421–430 of 1001 posts
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…
I, for one, am happy about this decision. If there's one thing that's became way more obvious to me over the past year and a half is just how susceptible a lot of people are to conspiracy theories and other similar content. In an ideal world we would have different solutions, however we don't live in a perfect world so I welcome decisions like this. Yes it does open doors for more government control and censorship, b…
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…
> Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong The problem is that (I doubt) Google is really doing this out of some misguided attempt at "protecting" people but rather as a reaction to what they perceive to be what the people want. When America was a very religious (Christian) country, media distributors stayed away from anything that appeared "blasphemous". They didn't necessarily do it because there wa…
For those us not from US, it this "as a reaction to what they perceive to be what the people want." really represent the majority as in your example when America was very religious?
Because it seems to me, ( and I know zip about US ) this action only please half and anger another half?
I see a lot of comments misinterpreting this. First, it's not about private files, it's about distributing content. Google isn't spying on your private files, but does scan them when you share them publicly. E.g. keep all the pirated movies you want on your Drive, and even give private access to friends, but the moment you make them publicly viewable Google scans them and limits access accordingly. So no, this isn't…
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…
Amazing 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…
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The other truth is we're all outraged when these companies host some stuff that we don't like ... and get upset when they don't host the stuff we do like. Consumers aren't rational. Neither are their demands. I'm probably no more rational than anyone else, but I'm honest that I sure as hell don't want to give money to a service that is happy to host some violent folks content / garbage...
> we're all outraged when these companies host some stuff that we don't like I'd argue that there is already a (fairly) tried and tested process in place to deal with this, it's the legal system. There are plenty of media outlets that publish stuff I don't particularly like, but almost none of it is illegal, so - to be blunt - I just have to suck it up. Some of my friends have opinions that I - at times - violently d…
1) Get to know people in your community who hold differing opinions. We all need to be doing this more - fostering friendship over the things we have in common. This isn't easy, but the Western world used to be far better at it.
2) Engage in healthy debate, which means advocating a specific opinion in a public way -- either speech, column in your local newspaper, etc. -- with carefully researched references/sources, no ad-hominem attacks, assuming good faith and intent on the part of those who disagree, and respect for the differing opinions of others.
Imagine if every local community did (1) and (2) -- people would be a lot happier and would be less likely to hold unsupportable opinions, since even cursory research (i.e. prior to publicly arguing in favor of them) would show those opinions have no basis in reality.
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…
A recent high profile example is the lab leak "conspiracy theory". Facebook block discussion of the possibility that Covid-19 started from a lab leak, but now scientists are seriously considering the issue. Imagine if Google had this policy last year, and a scientist posted a Google Slides presentation about the merits of the lab theory (and imagine it was banned under the misleading "health" information umbrella) ..…
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Maybe it time we make it easy for people to host thier own clouds… Like Nextcloud. All in one at home server with Owncloud Plug-N-Play. While we are at it, have it ready to go for hosting emails and Federated Social Media. To be honest, it would be a challange, but totally doable. Decetralize the interenet once again!
This is techno-utopianism. The problem isn't technical. Your grandparents won't figure out how to host their own cloud or use Mastodon. Your friends who work at art galleries or in construction won't figure it out either. The reason centralized services proliferate is that they cater to the vast majority of people who don't care about this stuff. "How do we limit the harm of misinformation while preserving our freedo…