101–110 of 199 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish we had a portable email address format, like phone numbers are, instead of being inherently tied to a provider.
You don’t own a phone number either. Ever tried to move between countries?
Literally every form nowadays requires a phone number
Stratechery covered this … they pointed out the really f*ed: part: Google is refusing to reinstate the account. Protecting children is important. AI is imperfect. But there is no reason the keep the account suspended once it’s clear there was no wrongdoing. This man is innocent of doing anything wrong. Google had suspended him, and removed access to all his online account data. And refuses to reinstate. We balance ou…
Stratechery covered this … they pointed out the really f*ed: part: Google is refusing to reinstate the account. Protecting children is important. AI is imperfect. But there is no reason the keep the account suspended once it’s clear there was no wrongdoing. This man is innocent of doing anything wrong. Google had suspended him, and removed access to all his online account data. And refuses to reinstate. We balance ou…
This is the part that should receive a Congressional inquiry. I would love to see Congress drag Sundar Pichai (and no one else) before them and scream “What the hell is wrong with you?” in his face. We have courts for a reason. They found no wrongdoing. Google is objectively deciding they know better than an elected court on what happened. This whole situation is absurd and evil.
I'd go a little broader than that. I'd also want to see them drag in whoever made the decision to not reinstate the account, plus everyone who knew what happened and could have overridden the decision but chose not to do so.
Does getting your google account blocked prevent you from using GCP? There are so many stories of people losing access to google accounts that it seems way too risky to use GCP when this sort of thing can happen.
How does this work with Android mobile devices that are linked to that account? From a non-technologist perspective, is a linked Android device becomes neutered?
> Mark’s wife grabbed her husband’s phone and texted a few high-quality close-ups of their son’s groin area to her iPhone
> Gmail account ... Mark ... came to rely heavily on Google ... appointments ... on Google Calendar... smartphone camera backed up his photos ... to the Google cloud. ... Google Fi.
The photos should never have been made visible to third parties, certainly not large nosy corporations which analyze you and your behavior and "flag" people (and also share info with the NSA or other US government agencies, as per the Snowden revelations). We must educate people around us not to just use these gratis software services naively. Of course, the defaults of what's installed and configured on the gadgets we buy is something that many will stick with despite our best efforts - but remember that all of this would never have happened if Mark had not _actively_ allowed it: If he had simply never had a Google account, or never entered its credentials into his, phone, this whole situation would have been averted.
So, tell your friends, tell your family members, tell yourselves:
* Putting something "on the cloud" means giving a third party, whom you can't trust, a copy of it.
* When you send someone an email, it's like you've sent a copy to the company which runs his email service. If its @gmail.com - imagine your email is placed on large placards in Google's lobby.
* Minimize the use of services by large multi-pronged companies like Google, to avoid surveillance.
... and all of above for Apple, their iTunes cloud, email and other services. Finally,
* Prefer privacy-respecting communications applications like Signal for sending messages.
Stratechery covered this … they pointed out the really f*ed: part: Google is refusing to reinstate the account. Protecting children is important. AI is imperfect. But there is no reason the keep the account suspended once it’s clear there was no wrongdoing. This man is innocent of doing anything wrong. Google had suspended him, and removed access to all his online account data. And refuses to reinstate. We balance ou…
For you, Google is your everything. For Google, you're an tiny ant. If a tiny ant steps out of line, they kill it. They don't feel bad about the ant; they don't feel anything. It's a free service and it's not worth the cost to literally do anything.
Stratechery covered this … they pointed out the really f*ed: part: Google is refusing to reinstate the account. Protecting children is important. AI is imperfect. But there is no reason the keep the account suspended once it’s clear there was no wrongdoing. This man is innocent of doing anything wrong. Google had suspended him, and removed access to all his online account data. And refuses to reinstate. We balance ou…
is protecting children more important than a software engineer with no backup's mistakes and first world inconveniences? yes.
the AI did its job flawlessly - detected a naked toddler. as did the human verifier. bravo. should it have been detected and flagged? yes.
should we be surprised at the chosen free cloud provider's attitude or dismissal? no.
Thanks for the reminder. Wife and I take a lot of photos of our newborn, including in the bath. We think nothing of it, but probably worth figuring out a digital plan.
If the idea of an AI flagging an innocent moment wasn't bad enough, I can't stomach the idea of having to appeal this by literally having a stranger review a private moment in order to determine if it was sexual abuse. This just seems like an unjustifiable invasion of privacy.
Stratechery covered this … they pointed out the really f*ed: part: Google is refusing to reinstate the account. Protecting children is important. AI is imperfect. But there is no reason the keep the account suspended once it’s clear there was no wrongdoing. This man is innocent of doing anything wrong. Google had suspended him, and removed access to all his online account data. And refuses to reinstate. We balance ou…
This is what software as law looks like. The software actually found one or more pictures of a nude child and banned the account - the software worked exactly as intended. As humans we can see the issue here, the software cannot see or understand the issue. Google is not about to start carving exceptions out of its government mandated or coerced scanning feature, it can only follow the rule that any nudity involving…
Apple's Photos app tried to tell me that my child was my lover in their photo event labeling, which really pissed me off a lot.