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Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

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Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#491

Post by iammisc »

hash872 wrote: post #230
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…

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…

No I wouldn't. Google is not necessarily wrong here. The issue is that you cannot easily 'own' a part of the internet, despite much of our life playing out there.

In the real world, if no one wants to host you and your group, the standard answer is to acquire money and buy your own land, your own broadcasting, etc. On the internet, this is much harder for 'normal' people to do, requiring them to use services like Google.

Look, once parler was taken down, I purchased several servers off ebay, rented colocation space, and set up my own services. But I have the technical know-how to actually 'own' part of the internet without depending on anyone else. Most people can't really do this. Thus they depend on Google, et al, who are not selling them something akin to a land title, which is what people feel they ought to have, but rather a service.

The reason people got Mad at AWS for taking down parler is because to the common man's mind, when Parler pays for its "website" (because let's be honest, that's as deep as most people go), it 'owns' it, and it ought to be able to hold title to that thing in perpetuity, like land. People felt upset because they felt that amazon simply seized what they perceived to be the equivalent of land or personal property.

Of course websites are different because they require active serving by a computer, and parler was paying AWS to do that and Amazon decided not to. But that's not how people view it.

To top it off, people are scared because they don't know how to own anything on the internet. Even tech savvy people have no idea how to purchase or lease IP space, set up servers, routes, etc. It's all very confusing.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#493

Post by Steltek »

contravariant wrote: post #441
crazygringo wrote: post #388

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…

There's something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy. You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with any truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they're right. I should at this point note that Google does…

What would you do to combat the deliberate misinformation campaign that is weakening the US and many other countries? While propaganda and polarization are not new, the speed, reach, and aggregation are only possible with modern communication.

An early tidbit that may have been lost with deplatforming was that Euro leaders also disagreed, citing that only the state could be trusted with that power. However, the US Constitution mostly prohibits that route and it's left to private companies to make up their own minds about what content they want to host.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#494

Post by BrainWorm »

hackererror404 wrote: post #455
contravariant wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy. You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with any truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they're right. I should at this point note that Google does…

Imagine if Britain had this same technology when the USA was founded... It of course would have quickly cracked down on communications and it would have done so in the name of "peace" and "what's right"... This idea that thinking critically of a government and even believing that perhaps the government as it stands today is not the government "of and for the people" (sure could be interpreted as anti-democracy by tha…

`Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215`

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#495

Post by Pick-A-Hill2019 »

floren wrote: post #456
Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #24

Ahh Hell No! I mean - Who gets to define 'misleading and/or confusing'? Google? A court case? If they (Google) want to impose restrictions such as "Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users" - Might I suggest that they apply those very same standards to their own behavior. * But who can watch the watchmen? * I am grateful that I have a symmetric ftth connection. Information (correct or inco…

> I am grateful that I have a symmetric ftth connection. Information (correct or incorrect) needs to be free - as in Free to be expressed; Free to be ridiculed; Free to be disseminated; Free to be discussed; Free to be exposed to the light of day. You have a symmetric FTTH connection for now. Host something somebody considers too offensive and they'll get your connection pulled. We don't hear about this because essen…

You are absolutely right. If I ran un-encrypted file sharing or torrented something that matched a hash somewhere in some system, yes, absolutely my connection would be shut-off. While I could debate the rights and wrongs of that I take the cowards approach and just shuffle random bits of bytes backwards and forwards.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#496

Post by GekkePrutser »

logifail wrote: post #390
duxup wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The legal system isn't great for this as it tends to listen to the one with the most expensive lawyers, especially in the US. And companies like Google have a lot of expensive lawyers.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#497

Post by diego »

throwaways885 wrote: post #227
duxup wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> The other truth is we're all outraged when these companies host some stuff that we don't like Please, speak for yourself. I think these companies should host absolutely everything[0]. Between 2010-2016 was the golden age for these companies actually being free and open. Edit: Within the law. To be honest, there is very little I see that should be censored beyond CP.

The law where? That is part of the problem. Every piece of content would need to have hundreds of flags, one for each jurisdiction in which the content could be viewed. That may not be enough for some countries given how easy it is to fake your origin address. It's solvable but not an easy problem.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#498

Post by colordrops »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #477
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…

> We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides I'm pretty sure Facebook and Twitter aren't far behind in the pursuit of also actively banning content they deem misleading. I don't think it's a Google-specific problem.

They are ahead of the game; they've both been doing it for a while.

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#499

Post by willhinsa »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #114

Also today, Psaki on de-platforming American citizens: "You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others if you providing 'misinformation' out there." https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1416095652162031624 They will define misinformation of course.

Not to mention the executive branch "flagging problematic posts for Facebook".

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-flagging-problem...

Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

#500

Post by GekkePrutser »

The problem with this is that people use Google Drive for a lot of purposes. Including private ones.

I really don't want Google removing my stuff because of some T&C crap when I'm not even sharing it with anyone. An external HDD is much less likely to break but it doesn't try to impose any opinions on my data. Overall the risk of data loss is much less with redundant personal storage.

At least just disable the sharing feature but don't delete it or ban the account. It makes the service completely unreliable as a storage medium. Sharing is only a tiny part of the features of these services and the only part where such limitations should apply.

For example I don't have anything really bad but I do have copyrighted stuff on my O365 like ISO images to have handy when I need to reinstall something. I'm not sharing them but if they'd be deleted anyway I'd be really really pissed.

And really, Google/MS shouldn't even be able to see what we store on Drive unless we try to share it publicly. It really should be zero-knowledge encrypted. Luckily there's apps like Cryptomator.

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