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Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

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Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#201

Post by CapriciousCptl »

thu2111 wrote: post #199
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #140

The file was widely shared on Google Drive and linked to from a public twitter message— it was very much not a personal file. And the title literally was, “An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus” referring to hydroxychloroquine. Google’s doing its part to purge pandemic misinformation and prevent harm. The authoring “doctor,” as far as I can tell has never had postgraduate medical training and cannot practice medicin…

The goalpost moving by people here on HN is quite entertaining to watch. Hydroxychloroquine was just bought in bulk by the UK in case it turns out to be a cure. Apparently the only people who are allowed to have opinions these days are academics employed by governments?

To be clear, the UK is undergoing a clinical trial with hydroxychloroquine. Hopefully it works, but as of now it's not known if the harms outweigh the benefits.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#202

Post by thu2111 »

CapriciousCptl wrote: post #201
thu2111 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goalpost moving by people here on HN is quite entertaining to watch. Hydroxychloroquine was just bought in bulk by the UK in case it turns out to be a cure. Apparently the only people who are allowed to have opinions these days are academics employed by governments?

To be clear, the UK is undergoing a clinical trial with hydroxychloroquine. Hopefully it works, but as of now it's not known if the harms outweigh the benefits.

There are trials yes. And, to be clear, they're also bulk buying it:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/uk-to-test-hyd...

I have no idea if this medicine will have any impact but at this point, I've seen so many people claim it's some sort of quack medicine/conspiracy/etc that it's important people realise that it's being taken seriously. As far as I can tell the moment Trump mentioned it a huge number of people decided it must, inherently, be wrong and have been wrongly attacking it ever since.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#203

Post by Craighead »

Thorentis wrote: post #195
hootbootscoot wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to conflate a private entities exercising their rights to "refuse a problematic client service" with infringement of the constitutionally protected free speech by a governmental entity.

Oh boy, another "private entities can do what they want" argument. What's the point in saying freedom of speech only applies in public places and protection from the government, and then turning around and handing over control of the biggest tool for sharing information (the Internet) to private companies? Sorry, but the "private companies can do what they want" argument is old and tired when it comes to censorship.

Your ISP, your phone carrier, your free saas platform you share misinformation on, the place you're posting this comment, these are all private companies.

Private companies can do what they want when it comes to censorship, if you don't like it, then fix it, otherwise, you need to learn that this is how legal precedence works.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#204

Post by grumple »

JackFr wrote: post #135
grumple wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta fight! For your right! To misssssleeeeead. It might be more prudent to be careful about accepting what you read at first glance; why would google allow someone to stream data (against policy for the product), let alone when that content violates their policies on their content streaming networks? Do you think they should leave up public to other content that violates their policies, just because it's tied t…

If you’re only in favor of free speech that doesn’t mislead, you’re not in favor of free speech.

I'm not in favor of unlimited free speech. I'm in favor of limiting speech that is intended to harm, knowingly mislead, or spread hate.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#205

Post by knorker »

smichel17 wrote: post #175
knorker wrote: post #155

Wow, so you're saying a free of charge Google Drive way to share files isn't without restrictions? I'm shocked! I really thought this misinformation video people found a loophole to not have to pay for what bandwidth actually costs. I really thought that Google had offered a free CDN for everyone, limitless, when they (and Amazon, and Microsoft, and Akamai) charge huge amounts for this as a cloud service. Yeah, that…

> I really thought this misinformation video people found a loophole to not have to pay for what bandwidth actually costs. I really thought that Google had offered a free CDN for everyone, limitless, when they (and Amazon, and Microsoft, and Akamai) charge huge amounts for this as a cloud service. > Yeah, that was sarcasm. Maybe so, but I came across a streaming site (of questionable legality) that did exactly this.…

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Having worked for multiple service and content providers I would assume that abuse like this happens.

One notable case was when a deal to license a database fell through when the would-be client said "I've found a different free way to solve this".

Turns out that "different way" was to scrape our website in real time and present it to their clients as their own, without attribution or payment.

Abuse happens. Shoplifting happens. That doesn't mean that the shoplifter "found a loophole", nor that it's morally or legally right.

And it's not unfair if the selective enforcement is based on "bandwidth actually used" or "in addition to violating our policies you're also hurting the world" (or even "we just plain don't like you"). I.e. in the case above about scraping our data, we just dropped it. They weren't going to be our customer, clearly, and suing (they were in a different country too) or technically blocking them would not be worth the cost. And they didn't consume that many resources at our scale, so whatever.

But if that site had been a porn site or something then the cost of doing nothing would include potential PR issues of being associated with them[1].

So in short: This (CDN from article, and using google drive like this) is abuse. A proof of concept likely won't get shut down, but it's not something that'll work in the long run.

[1] I'm not against porn as such, but let's say our database was one of children's toys. That kind of company would understandably be hurt by apparently making deals with porn sites to show up there.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#206

Post by hyperman1 »

pdonis wrote: post #99
hyperman1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I have to believe the opposite, even if I wish it wasn't true. People don't want to maintain a server, look after backups, deal with software updates, legal stuff, blacklists, ddos attacks, .... it never ends. People want to create some content, publish it and be done. This directly drives the future to externalizing these things to other companies. Distance isn't an issue, economies of scale are huge.…

> Self hosting It isn't just "hosting" that's the issue, it's "publishing". You can buy "hosting" for a few dollars a month from lots of companies. But that just gives you a place to park files. There's still a lot of other things you need to get to the point of "create some content, publish it and be done", which you correctly say is what people want, and "hosting" does not include all those things. Various hosting…

Regarding your first, this is only true if the ecosystem allows it.

I could repair my own car, except the last time I tried to change a tire, I couldn't as the garage used a pneumatic tool to fasten the screws inhumanly hard. Every so much km, the car starts flashing all kinds of warnings because some computer from the manufacturer needs to be attached to the odb2 service connector. Neither is insurmountable, but why would I spend more money on tools than I ever would on the garage? Why would I spend a ton of my time, and take the risk of screwing up the car I depend on? Only because I like it, i.e. a hobby.

In the computer world, you can still send email, but if 1/3th of the people have a gmail account, you better have configured the server exactly as they want it, and every few months they change the rules. Google has a near monopoly in directing people to your site. If they decide you get no visitos without amp, you use amp or you live without much visitors.

Look at github's popularity. Not that long ago, every open source project ran their own source control, bug tracker, wiki, etc... gitlab's integrated system made that extremely easy, and still the very software devs that should be the main demographic for running their own server have migrated in masses to github.

Regarding your second: It might be true. But in this case you just swapped a huge company/oligopoly for another one that is a bit smaller. You're still not self hosting and peer-to-peering in this model.

None of this is insurmountable, but all of it is a bother. So you'll only do it if you want to, i.e. as a hobby.

I dont want to looking at it as 'doomed'. Technology advanced, and previous methods are now obsolete. We probably lost something charming in the process, but we win other things. That's just the way progress works, both in IT or outside it.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#207

Post by 34679 »

Thorentis wrote: post #195
hootbootscoot wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to conflate a private entities exercising their rights to "refuse a problematic client service" with infringement of the constitutionally protected free speech by a governmental entity.

Oh boy, another "private entities can do what they want" argument. What's the point in saying freedom of speech only applies in public places and protection from the government, and then turning around and handing over control of the biggest tool for sharing information (the Internet) to private companies? Sorry, but the "private companies can do what they want" argument is old and tired when it comes to censorship.

Anyone who doubts this argument should also take a look at the increasing role of private companies to circumvent your 4th Amendment protections on behalf of your government. A limited set of examples:

-License plate location databases -Cell location databases -Contact databases

The 4th may prevent your local PD from gathering all that data on every citizen, but it doesn't stop them from buying it from private companies that collect it. This is a problem.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#208

Post by 34679 »

apostacy wrote: post #172
grumple wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta fight! For your right! To misssssleeeeead. It might be more prudent to be careful about accepting what you read at first glance; why would google allow someone to stream data (against policy for the product), let alone when that content violates their policies on their content streaming networks? Do you think they should leave up public to other content that violates their policies, just because it's tied t…

It needs to be said though, that these "misinformation" policies are nonsense. If they had these policies in January, I would have been banned for disagreeing with the WHO and saying that this pandemic was serious. Independent journalists were warning us about this since November, despite the best efforts of the Chinese government and American tech companies. But it would have been fake news, until it turned out to b…

There was also that incredible stretch from the CDC where they tried to convince the public that face masks are ineffective at slowing the spread of infection. Now they have done a complete 180 and recommend everyone wear one in public. The science of facemasks has been well understood for many decades and the CDC's understanding of their efficacy did not evolve over the last 2 months, their disinformation campaign did.

It's obvious to me that they simply wanted to preserve as much PPE as possible for those on the front lines who needed it most. But they could've just said that, instead of eroding their own credibility with lies. It's no wonder the pandemic response has become divided along political lines when people can't trust their government to give them facts.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#209

Post by apostacy »

woodruffw wrote: post #193
apostacy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the risk of being a little flippant: yes. It is a "threat," in the sense that it's an explicit communication that someone is going to be displeased if you say the thing that you've been telegraphing. The "threat" is that you might not be able to rely on their (or their community's) implicit social approbation in the future. In the context of things like racism, this feels like an awfully mild threat. So you agre…

> So you agree with me that people who say that are not sincere, and not legitimate. I don’t agree, sorry. They seem perfectly sincere; I’m not sure what you mean by “legitimate” in this context (what would “legitimate” behavior look like here? Never disengaging from another person’s attempt at a conversation, no matter how absurd the priors are? This doesn’t feel like a reasonable standard to demand of others.) I pu…

> I don’t agree, sorry. They seem perfectly sincere; I’m not sure what you mean by “legitimate” in this context (what would “legitimate” behavior look like here? Never disengaging from another person’s attempt at a conversation, no matter how absurd the priors are? This doesn’t feel like a reasonable standard to demand of others.)

> I put “threat” in scare-quotes because I thought it was obvious that this isn’t really a threat in any meaningful sense. Equating it to abuse is specious and distasteful.

I don't think the platitude itself is a threat, I'm saying that it is the same as condoning illegitimate bad behavior as a response to people exercising their rights. It is condoning bad behavior, and in the sense that it is amplifying a potential threat and coercing someone to not exercise their rights, it does sound like a threat, in a small way.

For example, it is generally frowned upon to tell a woman that she should make herself less attractive because it is her fault if she is assaulted. Even if there might be a kernel of truth to it, it is a shitty thing to say, and one might even call it "invalid", because it is often outside of whether someone indeed has the right to walk in public or say what they please.

And, in our society, even the worst people should have the same rights as all of us. Because all of us are the worst people to someone. These tactics are themselves wrong; illegitimate. So it should give you pause when you see that you are doing the same thing as those who silence people speaking truth to power.

I'm sorry, I really thought my examples were helpful.

Re: Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files

#210

Post by ufmace »

grumple wrote: post #204
JackFr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re only in favor of free speech that doesn’t mislead, you’re not in favor of free speech.

I'm not in favor of unlimited free speech. I'm in favor of limiting speech that is intended to harm, knowingly mislead, or spread hate.

And who decides what speech meets that standard? Have you read the other posts in this thread? The "official" position on a variety of facts and best-practices has changed multiple times during the course of this pandemic. It's profoundly disturbing how enthusiastic some people are to start censoring anything that goes against the official narrative.
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