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Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

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Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#291

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

squarefoot wrote: post #87
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Drive is free. The individual in-question was not paying for the service. If you do pay for Google’s services via G Suite then you do get instant human support.

Being free is not an excuse. If Google can't give a reliable free service, then they should stop offering free services. Thee way they're doing it is way unprofessional.

This is like saying the Red Cross should not be allowed to give free sandwiches to homeless people if they are made of baloney and government cheese. It's unprofessional! Either use premium meats and cheeses and artisanal bread, or don't give them any sandwiches at all.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#292

Post by notyourday »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #253
notyourday wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. He used a service for years, for free. He got what he paid for, in fact he got more than what he paid for. > I'm not sure that difference matters. It does. Customers pay money. He is not a customer.

This attitude is exactly the problem - we are selling our data in exchange for a service. If it's value were $0, Google would go bancrupt. So this 'pretend the service is free' thing needs to die because Google has been able to make billions. Clearly they are making a profitable trade. It's basically digital barter Where there is profitable trade both parties have certain responsibilities. Personally I stopped using…

Your value of the service is the exact the amount of you are paying, which is zero.

You do not have a say in what Google does with others - in fact others are paying Google so it is clearly that Google's services are valued by them.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#293

Post by nh2 »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #281
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, Isn't this moving the overton window? Should we accept that they were viewing his data in the first place?

@skosie >Host locally, and push encrypted backups to a cloud service. Is there any "grandparent friendly" way to do this today?

Give them a NAS / old PC with shared network folder (Windows context menu or Samba on Linux), replicate the parts they want on phones etc. with Syncthing, and use any encrypted backup tool of your choice for the cloud backup.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#294

Post by mastazi »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #246
mastazi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you already know, but setting up your own myname@mydomain.tld and then setting that up in Gmail[1][2] means that in a catastrophic scenario (your Gmail is closed) you don't lose your email address. In addition to that, you should frequently take a backup of your Gmail emails[3], then in case your account is locked you can use the exported mbox[4] archive, and import it in Thunderbird, this works reasonably[5…

Or just use Zoho. It's free to link your own domain ($1/mo if you want IMAP access) and they have actual support. I have contacted them in the past about a bug with their DKIM implementation (or really, the UI) and they sorted it out manually on the spot.

This was in case OP didn't want to give up Gmail straight away. Of course you can just migrate to another provider, or, as in my case, spin up your own mailinabox[1] instance. That way the only provider you have to deal with is the cloud provider for your VPS, and in the remote case my account was terminated, it would be very easy to switch to a different provider (because Mailinabox includes functionality to do automated backups to an external location).

[1] https://mailinabox.email/

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#295

Post by josephg »

gime_tree_fiddy wrote: post #262
Ansil849 wrote: post #5

> The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I mean, how many times does this need to come up for people to learn the lesson? If you are storing your data with a third party, and you do not have an iron legal contract with this third party, then that third party can and will do whatever it wants with your data, including locking you out…

Is there a way to get a complete download of your data from Google? Maybe an online guide or something. Drive alternative is simple enough with "cp -r" and your own bucket. For something like, Gmail and other services, it gets complicated.

Sure is, and it’s excellent. I make a backup of everything Google stores about me every couple of years. I’ve never needed them, but they’re really interesting and give me peace of mind.

https://takeout.google.com/

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#296

Post by mastazi »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #259
mastazi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you already know, but setting up your own myname@mydomain.tld and then setting that up in Gmail[1][2] means that in a catastrophic scenario (your Gmail is closed) you don't lose your email address. In addition to that, you should frequently take a backup of your Gmail emails[3], then in case your account is locked you can use the exported mbox[4] archive, and import it in Thunderbird, this works reasonably[5…

That was very helpful, thank you - I didn't know all that, and even if I did, many others coming across this probably did not either. I still don't feel like going traipsing around minefields. I'm sure there's a benefit from tying together all Google services - for me, it just keeps me away from most of them. And I even pay for Google One.

> And I even pay for Google One.

you would think that paying for it would translate into a slightly better level of customer care. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Google. I pay for YouTube premium and I had my fair share on unanswered issues. Not sure about the other services though, YouTube is the only Google product I still use and I have a separate account only for that. Hopefully Google One turns out to be better than YouTube Premium!

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#297

Post by zamadatix »

zibzab wrote: post #56

This is your daily reminder that nothing in your digital life should EVER entierly depend on any Google services. Im writing this from an android phone. It is not de-googled per se, but uses a replacement for every single Google service (files, books, maps, search, movies, ...). Yes I pay money for those replacements, but God its good to not my life in the hand of a overzealous ML algorithm.

What do you use for maps?

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#298

Post by pdonis »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #35
Ansil849 wrote: post #5

> The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I mean, how many times does this need to come up for people to learn the lesson? If you are storing your data with a third party, and you do not have an iron legal contract with this third party, then that third party can and will do whatever it wants with your data, including locking you out…

Have you seen the TV ads for cloud storage services? They’re advertising themselves as being dependable. We cannot blame average consumers when events like these happen. We need to stop pretending that software, including free-as-in-beer SaaS, doesn’t have an implied warranty. It does. The implied warranty in Google Drive is that “we’ll host your files for you”. Google screwed-up (an “honest” mistake, it pains me to…

> Have you seen the TV ads for cloud storage services?

Google Drive is not a "cloud storage service". You're not a paying customer of Google and you have no leverage with them at all. Putting your only copy of any data that you can't afford to lose on Google Drive is just asking for trouble.

> Google for failing to comply with their own implied warranty

There is no implied warranty for a service that's being given to you for free and for which you have no customer agreement or contract with Google. If you want a warranty, express or implied, you need to be a paying customer.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#299

Post by _dain_ »

garmaine wrote: post #204
verisimi wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you're making an omelette you have to break some eggs. There has been a literal, yet largely silent, book burning going on with Google services in recent years. On youtube, many alternative voices are silenced, billions of comments deleted. I know its a private company, but in the US there are free speech laws + the possibility of using the court system (if someone makes a libellous statement). But no, sil…

“Free speech” laws only apply to government restrictions on speech.

In your country, perhaps. I am sick of this narrow American corporatist view that is unthinkingly applied to the whole world.

Do you ever imagine how unnerving it would be, if 99% of all online discourse in your country took place on platforms owned by foreign corporations?

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#300

Post by pdonis »

munk-a wrote: post #12
Ansil849 wrote: post #5

> The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I mean, how many times does this need to come up for people to learn the lesson? If you are storing your data with a third party, and you do not have an iron legal contract with this third party, then that third party can and will do whatever it wants with your data, including locking you out…

Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.

Most web hosting providers will give you plenty of space for a pretty low price, particularly if it's just data you want to store, not make accessible through a web interface. Also there's tarsnap.
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