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A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

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Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#151

Post by falcolas »

cypress66 wrote: post #63
bagels wrote: post #7

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.

I don't know why people use gcp, I would like to hear some opinions. The way I see it, if you don't mind price, you go with AWS (most polished). If you mind price gcp isn't really much cheaper, so you go with something actually cheap like OCI.

Usually, it’s because someone bought into GAE, and needed some flexibility for extensions to that app.

Cynically, fairly typical vendor lock-in.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#152

Post by lostapathy »

cpcallen wrote: post #65
LAC-Tech wrote: post #35

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.

Use a film camera and develop the film yourself.

Digital camera would be fine too. Some photo printers can print direct from an SD card without any PC or network connection.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#153

Post by gonehome »

fncivivue7 wrote: post #130
gonehome wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC there was a follow up which was arguably worse. Google implied that the account was suspended because of real CSAM concerns unrelated to the photos sent to the doctor/police officer (other photos in their account? they wouldn't go into details about their decision) and that the officer closing the case doesn't mean their judgement here is wrong. If that's the case I can understand why they're obstinate about the…

That's spin. The real reason is discussed near the end of the article. They don't want to get into the business of deciding what is and isn't sexual imagery. Instead, it's easier to just ban people and forget about it. It's the same type of behaviour and attitude that lead to damoore being fired. No room for ambiguity or nuance at Google. Everything can be decided by an algorithm.

If the reason stated at the end of the article is the reason I can also understand their decision.

If my SO was surreptitiously taking nude pictures (videos?) of me and our kid while we were sleeping (and uploading them to the cloud!), I’d be pissed (and this is the most benign interpretation).

That said, there should still be due process.

Ultimately, I think it’s an issue with the local max of computing we’re trapped in. We need tools that can free us from dependence on a handful of centralized companies that have this kind of discretionary power over our lives.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#154

Post by int_19h »

Alupis wrote: post #90
gambiting wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? What kind of paths? Gmail isn't a paid service - you can't force Google to continue providing you with Gmail access if they don't want to, I can't believe any court would agree to such a thing. They reserve the right to terminate your access for any reason,and since you don't have a business relationship with them in this case I wonder what could you possibly claim in front of the judge to make them reverse t…

This isn't about a free GMail account... From the article there appears to be an arbitration path (based on the dollar amount quoted in the article, but they talk about it like it would be a lawsuit) - but Dad explicitly chose not to take it for some reason. It would be very surprising if the ToS for Google Accounts didn't include an arbitration agreement. Also, Dad had a paid Google One account - filled with apparen…

Are there any known examples of people using arbitrage to successfully recover their Google accounts?

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#156

Post by drited »

Alupis wrote: post #67
para_parolu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have one side of the story because the other side (huge corporation) didn’t give any information and decided to keep ban. No transparency there. Ps. This “we will never really know” is triggered me. This phrase used by Russian propaganda when they got caught in crimes every damn time.

> We have one side of the story because the other side (huge corporation) didn’t give any information and decided to keep ban. No transparency there. I'm not sure why we expect Google to provide transparency for CSAM bans/investigations. That would be highly irregular, and not just for Google. The Dad has legal path(s) to take if he feels he was truly wronged. Paths that would ultimately cost nothing if he prevailed.…

>> Dad chose not do do any of that though... why?

It says in the article that would have cost 7k.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#157

Post by dmix »

gonehome wrote: post #76
pyuser583 wrote: post #60

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…

IIRC there was a follow up which was arguably worse. Google implied that the account was suspended because of real CSAM concerns unrelated to the photos sent to the doctor/police officer (other photos in their account? they wouldn't go into details about their decision) and that the officer closing the case doesn't mean their judgement here is wrong. If that's the case I can understand why they're obstinate about the…

Zero transparency and zero due process is a massively underrated feature of big tech censorship/policing.

It's one thing to debate the benefits that society gets for removing/flagging content, but the costs are immediately 10x higher when the false positives have zero recourse.

Even 'legitimate' cases often can't speak to a human to find out why or how they were flagged (unless they have influence). The public can't find out what motives/reasoning or who was behind certain content being removed. So it feeds into conspiracies and builds resentment.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#158

Post by dylan604 »

rosnd wrote: post #149
dylan604 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

until your domain registrar starts playing stupid reindeer games too

So just work with a decent domain registrar. Or if you have extra money, just pay the fee to become a registrar yourself.

>So just work with a decent domain registrar.

People would have said that about Googs at the beginning (being a decent company)

>Or if you have extra money, just pay the fee to become a registrar yourself.

yeah, cause just registering a domain and admining your own mail service isn't enough fun already, let's just make spinning up a new registrar part of the deal too?

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#159

Post by skissane »

Ptchd wrote: post #155
dang wrote: post #131

Please don't post archive.org links when the original URL works or there's a good alternate source available. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's to avoid pay walls....

Post the actual URI, then put archive URI in comment. If it helps people (with paywalls or hug of death or whatever) people will often upvote it and it will achieve a reasonably prominent position among the comments.

Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal

#160

Post by googlryas »

josephcsible wrote: post #143
googlryas wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there something like the guy searching for CP before the photo was uploaded, or something along those lines?

No. > “I determined that the incident did not meet the elements of a crime and that no crime occurred,” Mr. Hillard wrote in his report. The police had access to all the information Google had on Mark and decided it did not constitute child abuse or exploitation.

> It contained a letter informing him that he had been investigated as well as copies of the search warrants served on Google and his internet service provider. An investigator, whose contact information was provided, had asked for everything in Mark’s Google account: his internet searches, his location history, his messages and any document, photo and video he’d stored with the company.

> *The search, related to “child exploitation videos,” had taken place in February, within a week of his taking the photos of his son.*

So maybe no crime occurred, but google doesn't want that kind of user. I assume you can just type "child exploitation videos" into Google without breaking the law, but google may terminate your account.

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