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Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

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Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#91

Post by icebraining »

Cl4rity wrote: post #42
twp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point. The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either. The q…

Actually, Tom gets it right. It's called discretion. Use his public example, for instance. If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall? "But this is who I really am, and it's how I want to portray myself in public!" It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules…

If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?

No, but one can disagree with both Google and the general public.

It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences.

That doesn't mean we can't publicly disagree with the rules.

You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.

Mall cops don't decide the rules, they just apply them. It's different.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#92

Post by icebraining »

jxi wrote: post #45
mike-cardwell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned, if a service you like, does something you dislike, you should complain, and you should tell people about it. Especially if the service is used by tens of millions of people and is growing at the rate that Google+ is. It sounds like you disagree with this though. Why? Why do you think he should have kept his mouth shut? "this is already the standard for any currently popular social network" An…

He's not complaining about anything that anyone has a problem with (ok maybe SOME people do want to see people giving them the finger in their stream). He's just whining about G+ like he always does, like a baby. Your general statements don't apply here. If you want to argue, then tell me why you want to see people flicking you off on G+ and why you think that's something that should be OK for everyone.

If you want to argue, then tell me why you want to see people flicking you off on G+ and why you think that's something that should be OK for everyone.

It has nothing to do with wanting to see people flicking someone off, but with not wanting to see Google take the role of moral censor and deciding for us what's "offensive" or not.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#93

Post by icebraining »

blurbytree wrote: post #21
jsz0 wrote: post #12

removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.

How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it? Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.

And we can choose to criticize them for that choice. Ain't free speech wonderful?

How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?

If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#94

Post by Pedrom »

zobzu wrote: post #80
Pedrom wrote: post #65

Sorry but I still don't understand why deleting that picture is such big deal? Google has the right to build their community with the rules that they want and the people eager to accept those rules. Mr Sieger has also the right to complain and he did so that should close the case right? I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people dow…

The "accept or move on" rule applies less when such sites are used by the majority of the population. When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not. That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Based on that n…

>That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is).

Sorry for disagree, but I think people should have more personality and do not take decision affected by what the majority is doing.

Maybe I am being too naive, but if I can't find an online community that fixes with my way of think then I am going to build one... Isn't that what Internet is all about?

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#95

Post by JoshTriplett »

zobzu wrote: post #80
Pedrom wrote: post #65

Sorry but I still don't understand why deleting that picture is such big deal? Google has the right to build their community with the rules that they want and the people eager to accept those rules. Mr Sieger has also the right to complain and he did so that should close the case right? I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people dow…

The "accept or move on" rule applies less when such sites are used by the majority of the population. When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not. That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Based on that n…

I found your reasoning so wrong it left me momentarily at a loss for words. No, sites don't ever become subject to a different set of rules just because the majority of people use them. That kind of thinking leads down a very dangerous road.

And if you still care about "to be accepted at school", grow up. Speaking as a "four-eyes" and a nerd, some of us never bothered caring about that in the first place. Unfortunately, the people that did care grew up to form "the majority of the population", leading to quite a few of the social problems that currently plague us.

Free speech only applies to governments, and it applies there specifically because there you truly do have a "whether you like it or not" situation when it comes to governmental policies. It does not, and should not, extend to speech made on someone else's site. That remains entirely subject to the policies of the site owner, who may set them however they wish, keeping in mind that any choice they make may gain them some users and lose others.

Now, that said, I think better solutions existed for the particular issue at hand (so to speak) than immediate deletion without notification (such as hiding potentially offensive profile pictures for people who don't have that person circled), but that remains entirely up to Google's policy. I personally think that policy ought to change somewhat, but I'd never argue that anyone other than Google has the right to determine that policy.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#96

Post by icebraining »

kevinh wrote: post #15
Stratego wrote: post #9

Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel? Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line? Imbecile. That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that…

The line is where they, as a company, decide to put it. I would not go to a social networking site that had gore or porn polluting my feeds. Similarly, you might not go to a website that disallows any content. That's our prerogative. It's facile to paint it as a free speech argument.

Why would you subscribe to users that post gore or porn to your feeds?

Tumblr has plenty of porn, but you can certainly use it without ever getting it on your dashboard. It's just a matter of, you know, not following the people who post it.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#97

Post by icebraining »

VikingCoder wrote: post #38
Stratego wrote: post #9

Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel? Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line? Imbecile. That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that…

It's not censorship. Your rights have not been abridged. It's a free service with terms of use, provided by a corporation. This is not a police action by an authoritarian government, stopping people from expressing Constitutionally-protected speech in the public square. Try to buy a full-page ad in any newspaper in the country showing goatse.cx in all its glory. Businesses generally limit profanity on their services.…

Sorry, but it is censorship, which is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable."

It's just not illegal.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#98

Post by icebraining »

earbitscom wrote: post #11
zitterbewegung wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard of people being thrown out of mall's because they were wearing an offensive t-shirt. I think the analogy that google+ is basically private property that is open to the public. The website isn't owned by the public instead it is owned by google. The point of google censoring offensive content is to not only follow their own rules but to make the company that provides this service to still look good and ke…

...and, to add to your point, as a not-public organization they build this product for company benefit. They let you do things on it that they benefit from. Why on earth would they be required to let you do things that are bad for their business?

Who says they would be required? The question is whether we should participate in their network considering these rules.

Of course, if enough people decide to leave G+ due to them (which I doubt), these rules might actually becomes themselves bad for their business.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#100

Post by JoshTriplett »

Steko wrote: post #25

"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. It seems pretty obvious how this should work: (1) Google enables a flag for offensive…

> "If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt."

> And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.

And that's the problem with analogies relating the Internet to the real world: they often fail because the Internet doesn't work like the real world. (I will say that this does come remarkably closer to the concept of "stealing bits" than how people usually use terms like "stealing", since the original owner might not have those bits anymore, but who would leave their only copy of a picture on a site they don't own, particularly one whose policies don't include preserving your data no matter what?)

Another marginally more accurate analogy, though still potentially flawed if you try to read too much into it: if you rented space in a mall, and displayed offensive material there, they might ask you to leave, or they might just close up your shop for you and kick you and your stuff out, and either way they have every right to do so.

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