removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.
How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?
Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.
Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
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Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#22I don't think you'd actually get in trouble for an "I hate White People" t-shirt. It would probably be seen as a political statement. We have whole college majors devoted to elucidating the evils of white people. It's hip to hate them.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#23removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.
That's not a valid argument. At the end of the day, if Google wants G+ to succeed they have to draw the line on offensive profile pics somewhere. Regardless of where the line falls, there will always be people who think it should be moved in one direction or another. To just say "I'm not offended by this content, Google must be doing it wrong" is ignoring the reality of the situation and failing to contribute to the discussion on how the issue could be handled better.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#24I like how humble Tom is about MySpace. All these years later, and he's still my only friend... In all seriousness, he should be proud of what they accomplished. Yes, it kind of turned into a cesspool, but there was no model of how a social network should be until Facebook came along. MySpace was an evolution of Geocities, more than it was an attempt to have the kind of "respectable" social presence that facebook sho…
Rather, there was no widespread knowledge and/or consensus on how a social network should be at the time. Models were a plenty. For example, Lunarstorm started out some 3 years (2000) before MySpace and in a year (2001) reached 600k users (it would plateau at 1.2m in 2007) but it had none of the Geocities stylings of MySpace. Instead it had a feed of your friends' activities, private messaging, notes (called diary), and message boards. It's just that the Internet back then was not the sharing ground it has grown into today, and people in other countries than Sweden were probably not aware of this particular site.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#25"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt."
And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.
It seems pretty obvious how this should work:
(1) Google enables a flag for offensive photos (some automated system might work in tandem with this).
(2) Someone who's offended by a photo (or automated system) flags it.
(3) The user sees that someone has flagged it, might change it himself.
(4) Google sees the flag and reviews the image for possible action. Some sort of adjudication record is created and available for both the user the image belongs to and anyone who reported it.
(5) The user has some recourse to appeal if Google takes action to remove the user's picture.
Google, having a terrible customer service background, just went with the big brother approach.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#26This page reliably crashes safari on my iPad 1. Does anyone else have this problem or am I going insane?
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#27Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel? Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line? Imbecile. That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that…
Suppressing racist speech is also censorship, so it seems like you're actually affirming the parallel. Since you seem to think it's self-evident that racist content should be banned and equally self-evident that this content should not be, why don't you tell us where the line is? This is very fine line to walk — you will anger somebody no matter what you do — so if you have any insights, I'm sure the people faced with the decision will appreciate them.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#28removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.
It's G+, not PG13+!
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have heard of people being thrown out of mall's because they were wearing an offensive t-shirt. I think the analogy that google+ is basically private property that is open to the public. The website isn't owned by the public instead it is owned by google. The point of google censoring offensive content is to not only follow their own rules but to make the company that provides this service to still look good and ke…
But, and I'm just throwing this out there so hold off on that downvote for a second, if a website has a comments section, doesn't such a feature act as something similar to a "town square"? In which case, if a website has a comments section or other area where users can interact with one another, should that area be a "public" place, and allow free speech etc.? Addition: since the purpose of free speech law is to all…
I mean, I didn't read it, but I'm sure somewhere along the way of my signing up for Google+ I agreed to their terms of service stating that they could remove whatever content they deemed unacceptable that I post or create.
As for your addition, to make all methods of communications pass through a company would either require a law, which would be unconstitutional, or would require more insidious methods. The government already has plenty of insidious methods of dealing with people.
Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
#30"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. It seems pretty obvious how this should work: (1) Google enables a flag for offensive…
The fifth point is a great idea that more services need to get behind in all areas. But aside from that one, this all sounds like pointless bureaucracy and foot-dragging, and well beyond what just about any other service on the planet does. (I've moderated a number of forums, and I can't think of a one where we routinely gave people a record of how their flags were resolved.)