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It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

alexaobrien.com

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Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#121

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

deathanatos wrote: post #28
jack9 wrote: post #10

Terabyte drives are very cheap. Since it's borderline stupid, to simply upload this volume of work to some third party service without backup, I have no sympathy or technical concern. This being an illustration of Google's terrible "progressively tyrannical" track record, the article is badly titled. More like Google the Oppressor of Truth. Good Luck to Alexa.

Ideally, I'd like to back up my data too. That's where it becomes much harder: I need a second location. (In case my house catches fire, or floods in a hurricane, etc.) AWS and GCE both provide raw disk space, and certainly, an encrypted backup could be uploaded to them. I would like to be able to put a cap on what I spend on service, in case something goes wrong with the system, which AFAIK, neither GCE/AWS provide,…

Tarsnap works well

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#122

Post by psyc »

KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you've written in this thread, and I share the same concerns about freedom and the Internet. I'm also an idealist. I recommend everyone with interest learn as much as they can about crypto and distributed systems. It's not a panacea. It's hard. Mathematics and the law appear to be roughly evenly matched, at least in the short term. At the least, it seems to me that crypto/p2p don't stand a chance without at least some support from the law. I think there is a great need for more effort towards user-friendly p2p software. There are a lot of people working on it, but in general they aren't backed by tons of capital. I suppose thats the ideal buried at the heart of the ICO mania. I wonder where all this will end up in another 20 years.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

stale2002 wrote: post #98
dragonwriter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USPS has a similar monopoly to YouTube No, the USPS has a legally-protected monopoly, where alternative services are prohibited from competing with certain core functions. Alternative web video distribution services are not prohibited, and there are several that specialize in content that is unwelcome on YouTube. > The present ambiguity over their status What ambiguity? They are active distribution agents (neit…

The ambiguity is that facebook and youtube can't be sued for hosting illegal content. They are not responsible for user created content. Yet, even though they have many of the legal protections of being a pseudo common carrier, they have none of the obligations, such as the obligation to treat all content equally. For example, it is illegal for your phone provider to eaves drop on your conversations and censor your p…

> The ambiguity is that facebook and youtube can't be sued for hosting illegal content.

Taking that as unvarnished truth [0], for the sake of argument, that's not at all an ambiguity, it's a crystal clear status.

> Yet, even though they have many of the legal protections of being a pseudo common carrier, they have none of the obligations, such as the obligation to treat all content equally.

Again, taking that as true for the sake of argument, its not an ambiguity, but a crystal clear status.

Its a conflict with the false dichotomy of the idea that the only two roles in information dissemination are fully-liable non-neutral publisher and fully-immunized neutral common carrier. That model isn't true offline, and it's not true online.

[0] Which it isn't, because while the CDA and DMCA (and others) provide some limited/conditional protection, they are not a total bar to liability; but the still the status is not ambiguous, merely distinct.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#124

Post by stcredzero »

KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing...the continued aggressive censorship by Google, while their legal right, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They can do it, but I don't have to like it.

One does not get to "Organize the World's Information" and do so without exemplary intellectual honesty and regard to morality.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#125

Post by wallace_f »

jldugger wrote: post #115
wallace_f wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free in the most obvious sense, but they still profit off of you.

When I checked a few years ago, Youtube was still not actually profitable. There's a reason it's owned by the company that spins off so much free cash it doesn't know what to do with it all, I guess.

Google's parent company, Alphabet is hugely profitable.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#126

Post by mirimir »

sbov wrote: post #16
KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

How tightly bound we are to just a few large tech companies is... unfortunate. I would love it if it were easier for the common person to host their own stuff. Between all the concerns involved (security, hardware, demand, etc.) I'm not sure how feasible it is. I've given it a lot of thought, and have slowly unwound my custom tech setups - from domains, to emails, to hardware. Mostly for the "bus" factor. When my dad…

Indeed, this!

It's true that the process of setting up and managing websites can be daunting. Even using shared hosting, let alone on a VPS. And then there's the additional complexity of HTTPS, which is now pretty much the norm (even when not really needed, with no account creation or payment processing).

Using Micah Lee's OnionShare, one can easily create Tor onion sites.[0] They can be transient (for file-sharing) or persistent. It's based on his txtorcon library,[1] specifically TCPHiddenServiceEndpoint.[2]

That still might be a little intimidating, but hey.

0) https://onionshare.org/

1) https://github.com/meejah/txtorcon

2) https://txtorcon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/txtorcon-endpoints...

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#127

Post by KGIII »

taurath wrote: post #99
blfr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above being more than a legal concept, it's also not really about expression, ie. the biggest value to society is not from Alexa O'Brien being able to express her thoughts and feelings, which is a minor benefit to her, but in us being able to read them and then choose the best ideas to adapt/copy/implement. The fact that you can make your (realistically, very tiny) contribution to the culture is much less important t…

The cynical side of me thinks that a society with no control over (certain) information is one which is more vulnerable to control by bad actors. We have more of a filtering problem than an access problem at the moment - there's too much information to support all beliefs so people are more likely to become entrenched in whatever they do believe.

Freedom always carries risks.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#128

Post by taurath »

KGIII wrote: post #127
taurath wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynical side of me thinks that a society with no control over (certain) information is one which is more vulnerable to control by bad actors. We have more of a filtering problem than an access problem at the moment - there's too much information to support all beliefs so people are more likely to become entrenched in whatever they do believe.

Freedom always carries risks.

Yup, and intellectual feudalism is one of them, one that I hope we manage to avoid.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#129

Post by KGIII »

psyc wrote: post #122
KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you've written in this thread, and I share the same concerns about freedom and the Internet. I'm also an idealist. I recommend everyone with interest learn as much as they can about crypto and distributed systems. It's not a panacea. It's hard. Mathematics and the law appear to be roughly evenly matched, at least in the short term. At the least, it seems to me that cr…

I am a mathematician, I wasn't kidding when I asked what I could do to help. I can program but you really don't want me to do that.

So, I write. I write these comments, I promote these ideals. They were pretty common ideals, not that long ago. I try to explain why and see if I can understand the responses.

I'm kinda happy with the way this thread has turned out. I've done this before. This one has seen lots of support and has some great ideas and thoughts. It's much easier when the subject is not a Nazi, but the principles are exactly the same.

Re: It appears my Google account is slated for deletion

#130

Post by tanilama »

KGIII wrote: post #7

Well, she is easier to defend than Nazis. So, here I go... Freedom of expression, not just free speech the legal concept, should be a societal goal. Google has every right, legally, to delete this stuff. However, in an ideal world, they'd do no such thing and would let people judge based on the merits of the message. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to work towards that ideal world. Maybe the solution…

> just ensuring the ISP is nothing but a dumb pipe

Trump's FTC largely disagree with you

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