21 ms·
Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity
- ecshafer 5y agoI will upvote and comment to hopefully gain visibility at the minimum. Google really has an unfortunate customer support set up, in that there isn't one. Your best bet when Google does something bad to their customers like this (And regardless if its a bad AI or bad bot, its still Google doing it), is to post it on twitter or hackernews and hope it gets the visibility for a Google employee to fix it, or contact someone who can fit it. That isn't a support model.
- kvathupo 5y agoExplains my experience with GCP...
- cm2187 5y agoAnd to teach other users to stop critically relying on such a capricious service. I have less sympathy when it happens to someone techy, who should know better, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoIMO, the real issue is relying on any single storage solution for such critical and hard to replace data. You should always have multiple, redundant, tested backups of such data, the minimum being 3 copies, in 2 different formats, with at least one located offsite. That said, Google does ha reputation for this shit, especially on their free plans, so, you should definitely keep that in mind when storing data on Google Drive. https://www.unitrends.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-sucks https://www.unitrends.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-sucks
- okdjnfweonfe 5y agoIn addition, encrypted backup means they can't do arbitrary scans and decide your content is wrong While it does make it harder to share things directly, its well worth the hassle
- Aeolun 5y agoOr they decide it must be wrong because it’s encrypted.
- userbinator 5y agoThat's when you start using steganography...
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoAnd drive a tank and live in a bunker. Maybe the laws should actually protect us, what the hell do we pay taxes for
- rrdharan 5y agoGoogle One, and Google Workspaces both offer paid support plans that cover Google Drive.
- tantalor 5y agohttps://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about $2/mo or $20/yr
- jazzyjackson 5y agodo you still have access to support if your account is locked?
- whymauri 5y agoGoogle workspaces requires you to attach a non-workspaces-related account. Unless they both go down, you can still contact them. Worst case, I believe Workspaces requires a phone number now -- at least Google can't wipe that!
- Miraste 5y agoUnless you have Google Fi!
- datguacdoh 5y agohaven't had to deal with it, but I would assume it works since you can call them. you don't have to be logged in to request support. https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9177339 https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9177339
- lucasverra 5y agoI pay for Google one since approx 24 months and have had surprisingly decent phone support with less than 3 clicks. PS: I tend to avoid google services, but google workplace is too damn superior
- jhart99 5y ago
- paulpauper 5y agoit is like this for almost anything in which money is not being exchanged. Impossible to get support unless you know someone who can give you a signal boost. Or if your compliant goes viral. otherwise, forget about it.
- irrational 5y agoI have to assume they realize this is terrible PR for them and engenders feelings of distrust, yet, they don’t seem care. Is it hubris?
- edoceo 5y agoThis news will be gone tomorrow, forgotten by Friday and they can spin a flashy thing on Monday. Solved! (for some limited definition of solved)
- shoto_io 5y agoI recently decided against G Drive and for office.com for our tiny startup. One reason being the unreliable customer support often mentioned here on HN. I hope MS customer support is better…
- hypothesis 5y agoIronically, someone recently attributed “hope is not a strategy” to Google’s engineering… I definitely understand the sentiment and curious if you researched options before making this switch?
- x0x0 5y agoG Suite / Google Workspace / whatever they're calling it this month has generally very good support. eg I had to fix a domain issue, albeit a domain issue caused by some stupid google stuff, and was connected to helpful competent people within a minute or two. Peers have similar experiences. The paying stuff is fine.
- edoceo 5y agoI'm a payer, on multiple domains. I disagree with "fine" and suggest "not absolute trash" as a replacement.
- sangnoir 5y agoGoogle Workspace has excellent support - unlike Google's free offerings.
- apecat 5y agoAny paid Google service with an SLA is perfectly fine. The choice between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace should mostly be a matter of taste. Google Workspace is very straightforward and largely offers better finish and UX. I personally dislike Google's material design and find myself confused by it, but most people seem fine with it. M365 Business Standard on the other hand is arguably a better deal if you value the macOS and Windows versions of Microsoft's office apps. The UI isn't always good and the web versions suck, but everything is also very flexible and intended to scale to almost everything the IT dept of a Fortune 500 companies with tricky compliancy requirements might require to control a fleet of Windows machines.
- ohgodplsno 5y agoTo Google, this is not unfortunate, this is planned. They truly do not give a single shit about you. Consume content and shut up is exactly what they want you to do.
- amelius 5y agoExactly, it doesn't matter if the customer has a problem, they will fix it when it becomes a problem for them.
- Haga 5y agoActually it is, it's just well hidden, their support is their developers in their spare time and reachability is your social connectivity graph distance to the next googleyesguy. Ps: you can increase likelihood of solution by adding words that suggest legal liabilities.
- version_five 5y agoI saw comment in another one of these discussions saying you should treat google as a potentially hostile adversary and have a contingency plan for what to do when they turn on you. I agree with this really in relation to every cloud provider. If your business continuity and data are important, there should be a plan for how to keep the lights on if a provider through malice or incompetence stops playing nice. The google specific problem is they are into so much stuff that its not just a question of not using them, you also have to consider what happens when your emails are flagged as spam our you're delisted from search, etc
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y agoI have no activity on YouTube, Blogger, or any other Google service since they tied up all the accounts, just to minimize the chance of getting my Gmail chopped off. (Note to self: stop giving feedback on Maps routing. You never know.)
- hunter-gatherer 5y agoIn a past job I was frequently around the globe and was not able to have my phone and SMS always with me. No matter how many settings I tweaked, it just seemed that google would not let me get into my gmail without my phone. Of course my banks would not let me in without my email. Ultimately I had to "de google" for the sake of being able to use the needed internet services wherever there was internet. When so much is tied to email these days, paying for a service that at least has a phone number to call if something goes wrong seems worth it to me, especially since most paid email services are reasonably priced.
- Dylovell 5y agoMan, That's dark. "You went to X location a few years ago, now there's bad stuff happening there. Your google account is banned." Leave your phone at home if your are going to protest, no matter what or where you are protesting.
- adolph 5y ago
- Causality1 5y agoGoogle's fetish for not providing human support is so counter-productive it makes me think there must be a single powerful individual executive maintaining the policy. It's too stupid to have widespread support among Googlers.
- Tenoke 5y agoFor what is worth, Drive as part of 'One' actually comes with support - I've been on live chat with them. They weren't super helpful overall but I was amazed I could get instant chat support in the first place from Google that I let it go.
- Avicebron 5y agoI imagine this theoretical powerful individual is rewarded handsomely for the decrease in "labor costs" presented quarter to quarter
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt doesn't exactly have widespread support; it's more that nobody can propose a better solution that doesn't blow the budget completely out of the water.
- falcor84 5y agoHere's one - how about allowing you to pay to get official support if your account has been locked. And maybe even, god forbid, refund you if your complaint had merit.
- JGM_io 5y agoVery obvious : they don't care about you... You're just ore to mine
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- verisimi 5y agoWell, when you're making an omelette you have to break some eggs. There has been a literal, yet largely silent, book burning going on with Google services in recent years. On youtube, many alternative voices are silenced, billions of comments deleted. I know its a private company, but in the US there are free speech laws + the possibility of using the court system (if someone makes a libellous statement). But no, silencing voices is in the realms of corporate policy - the rule of law has been deemed to not apply.
- saxonww 5y agoPlease don't characterize this as a political voices thing. Of course it's _related_, but this instance is about misclassification of private data, not silencing voices online. Also, Google is not a private company.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoThey are a private company in the sense that they are not a government entity, and thus the first amendment does not apply to them. This is a different sense of the word "private" than whether their stock is or is not publicly traded on an exchange.
- Igelau 5y agoWhat do you do when all speech takes place on corporate-owned platforms?
- PKop 5y agoThe nature of the problem (a big monopolist behemoth of a corporation is too big and powerful and lacks incentives to change) and the solution (only state action, regulation, mandates, i.e. something more powerful than Google must enforce Google to act) is by definition a political problem. This is like the epitome of what politics is for.
- dude187 5y agoI remember during the BLM riots, I had shared probably 50 videos of individual destructive and/or violent acts by the rioters in a Slack channel I'm a part of. Probably 6 months later, I went back to look at some. I found a total of 3 that _hadn't_ been deleted.
- travoc 5y agoThat’s why making your business completely dependent on AWS or GCP is absolutely insane.
- ycombigator 5y agoHonestly don't understand why anyone would use their services unless they had to.
- toss1 5y agoGoogle is so bad that I'm surprised that he got enough information on even have a clue as to why it was locked/flagged by Google. To say they have no support is too generous. It is more like they have an aggressively anti-support model. Sadly, it seems that this should be so well known as to be considered foolish to use Google (and many others) for anything critical. Its is not like Google lacks the capital or organizational scale to provide good support - they just refuse to do so. If they actually did it, they could probably do an amazing job, but that is not their goal.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GuB-42 5y agoI think it will be Google downfall if they don't change. No one wants to deal with a company that can shut you down any moment for no good reason and with no way to resolve the situation. If they continue like that, their dominance may be slowly eroded by smaller companies that actually care for all of their customers. It won't happen overnight, but once the movement has gained momentum, it will be hard for a giant like Google to adjust.
- rhizome 5y agoLike Facebook and content moderation, Google is incapable of support. Look at the terms: at the very least, they'll be opening themselves up to people calling in with every KilledByGoogle complaint and lament. My impression from watching Google since they launched is that they absolutely do not want to do anything even close to that. Ever, as in the dictionary definition of 'anathema.' Like Facebook and content moderation, it's a problem entirely of their own making. Zero sympathy, caveat emptor.
- asiachick 5y agoI see this complaint and it doesn't fit my experience at all. I pay for a google account (GSuite) and every time I've asked for help I've gotten it quickly/timely. Maybe if you aren't paying?
- judge2020 5y agoStop using Google Drive. Unless you're storing cat photos, or you use an rclone-encrypted mount that is stored in your Google Drive, you can't trust any public file store.
- Gibbon1 5y agoWell you especially cannot trust google for anything. The only reason they let you host stuff is so they can datamine it.
- gibsonf1 5y agoI have to say, the fact that google disables the back button once you hit the link above is truly infuriating.
- ColinWright 5y agoThe "Back" button works for me after I've cluck the link ... I wonder what you're seeing that I'm not.
- gibsonf1 5y agoAhh, I'm on firefox - wonder why its only there? Oh wait, I think that's even worse. This is the case for all google sites, if you use firefox, back button is disabled. Maybe this is to worsen the user experience for Firefox and encourage use of Chrome?
- ColinWright 5y agoI'm also using Firefox. No addons, running on Ubuntu. I click on the link, read the article, click the "Back" button, and everything works as I expect. Maybe you have some scripts or addons.
- gibsonf1 5y agoWow, ok, very interesting. It must be something about my particular environment (Also on Ubuntu) that it only affects google sites.
- adamrezich 5y agothis does not occur for me (Chrome, Windows)
- Ansil849 5y ago> The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I mean, how many times does this need to come up for people to learn the lesson? If you are storing your data with a third party, and you do not have an iron legal contract with this third party, then that third party can and will do whatever it wants with your data, including locking you out of it. We certainly don't like this state of affairs, but that is the world many of us have created.
- munk-a 5y agoWelp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.
- dangs_p3n1s 5y agoPenis
- prox 5y agoI have HDDs running longer than most Google projects do. So that point is really moot.
- whymauri 5y agoDitto. And when I felt it was near end-of-life, I just moved it over to a more stable SSD. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to have to backup my entire G-Drive externally and wipe it (for the security of my Google account). I mean, who knows what will trigger the deletion of your Google account these days... I guess the storage I pay for is just for e-mails.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoIncidentally, I’ve had more SSDs fail - or misbehave - on me than spinning-rust drives now. And I don’t just mean cheap SSDs either, but an Intel Optane 905p I own results in hundreds of PCI Express bus errors every minute when plugged-in to any ASUS motherboard I own, while a SATA Intel 530 woke-up one day completely unreadable. And throw-in a couple of Samsung SSD failures too. It’s enough to make me anxious between backups: at least with spinning rust-drives we can transplant the platters and controllers (separately, even!) while SSD hardware recovery is almost unheard of.
- aboringusername 5y agoAside from all the moral and ethical questions this raises from the usage of faceless AI, really this happens time and again, I suspect so Google can employ less human reviewers and so they can claim "not our fault". I think I've commented on a couple of these posts by now every time with the same advice. But anyhow, people should be well aware cloud providers do use AI systems and they will make mistakes, so you should: 1: have multiple redundant backups, seriously this is a no-brainer, AI or no even Google can lose data if a storage device dies. Depending on how important the data is you might consider as many backups as you can manage. 2: encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. If you store even so much as a text file unencrypted you're making a mistake. Use archives, double compressed, use the myraid of tools out there to ensure your files can't be read by anyone but you and who you decide to give the key to. Is this more work? Absolutely, but at the end of the day regulations mean Google need to scan content, and they will have a false positive match, and then it goes on HN and magically Google restore the data. I hope they get the data back but sometimes being burnt is actually a lesson in remembering best practice, why oh why your only copy of family photos are on one user hostile data-mining platform is beyond me, but it's a terrible idea.
- judge2020 5y agoYes, the entire business model is Google offering a service to everyone, hiring the bare minimum number of moderators, automate most moderation, and treat the <0.001% of people caught in the cross-fire as as a negligible loss.
- staticelf 5y agoTo be fair it probably works tho.
- everybodyknows 5y agoFrom the post: >Google Drive which I used to back up all of my data “back up” rather than “only copy”.
- franczesko 5y ago+ never rely on login with [provider_name]
- adamiscool8 5y agoI know this is avoidable, and I know it’s a semi-regular occurrence, and I can recognize Google’s moderation problem is non-trivial, but I really can’t shake the feeling that Orwell was off by a letter and the future will truly just be a bot stamping on a human face forever.
- quantified 5y agoSkynet doesn’t need Terminators. Software bots can keep us busy all on their own.
- 8ytecoder 5y agoYou don't even need bots - simple sorting algorithms do more damage. It shows human vulnerability more than anything else. All it took was a single fake message to get 600 people killed in Burma.
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoDo you have a good reference for this? I'd like to use it in future discussions :-)
- Willish42 5y agoThis took me a minute to figure out, mostly because I didn't immediately intuit that "sorting algorithm" == Facebook and "Burma" == Myanmar. I believe they're referencing Facebook's role in the Myanmar coup: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654 (reference for "600" as the death toll: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56703416 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56703416)
- closetohome 5y agoYou'd think Google breaks into your house, uploads your data, and deletes the originals. Think of cloud accounts like any other form of backup. Two is one, one is none. Hard drives die, cloud services come and go. No backup is forever.
- stevens37 5y agoEncrypt everything before uploading.
- danlugo92 5y agoTips and tricks for doing this the easiest way possible?
- symlinkk 5y agoDeja Dup on Linux supports this. Just pick a directory to back up, sign in with your Google Account, and check a box to encrypt your stuff before uploading. Google Drive just sees encrypted chunks with file names like “duplicity.gpg”.
- dotancohen 5y agoAnd don't forget to backup the decryption key using an out of band method, such as a USB disk.
- cdumler 5y agoRclone. It has multiple backends and you can chain them: encrypt -> cache locally for performance -> store on backend.
- mNovak 5y agoCryptomator has overall a nice clean interface, I find
- jeffbee 5y agoAs a person who formerly worked on the technical side of anti-abuse (both content and account) at Google, I urge you to read these kinds of reports critically. There is no reason to believe any of the details given in the post, which incorporates a lot of supposition about how this system works. For example, we have no rational basis for believing that this was done by some robot at Google. It is at least as likely that the content was flagged by some other user. Anyway, Google will never ever comment on the reason for account disabled in public, therefore whining about it in public is not going to work. The way to get accounts enabled is https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2 https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2
- Nicksil 5y ago>As a person who formerly worked on the technical side of anti-abuse (both content and account) at Google, I urge you to read these kinds of reports critically. There is no reason to believe any of the details given in the post, which incorporates a lot of supposition about how this system works. For example, we have no rational basis for believing that this was done by sone robot at Google. It is at least as likely that the content was flagged by some other user. >Anyway, Google will never ever comment on the reason for account disabled in public, therefore whining about it in public is not going to work. The way to get accounts enabled is https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2 https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2 No, Google has proven itself to be a pretty awful enterprise and deserves no benefit of doubt.
- joosters 5y agoThe way to get accounts enabled is https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2 https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/disabled2 There have been plenty of reports that this doesn't work either, with a bot simply 'reviewing' your account and not enabling it. The OP is 'whining about it in public' because it's the only hope they have of getting a human being at google to notice the problem and save their data. If google had a functional support system that wasn't 100% bots, users wouldn't have to complain in public!
- tedunangst 5y agoI'm supposed to believe it's better that a human reviewed this ban?
- croes 5y agoHow many times does that have to happen before people realize there is no cloud, only other people's computers. The data that is stored there is no longer yours, just as thanks to Apple and Co. your hardware no longer really belongs to you, but you only enjoy a temporary right of use. It will be interesting to see when hardly anything remains of an entire generation because everything comes from the cloud: Photos, videos, games, film, music. No more treasure troves in the attic, no more of grandma's record collection or dad's DVD collection or uncle's old console games. Everything just rented and when removed from the catalog, they are gone forever. Only our plastic waste remains.
- scohesc 5y agoThat's honestly really scary and I never thought of that.
- N00bN00b 5y agoThere is a counter movement, for example, these guys place a significant role (and as far as I know primarily with a practical focus): https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/
- bserge 5y agoThey are the worst pirates I've ever heard of.
- theodric 5y agoIf everything I've paid for and supposedly own some right to access can be taken away from me by a wayward algorithm at a moment's notice with zero recourse, you bet your ass I'm going to "pirate" content, even if I still buy it first!
- jjulius 5y agoWhat a terribly inaccurate, sweeping generalization.
- andrea81 5y agoI won't click because I don't trust Google anymore, and really never trusted
- himinlomax 5y agoAt least in Europe he could file a complaint with the data protection authority, and at the very least request a copy of all his data.
- slownews45 5y agoI'm on the AWS cloud. I've never had a problem like this. I pay the $100 / month for the basic AWS support plan. Even store side AWS has done reasonably OK by me (except for all the crap listings in their storefront - wish they'd fix that). By this I mean any problem I've had has been fixed. So at least Amazon has SOME humans still in the loop handling AWS support tickets and Amazon store calls.
- dudus 5y agoI'm on Google Cloud and Google Drive and have never had a problem like that either. I have Google One and it gives me access to humans when needed for chat, email and phone support. I pay way less than $100/month My evidence is as good as yours. Anecdotal. I think the real lesson here is that you should backup your data. Simple as that. The guy losing access to their Google account today is at fault just like the guy that lost all his data because his HD got burned a decade ago. It's just slightly easier to blame Google than to blame a faulty drive. But ultimately you are the one to blame. Just backup your Google Drive to a S3 storage or equivalent. And maybe keep a local copy in an HD or optical media.
- npteljes 5y ago>I think the real lesson here is that you should backup your data. Simple as that. It really is as simple as that. People who have their only hard drive die experience the same. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"
- hereforphone 5y agoTenuously related: Wikipedia articles referencing less than desirable historical figures (e.g. Nazis) are reportedly being deleted en masse.
- prox 5y agoCitation needed?
- carabiner 5y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/one-womans-mission-to-rewrite-nazi-history-wikipedia/ https://www.wired.com/story/one-womans-mission-to-rewrite-na... There have been a lot of WW2 fanboys who have been writing fawning articles about nazis who won a medal or two and were secretly, actually anti-Hitler the whole time. The reality, as far as documented, is that most of these were run of the mill soldiers without any known tendencies to be treasonous in wartime. She's been finding most of the heroics to be bullshit, and the real soldiers to be nobodies, and hence having the articles deleted per WP non-notable policy.
- prox 5y agoGreat article and insightful on how WP works.
- snthd 5y agoCould this be related? https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/19/war_thunder_classified_tank_docs/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/19/war_thunder_classifie... >Hungary-based game developer Gaijin Entertainment found themselves in a tactically difficult position last week when a user of their combat simulator War Thunder tried to win an online argument by sharing classified documents in the company's game forums. Maybe checksums of that document are circulated to cloud providers for censorship purposes.
- shadilay 5y agoIn that case I believe the document had top secret stamped on it.
- dsign 5y agoThis is very disturbing; hundreds of thousands of individuals and companies host their important documents in Google Drive--and pay to do it. Imagine that tomorrow you are locked out of those by a faulty AI, and the company that you have spent years building goes into bankruptcy and the livelihood of your employees goes away, just like that. Google has no business snooping in their customer's data for any reason, much less with buggy software.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoGoogle Drive is free. The individual in-question was not paying for the service. If you do pay for Google’s services via G Suite then you do get instant human support.
- squarefoot 5y agoBeing free is not an excuse. If Google can't give a reliable free service, then they should stop offering free services. Thee way they're doing it is way unprofessional.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoThis is like saying the Red Cross should not be allowed to give free sandwiches to homeless people if they are made of baloney and government cheese. It's unprofessional! Either use premium meats and cheeses and artisanal bread, or don't give them any sandwiches at all.
- Gigachad 5y agoNo, its like saying they should not be allowed to serve expired food and let x% of people end up sick. They should either serve safe to eat food or no food at all.
- hansel_der 5y agoto continue the analogy; idk if dying from starvation is worse than dying from food-poisoning (quantitative and qualitative). moot point anyways, as google is not (yet) in the business of essential services. they can hand out literal shit and it's totally fine.
- tyingq 5y agoI'm curious if "has locked my account" means just Google Drive, or if he also lost Gmail, Android functionality, Chrome profiles, Adwords, YouTube, YouTubeTV, purchased movies and tv shows, Fitbit, Nest, sites where he used federated login (DoorDash, Uber, etc). I see, for example, his YouTube channel is up, but it's associated with 'team@armouredarchives.com', and not the personal gmail account he posted in the linked forum. If it was the entire account, something really needs to be done with Google to force them to make these kind of actions as narrow as possible. They can really disrupt your life with a broad account lock.
- quantumBerry 5y agoIf google really thinks he is a terrorist, which apparently they did, why on earth would they allow him to use gmail or android? It makes sense they would lock him out of everything possible. What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all. They should not be in the position where they can even find out who is a terrorist.
- tyingq 5y agoI imagine Google takes business from lots of places and people that are unsavory to some. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
- quantumBerry 5y agoTerrorism is usually only defined by your allegiance, yes. In this case google is a US company so in the case they know violent islamic extremists use their platform, their allegiance is with the Americans, even if it happens to be the Americans blow up innocent Arabs and the extremists may just be engaging in self defense.
- filoleg 5y ago> What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all. Without reading into the details, I don't think that google arbitrarily examines all user files on Google Drive (and please correct me if I am wrong, but that's what I remember since the last time this discussion was had). Google only examines files that were shared with other users or were made accessible to others through a shareable link. Which, sorta makes sense, because that's how a lot of people shared illegal content or streamed videofiles (sort of like a personal youtube). And if you don't share those files with anyone and just keep it as your personal cloud drive, I don't think they examine it. >why on earth would they allow him to use gmail or android? Google is essentially your mail service (gmail), video platform (youtube), cloud storage (gdrive), and tons of other completely separate services. In physical world, violation of terms of one of the services leads you to being banned only from that service, unless criminal law gets involved. If the law gets involved, then the law can get you banned from using quite a lot of services. But until the law makes the judgement, being banned from a grocery store cannot automatically and without any recourse get you banned from your bank, your car insurance, your mail service, and many other things. I guess my point on the latter is that no private business (but law) should be able to prevent a person from using multiple completely unrelated vital services. Here are a few scenarios I thought of that would illustrate how it would work: * An airline banning you for being an asshole on a flight by adding you to a denylist used by other airlines as well? That's congruent with my idea, because it is all within the same service (airlines), and it won't be done automatically. *A judge completely blocking you from flying by locking you up for participating in terrorist activities? Sure, because the law did it after an investigation and followed proper legal processes. *Wells Fargo closing down your account because you were an asshole at Kroger when shopping for groceries and got banned from that store? That would be crazy talk. The only difference between the google scenario and the kroger+Wells Fargo scenario is that kroger+WF are not a part of the same company. But would it be acceptable for WF to close down your account if WF and Kroger were a part of the same parent company? In my opinion, it wouldn't be ok.
- zibzab 5y agoThis is your daily reminder that nothing in your digital life should EVER entierly depend on any Google services. Im writing this from an android phone. It is not de-googled per se, but uses a replacement for every single Google service (files, books, maps, search, movies, ...). Yes I pay money for those replacements, but God its good to not my life in the hand of a overzealous ML algorithm.
- tyingq 5y agoThere's a middle ground too. I use lots of cloud services, but I also spent $300 on a home NAS device to sync copies of the stuff I can't live without. Not affiliated with them, but I bought a Synology unit, and the UI lets you pretty easily sync things like Google drive. I'd still be scrambling around a bit to fix stuff if Google banned me, but I'd at least have copies of the most important things.
- southerntofu 5y agoThat works for us tech people who have know-how and cash. Most Internet users across the world don't have 300$ to spend right away (in many parts of the world, 50-200$ for a laptop/phone is already quite the expense). I believe only by empowering smaller, user-friendly providers (eg. hosting coops) can we actually change the situation.
- tyingq 5y agoYes, but the $300 device wasn't really my main point. Just some middle ground of using Google, but maintaining a copy of important data. The copying could be done with a $30 external usb hard drive and regular visits to the Google Takeout page.
- zamadatix 5y agoWhat do you use for maps?
- JanisL 5y ago
- narrator 5y agoGoogle is too successful. Their primary preoccupation these days is how to lose users they don't want.
- shadofx 5y agoScroogled lives on
- rexreed 5y agoI have more concerns about Google Docs than Google Drive. While files can be moved around and used pretty much the same offline as online, the same cannot be said about the use of Google Docs for collaborative document editing. If you're trying to de-Google your life, what is a sane replacement for Google Docs in a collaborative team environment where you can have some confidence that you won't lose all your assets?
- 1023bytes 5y agoIf you want to own your data you can use Nextcloud with Collabora
- midnightGhost 5y agohttps://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/
- kipchak 5y agoLooking at pricing for Google One to compare it with a Synology, I noticed my account doesn't seem to have the option for the higher tiers of storage such as the 5TB or 10TB that should be an option, instead 2TB is the highest. Have these plans gone away recently, or is this perhaps an account issue? I see articles mentioning them this month.
- foxpurple 5y agoOver 2TB is hidden behind an expanding button. They went up to 10TB iirc.
- notyourday 5y agoIs he on a free plan? Because if so, I see exactly zero basis for his complaint. He got what he paid for. P.S. No, I'm not saying that Google is in the right.
- Ensorceled 5y ago> I see exactly zero basis for his complaint. > P.S. No, I'm not saying that Google is in the right. You are, however, clearly saying they are not in the wrong... I'm not sure that difference matters.
- notyourday 5y agoNot at all. He used a service for years, for free. He got what he paid for, in fact he got more than what he paid for. > I'm not sure that difference matters. It does. Customers pay money. He is not a customer.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoThis attitude is exactly the problem - we are selling our data in exchange for a service. If it's value were $0, Google would go bancrupt. So this 'pretend the service is free' thing needs to die because Google has been able to make billions. Clearly they are making a profitable trade. It's basically digital barter Where there is profitable trade both parties have certain responsibilities. Personally I stopped using free services everywhere I can because of this legal vacuum leaving me exposed.
- notyourday 5y agoYour value of the service is the exact the amount of you are paying, which is zero. You do not have a say in what Google does with others - in fact others are paying Google so it is clearly that Google's services are valued by them.
- cdash 5y agoYou really think someone who is using google drive as a historical video backup service is on the free plan? There is no possible way.
- ajb 5y agoOne of the simplest functions of a justice system - before impartial judgement, before detailed laws, before qualified advocates - is simply the right to summon a powerful person to justify their actions. Increasingly it seems that we will need this to be applied here, ideally in some simpler and less costly way than a full trial. It is just wrong for companies to make money by inviting people to rely on them , and then ghosting if something goes wrong.
- no_butterscotch 5y agoI agree. But I'm not sure what the solution is. A lot of people will say "Hey, it's a private company", and as a libertarian minded person I tend to agree. But increasingly these private companies have more power of my life than my own government does, and it's accelerating further it seems.
- amznthrwaway 5y agoCandidly, these companies have far, far less power than the government does. The government has the ability to make literally _every_ company do this to you, simultaneously, and if they use an NSL, to do it secretly. The reason the government feels less impactful is because Google is much more likely to ban you than the government. Google has essentially no incentive to behave well.
- cube00 5y agoThey only gain as much power as you allow them to have. You can still use your own domain. You can still back up to external drives in your house. You can still leave encrypted copies of those drives at a friend's house.
- encryptluks2 5y agoYou can still only get one or two, if you're lucky, high speed Internet service providers.
- 5y ago
- cyberpsybin 5y agoMega is more reliable that Google lol
- bjourne 5y agoNot the first time: "so google disabled my account that i used to make my folder with educational content on Palestine, i.e the drive folder that i had linked in my bio" https://twitter.com/hotgirlhala/status/1385212069679702020 https://twitter.com/hotgirlhala/status/1385212069679702020
- throwawayswede 5y agoWhy the heck do people still store their important documents (that they absolutely can’t do without) somewhere where they have no control over and where they could be kicked out at any moment is beyond me. Obviously it’s always sad to see such a great amount of work go to waste, but at what point are we just going to start blaming people like that who are just careless with their data. Don’t use a cloud you don’t have total control over for something that you absolutely need control over. At the very least don’t use fucking google.
- wil421 5y agoMost people are not technology savvy let alone HN elitists. When I talk to non tech people about stuff like this I get a lot of blank stares. Whenever I’ve said if the service is free then your are the product I get even blanker stares. Most normal people wouldn’t consider using Google Drive as being careless with there data. They would actually considering it being smart as Google is one of the largest tech companies. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a minute. People who have these kids of hobbies do it because it’s their passion and a lot of times, the best ones at least, don’t have a lot of disposable income to spend on said hobby.
- throw_m239339 5y ago> Why the heck do people still store their important documents (that they absolutely can’t do without) somewhere where they have no control over and where they could be kicked out at any moment is beyond me. Cause they think it will never happen to them, until it does...
- kwijibob 5y agoGoogle Takeout is good insurance. I backup my full google dataset every 6 months or so. When Google AI blocks an account, why don't they offer a window of using Google Takeout to get a .zip of all their stuff?
- the_snooze 5y agoGiven the siloed disjointed nature of various Google products, it's probably because the security and Takeout teams don't care to deal with with one another.
- javagram 5y agoIt’s unlikely they’d want to let someone accused of “terrorist activity” download their data, since if it was actually a terrorist some future investigation would probably blame them for materially supporting terrorism which is illegal.
- intricatedetail 5y agoWhere is the due process or do we outsource this to private companies too?
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoDue process does not apply to companies choosing not to service you.
- intricatedetail 5y agoThey cant steal or destroy your property though.
- JohnHaugeland 5y agowhether or not that is true is not an issue of due process due process is "the state isn't allowed to do things to you unless they're in the law" so like, a king would just make up criminal punishments. oh, you stole a painting? four years. THE PAINTING OF MY MOM? THIRTY YEARS, NO, FORTY. because of due process, that isn't legal here due process only applies to the application of the law, by the state
- thedudeabides5 5y ago161 comment yelling at either google or the guy for XYZ and here I am just wondering if the bloke got his tank photos back
- gundmc 5y agoIt looks like this happened yesterday, and he says in the link that it normally takes 2 days to investigate and respond. This is an unfortunate incident, but IMO hardly as egregious as other commenters are making it out to be. A false positive for literal videos of terrorist vehicles does not seem at all unreasonable, and yet HN has given it less than 24 hours to be resolved before blasting it to the top of the front page.
- drivebycomment 5y agoObviously not everyone at HN. But it's definitely true that there's a faction of online Karens in HN.
- Cipater 5y ago"Hello, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Your account has been re-enabled." https://support.google.com/drive/thread/127021326/google-has-locked-my-account-for-sharing-a-historical-archive-they-labeled-as-terrorist-activity?hl=en&msgid=127344594 https://support.google.com/drive/thread/127021326/google-has...
- thatsillyqaguy 5y agoGoogle is f'ed up with bots.
- tqwhite 5y agoI don't mean to be insensitive but what on earth possessed you to have your only copy of anything be held by some gigantic corporation, let alone one as completely nihilistic as Google. Dear Everyone, Buy a USB stick and keep some copies of your important stuff in your own possession.
- Goety 5y agoWe need an alternative to the internet as an actual timeline keeper. This is ridiculous
- Aeolun 5y agoI haven’t said it before, but I’ll say it again. Don’t host your important shit on Google! It’s pretty much the worst place you can use as a backup service.
- unanswered 5y agoAll historical information is subject to correction by MiniTrue. Until Google Drive supports such a scenario, it is inappropriate for publishing historical information.
- technick 5y agoA few years ago someone ported my google voice number out without my authorization. The normal methods of contacting Google was useless. I eventually went to people in my linkedin network at Google for help and they were able to get me in touch with the right people. Google should be embarrassed...
- noxer 5y agoDaily reminder that you need backups Daily reminder that online stored files should be encrypted (no bot would have found anything it doesnt like) Daily reminder that google is know for this and should not be used unless for a third backup or something.
- rob_c 5y agoCouldn't agree more
- dimitrios1 5y agoDaily reminder that a former sitting president is still banned from a major social media network yet we are blessed with updates from literal terrorists, so when another big tech co keeps their eyes open for "terrorists" you know it's a facade to impose their draconian wishes, and remind us proletariat who really is in charge. Daily reminder that big tech is the biggest threat to democracy we face today, even bigger than some conspiracy Q theorists LARPing in the capitol. Daily reminder that if we simply enforced our current anti-trust laws, we could disassemble the bulk of these companies, all the meanwhile distributing the opportunities and improving the economy for all. If Microsoft deserved it in the 90s, Google sure as hell does today.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoI’m my eyes, trump was a terrorist.
- hansel_der 5y agohe arguably did a lot of damage
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoI’d consider antivaxxers as terrorists at this point, too. They will kill people, many more people than 9/11.
- 5y ago
- vkaku 5y agoUntil we move to E2EE, we will all get policed for the wrong reasons, even if the files we have are legit. The scale of some things has forced people to use non humane flagging, and to comply with some tyrannical government requests. The best solution? NAS it or use E2EE providers only.
- cube00 5y agoHopefully the banner that's now appeared at the top "This post is a trending issue." means they'll actually look into this.
- FpUser 5y agoI can't comprehend why the fuck people fall for that cloudy "gimme all your data and code" bullshit.
- exporectomy 5y agoIt's possible he really did violate Google's "Program Policies" which are utterly ridiculous: "If storing or distributing content related to terrorism for an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purpose be mindful to provide enough information so viewers understand the context." So a random photo of a ute with the ISIS logo on the side might be a violation if you don't also write some commentary explaining what it's about and assuring everyone that you aren't promoting or celebrating terrorism. But where? in another file? How will a person with a link to the photo find that?
- Gigachad 5y agoAs if the Google AI is smart enough to understand context anyway. If you are going to use google services, set a calendar reminder to download the takeout dump very frequently. It's pretty easy to do and saves you in these cases.
- exporectomy 5y agoIf "viewers" includes Google's own AI, then any failure is the user's fault!
- silexia 5y agoGoogle was once my favorite company when it was still run by its founders and genuinely followed the "don't be evil" policy. Now everything it does has turned into dark patterns. Google's #1 revenue generator Ads (formerly AdWords) now uses dark patterns to trick advertisers into spending more. For example, most of the recommendations make a user's campaign spend more money while not getting results. Many unwary users ignore these recommendations without realizing that Google added a setting that by default is on that automatically implements all of Google's recommendations after 14 days of wait time. These recommendations are implemented without the users consent or even knowledge. Even if a user turns off that setting, the recommendations appear everywhere throughout the interface with enticing "Apply All" buttons that are easily clicked on accidentally. What a total nightmare of evil Google has become.
- 5y ago
- dude3 5y agoWhile not Google Drive, today my Ad words account was suddenly suspended because of non payment. No warning just a suspension. I have a 100% Valid credit card number on my account. I need to submit an appeal and then I get a vague "because of Covid 19" we can't respond even though we know Google has hired a record number of contractors and folks in the US this year. Something isn't right.
- Syonyk 5y agoInteresting - I got a sternly worded warning about the billing information for my GCE account this evening, and after looking and verifying that the credit card on file was, in fact, still my credit card, and not remotely close to expired, I shrugged. The VM I run there as a freebie instance for a few things isn't that important, it would be annoying to lose it, but... I'd just spin up another VM somewhere else for the purpose. I don't think I had the option to appeal, but they've also not actually terminated the VM yet, and I'm up to date on my billing according to their system so... shrug Someone pushed a billing update without testing it properly first and it got confused, most likely. I expect a "Please ignore our last email..." sort of message tomorrow. Actually, now that I look... https://status.cloud.google.com/ https://status.cloud.google.com/ > [Under Investigation] Customers may receive "Payment failed" notifications. > Error Message: “Your payment information could not be processed. Visit the payment overview page to make sure your payment information is up to date and to pay any outstanding charges.” I wonder if it's more widespread and you got caught in the same thing.
- dude3 5y agoGP! I also received a billing failure on Google Cloud etc at approximately 6pm PST.
- eitland 5y agoGoogle has been crumbling under its own weight since a decade ago it seems. Search quality has been deteriorating, services shut down, quotas lowered etc. Wonder if they manage to break this cycle. I'd kind of of so given all the pension fund money that is invested into it.
- throw_m239339 5y agoDon't rely on Google Drive if your documents are important, or of academic significance or whatever. Period. Google can lock your account for any reason. If you value your data and privacy, don't use Google drive or one drive or icloud or anything like that. When will people learn their lesson?
- fuzzfactor 5y agoIt's not a cloud. That's only the icon. It's just somebody else's computer. _Not yours_ is the keyword.
- ncphil 5y agoOh yeah. AI are definitely going to replace us all. Bring it.
- ozaark 5y agoThat didn't take long to reverse: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Your account has been re-enabled" https://support.google.com/drive/thread/127021326/google-has-locked-my-account-for-sharing-a-historical-archive-they-labeled-as-terrorist-activity?hl=en&msgid=127344594 https://support.google.com/drive/thread/127021326/google-has...
- simlevesque 5y agoThat's what happens when your support ticket is on the front page of HN for a couple of hours.
- afroboy 5y agoJust imagine thousands of people where their accounts get locked without the ability to reach their voices over HN or Reddit.
- gekkonier 5y agoAnother story that leads to my conclusion to not use such and similar services. For me it‘s always better to hoard data on my selfowned drives.
- atok1 5y agoIt's so pathetic, everything 'terrorist' these days purely means what the government/private corporation doesn't like.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chinathrow 5y ago> Google Drive which I used to back up all of my data Google Drive is not a backup of your data. We need to help people get to know this - I keep telling this to friends all the time, hardly anyone listens.
- sudcha 5y agoI wonder if this applies to just google drive, but also google cloud storage buckets?
- sudcha 5y ago(Also good to know that the account was re-enabled)
- shell0x 5y agoThis is exactly the reason why I'm against Apple CSAM. It's just a matter of time before someone innocent gets flagged. Lots of parents take a photo of their child having a bath or something similar at least in Europe/Asia and it's clearly of non-sexual nature. Now, how does the Apple algo know that? I'm generally curious: Have you tried to contact Google before about any kind of issue? It took me like a day or so to chat with an actual person the last time I had an issue.
- antihero 5y agoI agree with your point as a whole but the Apple CSAM wouldn't really have this issue as it compares the images hashes against hashes of a specific list of CSAM.
- 3np 5y agoReminder that it's perceptual hashes, not cryptographic hashes. So it's enough that images have enough visual resemblance, according to the model. Natural collisions have been observed and generating collisions for planting on someone elses device is trivial. Apple also only recieves a DB of hashes and so have no way to verify that they're only scanning for CSAM and not other "undesirable" content. https://github.com/roboflow-ai/neuralhash-collisions https://github.com/roboflow-ai/neuralhash-collisions https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider https://github.com/anishathalye/neural-hash-collider
- antihero 5y agoAh, I stand corrected. That's even more worrying then.
- arodyginc 5y agoWould it helped if the content was encrypted? I guess yes, so before using any cloud storage, set up the process to encrypt everything you are going to put up there
- snomad 5y agoBan algorithmic account suspensions to users who have derived $250 from a service in last year - all must be confirmed by a human. Gives Google, fb, twitter, et al time to ban the bots (in first 30 days of an account life), while still protecting users from ever expansive tech cos.
- dieselkraken 5y agoThe further the cloud technologies go the less reliable they are becoming. More users also mean more automated and inapropriate bans and less chance to get through to support. Good time to invest in hard-drive manufacturers ;D
- twirlock 5y agoGoogle is trash, and they don't even care if we know it at this point.