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Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

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Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#81

Post by StreamBright »

f_allwein wrote: post #70
StreamBright wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo, Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to many Google services, most notably Youtube. ht…

No, this is an entirely separate process. The wikipedia link you shared relates to content that is illegal in a country, so consequently Google does not show it. E.g. in my home country (Germany), this includes some types of Nazi propaganda. I would assume all other search engines follow the same rules.

So in your country can you look stuff up about China and Tiananmen Square? Well you can't in China. This is censorship coming from the state. Now go on Youtube and look for PagerU videos. I understand that conservative views are not popular in Google but filtering legitimate content is just bad.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1406441&st...

What about Dave Rubin? Does he fall into the same category as nazi propaganda according to you? What about Christina Hoff Sommers? Same question. And the list goes on an on. I do not necessarily agree with these viewpoint but I strongly against censoring them just because it does not fall inline with Google's political agenda.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#82

Post by StreamBright »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #67
StreamBright wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo, Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to many Google services, most notably Youtube. ht…

Concrete examples?

Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin, Prager University, all of their content is delisted and demonetized on Youtube. Non of them is illegal content.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#84

Post by fastball »

tgragnato wrote: post #69
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

This is not a matter of support, although I understand why it is convenient for Google to consider the issue from this point of view. $$$ The problem is that when a search engine has the overwhelming majority of the online search market, freedom of information has a strict dependence on the QoS of that engine. Since people (at least in Europe) have a legal right to freedom of information, if Google is not providing s…

That's insanity. So because Google is an information company and governments have granted a "right to information [x]" Google has to provide any information a consumer could possibly want, for free, regardless of the cost to them?

[x] - which is an absurdity in itself - what information? how? when? where? This "right" is just another overreach by the EU et. al. wanting everything to be a "human right" even if it's nonsense. A right to whose information? If I have a unilateral right to information, does that mean I have a right to your medical records? Where do you draw the line? If it's just a right to my own information, which I think is reasonable, Google search results don't qualify.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#85

Post by def_true_false »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #27
Jerry2 wrote: post #22

ProtonMail is not safe. To delete someone's ProtonMail account, just print their email onto some posters, put it up in some public place, take a picture of it and tweet it to ProtonMail. And just like that, the email of your target will be probably deleted. https://i.imgur.com/d9K9Wdm.png This is not a service you want to use for anything important. If you have some enemies, they can use this method to ban you.

Are we complaining that you can't put up a poster explicitly designed to incite violence against anti-fascists with a ProtonMail email address? I'd imagine they might also disable your account if you use swastikas as your logo, is that "awful censorship"? If you wanna do that sort of stuff then roll your own ffs. Consider that they might have some form of legal liability.

Liability for what? What if the user used a random string for their address instead? Does one have to pretend to agree with their provider's politics or fear having their accounts deleted?

Some people would probably assume that they won't have to do that, since PM doesn't really present their service as exclusive to people with certain political leanings (unlike, say, riseup).

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#86

Post by fastball »

coldtea wrote: post #73
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

> It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... It should be, though. It's not 1776. A website like Google is more than a company, it's a public service with immense power of manipulation and influence over countless industries. The law shouldn't be written like we live in the stone age.

So what exactly is your solution? What law do you put in place, precisely? Google has to provide consumers with whatever information they want, whenever they want it, free of charge? Because that seems to be what you're gunning for.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#87

Post by dvdkhlng »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #77
rocqua wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other methods of coercion than courts, but I agree that the German courts are probably much safer than the American courts. In any case, the fraudulent client update is a very hard hole to patch. The only solution for this I know of is local hosting. At the moment, defending against this in web-apps is simply not possible.

There's one way I know to stop that. Ipfs. Its immutable, for a given key. And its easy to see what an IPNS link points to. It may not be a way to verify, but others could do that hard work. But it strictly shows proof that codebase for a web app hasn't changed.

The only real antidote against unauthorized access is using end-to-end encryption between email's sender and recipient(s), via PGP/GPG or S/MIME. Unfortunately this requires the sender's cooperation. As long as the sender does not cooperate, there will always be some leg of the communication path that is vulnerable.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#88

Post by awestroke »

welly wrote: post #42
caio1982 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that! I really didn't know they had a response to these claims. However it's not hard to see this can just be a PR shield anyway.

Then they can't win. An accusation has been made, they've refuted the claims with a response, response is dismissed as a PR shield. What are they going to do?

They could stop doing business with a company that has strong links to IDF.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#89

Post by fastball »

jsiepkes wrote: post #71
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

If a company gets a big enough marketshare it's not that simple. If Google would have de-listed Protonmail just because "they could" that would be a problem (legal wise) in the EU. Since they also specifically target EU countries (google.nl) they also can't simply say they don't have to comply because they are based in the US.

If this is an anti-trust matter in a certain jurisdiction then it's an anti-trust matter in a certain jurisdiction, and governments have ways to address that.

If Google has a monopoly on search then break up their monopoly on search in your country.

BUT.

Saying that Google needs to bend over backwards to accommodate every possible edge case of EU human rights (of which there are far too many that are overly broad) as a response to anti-trust concerns is absurd.

In the end, you're just going to end up solidifying Google's monopoly, because Google actually does have the funds to build out such platforms, even if they don't want to. Startup search engines that could help lessen the stranglehold Google has will not have the resources to do the same. If then you governments say "well actually only Google needs to do this", you've found yourself in a position where governments are playing favorites, and that is never a good thing.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#90

Post by rusk »

fastball wrote: post #84
tgragnato wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a matter of support, although I understand why it is convenient for Google to consider the issue from this point of view. $$$ The problem is that when a search engine has the overwhelming majority of the online search market, freedom of information has a strict dependence on the QoS of that engine. Since people (at least in Europe) have a legal right to freedom of information, if Google is not providing s…

That's insanity. So because Google is an information company and governments have granted a "right to information [x]" Google has to provide any information a consumer could possibly want, for free, regardless of the cost to them? [x] - which is an absurdity in itself - what information? how? when? where? This "right" is just another overreach by the EU et. al. wanting everything to be a "human right" even if it's no…

Yeah, the law looking out for the best interests of her citizens is insanity.

> does that mean I have a right to your medical records

No, because under data-protection legislation nobody has the right to data about you, but you. More European insanity.

I think GP has incorrectly categorised this as an FOI issue, it's more to do with Antitrust, which is a well worn path in the USA as well.

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