As a common carrier they should not be allowed to discriminate. Like railroads cannot discriminate against traffic they do not like, and restaurants and hotels cannot discriminate. As a society we decided long ago that if you hold yourself out to the public you cannot discriminate
Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#292Amazing they have the gall to think they still can arbiter truth, considering how YouTube up until recently was banning the "conspiracy theory" that the recent pandemic may have originated from a Wuhan Lab... Something that now all the experts are saying may actually be true.
I am so tired of seeing this crap. Here is what happened:
Act I: there was no solid evidence as to where COVID originated. There was speculation of various kinds ranging from transmission from a bat cave via wet markets, to lab leak at a Wuhan lab, to it being a bio weapon. Nobody had solid evidence though people started digging.
Act II: a group of pundits and conservative political operatives who were already known to be liars and blowhards latched onto the lab leak theory. It just so happened that it was politically advantageous for the GOP to push anti-Chinese sentiment at the time and a lab leak theory would point the finger directly at the Chinese government. They presented no evidence and had no evidence. They started spreading this theory along with various online groups all known for spreading disinformation. The clear undertone of this message was a call for violence against Asian Americans.
Act III: in reaction to the calls for violence tech companies started curbing spread of this message. Remember some of the other things these same people were saying: that COVID was fake and invented by the US government to keep us indoors while they installed 5G towers everywhere to control our minds; that staying home and wearing masks was designed to weaken our immune systems to prepare for some kind of bio weapon attack; that Bill Gates was using vaccines to implant trackers in every arm of every individual around the world; that the mRNA vaccines are designed to let Pfizer and Moderna copyright or trademark your DNA such that they own you and you become their slave; that nobody actually was dying from COVID and this was a massive coverup designed to make Trump look bad.
Act IV: evidence had emerged that the lab leak theory might have credibility. The tech companies lifted the filtering efforts.
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Note that this is in no way different than if I tell you that lizard people from Mars run the US government and you tell me to shut the fuck up. I might be right and maybe evidence later shows up that in fact lizard people form Mars do run the US government, but since I have no evidence at the moment this is just bullshit at best and a call for insurrection at worst. Even a broken clock it right twice a day and when liars say something there is less than neutral reason to trust what they say. When mostly liars are frothing at the mouth spreading a theory, well it sure walks, talks, and sounds like a conspiracy theory. Had the people spreading the lab leak theory initially taken the time to do proper research and present any kind of shred of evidence then maybe it would have been treated differently. But as is they had no credibility to begin with, so is it that surprising that what they had to say was treated as lies, especially given their clear conflict of interest?
And yes I am aware of individual incidents of various investigators being hampered by their higher ups from looking into the lab leak theory. I read those stories in nuance and what I gleamed is that it was (a) partly incompetence and (b) partly reactionary to the bullshit that the talking heads on TV were spreading. Maybe what we should focus on is holding the talking heads on TV to some standard of reality and these things won't happen instead of crying "censorship!" when someone calls for violence against an ethnic group based on unsubstantiated (at least at the time and still currently not proven) theory.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#293What. The. Hell. I suppose limiting sharing might be justified. But limiting access and/or deleting own files is outrageous. For that matter, collections of misleading content can have legitimate purposes. Such as research. Now I'm seriously considering dropping my Drive subscription. Update: I got a lot of upvotes, but tbh I may have misunderstood the new policy, which does seem to (maybe?) only be limited to distri…
Does this apply to google workspace (paying)customers too? If so google is actually scanning what is supposed to be private information.
I looked closely but I cannot find anything that says that paying customers are excluded. So I would assume it is included.
It makes sense, though, to enforce one single policy: otherwise, just becoming a paying customer would be a loophole to circumvent phishing etc policies.
I guess the crux here is when, exactly, they start scanning the content. Is that perhaps the moment the content is first shared?
It doesn’t seem to be documented.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#294The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides. Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. are fantastic services in that they work really well on a massive scale. However, Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information puts too much power into the hands of one corporation, whose best inte…
I think your fundamental error is in the fact that you think that a private company (and market competition) can fix these issues. It seems that many people on HN are just waiting for the new Savior company, that will magically have incentives to fight for them instead of making money. It's like hoping for market competition create health regulation in the food industry. Turns out, not even Apple is that messiah, and…
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Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#295Like many on HN, I rely on Google's services to a degree that I find worrying. The reason for my immobilism is the usual one: Google's services are extremely convenient, and switching to alternatives is extremely costly in time.
Like many of you, I make it a point to investigate alternatives to G-Suite, Android, etc. Sadly, the answer to "is there a practical alternative to Google" has so far been a resounding "no".
After thinking about this some more, I'm beginning to think the question is ill-posed. I'd like to ask a better question, and I'd really appreciate your input. But first, let me list a handful of observations about my behavior as a user and customer that I think are important.
== OBSERVATIONS ==
OBSERVATION 1: I don't mind paying for software, I just hate accounting.
I don't often buy software, especially subscription-based SaaS products. For the longest time, I thought my aversion had to do with frugality, but I now realize it has to do with peace of mind. I refuse to accept the burden of tracking my subscriptions, being responsible for cancelling them when no longer in use, and chasing down the odd unexpected charge on my bank statement, or trying to remember how much a subscription costs and whether or not to cancel before its automatic renewal. Life is too short. The mere thought of such a snake-it provokes a response approximating an anxious rage. My reaction is visceral; one cannot reason with me on this point.
Subscriptions-management services don't solve the problem. They might remove accidental complexities that emerge from managing subscriptions -- visualizing pricing side-by-side, alerting me when a subscription is about to expire, performing the (un)subscription automatically, etc. -- but it is impossible for them to solve the essential complexity of subscription management: thinking about subscriptions.
OBSERVATION 2: I am a software developer, but I am not an advanced user.
I am technically literate, but most of the work I do in G-Suite is basic. I draft documents, often collaboratively. I use track-changes and comments. I use Times New Roman in 12-point font. I sometimes make basic slide decks, using the default theme and paying no regard to aesthetics beyond ensuring proper alignment. I rarely use spreadsheets, but when I do, I use the basic functions, and rudimentary formatting.
Same goes with email. Helvetica, ll-pt. Attachments.
OBSERVATION 3: Cloud storage is actually pretty great, but I mistrust you deeply.
In a utopian world, Cloud storage and SaaS software would be perfect! I almost always have access to the internet when I need it, and during the rare times when I don't, it can wait an hour or two. In this utopia, I could take full advantage of Cloud/SaaS offerings, effectively freeing myself of the need to store, organize, back-up and garbage-collect local copies. It would be great!
Only, here's the issue: I can't do that. I can't do it because SaaS platforms can't be trusted to have adequate disaster recovery in place, spy on me, routinely hold my livelihood hostage [0], and might arbitrarily deplatform me.
As such, I find myself in the ironical situation of having to manually backup my Google documents by exporting them to RTF and storing them in a well-organized folder hierarchy for a rainy day. My life has actually gotten a bit worse, but not so bad that I'm willing to give up collaborative editing.
== QUESTION ==
Taken together, the above observations point to something approximating:
1. Self-hosted service. Or, at least, some kind of ability to continue working in the event that the Cloud-based mothership fails or banishes me. Such self-hosting should be prepackaged and easy to install/configure.
2. Non-subscription based monetization. More generally: non-recurring expenses.
3. Optional cloud-based storage. Perhaps just a dumb S3-style API into which data can be backed up?
Does anything like this (or better!) exist?
[0] I'm looking at you, Lastpass.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#296Oh no! I have an OKR sheet that might be in violation.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#297As a common carrier they should not be allowed to discriminate. Like railroads cannot discriminate against traffic they do not like, and restaurants and hotels cannot discriminate. As a society we decided long ago that if you hold yourself out to the public you cannot discriminate
This. Also, 'misleading' is a mechanism to how content is used, not the content itself. So content in one use case may be misleading and in another, it is not. How content is used matters. How is google to judge this?
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that we know from experience, after 20+ years of the modern Internet, that if you make a 'free speech' drive/repository place that's widely available, it will host the absolute worst of the human race. Then, let's say you personally were in charge of said Free Speech Drive- every day you'd get up and hear about people using it for (legal) jailbait photos, Islamic State recruiting, collaboration between e…
a lot of people who say they want an absolute free speech drive/free speech host have never actually worked for a colocation/dedicated server/hosting ISP and seen how the sausage is made.
Is “seeing how the sausage is made” a requirement for having beliefs or opinions on the matter?
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really sorry for the off-topic, but I've been waiting for a chance to ask because I see it here very, very often. What are people intending to denote with the "private" in "private company", especially where the company is so obviously and well-known to be public[ally traded]? What are you trying to distinguish it from by calling it private? Are you just pointing out it's not the government or quasi-governmental?…
I feel the exact same way. I suspect "Private Company" is being used in relation to Public/Private Sector and not in relation to whether or not the company is publicly traded.
I feel like your sense of it might be right. But even then, you can count the number of public sector "companies" (like Fannie and Freddie) on one hand, so it just strikes me as such a bizarre distinction.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#300I see Google got the DNC's memo. Gov't is asking private corporations to censor your SMS messages, because gov't itself can't. They want to censor every form of digital communication, period. We either have free thought and expression of ideas, or we all live under someone else's ideals of what those are, and most likely, if history has taught us anything....you won't like it but it will be too late. Your voice will just be gone, unless it's full of praise for whoever your "dear leader" ends up being. This isn't done. More will come. We'll hem and haw when we hear about it, but keep on keeping on...right off the cliff.
Free speech is not easy, but it is an absolute necessity unless we want to revisit some of histories uglier chapters, and all I see is pedal to the metal.
> And this campaign is far from a single-pronged strategy. According to Politico, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and “Biden-allied groups” – whatever that last phrase means – have plans to “engage fact-checkers more aggressively” and “work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.”
https://www.eutimes.net/2021/07/us-says-it-will-censor-anti-...