just as difficult as determining which accounts have violated ToS.
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