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Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

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Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#351

Post by throwitaway1235 »

beebmam wrote: post #329
semitones wrote: post #39

The 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…

Please tell me why a private company should be forced to host content that they fundamentally disagree with. Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry Chinese state propaganda, for example? Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry ISIS propaganda? There are alternatives to Google. They should host that content there

The argument would be the magnitude of their impact on how a member of society can search for, view or transmit information is too large for Google to be deemed a private company.

If a private company impacts a nation's states democracy to such an extent that it rivals it in power, they ought to be classified as something else.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#352

Post by hash872 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #311
hash872 wrote: post #230

Earlier 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…

Another wrinkle in all of this is that you can use free speech as a form of censorship . For example, if someone says something you don't like, you can intimidate them into shutting up by, say, threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity, address of residence, and so on. On certain corners of the Internet, merely dropping dox is good enough to get randos (who won't even be affiliate…

Agreed. That's not even getting into just pure spam, which from people like Alex Stamos I've heard is 100-1000x the issue that culture war content moderation is. Once you've accepted that a platform can remove the kind of spam that killed MySpace- or doxing or a DDoS attack, as you say- you're already on the (common sense IMO) road to content moderation. Which again, from 25+ years of the modern Internet, we know is just mandatory to have a useable site

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#353

Post by imwillofficial »

slg wrote: post #174
mancerayder wrote: post #105

I read regular stories on HN about employee activism on certain types of popular issues around gender and race, involving petitions and publicity. Spotify, Apple, Google. Yet nothing about the march towards totalitarianism and information control - always with good intentions and to our benefit - promulgated with stories such as this. Not a peep from our young Silicon Valley activists. Do we still teach history at sc…

>Do we still teach history at school? I'm talking about history of many countries. No fear whatsoever of information control and government censorship. I'm baffled and saddened. I agree. We don't spend enough time teaching about the history of free speech in other countries like Germany. And no, I don't only mean in 1930s and 1940s Germany. I also mean the Germany of today. They, along with much of Europe, have laws…

Playing devils advocate here, how is holocaust denial dangerous?

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#354

Post by gumby »

semitones wrote: post #39

The 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…

Have you considered NextCloud? Even available as a service if you don't want to host the code yourself.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#355

Post by TameAntelope »

The problem we actually need to solve is how to divorce the concept of free speech from private companies. For some reason, it's almost ubiquitously believed that the "Internet" is actually just Twitter, Google, Facebook.

How can we, the tech literate, start to explain to our friends/family and eventually the world, that the Internet is actually an interconnected network of computers that no one person or entity controls?

Honestly, I fear that even among us, we have large groups of uninformed people who believe companies like Google and Facebook are more than just leaf nodes on the graph, and that worries me. If knowledgable people can be this wrong, how can we expect the uninformed to get this right?

I worry about the future of tech, if the discourse on HN is any indication of how the greater tech community feels. The idea that Google is an integral part of using the Internet to express oneself is not only completely wrong, but actively harmful, and I have no clue what to do about it.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". John Gilmore's statement has seemingly gone out of vogue, but it remains true. Google cannot stop information (good and bad) from spreading, so why do people think they can, and how do we disabuse Americans (and the world) from the notion that Google has that power?

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#358

Post by Alex3917 »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #22

What. 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…

> I suppose limiting sharing might be justified. But limiting access and/or deleting own files is outrageous.

It's definitely not just a hypothetical risk either. In the last month, Facebook blocked me from distributing my blog post on Django best practices because they claim it violates their community standards. It's literally a post about how to structure API code, but now they're claiming that it's advocating for genocide or something and there's apparently no one to appeal to or any way to reverse this.

For reference: https://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2021/06/django-for...

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2...

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#360

Post by beebmam »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #351
beebmam wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me why a private company should be forced to host content that they fundamentally disagree with. Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry Chinese state propaganda, for example? Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry ISIS propaganda? There are alternatives to Google. They should host that content there

The argument would be the magnitude of their impact on how a member of society can search for, view or transmit information is too large for Google to be deemed a private company. If a private company impacts a nation's states democracy to such an extent that it rivals it in power, they ought to be classified as something else.

So, in your opinion, what should a government force the company to do when they are classified as what you describe? Force them to host all speech? Does that include art? Disinformation? Propaganda? Porn? Spam? Terrorism?

I don't think you've thought out the consequences of what you're advocating for.

If you have thought it out, please explain exactly what speech they should be forced to host and what speech they shouldn't be.

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