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It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

alexaobrien.com

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Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#21

Post by sshumaker »

KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

xoogler here.

I would definitely subscribe to occam's razor here. Rather than explicit censorship, this is probably something that just got snagged in the net of Google's semi-automated content moderation process, which is probably overzealous in combating #extremism. Having no human channel to contact doesn't help either.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#22

Post by kop316 »

ben_jones wrote: post #9

CTRL + F "Disclaimer: I work at Google" Funny how that never comes up on these threads. I get it you can't discredit your employer. Even at Google.

In all fairness, this has only been posted for an hour, and it was only at the top of HN for 20 minutes or so.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#24

Post by xf86alsa »

mankyd wrote: post #13
KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

> Maybe the solution is enabling people to realistically host content themselves, on their own property, and just ensuring the ISP is nothing but a dumb pipe? For what it's worth, this is mildly achievable, but I doubt there's much of a market for it. It's (usually) not hard to convert one's internet connection to some sort of business-class connection, get a static ip, and have port 80/443 unblocked, (I've done it).…

Check out ZeroNet: https://zeronet.io

Decentralized websites that are hosted by your users. Can be accessed over ZeroNet or without using a proxy.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#25

Post by KGIII »

sshumaker wrote: post #21
KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

xoogler here. I would definitely subscribe to occam's razor here. Rather than explicit censorship, this is probably something that just got snagged in the net of Google's semi-automated content moderation process, which is probably overzealous in combating #extremism. Having no human channel to contact doesn't help either.

At this point, I'm no longer comfortable giving them the benefit of doubt. They burned that bridge. If this is a problem with aggressive filtering, they have had ample opportunity to note the problem and provide a solution that applies to all.

I really can't trust that they are benevolent or incompetent.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#26

Post by tyingq »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #5

Normally I try to rule out conspiracy theories, but this one is pretty interesting. A video being removed I could understand, but deleting an entire Google account seems like a rather extreme measure, and I wonder who is really pulling the strings here. I could certainly think of motives for doing so.

It gets worse over time as well, as their product space expands. If she had a Chromebook, Chromecast, Google Home device, Android phone, etc...it would easily make $1k+ worth of purchases worth substantially less. You would have to either sell them, or lose all setup (contacts, configuration, purchased apps, etc) and history.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#27

Post by vickyvicky »

jack9 wrote: post #10

Terabyte drives are very cheap. Since it's borderline stupid, to simply upload this volume of work to some third party service without backup, I have no sympathy or technical concern. This being an illustration of Google's terrible "progressively tyrannical" track record, the article is badly titled. More like Google the Oppressor of Truth. Good Luck to Alexa.

>"progressively tyrannical"

Google was much worse back in the years. It's just that people are beginning to notice it more.

Back in those days, for my school project I created an app that had to recognize the hollywood celebrity based on the drawing. Google shut down my android account and then everything else in few weeks citing "copyright and impersonation".

Worse, it shut down my google apps for business account 7 years later because "all related accounts will be closed". Other people faced the same wrath : https://www.androidpit.com/forum/617883/google-suspend-my-ac...

It was a business account and everything including drive etc was gone. The appeal form has automated responses and there is no number to call.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#28

Post by deathanatos »

jack9 wrote: post #10

Terabyte drives are very cheap. Since it's borderline stupid, to simply upload this volume of work to some third party service without backup, I have no sympathy or technical concern. This being an illustration of Google's terrible "progressively tyrannical" track record, the article is badly titled. More like Google the Oppressor of Truth. Good Luck to Alexa.

Ideally, I'd like to back up my data too. That's where it becomes much harder: I need a second location. (In case my house catches fire, or floods in a hurricane, etc.)

AWS and GCE both provide raw disk space, and certainly, an encrypted backup could be uploaded to them. I would like to be able to put a cap on what I spend on service, in case something goes wrong with the system, which AFAIK, neither GCE/AWS provide, unfortunately.

I would also like it to be remotely accessible, which a simple terabyte drive doesn't get directly.

Now, most of the above (creating a backup, encrypting it, shipping it out to AWS/GCE, securely accessing a drive remotely) are all possible, but none are easy, and certainly not yet at the level of "my mother/father can do it".

I try very hard to maintain a private "cloud", and I find it fairly difficult.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#29

Post by KGIII »

sbov wrote: post #16
KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

How tightly bound we are to just a few large tech companies is... unfortunate. I would love it if it were easier for the common person to host their own stuff. Between all the concerns involved (security, hardware, demand, etc.) I'm not sure how feasible it is. I've given it a lot of thought, and have slowly unwound my custom tech setups - from domains, to emails, to hardware. Mostly for the "bus" factor. When my dad…

Maybe something like a RPi, made to just be a web server. Something pretty dumb. Also, possibly legislation that forces ISPs to let residential customers use their outbound bandwidth the way they want, within the bounds of the law?

I dunno...

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#30

Post by [deleted] »

KGIII wrote: post #29
sbov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How tightly bound we are to just a few large tech companies is... unfortunate. I would love it if it were easier for the common person to host their own stuff. Between all the concerns involved (security, hardware, demand, etc.) I'm not sure how feasible it is. I've given it a lot of thought, and have slowly unwound my custom tech setups - from domains, to emails, to hardware. Mostly for the "bus" factor. When my dad…

Maybe something like a RPi, made to just be a web server. Something pretty dumb. Also, possibly legislation that forces ISPs to let residential customers use their outbound bandwidth the way they want, within the bounds of the law? I dunno...

[deleted]
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