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It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

alexaobrien.com

211–220 of 278 posts

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#211

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…

Does not make sense to me. I agree, that an account deletion is very rare. So you do not need millions of employees to handle this. To me, it seems, that google simply doesn't care.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#212
post #81
post #40

Resolved. https://mobile.twitter.com/carwinb/status/907778135957131265

https://twitter.com/DeadPrecariat/status/907778635817521152 This person asks that she "demands answers." Since when are beggars choosers? Google is free. Did we really expect a different behavior from them?

Google is beholden to advertisers. You are not a customer, even when you are one, you are still the product delivered to them. Using their services is a choice but I've opted out of everything but search, and I'd like to get off of that too.

Boggles my mind how people keep thinking Google is this benevolent entity hovering over us. It's a company, with balance sheets. Nothing more.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#213
It sounds like her blog post got her noticed by Google, so that's good.

However, for cases like these, where you have videos that are probably outside of the terms & conditions of Google, you should be hosting those on your own servers that you purchase the bandwidth for, not relying on a 3rd party to host.

Yes, Google has mutiple defacto monopolies that are very, very concerning. But one can still self-host on the Internet, and this person should have done that. She has her own domain, so she could have had the video on her own server.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#216
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 distributed content and P2P networks?

So... ZeroNet? https://zeronet.io

Freenet? https://freenetproject.org/pages/about.html

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#217
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…

I'm not sure you're understanding that the author isn't complaining that Google is deleting content based on a free speech issue but the fact that they're misunderstanding it as terrorist propaganda when it's simply evidence from a court case of her research into whether it was a fair trial or not... The author is not complaining about free speech, she's complaining about Google's overly-broad definition of propaganda which is leading to the deletion of her account. It doesn't apply here because the author is not promoting propaganda, she is simply presenting evidence of research in a potentially unfair court case.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

If you want exact word matches only, you need to use quotes:

    "TVN_DELETEITEM" "recursive"
    "ITU" "T.800"

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#220
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."

I used to blog about politics, policy (election integrity). Even scored some minor policy victories.

Like with indie bands, the challenge is having access to an audience, rising about the noise, finding your tribe (and them finding you). Posting on someone else's site sucks. Groveling, genuflecting to get some consideration (front page!). No different than the gatekeeping role newspapers played.

I strongly support going the solo route. But it's a lot of work. Maybe even 80%. And I sucked at it. And the self-promotion efforts takes time away from all the other activities (research, FOIA requests, writing, speaking, lobbying).

Saving democracy doesn't pay very well. I marvel, applaud the indie bands, err, solo bloggers that somehow keep it up for years, decades.

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