6 ms·

> in a situation where they fundamentally can't. I’m sorry but they can stay neutral by just not reading/blocking people’s Docs

shadowgovt 5y ago
That's not actually neutral; that's letting harmful content spread at the speed of Internet discourse. We already know, for example, that they aren't going to allow Google Docs to be used to wide-cast child pornography. They never have. It appears the only change is that they're adding new categories of misinformation to the "harmful content" list. When you have a reach like Google, neutrality isn't an option. And their mission isn't neutrality anyway; it's "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Dangerous misinformation coming from a google dot com domain isn't useful.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  CP is already illegal and google doesn’t need to arbitrate whether its illegal or not. Blocking CP is neutral and a basic. It’s when google decides to block things that aren’t illegal that they get into the weeds, and companies framing opinions they disagree with as “Dangerous misinformation” is itself dangerous misinformation, and a net negative on society. Google should not be arbitrating truth. They are not qualified, not capable, and not honest enough to do it, and they will never be. I don’t know a single person in real life I would trust to censor what I can and can’t see, and I trust google much less than those people I actually know.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Is it "censorship" when they simply choose not to be the medium to communicate that data to you? If so, that puts the entire search apparatus in the category of "censorship," since it makes opinionated decisions regarding what the answer to your query should be. Choosing to refrain from vending a Drive URL is basically the same thing. Edit: I could see an argument that they're being a bad steward of other people's data if they choose not to honor share requests on content they host or choose to remove content they've previously hosted. In which case, I'm glad they're putting the fact they'll do that right in a public disclosure, and it is something people should consider when choosing Drive to host their content.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      No, of course not. Every entity is allowed to manage how’s its property is used. Barnes and Noble isn’t censoring anyone because it chooses to feature some books on an end cap vs. buried on the shelf.
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      The search apparatus is exactly the target of those trying to implement censorship. Six months ago saying covid-19 originated in a lab was verboten on many platforms - saying it on facebook or YouTube would get you called a purveyor of misinformation and the content deleted and and your account at risk. Suddenly it turns out the people involved at the government level funded the work exactly, and they worked with these companies to define what was misinformation, and suddenly Jon Stewart is making jokes about it and these companies allow it to be talked about again. If you don’t understand how dangerous the platforms that house our public speech banning some speech based on “misinformation” is you aren’t paying any attention. They have set up their systems to detect/downrank/remove arbitrary content and that will be used for political reasons - it already has been and quite recently. We live in dangerous times and a lot of people are oblivious.
  - asiachick 5y ago
    It's funny to me that , in my mind HN = SV and SV is hyper liberal and listening to NPR which is also fairly liberal all the shows I listen to are calling for exactly "Google and Facebook need to ban all speech we don't like" this isn't Google's problem. It's a society level problem. Google is just responding to the pressure
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      That’s like 3 layers of assumption. Google doesn’t want to eliminate its cash cow, and doesn’t want to be associated with crazy fringe people. It’s pretty simple really. Running this stuff through a “liberal” or “conservative” lens isn’t productive. Big public companies care about making money and eliminating risks associated with doing so.
      - LegitShady 5y ago
        I think you underestimate the desire of people to conform, to push their political agenda through their work, etc. Big companies aren't at risk from losing money for quashing unpopular speech - it's exactly why unpopular speech is the speech that generally needs protecting.
        Spooky23 5y ago
        To a point. I think being credited with empowering right wing nuts can blowback though.
        LegitShady 5y ago
        That's narrative not reality. There's plenty of blowback but that's why it's important to protect unpopular speech. Its why the ADL argued the nazis should be able to march in milwaukee. Because when you create a mechanism to censor and restrict you have to know that it can be turned against any speech those in control find they don't like. Are nazis marching near the homes of holocaust survivors disgusting? Sure. But there's a reason why it should be allowed if you and your children and their children are going to experience fundamental freedom instead of the arbitrary wishes of a government that may replace this one or the next one or the next one. extrapolate from there.
- clord 5y ago
  My mind boggles that people have opinions like this. It is so anti-liberal. Every evil regime in history takes it upon itself to define and eliminate hateful content, using the contemporary unconscionable act to justify this evil. To be a good liberal, Google has to decide if it's a publisher or platform. IF it's a publisher, then the hateful content is coming from them and they must take editorial control of google docs and whatnot. If they're a platform provider, then they get the same protections as telephone network operators and others from the actions of their users. This current situation is the start of the road to tyranny.
  - 8note 5y ago
    I think the protections for phone operators are the anti liberal parts. These companies are choosing to repeat what people tell them. They should always be considerate when doing so. Picking operators who's opinions align with yours is the liberal way, using the free market to pick which ideas get repeated
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >Every evil regime in history takes it upon itself to define and eliminate hateful content, using the contemporary unconscionable act to justify this evil. >This current situation is the start of the road to tyranny. I'm not a historian, but I can't think of many examples where an evil regime gained power by slowly "boiling the frog" and gradually eroding free speech rights. Communist dictators typically seized power in a violent revolution spurred on by deliberate misinformation campaigns. Many of the Middle-Eastern dictators seized power in a not-so violent revolution (at least, not violent enough to cause a full-scale civil war) spurred on by deliberate misinformation campaigns. The colonial powers maintained their grip on power by denying education to the natives, and when they left the dictators that took their place seized power by violence even in a Western legal framework. Maybe the Nazis did this (I'm honestly not sure), and maybe Julius Caesar too? But this doesn't seem to be a set-in-stone, guaranteed way of seizing power.
Spooky23 5y ago
No. That appeal to some notion of free speech is bunk. They can “stay neutral” by limiting the ability to share widely. Free speech doesn’t mean that you are entitled to a billboard, radio station, or global content delivery network. By aligning global distribution with easy content marketing, Google, Facebook, etc created a monstrosity that encourages the worst content and systematically evicerates high quality content. That fundamental lack of understanding by naive engineers drives a lot of the problems we have.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  There was no appeal to free speech. You’re creating a straw man
- zepto 5y ago
  > Free speech doesn’t mean that you are entitled to a billboard, radio station, or global content delivery network. What has any of this got to do with Google Drive?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Google Drive is a global content delivery network. A document flagged as "Share with link" is reliably hosted worldwide.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > Google Drive is a global content delivery network. No it isn’t. > A document flagged as "Share with link" is reliably hosted worldwide. Just like any other piece of content online. Are you saying all online content should be subject to censorship just because it can be accessed worldwide?
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        > No it isn’t. I'm afraid I don't follow. In what way does it differ? > Are you saying all online content should be subject to censorship just because it can be accessed worldwide? I'm saying no CDN is obligated to vend content in violation of its TOS. Content available at drive.google.com is quite different from content hosted at your-site.com: you control the content at the latter. It's your TOS to enforce there.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
In theory they can... in reality something bad will happen, someone will have written about it in a google doc, and the narrative will read "...they had access, yet evil/neglectful Google did nothing!".
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Sure, someone can frame it that way. Someone else can also frame it as respecting privacy

shadowgovt 5y ago

That's not actually neutral; that's letting harmful content spread at the speed of Internet discourse. We already know, for example, that they aren't going to allow Google Docs to be used to wide-cast child pornography. They never have. It appears the only change is that they're adding new categories of misinformation to the "harmful content" list. When you have a reach like Google, neutrality isn't an option. And their mission isn't neutrality anyway; it's "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Dangerous misinformation coming from a google dot com domain isn't useful.

LegitShady 5y ago
CP is already illegal and google doesn’t need to arbitrate whether its illegal or not. Blocking CP is neutral and a basic. It’s when google decides to block things that aren’t illegal that they get into the weeds, and companies framing opinions they disagree with as “Dangerous misinformation” is itself dangerous misinformation, and a net negative on society. Google should not be arbitrating truth. They are not qualified, not capable, and not honest enough to do it, and they will never be. I don’t know a single person in real life I would trust to censor what I can and can’t see, and I trust google much less than those people I actually know.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Is it "censorship" when they simply choose not to be the medium to communicate that data to you? If so, that puts the entire search apparatus in the category of "censorship," since it makes opinionated decisions regarding what the answer to your query should be. Choosing to refrain from vending a Drive URL is basically the same thing. Edit: I could see an argument that they're being a bad steward of other people's data if they choose not to honor share requests on content they host or choose to remove content they've previously hosted. In which case, I'm glad they're putting the fact they'll do that right in a public disclosure, and it is something people should consider when choosing Drive to host their content.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    No, of course not. Every entity is allowed to manage how’s its property is used. Barnes and Noble isn’t censoring anyone because it chooses to feature some books on an end cap vs. buried on the shelf.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    The search apparatus is exactly the target of those trying to implement censorship. Six months ago saying covid-19 originated in a lab was verboten on many platforms - saying it on facebook or YouTube would get you called a purveyor of misinformation and the content deleted and and your account at risk. Suddenly it turns out the people involved at the government level funded the work exactly, and they worked with these companies to define what was misinformation, and suddenly Jon Stewart is making jokes about it and these companies allow it to be talked about again. If you don’t understand how dangerous the platforms that house our public speech banning some speech based on “misinformation” is you aren’t paying any attention. They have set up their systems to detect/downrank/remove arbitrary content and that will be used for political reasons - it already has been and quite recently. We live in dangerous times and a lot of people are oblivious.
- asiachick 5y ago
  It's funny to me that , in my mind HN = SV and SV is hyper liberal and listening to NPR which is also fairly liberal all the shows I listen to are calling for exactly "Google and Facebook need to ban all speech we don't like" this isn't Google's problem. It's a society level problem. Google is just responding to the pressure
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    That’s like 3 layers of assumption. Google doesn’t want to eliminate its cash cow, and doesn’t want to be associated with crazy fringe people. It’s pretty simple really. Running this stuff through a “liberal” or “conservative” lens isn’t productive. Big public companies care about making money and eliminating risks associated with doing so.
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      I think you underestimate the desire of people to conform, to push their political agenda through their work, etc. Big companies aren't at risk from losing money for quashing unpopular speech - it's exactly why unpopular speech is the speech that generally needs protecting.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        To a point. I think being credited with empowering right wing nuts can blowback though.
        LegitShady 5y ago
        That's narrative not reality. There's plenty of blowback but that's why it's important to protect unpopular speech. Its why the ADL argued the nazis should be able to march in milwaukee. Because when you create a mechanism to censor and restrict you have to know that it can be turned against any speech those in control find they don't like. Are nazis marching near the homes of holocaust survivors disgusting? Sure. But there's a reason why it should be allowed if you and your children and their children are going to experience fundamental freedom instead of the arbitrary wishes of a government that may replace this one or the next one or the next one. extrapolate from there.
clord 5y ago
My mind boggles that people have opinions like this. It is so anti-liberal. Every evil regime in history takes it upon itself to define and eliminate hateful content, using the contemporary unconscionable act to justify this evil. To be a good liberal, Google has to decide if it's a publisher or platform. IF it's a publisher, then the hateful content is coming from them and they must take editorial control of google docs and whatnot. If they're a platform provider, then they get the same protections as telephone network operators and others from the actions of their users. This current situation is the start of the road to tyranny.
- 8note 5y ago
  I think the protections for phone operators are the anti liberal parts. These companies are choosing to repeat what people tell them. They should always be considerate when doing so. Picking operators who's opinions align with yours is the liberal way, using the free market to pick which ideas get repeated
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Every evil regime in history takes it upon itself to define and eliminate hateful content, using the contemporary unconscionable act to justify this evil. >This current situation is the start of the road to tyranny. I'm not a historian, but I can't think of many examples where an evil regime gained power by slowly "boiling the frog" and gradually eroding free speech rights. Communist dictators typically seized power in a violent revolution spurred on by deliberate misinformation campaigns. Many of the Middle-Eastern dictators seized power in a not-so violent revolution (at least, not violent enough to cause a full-scale civil war) spurred on by deliberate misinformation campaigns. The colonial powers maintained their grip on power by denying education to the natives, and when they left the dictators that took their place seized power by violence even in a Western legal framework. Maybe the Nazis did this (I'm honestly not sure), and maybe Julius Caesar too? But this doesn't seem to be a set-in-stone, guaranteed way of seizing power.

Spooky23 5y ago

No. That appeal to some notion of free speech is bunk. They can “stay neutral” by limiting the ability to share widely. Free speech doesn’t mean that you are entitled to a billboard, radio station, or global content delivery network. By aligning global distribution with easy content marketing, Google, Facebook, etc created a monstrosity that encourages the worst content and systematically evicerates high quality content. That fundamental lack of understanding by naive engineers drives a lot of the problems we have.

nomoreplease 5y ago
There was no appeal to free speech. You’re creating a straw man
zepto 5y ago
> Free speech doesn’t mean that you are entitled to a billboard, radio station, or global content delivery network. What has any of this got to do with Google Drive?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Google Drive is a global content delivery network. A document flagged as "Share with link" is reliably hosted worldwide.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > Google Drive is a global content delivery network. No it isn’t. > A document flagged as "Share with link" is reliably hosted worldwide. Just like any other piece of content online. Are you saying all online content should be subject to censorship just because it can be accessed worldwide?
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      > No it isn’t. I'm afraid I don't follow. In what way does it differ? > Are you saying all online content should be subject to censorship just because it can be accessed worldwide? I'm saying no CDN is obligated to vend content in violation of its TOS. Content available at drive.google.com is quite different from content hosted at your-site.com: you control the content at the latter. It's your TOS to enforce there.

clipradiowallet 5y ago

In theory they can... in reality something bad will happen, someone will have written about it in a google doc, and the narrative will read "...they had access, yet evil/neglectful Google did nothing!".

nomoreplease 5y ago
Sure, someone can frame it that way. Someone else can also frame it as respecting privacy