It appears my Google account is slated for deletion • Hacker News Board

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#71

Post by blfr » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:29 AM UTC

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…

Above being more than a legal concept, it's also not really about expression, ie. the biggest value to society is not from Alexa O'Brien being able to express her thoughts and feelings, which is a minor benefit to her, but in us being able to read them and then choose the best ideas to adapt/copy/implement. The fact that you can make your (realistically, very tiny) contribution to the culture is much less important than being able to access everything created by other people.

Robin Hanson calls it "free hearing"[1]. The branding could be improved but the argument is exactly right.

We shouldn't even hide behind commentary and journalism. The source bin Laden videos should be available for us to judge. Removing them is not an act against the terrorists but against the public.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/free-hearing-not-speec...

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#72

Post by KGIII » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #46

throwawayjava wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, if anyone can think of something that I can do to help, I'm all ears. You already live in this world. Who cares if Goolge won't host these videos on youtube? I don't understand why this matters. There are millions of other video upload sites, all of which are extremely easy to find and use. There are literally too many open source options for sharing files to count, and many of them are even usable by no…

You seriously see no material difference in having your video on the YouTube vs on randomvideowebsite.com? It's not merely a question of finding a host to upload your file.

Not to mention the trouble when nobody will allow you to host your legal content because they disagree with the message. Hell, even registrars are refusing to point to an IP address.

I know... We all hate Nazis. I get it. I don't like them and, being not white, they definitely don't like me. But, they are the current good example of what happens when the controllers decide you can no longer share your legal content.

I don't know what the solution is, but I want a world where even the deplorable are able to express their thoughts and feelings. I want a world where we aren't cowards and trying to force conformity. I want a world where even the worst of us can express themselves, using the same tools as others, so long as it is legal content.

Yes, speech must have restrictions. However, we already know what those restrictions are. I guess I'm just a hopeless idealist.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#73

Post by alsetmusic » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

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…

Along with proactively making my wishes concerning life support known to my family, I have made certain that they understand that a close friend is to be responsible for dealing with my data. He is capable of purging private data and filtering it down to family photos and the like. He knows to physically destroy all storage devices after processing the data and my family knows that he has accepted this responsibility.

I make sure to mention this to all concerned parties every couple of years so that everyone is clear on the matter. This doesn't include online services (email, etc), but it's enough for me.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#74

Post by josephg » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:37 AM UTC

donalhunt wrote: post #56

The following articles may be of help: 1) https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695 2) https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802168?hl=en Despite claims in this thread that Google likes to do things without due process and clear guidelines, the reality is that something like an account deletion is both pretty rare and not done lightly (you'll see that in some of the language in support articles and T&Cs r…

> In this case, it's not clear if it's the YouTube account or the Google account that has been flagged for deletion (support articles suggest there is a distinction). Either way, support articles indicate that rationale for the action taken would have been provided to the user.

We've heard a number of stories like this of people who have their youtube videos flagged for various reasons. The lived experience of people who go through it sounds hellish. Their entire digital life on google is suspended and held to ransom by some completely opaque, inscrutable, byzantine process that is not accountable to anyone. There is no real way to appeal, and once deleted there may or may not be any way to recover lost data or have emails sent to your old address forwarded to another account.

If your account was suspended, would you really trust that the knowledge base answers are correct? If you're wrong you'd have no account, no access to your own email address, no power, and no way of contacting anyone at google to help.

If my account was suspended by a machine and couldn't get in touch with a human to help fix it, there's no way I'd continue to trust google's automated processes to get everything figured out. Not when so much is at stake. As someone who's worked at google for over a decade if something happened to your account, you'd be fine - you'd be able to contact someone and get it fixed. But without that recourse, scared paranoia seems pretty reasonable.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#75

Post by snerbles » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:48 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #58

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #19

What are some good alternative email accounts to use? I should really start decreasing my dependence on Google.

Anything, so long as your e-mail address is on a domain name you own and you back up your inbox via IMAP. If both of those are in place, you're not really dependent on your mail provider at all, because you can switch just by changing a DNS record. If you lose the use of an e-mail address on someone else's domain, then you've got a serious problem.

This works until a registrar revokes your domain name.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#76

Post by userbinator » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:52 AM UTC

severine wrote: post #51

Clubber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with Google isn't that they can delete YouTube videos or your Google+ account, it's that they can virtually erase you from the web through their search domination.

Serious question: what are some examples of great content virtually erased from the web by search engines?

Great and obscure content --- that you'd most want a search engine to find, tends to be at most risk. For one example, I've noticed that finding information on obscure electronics part numbers has gotten much harder, and the search results are getting "diluted" with useless "fillter" results that don't even contain all the words you're searching for.

Example queries I've had poor luck with recently:

    TVN_DELETEITEM recursive (count how many first-page results contain TVN_DELETEITEM)
    ITU T.800 (count how many are about T.800 and not E.800 or P.800 or X.800 or...)

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#77

Post by jiggunjer » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #48

deathanatos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Redundant cloud storage is made trivially easy by IFTTT. In just a few clicks, you can have your Google Drive uploads automatically replicated to half a dozen other cloud storage services and several brands of NAS. It can also back up your Gmail inbox, your Google Contacts and dozens of other cloud services. https://ifttt.com

Nice ad. Not the best option for people who are trying to minimize their reliance on 3rd parties though, since you are now giving a single entity access to all your online data. Also, their 'recipes' are rather limited in terms of triggers and available services.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#78

Post by flukus » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 2:56 AM UTC

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…

I think we've gone well past the equilibrium point between ease of use and computer literacy, to the point that we are now disempowering users rather than helping them. If someone record a video on their phone and want to share it we know it's just a file on a disk, but most users don't, to them it's just a video that appears in a list in an app. We know a file can be copied, modified, shared, etc, but all they can do is what the share button on the phone's UI allows them to do, like upload to youtube. Even if they had a youtube clone owned by themselves or a friend they wouldn't know how to upload it.

I saw it with my mother going through photos she took on her digital camera, she's a slave to the software that came with the camera and the features it provides. She doesn't access the file, she goes through a UI to view the images and manipulate them. If she wants to post them to facebook she does that through the UI. When the camera dies and is replaced she has to relearn a different software package whereas if she'd managed her files through explorer like we probably do then the knowledge would be transferable.

Unless we start teaching computer fundamentals better and expect people to apply that knowledge to do things then we are sliding head first into the world of digital serfdom.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#79

Post by xupybd » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

Wow I get they don't want the videos on their site but banning all of the users other services seems very over the top. They're a private company they can do what they want but this is not a good way to do business.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#80

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #68

glenstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point, because I think it shows that people who are trying to redefine the contours of the standard free speech conversation (which had historically been about freedom from government imposed limits) are attempting to solve the wrong problem. The problem is dependence on huge monolithic tech platforms, such that we feel that the societal value of free expression is threatened by the standard forms mod…

There's also a very blurry line between a common carrier and a publisher. Social media platforms don't want to be liable for content published on their site, but they also want the right to delete content at their own discretion. Somehow, the courts have granted them this wish. The USPS has a similar monopoly to YouTube, but they're obliged to transport any printed material that is legal. There's no hidden algorithm…

> The USPS has a similar monopoly to YouTube

No, the USPS has a legally-protected monopoly, where alternative services are prohibited from competing with certain core functions.

Alternative web video distribution services are not prohibited, and there are several that specialize in content that is unwelcome on YouTube.

> The present ambiguity over their status

What ambiguity? They are active distribution agents (neither publishers nor common carriers, in that regard, though they are often also publishers, more like bookstores).

It only seems “ambiguous” when framed with a false dichotomy.