13 ms·
Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of them from search
- clircle 5y ago> we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18 Sounds like I should adjust the age on my Google profile.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y agoThis is a right move by Google. - Even for adults, ad targeting based on gender or age (or race) seems… wrong? - Would like them to come out and assume all personalization and recommendation systems they have also waive this for children. E.g.: YouTube recommendations are based solely on similar videos versus profile, location, viewing habits, whatever other magic they probably do.
- aaomidi 5y agoHonestly disabling all ad targeting has been the best thing I've done.
- asteroidbelt 5y agoIs your browsing experience better now? Or you think it makes world a better place? I like certain ads. For example, I often click of property ads just to learn what they are building in the city I live, what is the price range etc. Because one day I'm going to buy. Of course I'd prefer no ads, but better this than random junk IMO.
- aaomidi 5y agoI would argue my browsing experience is better ~ I do enjoy seeing the random junk because that also doesn't make my brain think about "hmm maybe I would like to buy that". Even if I actively avoid thinking about an ad I saw, it still impacts my psyche.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago> Even for adults, ad targeting based on gender or age (or race) seems… wrong? Wrong how? I don't mind ads target based on my gender (e.g. male suits, not cocktail dresses), age (no teenager sneakers), race (probably not interested in Diwali party). But practically it doesn't matter anyway. The neural network will learn my gender, age and race based on my previous behavior. It will be encoded in trained data, but not explicitly visible. And because of that modern ads developers don't actually need sex, age and race parameters, it won't make targeting better.
- Tenoke 5y agoDepends on how much data they have on each person but typically adding variables that can be mostly inferred still usually improve model behavior by a little bit overall.
- rand0mx1 5y agoThen many youtube videos will be inaccessible.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoDummy account for YouTube access (or rather, YouTube-dl scraping).
- teddyh 5y agoyoutube-dl can’t download age-restricted videos from YouTube anymore.
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359561
- FeistySkink 5y agoYou still need to be able to see them in the first place. That is prove your age to Google.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoHence the dummy account to segregate your day to day Google activities from your YouTube retrieval activities with a cookie piped into ytdl.
- ModernMech 5y agoTake a youtube url and put 9xbud.com/ in front of it. Works like a charm for me. e.g. https://9xbud.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3k https://9xbud.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2eXs4pCs3... (A video of guys smoking weed) This actually works for most sites with embedded videos.
- toast0 5y agoGoogle has been prompting me for the past several months to add my birthday. Leaving it in doubt seems to be the best way forward.
- smt88 5y agoUnfortunately the price you might pay for this is getting locked out of your account. It happened to my brother. One verification step was supposed to be birthday.
- sam_goody 5y agoActually, Google collects MUCH more data (I know that doesn't sound possible) from children under 18. Open the Family filter and look at what they colect. It is like, everywhere you go, every page you open, every image you look at etc. - Becuase, you know, "think of the kids". And yes, they may be collecting too much about every one, but this is just another level. And then, for the tiny fraction of kids that opt oout, they have a HUGE data point about them that can be combined with future actions to later build an even more powerful profile.
- stephenhuey 5y agoConsidering how many parents I know who post public photos of their children on social media, it’d be great for other services to provide such tools as well.
- ajay-b 5y agoHow about over-18 too?
- hanniabu 5y agoEspecially over-18 that gradce pictures online from when they were under 18.
- tyingq 5y agoI'm curious how they enforce rules here. It has to be pretty messy trying to only remove images of people from when they were < 18.
- Minor49er 5y agoWhat, no concern for those who are exactly 18? :P
- _moof 5y agoPossibly controversial proposition, which I offer as a discussion prompt, not necessarily a position: What if we stopped relentlessly cataloging and indexing information about every single person on the planet in a way that anyone can search instantaneously? Genuinely interested in what folks think about this, pro or con. Edited to add: The reason I think this question is interesting is because I think it shines a light on some tension between privacy rights and freedom of information.
- etskinner 5y agoLooking at the other side of the spectrum, do you think we should still have information available online about prominent people? Politicians, historical figures, etc.? If so, where do you draw the line between people whose information is useful to the public and people who shouldn't be cataloged?
- Hizonner 5y agoIf somebody is seeking a position of power and/or trust from the public, then the public should get the same information about that person that we'd allow an employer to ask for about a prospective employee. So their qualifications for the job, how they intend to do the job, how they've done in similar jobs before, and how they've handled similar types of trust in the past. Otherwise, frankly, fuck the public.
- _moof 5y agoIndeed, that's a very difficult line to draw. In the US we have the concept of a public figure, and I'll admit I have no idea how that's actually defined. That being said I've also wondered if it's too blunt a concept. Are public figures entitled to any privacy, and if so, where is that line? I see celebrities being hounded by paparazzi while trying to go about their daily lives, for example, and while I understand the principles behind why that's legal, I have to imagine it's a real drag.
- ghaff 5y agoSee New York Times v. Sullivan (US SCOTUS) I haven't checked the exact wording of this definition but, as a summary, "The Supreme Court has defined public figures as those who hold government office and those who have achieved a role of special prominence in the affairs of society by reason of notoriety of their achievements or vigor and success with which they seek public's attention. "
- mmmBacon 5y agoWhy should this be limited to under 18?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoMy thoughts too. I don't want to show up in googles indexes for literally everything I do.
- Hizonner 5y agoBecause Google estimates that the profit impact of pretending to care about The Children is positive, whereas the profit impact of actually caring about anybody would be negative.
- donohoe 5y agoDamn. That’s harsh… But I can’t argue against your logic.
- dleslie 5y agoAlmost certainly for some form of legal compliance. It looks like Google is doing the bare minimum.
- g_p 5y agoGDPR in Europe makes a number of provisions for under-18s, including data removal I believe. This is likely an attempt to get ahead of enforcement of those rules by privacy groups.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dleslie 5y agoIt's a shame that this is only for minors.
- distancelight 5y agoOver 18 are also children, just trapped in older bodies. https://imgflip.com/i/5k4b3w https://imgflip.com/i/5k4b3w
- FirstLvR 5y agothis leads to the very same question Rousseau and Maquiavelo made a long time ago: are we inherently evil? Google is asuming we are, thus making this tool in order to "help"
- asteroidbelt 5y ago"We" are not uniform. Vast majority of people is good, and all evil in the world is done by very small share of people.
- unnouinceput 5y agoHide, not delete!! Google will never truly delete anything, just hide it. And then when you're of age, guess what? You're fair game now.
- villgax 5y agoWow, way to go Google! Shift the onus to the people who have not authorised you in the first place.
- perihelions 5y agoAll EU residents have this ability due to the GDPR. Here's what the request form looks like: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=rtbf https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-reques...
- dheera 5y agoThis is neat, maybe if I need data to be removed I can just take a vacation to Europe and fill out the form from there, that makes me protected under EU law for the duration of my stay.
- intricatedetail 5y agoWhy only under 18s? Everyone should have a right to remove data from search. Most data Google indexed without consent.
- maerF0x0 5y agoGood for them! I read and really enjoyed "Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden[1]. In it he talked about a time when we didn't use our real names, we'd both change identities and did not expect our identities to be perfectly congruent with our IRL selves. (an element of roleplaying). I also think that a big part of the problem touches on philosophy, politics, and maybe human nature; Part of the issue isn't that we have something to hide, but that we've allowed people to shame us for things that are ok. We've created a world where the fake is more lauded than the real, and so now people feel pressured to keep up public images that are inhuman. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46223297-permanent-record https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46223297-permanent-recor...
- clairity 5y ago> "...a time when we didn't use our real names, we'd both change identities and did not expect our identities to be perfectly congruent with our IRL selves." i've always been struck by the concept of names (formal name, pen name, courtesy name, etc) as alternate identities, which is prominent in the chinese historical/wuxia dramas i guiltily indulge in (e.g., often a character employs a different name, and the other characters all the sudden have no idea who this character is within the reality of the drama). it seems like the panopticians are encouraging netizens to adopt a similar assortment of names and identities to compartmentalize our public and private lives.
- x0x0 5y agoWhy is it good on google? Privacy for your children, as long as parents don't mind jumping through hoops created by google to fix a problem created by google. With I'm sure google-standard support (fuck you if it doesn't work and you aren't friends with a senior employee) to go along for the ride. It's the appearance of doing something while leaving 99.999% (estimated) of the children's pictures right where they are. Actual privacy would be proactively removing all images of under 18s from search.
- sealeck 5y ago> Actual privacy would be proactively removing all images of under 18s from search. But there are valid reasons for why you would want photographs of u18s in search results (e.g. student athletes, etc)
- the-dude 5y agoGreat timing.
- kazinator 5y agoSo you have to be under 18, and prove it, to get help with this problem?
- jliptzin 5y agoWhy only under 18? People lose their right to privacy when they turn 18?
- giantg2 5y ago"We're committed to building products that are secure by default, private by design, and that put people in control." So why is tool just for under 18s?
- jacobsievers 5y agoI think I might be missing something. I don't see any mention in the post regarding a tool being "introduced."
- jjulius 5y agoClick link, ctrl+f "introduce" >In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results.
- jagan120 5y agoExactly, why only for under 18s? This should be available for everybody.
- hermannj314 5y agoI am playing devils advocate here, but if you are the solider in Abu Gharaib torture photos, I am not sure you should have a right to purge the internet search of those photos. So there had to be a middle ground between freedom to find information and an individual's privacy. Do you want Google drawing that line?
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoThey have already drawn that line, or at least the EU right to be forgotten has. All sorts of results are missing when searching from an EU member state (or the UK). I'm not sure I agree with it, but we seem we'll past the line already...
- 5y ago
- poopypoopington 5y agoWould love this, am over 18
- flowerlad 5y agoThis is an improvement over their previous stance, which was that young people should change their name upon reaching adulthood [1]. This doesn't go far enough though, because just removing photos isn't enough. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-...
- YeBanKo 5y agoWhy limit it only to under-18s?
- ineedasername 5y agoGiving minors more control over their digital footprint Soooo.... Why not give everyone the same control over their digital footprint? Yes, minors are a protects class not being if legal age, but it seems reasonable to allow anyone to opt out things like this.
- JasonFruit 5y ago> We're committed to building products that are secure by default, private by design, and that put people in control. How can anyone believe this from any of the big tech companies at this point? The only way Google "put[s] people in control" is to let the public do their customer support for them, the only thing private is the details of their CIA connections, and the only thing secure is their market position.
- not2b 5y agoOne difficulty with this is the number of teens with social media accounts that have a false age. Most of our friends' kids and many of my nieces and nephews fall into that category, some because they got an account before age 13 and lied, or were older than that and lied to have access to some forums, or just because they just wanted to pretend to be older (my own daughter is an introvert with good sense and isn't on social media). I suspect that Google and Facebook are well aware of this internally.
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoWhen you were a kid you had to fake that you are above 18 to get access to something you want, now you have to fake that you are under 18 to get access to something you want…
- darwingr 5y agoThis is my favourite take on this, honestly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ansil849 5y ago> In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results. OK, how? This blog post has a lot of posturing about how Google is doing this-and-that, but I see no actual instructions or links to how to do this removal process. Where is the actual process for how to request removal?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoGood. Their search engine.
- colechristensen 5y agoI went through the process of getting something removed from Google, they did remove it fairly quickly after my report, but it was back in the index about a month later.
- Cipater 5y agoThere is barely any popular sentiment behind keeping any age group's images off the internet. Quite the opposite actually, people want their images online and they'll gladly and enthusiastically hand them over if you give them a platform to do it. The journey we're on with our lax attitudes towards privacy will finally be complete when Big Tech truly sinks its teeth into health/biology. We will give them real time access to data on our bodies, our health and our diets and mint the first trillionaires in the process. Interesting times are coming.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago> There is barely any popular sentiment behind keeping any age group's images off the internet Depends on the group. People victimized by LEO's lustly pleasure for posting mugshots - they'd be interested.
- asteroidbelt 5y agoI'm not sure it's just lustly pleasure. It might be in the public best interest to know who are these people committing crime. E.g. are they skinheads or hipsters? In the UK (AFAIK) law enforcement (and probably even newspapers) are not allowed to share photos (or any personal details) until people are prosecuted. And after people are prosecuted, I wouldn't call prosecuted people "victimized". Don't know how it works in the US though.