Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

Exactly. What is misinformation? What you define as misinformation right now could be information in a few months.

Entire discussions on things like ivermectin to treat covid were banned from YouTube as “misinformation”. Now some studies are coming out that might show that it’s not. At least it deserves a discussion but it has been censored as misinformation. So we lost an entire year of treating people around the world because SOMEONE deemed ivermectin misinformation??

What about the Wuhan lab origination? Last year that was derided as conspiracy theories and misinformation, but now it’s basically accepted as fact.

Who determines what is misinformation? What if Trump wins again or someone worse like Tom Cotton? And they set up a government panel that they decide is misinformation and companies like Google need to follow it? Who determines who is spreading misinformation now?

10 years ago a low fat diet was deemed “heart healthy”. Now that is classified as misinformation. Should low fat diets be censored by Google?

This is the problem. What you thought was misinformation is only really a few studies away from being flipped around.

Wielding the baton of "misinformation", or in general, fear of falsehood/insecurity etc, to whack those who the ruling class disagrees with is also code designed to specifically take advantage of the gaps in a healthy bureaucracy and seize control over it in such a way that makes it hard to challenge it.

>Google isn't spying on your private files, but does scan them when you share them publicly.

What's more likely:

A) That they make a single-pass scan over a file for various purposes

B) They make multiple, separate scans over a file at different times depending on sharing status and other factors

I'd contend that it's more likely to be A, and that it almost certainly happens as soon as the data becomes visible to Google. I'd be very surprised if they didn't scan immediately to de-dupe and detect illegal pornography, for example. Once that's a given, it doesn't make much sense to do a separate kind of scanning later based on a different set of criteria; You scan once and flag for the respective detections immediately.

You keep mentioning in this thread “malformed code” as if nonsense Facebook posts are executables my brain is loading.

What do you mean by “your brain is mapped?”

Ok I'm not pro censorship, but I'll bite your bait.

Firstly, this is a content policy, this is separate from actual enforcement. I would doubt that google enforces this proactively, rather they want a possibility to shut down what has now been dubbed 'fake news'.

Secondly, reading this with an open mind their focus seems to be on dangerous falsehoods, think things that can get people in prison (double voting?), health issues ('bleach anema for 3 year olds cures autism', 'vitamin D prevents covid', 'covid is an invention of the deep state', ...), or manipulated information that claims to represent another's view ('manipulated media ... that may pose a risk of egregious harm', e.g. I'd imagine a fake NYT article saying that masks are harmful).

Third, this is a private platform, not a government body enforcing its views.

Last, there are some dangerous lies. In Germany its illegal to state the holocaust never happened. You can discuss details and question parts of the narrative but not doubt that it ever happened. You can't have neo-nazis claiming that its all a big conspiracy and that others were at fault - which, if you know your history, is one of the very ways the nazis justified WW2. This law was an essential tool to counter similar tendencies after Germany lost WW2. In contrast, in Poland its illegal to state that Poles contributed to the holocaust, which is however a true fact that is just politically unwelcome. So the issue here is not whether there is a truth, and also not whether lies can be dangerous (bleach anema to get rid of your kids' autism!), but rather who does and how truth is arbited. A government/company shouldnt be able to shut down every dissenting opinion but I can't believe anyone honestly believes that there should be no way to challenge and limit the spread of dangerous lies. You can think and discuss what you want, but if you broadcast your views to a wide audience you should also be held to a higher standard. The real issue is who does the accounting.