221–229 of 229 posts
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Or someone deems it "misinformation", whatever that means.
Just a guess but I think it means it promotes a bunch of false claims about COVID that could lead to people getting hurt or killed.
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Google has no obligation to be anyone's mouthpiece or loudspeaker, and we have no information on whether any files were deleted.
Next step will be, "Verizon has no obligation to be anyone's loudspeaker". No one is obliged to be anything to anyone if you put it that way, but then there's this thing called discrimination that goes counter to that - it expects a VERY GOOD reason to deny service to someone. "I have no obligation to sell to blacks", for example, does not stand. "I have no obligation to hosts anyone's word when I don't agree with th…
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Next step will be, "Verizon has no obligation to be anyone's loudspeaker". No one is obliged to be anything to anyone if you put it that way, but then there's this thing called discrimination that goes counter to that - it expects a VERY GOOD reason to deny service to someone. "I have no obligation to sell to blacks", for example, does not stand. "I have no obligation to hosts anyone's word when I don't agree with th…
Stopping the spread of harmful misinformation is a VERY GOOD reason to deny service to someone.
I understand if they give a safebrowsing warning that the document contains potential misinformation, like for sites with potential malware. Blocking is not the right way to solve it. Censorship is always abused, in the end.
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Windows 10 is a free subscription, and users don't necessarily own a license of their operating system. Under this precedent, what is to stop Microsoft from deleting problematic files off of users' computers? After all, it's a privately owned platform.
Windows 10 routinely deletes problematic files from peoples computers; it's called "Windows Defender". Most users are happy to let Microsoft delete malware. The reason that propaganda videos aren't detected as malware because none of these companies give a damn about what you're using your computer or your private storage for. It is a ton of extra work for them to run some censorship side business to specifically ann…
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I'm not in favor of unlimited free speech. I'm in favor of limiting speech that is intended to harm, knowingly mislead, or spread hate.
And who decides what speech meets that standard? Have you read the other posts in this thread? The "official" position on a variety of facts and best-practices has changed multiple times during the course of this pandemic. It's profoundly disturbing how enthusiastic some people are to start censoring anything that goes against the official narrative.
Has it? It's remained stable as far as I can tell; maintain distance from others, minimize interactions with others. There has been some evolution in disease treatment, but it has been a rather measured evolution.
> It's profoundly disturbing how enthusiastic some people are to start censoring anything that goes against the official narrative.
This is a bit unfair. I'm in favor of censoring speech that demonstrably causes harm. This is done in many nations where they are arguably more free than the US despite our age-old slogan from the early 1800s which implies we're unique in having demoratic freedoms (namely European nations). There does not seem to be a significant propaganda effect or unwarranted censorship in those nations - in fact, quite the opposite, as they appear to be better educated and better informed than Americans. Perhaps in the past, America's version of free speech guaranteed liberty; but now it's just as often used (if not more, in our media) to cause harm - anti-vax, hate speech of all sorts, anti-mask, advocating taking hydroxychloroquine without supportive medical evidence or examination, general misleading of the American public.
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You use the platform, you abide by the contract. My only concern is that contract violations (or even gray area violations) are not always predictable by the customer because the legalese in the ToS is so vague. You are overloading the term "own" and your use of "that file" is ambiguous. You "own" (in many senses) the local copy of the uploaded file. You only lease the space and hosting for the remote copy, assuming…
> My coworker overflowed his Google Drive quota and learned that lesson the hard way. This sounds a lot more sinister than "my coworker had to delete some files to go back under his quota".
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Then it is a terrible comparison. Google does not control distribution of video content on the web. There are many platforms that could be used to share a movie on the web. That makes it pretty unlike telegraph operators.
> That makes it pretty unlike telegraph operators. I never said that YouTube was exactly like telegraph operators. I was making a much more general comparison between of communication magnates back then and now. It seems like a pretty direct mapping to me. Big tech today and telegraph operators of the past both benefited greatly from the government, and yet they like to claim they are "private platforms", and are the…
If youtube/facebook/etc were just platforms where people were spreading false information/hysteria/propaganda from other countries targeting the US during a crisis the government would step in and force its own censorship regime on these services.
These services are trying to prevent that from happening by being proactive about policing themselves. This is expensive. They wouldn't do it without a profit motive of keeping the government from getting involved, which would probably be even worse.
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Regarding your first, this is only true if the ecosystem allows it. I could repair my own car, except the last time I tried to change a tire, I couldn't as the garage used a pneumatic tool to fasten the screws inhumanly hard. Every so much km, the car starts flashing all kinds of warnings because some computer from the manufacturer needs to be attached to the odb2 service connector. Neither is insurmountable, but why…
> Regarding your first, this is only true if the ecosystem allows it. What you are describing is not "the ecosystem"; it's trying to mix doing it yourself with letting third parties do it. I agree that often doesn't work well. I don't bother trying to repair my own car because I would need to do everything myself and I don't have either the skill or the interest where car repair is concerned. As you say, doing it you…
If you can afford to alienate 1/3 of population then you're either a big business or a government and can push your own standards. Nobody else can do that.
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If you had a previous version of Windows, the upgrading to Windows 10 was free. Additionally, you can download Windows 10 and never activate it and all it will do is show a watermark indicating it is not activated. You can always pay for Windows. I think Windows 10 Pro is pay only.
Still just watermarked, in fact.