Live data from Hacker News

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

fandom.ink

131–140 of 217 posts

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

#131
post #89

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.

Google's policy doesn't say anything about using their services to create sexually explicit content, only using their services for distribution.

> Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes.

This squares with what happened to the authors here, who were only subject to enforcement actions when they shared the content via Google Docs.

But yes I think the basic idea of being unable to "trust" a free service which has no contractual obligations to you as a user is a given under any circumstances.

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

#133
post #34
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.

Really? Do you have any source on that?

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

#134
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…

You see that on Youtube as well. Creators will also censor su*cide, both in audio and video, because Google / advertisers don't like sensitive content and the video will make a lot less money if Google thinks it's about mental illness or suicide.

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

#136
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you want to store it. You could store it encrypted. Any true backup worthy of the title should, in my opinion, be encrypted. Otherwise it's just a copy.

Surely you jest, you joker you. The number of problems with that idea far outweigh the benefits. Should I go into detail? Love your profile text, by the way. EDIT: one quick example is that I’ve lost more data by forgetting passwords than I care to admit. They’ve all been from an age where I thought it was a good idea to encrypt my secret documents, lest prying eyes get to them. Turns out the secrets would’ve been in…

Please go into detail, I'm curious how encrypting your backups has more problems than benefits.

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

#137
post #5

The only thing I use gdocs for is collaboration. What are some of y'all's favorite alternatives?

I remember this from HN or otherwise when looking for an alternative solution: https://cryptpad.org/

There's a public instance in France to try it out.

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

#138
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author’s last screenshot states that her whole account was frozen just after submitting the appeal and she no longer has access to her docs. I would have far less of an issue with this if certain docs were marked unsharable, or even if her entire account could no longer share, but losing access to previous work written before the policy change feels like a big misstep to me. Here’s what she said: > “As of right now,…

> Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review Google presuming guilt until proven innocent. An appeal locking the account in retaliation is absolutely disgusting.

Meta does this too. My guess it appears as some signal to some "AI" somewhere that this is Legit Bad Stuff, and they then send it over to an underpaid overworked exploited moderator somewhere who doesn't care, and just takes it to the next level.

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

#139

Good open source self-hostable alternatives exist! https://nextcloud.com/ (no affiliation, just a longtime happy user) is great for file sharing and even collaborative online document editing. If you do not want to host your own instance, there are many great providers who will host one for you at a low cost.

I have so many problems with nextcloud! It kills itself from time to time, often during updates. Randomly problems with folder rights when everything was working before. It's slow and the code is php. The official documentation and forum are a mess.

I have a lot of files, the database is not able to handle them correctly, even the cleaning commands take hours and do not work.. I regularly lose files in the database and need to re-upload them from the file in the server..

The app on Android has a lot of issues synchronizing my files, too many too often I guess.

I'm hoping to see a good alternative to nextcloud one day.

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

#140
post #44

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 care…

Care to explain what exactly "may be illegal" in this case?
Post reply on HN