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Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

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Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#41

Post by notaustinpowers »

swarnie wrote: post #24
paxys wrote: post #6

"I keep all my work on Google/Apple/Dropbox/Office" is really the new version of "I kept all my work on my hard drive and didn't back it up". All of these companies have shown repeatedly that they will cut off your access with no notice for any or no reason and with no recourse. Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability.

Sure, to us technically minded types who work in the industry. Do you think the average erotic fiction writer is keeping abreast (lol) of cloud data access + integrity news?

[flagged]

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#42

Post by [deleted] »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #4

The post only says "An author lost access to her explicit writing", which sound to me that she cannot access that document anymore, not her account got suspended (I skimmed over comments and didn't see people said otherwise). Of course in this particular case, it might be worse (because she lost her entire writing if without backup), but it's not the same as losing an account. Anyway, it won't surprise me if she did…

[deleted]

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#43

Post by Freak_NL »

paxys wrote: post #34
giantg2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability." If they're actually a backup they can be a good idea. If it's a single source, then yeah, it's asking for trouble. I even backup my GitHub stuff locally because who knows what could happen.

Even if they are just a backup, all these companies scan your data for offensive material and report it to the authorities if their algorithm deems it fit. There have been plenty of cases of parents being investigated by the police just for taking photos of their kids on their phone.

For this I would only consider something client-side encrypted a proper back-up when using the cloud.

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#44

Post by kyrra »

The currently linked site is just a forum post, which links to Instagram, which is a screenshot of a discord chat. Instagram has the screenshots at least: https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO...

It does look like the author just lost access to docs they shared with others, not their entire account. Author is currently appealing.

We have seen this kind of thing in the past. Drive has to be careful, as people will use private drive links and doc links (could have embedded images) to share explicit material that may be illegal. From my understanding, Google will start running some kind of automation against things when they are shared with other people if they might contain things that could be illegal. I have no idea what the heuristics are, or how often they get it wrong. But they are kind of between a rock and a hard place.

Googler, opinions are my own.

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#45

Post by jlkuester7 »

brianwawok wrote: post #14
paxys wrote: post #6

"I keep all my work on Google/Apple/Dropbox/Office" is really the new version of "I kept all my work on my hard drive and didn't back it up". All of these companies have shown repeatedly that they will cut off your access with no notice for any or no reason and with no recourse. Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability.

All your eggs in 1 basket is never good. Local hard drive + a cloud provider should give you like 99.999999% reliability

> Local hard drive + a cloud provider

This has been my general strategy for personal data. I have also been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable way to get long-term very-cold storage (e.g. backups of family pictures). Something that would last decades just sitting in a fire-box somewhere (reasonable temps, no moisture). Been considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC, but interested to know if anyone has other ideas...

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#46

Post by polski-g »

giantg2 wrote: post #22
paxys wrote: post #6

"I keep all my work on Google/Apple/Dropbox/Office" is really the new version of "I kept all my work on my hard drive and didn't back it up". All of these companies have shown repeatedly that they will cut off your access with no notice for any or no reason and with no recourse. Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability.

"Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability." If they're actually a backup they can be a good idea. If it's a single source, then yeah, it's asking for trouble. I even backup my GitHub stuff locally because who knows what could happen.

Never forget: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#47

Post by Filligree »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #45
brianwawok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your eggs in 1 basket is never good. Local hard drive + a cloud provider should give you like 99.999999% reliability

> Local hard drive + a cloud provider This has been my general strategy for personal data. I have also been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable way to get long-term very-cold storage (e.g. backups of family pictures). Something that would last decades just sitting in a fire-box somewhere (reasonable temps, no moisture). Been considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC , but interested to know if anyon…

Don't quote me on this, but Bluray is apparently supposed to be long-term stable. I haven't explored the claim.

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#48

Post by thfuran »

diggan wrote: post #8
thrdbndndn wrote: post #4

The post only says "An author lost access to her explicit writing", which sound to me that she cannot access that document anymore, not her account got suspended (I skimmed over comments and didn't see people said otherwise). Of course in this particular case, it might be worse (because she lost her entire writing if without backup), but it's not the same as losing an account. Anyway, it won't surprise me if she did…

The Instagram post ( https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO ) states: > one romance author explain that all her work was suspended by Google [...] She has no access to these files or her other works That would seem like an account suspension, not just one document. Edit: I guess it might also be a Google Drive/Docs specific suspension, rather than Google-wide.

>I guess it might also be a Google Drive/Docs specific suspension,

Do they do that? I've only ever heard of people being entirely locked out of their Google account, not specific services.

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#49

Post by vsnf »

Something related I’ve been wondering about is the change in language catalyzed by social media companies and their morality / fear of advertisers.

You see it especially in TikTok videos. When people aren’t straight up censoring themselves with bleeps, dead audio, or cuts, they use euphemisms instead: kill -> unalive, rape -> grape, sex -> seggs.

Even more concerning is that what is considered in need of censoring is expanding. I saw a video where the creator censored “white” when referring to Caucasians.

Re: Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

#50

Post by Aerroon »

inetknght wrote: post #36
endisneigh wrote: post #18

Doesn’t seem like a big deal - unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing. Google really needs to stop preemptively locking accounts, though. They also need to warn ahead of time when someone is going to do something “bad”.

> unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing Ahh you think Discord has better policies? You might want to rethink that.

Ironically, I think the users are partly to blame for that. They were definitely complaining about some of the stuff that was on discord and discord then stepped up their enforcement of everything.
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