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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

#81

Post by danpalmer »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #79
nickelpro wrote: post #62

Misleading title, none of the authors involved are claiming they're locked out of the accounts. The exact quote from the OP's mastadon is "An author lost access to her explicit writing when she shared it with alpha and beta readers." Google says you may not use its services to distribute sexually explicit content. This is a very common and reasonable policy. The authors violated that rule, and while none of them are…

Why is it reasonable?

Distributing sexually explicit material is subject to many tricky laws around the world. It's illegal in some places, requires age restrictions in others. It's reasonable for any hosting provider to say they are not going to get involved in that legal quagmire.

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

#83

Post by gcr »

paxys wrote: post #10
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…

From the thread it sounds like they only took away their ability to share. They still have access to the account and everything on it.

The last screenshot states her entire account was frozen and her work is not accessible.

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

#84

Post by dotnet00 »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #66
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.

Keep it on there in an encrypted volume! Cloud backup AND privacy in one.

Wouldn't be surprised if "too much encrypted data" also triggers a ban because it'd stand out as unusual and a potential liability.

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

#85

Post by lakpan »

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”.

Warning is not possible, have you seen the amount of spam the web has?

What’s possible though is a better handling of these scenarios. Don’t lock me out of my entire account, but stop the specific service/action breaking the ToS.

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

#86

Post by Cthulhu_ »

vsnf wrote: post #49

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…

Part of it is feared censoring / demotion in the algorithms; part is hypersensitivity / hyperconsiderate, because some people have indicated they are triggered by certain words, and I'm guessing another part is maximising reach. That is, if you use explicit language, your content may be marked as 12, 16, 18+ content, and half your engagement may drop because people in comment sections seriously underestimate how much "engagement" a teenager with a phone and infinite time generates.

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

#87

Post by cmrdporcupine »

squirrel wrote: post #70
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #59

How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no customer service, and delegate more and more to "AI" to manage these things. This has all been giving me anxiety since the time I had my Facebook account partially locked for over a month because I shared a picture of my son at the beach with no shirt on and their…

Google Takeout will give you an archive of your email (and everything else).

Yes I've done that recently, too. But it's really something that needs to be done periodically.

By "figure out about email" I meant: where to move my email & whole life to. I'm thinking about registering a domain and taking up residence on another email hosting provider that lets me use my own domain.

I have started self-hosting my own photos on my own local NAS running Immich, with limited, controlled exposure via tailscale for when I'm out.

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

#88

Post by codazoda »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #59

How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no customer service, and delegate more and more to "AI" to manage these things. This has all been giving me anxiety since the time I had my Facebook account partially locked for over a month because I shared a picture of my son at the beach with no shirt on and their…

I don’t know if it will save me but I purchase a domain of my own, use an email address from that domain, and forward to Gmail. I could easily forward to any other service. When Google locks me out of my account I’ll see how resilient this idea is. Obviously I’ll lose the ability to search my decades of email, which will sting a little.

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

#89

Post by aqme28 »

nickelpro wrote: post #62

Misleading title, none of the authors involved are claiming they're locked out of the accounts. The exact quote from the OP's mastadon is "An author lost access to her explicit writing when she shared it with alpha and beta readers." Google says you may not use its services to distribute sexually explicit content. This is a very common and reasonable policy. The authors violated that rule, and while none of them are…

I understand the idea behind banning sexually explicit writing, but that basically means that large large percentage of literature cannot use Google services. Anyone writing a novel basically shouldn’t use docs in case they might someday want to include sex in their writing.
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