101–110 of 217 posts
"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.
May be less of a big deal than is being suggested.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"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?
"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.
Wow, the state of freedom of speech is probably worse than the soviets ATM, since during the soviet times the speech scanning tech was primitive and the thought control was rudimentary and blunt. Back in the old school totalitarian days at least your writings were banned after they were written. Even 10 years ago it was fine, the worst was about blocking keywords and making printers refuse to print images of money. W…
What's wrong with sexually explicit content? Is Google controlled by Taliban or something?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it reasonable?
For one example, Florida introduced a law enforcing age verifications for pornographic content; it's easier to prohibit using a platform to distribute said content, than to introduce a content rating and age verification system.