Crypto, get off the bench. You're in.
Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
361–370 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#362The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides. Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. are fantastic services in that they work really well on a massive scale. However, Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information puts too much power into the hands of one corporation, whose best inte…
Please tell me why a private company should be forced to host content that they fundamentally disagree with. Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry Chinese state propaganda, for example? Why should Google be forced, legally, to carry ISIS propaganda? There are alternatives to Google. They should host that content there
Why do we not allow telephone companies to censor our conversations? Why can't the power company choose not provide power to offices for political campaigns they disagree with?
We afford monopolies certain privileges, but we also require monopolies to have certain restraints.
Many of these large tech companies have become natural monopolies. I think its reasonable to expect similar restraints.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#363How is this _not_ on the front page? Google is analyzing your files for content, and flagging if it doesn't align with narratives that a government body sets - and _removing all trace of that content._ If this doesn't conflict with the "hacker pathos," what the fuck is Hacker News then?
It appears as though this post has been memory-holed.
It set off the flamewar detector. We turned that off when we saw it.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your fundamental error is in the fact that you think that a private company (and market competition) can fix these issues. It seems that many people on HN are just waiting for the new Savior company, that will magically have incentives to fight for them instead of making money. It's like hoping for market competition create health regulation in the food industry. Turns out, not even Apple is that messiah, and…
Doesn't need to be a private company. For instance, LibreOffice is looking at WASM: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WASM
In fact, there is already Collabora, which is production ready, FOSS and based on LibreOffice.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your fundamental error is in the fact that you think that a private company (and market competition) can fix these issues. It seems that many people on HN are just waiting for the new Savior company, that will magically have incentives to fight for them instead of making money. It's like hoping for market competition create health regulation in the food industry. Turns out, not even Apple is that messiah, and…
I'm really sorry for the off-topic, but I've been waiting for a chance to ask because I see it here very, very often. What are people intending to denote with the "private" in "private company", especially where the company is so obviously and well-known to be public[ally traded]? What are you trying to distinguish it from by calling it private? Are you just pointing out it's not the government or quasi-governmental?…
The key is in your last paragraph: the companies in question are privately owned in the sense of "private property". In the context of (American) public policy, due to factors such as the First Amendment, the distinction of a company being governmental/public vs non-governmental/private is much more likely to be relevant than it being publicly/privately traded.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#366I see Google got the DNC's memo. Gov't is asking private corporations to censor your SMS messages, because gov't itself can't. They want to censor every form of digital communication, period. We either have free thought and expression of ideas, or we all live under someone else's ideals of what those are, and most likely, if history has taught us anything....you won't like it but it will be too late. Your voice will…
Nailed it. Government knows it would be difficult to implement vaccine passports (stateside anyways) so they have publicly and privately asked private business to check vaccination status, bar entry etc for them.
Same goes for the Democrat Party asking Facebook to flag opposition comments regarding Covid. Government is shacked by the 1st amendment, corporations aren't.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#367The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides. Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. are fantastic services in that they work really well on a massive scale. However, Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information puts too much power into the hands of one corporation, whose best inte…
> Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information
That is exactly what's needed.
When there's no penalty for bullshit, lies tend to self-perpetuate, like viruses.
You may be fixated right now on some half-baked ideal of "free speech" and so on, but the fact is - a lot of people out there can't tell left from right. And in situations such as the current pandemic, when the consequences of spreading bullshit are thousands of deaths, your naive ideas about "freedom" need a reality check.
> truly free-flowing information
Which will then immediately get hijacked by bullshit-spewing AI bots and folks with agendas. See what happened recently with all the "freedom" emphasizing social networks.
What you're proposing is the online equivalent of a country with no military, no police, no laws and no judicial system. This may be fine in some Ayn Rand fanfic novel for young adults, but it's not a reality where anyone would want to live.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#368The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides. Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. are fantastic services in that they work really well on a massive scale. However, Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information puts too much power into the hands of one corporation, whose best inte…
The issue is that we know from experience, after 20+ years of the modern Internet, that if you make a 'free speech' drive/repository place that's widely available, it will host the absolute worst of the human race. Then, let's say you personally were in charge of said Free Speech Drive- every day you'd get up and hear about people using it for (legal) jailbait photos, Islamic State recruiting, collaboration between e…
It's a real problem. It's easier to suppress such content, but the problem is, it just goes elsewhere where it is almost completely unchecked, and it just proliferates in much darker circles as a result, and we have even less exposure as to its true volume.
Maybe there should be more of an effort to reduce peoples' incentive to engage in that sort of behavior in the first place. Why do people join violent extremist groups? Why do people engage with CP? Why do terrorist groups exist? Is it just human nature? Is it a fact that with 7+ billion people we are destined to have millions of people engage in this behavior?
De-platforming horrible material is better than nothing, but it feels like whack-a-mole
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#369The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". We desperately need to find a globally adoptable alternative to google and the services that it provides. Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. are fantastic services in that they work really well on a massive scale. However, Google's increasing role as an arbiter of right vs wrong and a steward of information puts too much power into the hands of one corporation, whose best inte…
I think your fundamental error is in the fact that you think that a private company (and market competition) can fix these issues. It seems that many people on HN are just waiting for the new Savior company, that will magically have incentives to fight for them instead of making money. It's like hoping for market competition create health regulation in the food industry. Turns out, not even Apple is that messiah, and…
[deleted]
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#370How is this _not_ on the front page? Google is analyzing your files for content, and flagging if it doesn't align with narratives that a government body sets - and _removing all trace of that content._ If this doesn't conflict with the "hacker pathos," what the fuck is Hacker News then?
Hacker News is a place for people to discuss interesting things, while being generally associated with Y Combinator, a startup incubator.
I've said this before, and dang has corrected me, but I believe this is a good thing for Y Combinator, because it attracts smart people to the YC brand, and gives YC companies a pool of talent they can pick from to build companies.
The "Hacker" part has always, to me, been about makers, not about ethics per se. I've always found the notion that there is a shared "hacker" set of mores to be kind of curious.
Ripping things apart to see how they work vs. kludging something together to solve a specific problem vs. adversarial digital trespassing for fun and profit -- none of that lends itself, to me, to some specific shared morality. Certainly a few personality traits will show up, but folks trying to build a set of acceptable behaviors out of that will probably not find a ton of consistency across the people who engage in the aforementioned activities.