That Google snoops and watches your video, photos and emails should not be a surprise to anyone in 2022.
If your entire online identity is tied to a string that ends in @gmail.com they own you.
A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
41–50 of 199 posts
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget that - Google states to the media they had reviewed the situation and had decided to uphold his ban. Good luck convincing them to admit their “appeal” system, and their media review, were mistakes. Google is too arrogant for that.
It might be worth remembering we only have one side of the story here. How do we know we can thoroughly trust the Dad any more than we can thoroughly trust Google? Perhaps there are more pictures Dad took the article doesn't know about? Perhaps Google can't verify it was indeed Dad's child in the images? Perhaps there is more to the story than what the article lets on...perhaps not. We will never really know.
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Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget that - Google states to the media they had reviewed the situation and had decided to uphold his ban. Good luck convincing them to admit their “appeal” system, and their media review, were mistakes. Google is too arrogant for that.
It might be worth remembering we only have one side of the story here. How do we know we can thoroughly trust the Dad any more than we can thoroughly trust Google? Perhaps there are more pictures Dad took the article doesn't know about? Perhaps Google can't verify it was indeed Dad's child in the images? Perhaps there is more to the story than what the article lets on...perhaps not. We will never really know.
This is always true, and a fundamental reason why free societies adopted the notion of open courts: to ensure that all sides of the story are known and innocent people don't suffer based on ifs and maybes.
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#44This is such a weird story. Is google really using computer vision to detect CSAM? How could that possibly work? This seems like a tremendous technical challenge. Usually photoDNA has been deployed for this, but that almost certainly wouldn't be triggered by the dad uploading his own photos that hadn't been previously marked as CSAM in the photoDNA database.
Everyone's using AI, and widely. I sell stuff online and sync a product feed to Facebook. Products often get banned based on image analysis. Sometimes it is reasonably close, eg darts getting classified as dangerous weapons, other times sneakers get that classification.
If I appeal, it usually gets overturned, but sometimes sneakers get confirmed as weapons after review. There seems to be no image history; when a previously whitelisted product gets imported again (with a minor change in description or something), it may get classified as weapon again.
Needless to say, my ad spend is now zero and I expect my account to get banned any moment.
Fuzzy AI-based image analysis is OK for things like extracting roof shapes from aerial images, but seems totally inadequate for moderation, because it lacks nuance and context.
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Potentially yes, if you use a personal account for GCP. Don’t do it. If you have to use GCP, use a burner account… because Google is absolutely asinine right now. I would not trust Google if they were a hired employee to turn on my sprinklers in the morning. Edit: For this reason, I am actually all in favor of having GCP, AWS, Azure, etc declared utilities. Unless there is a crime, we have a right to an account. Your…
> If you have to use GCP, use a burner account Does that actually help? Don't they collect enough of your data to be able to correlate accounts?
You're going to have to start using your GCP like it's a freedom fighting session. Never used from the same public wifi. Don't use a public wifi within xDistance from your house. Only interact with GCP from a freshly spun up VM/Tails boot/etc. If no available wifi access, only use a mobile hotspot that is prepaid in cash where the burner was bought by someone else (so their shiny mugs are on the security camera), buy that burner in a different town, and all the other paranoid things to safe in a hostile world. Just to use Google
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
right but most people take pictures with their phones nowadays, which might automatically backup up to google photos.
Sounds like there almost needs to be an incognito mode for cameras.
There is. The Android camera app has a button on the top-right corner that lets you quickly switch between saving to "photo storage" or "locked folder". If you pick "locked folder", it saves it to a special folder that isn't backed up to the cloud and requires a screen lock to open.
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#47Shit, this gave me pause. My dog has crypto* and my vet asked me to send him pics at various states of arousal so I have numerous pics of dog junk on my phone. * Cryptorchidism is the medical term that refers to the failure of one or both testicles (testes) to descend into the scrotum.
Thanks for the footnote, it’s quite confusing otherwise. :)
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget that - Google states to the media they had reviewed the situation and had decided to uphold his ban. Good luck convincing them to admit their “appeal” system, and their media review, were mistakes. Google is too arrogant for that.
It might be worth remembering we only have one side of the story here. How do we know we can thoroughly trust the Dad any more than we can thoroughly trust Google? Perhaps there are more pictures Dad took the article doesn't know about? Perhaps Google can't verify it was indeed Dad's child in the images? Perhaps there is more to the story than what the article lets on...perhaps not. We will never really know.
How can we trust the dad?
I think if someone was doing something criminal and their access was blocked, they will juat quietly walk away. But talking to the press? That would be a new level.
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#49These stories of people being banned by google without recourse are so common, it's amazing that anyone here is still using google for anything important. First of all, get off of gmail. If you do nothing else, get off of gmail. I'm very happy with fastmail, they provide email, calendar, contacts, notes, and some cloud storage for a monthly fee.
I've also come to love nextcloud, I started using it to replace google photos, but there are tons of other great features too. I use it for photos, notes, calendar, contacts, news, and some collaboration stuff. It's open source, you can self-host, or get a hosted account somewhere.
While you're degoogling, start using duckduckgo for search. It's a better experience than google these days, and if you really want to send a query over to google, just add !g to the end of the search.
Get off of Chrome too. I would prefer that you use firefox, but chromium works fine too.
Getting off of google voice took a bit more work. I ported my number to Telnyx, wrote a SMS-to-XMPP bridge, and set up Asterisk to route voice calls. I'm happy with that solution but it won't be practical for most, so maybe someone else can comment on google voice alternatives.
Re: A Dad Took Photos of His Kid for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
#50These stories of people being banned by google without recourse are so common, it's amazing that anyone here is still using google for anything important. First of all, get off of gmail. If you do nothing else, get off of gmail. I'm very happy with fastmail, they provide email, calendar, contacts, notes, and some cloud storage for a monthly fee. I've also come to love nextcloud, I started using it to replace google p…
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