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It's possible he really did violate Google's "Program Policies" which are utterly ridiculous: "If storing or distributing content related to terrorism for an e

It'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 ago
As 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 ago
  If "viewers" includes Google's own AI, then any failure is the user's fault!
- silexia 5y ago
  Google 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.
  - ttty2 5y ago
    The default for country targeting it's not people living in that country, but people interested in that country. Because of this you can easily get clicks from a person in India that is interested in USA (if you're target is USA). I have a guide on how to create new ads to avoid all these traps.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  And there’s no way to actually get your case in the hands of a human, who might understand the context, without making it to the front page of HN.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Also don't take any important dependency on any Google service. If Gmail is your primary email you may end up locked out of everything associated with it.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
You've employed a strawman fallacy; you took a policy which is on its face pretty reasonable: "be mindful to provide enough information so viewers understand the context" and hyperbolized it, to put it mildly, into: "you are forced to write some commentary explaining what it's about and assuring everyone that you aren't..." Context is the opposite of "an explicit statement spelling it all out." Maybe I post photos of a vacation trip somewhere there was a car with an ISIS logo on it. The information and context they are talking about would be "2020 Vacation photos" for the album title and it being accompanied by pictures of sunsets, my partner, birbs, etc. that make it plainly obvious it just is a random car in my vacation photos.
- Talanes 5y ago
  >Context is the opposite of "an explicit statement spelling it all out." Just because the context is very explicit does not mean that it's not context. Is it additional information that clarifies the primary info? Then it's context.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Veen 5y ago
  And how does that work when you're researching tanks and other military vehicles? Perhaps the researchers should photoshop someone wearing shorts and drinking a pina colada into their catalog of armored fighting vehicles from the Middle East.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    > And how does that work when you're researching tanks and other military vehicles? The title / description that says something like "Study of the use of mechanized artillery by guerilla fighters in the blah blah region", which is what you'd do anyway if it were for public consumption? Don't be obtuse.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
kypro 5y ago
ISIS is probably an extreme example, more recently there have been moves to brand many non-mainstream movements and groups "terrorist". For example, Antifa is considered by many to be a terrorist group and if Google were operating in Hong Kong they would likely have to view supporters of the Hong Kong protest as terrorist. My concern with actions like this is that there is rarely a clear line between what is acceptable and what's not, instead decisions are made in a highly political manner either by companies themselves or more authoritarian governments. So the question I have here is whether Google is simply respecting and enforcing national laws against owning illegal terrorist materials or are they making their own decisions about what is and isn't terrorist material? IMO this just touches on a wider problem that in many countries simply owning concern books without a good excuse is illegal. To be charitable I suspect Google doesn't have much of an option here. If the government has classified something as terrorist material, even if Google disagrees with them doing so, Google probably should still respect national laws on not allow that material to be stored, or worse, distributed on their platform.

Gigachad 5y ago

As 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 ago
If "viewers" includes Google's own AI, then any failure is the user's fault!
silexia 5y ago
Google 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.
- ttty2 5y ago
  The default for country targeting it's not people living in that country, but people interested in that country. Because of this you can easily get clicks from a person in India that is interested in USA (if you're target is USA). I have a guide on how to create new ads to avoid all these traps.
ashtonkem 5y ago
And there’s no way to actually get your case in the hands of a human, who might understand the context, without making it to the front page of HN.
mulmen 5y ago
Also don't take any important dependency on any Google service. If Gmail is your primary email you may end up locked out of everything associated with it.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

You've employed a strawman fallacy; you took a policy which is on its face pretty reasonable: "be mindful to provide enough information so viewers understand the context" and hyperbolized it, to put it mildly, into: "you are forced to write some commentary explaining what it's about and assuring everyone that you aren't..." Context is the opposite of "an explicit statement spelling it all out." Maybe I post photos of a vacation trip somewhere there was a car with an ISIS logo on it. The information and context they are talking about would be "2020 Vacation photos" for the album title and it being accompanied by pictures of sunsets, my partner, birbs, etc. that make it plainly obvious it just is a random car in my vacation photos.

Talanes 5y ago
>Context is the opposite of "an explicit statement spelling it all out." Just because the context is very explicit does not mean that it's not context. Is it additional information that clarifies the primary info? Then it's context.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Veen 5y ago
And how does that work when you're researching tanks and other military vehicles? Perhaps the researchers should photoshop someone wearing shorts and drinking a pina colada into their catalog of armored fighting vehicles from the Middle East.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > And how does that work when you're researching tanks and other military vehicles? The title / description that says something like "Study of the use of mechanized artillery by guerilla fighters in the blah blah region", which is what you'd do anyway if it were for public consumption? Don't be obtuse.
  - exporectomy 5y ago

kypro 5y ago

ISIS is probably an extreme example, more recently there have been moves to brand many non-mainstream movements and groups "terrorist". For example, Antifa is considered by many to be a terrorist group and if Google were operating in Hong Kong they would likely have to view supporters of the Hong Kong protest as terrorist. My concern with actions like this is that there is rarely a clear line between what is acceptable and what's not, instead decisions are made in a highly political manner either by companies themselves or more authoritarian governments. So the question I have here is whether Google is simply respecting and enforcing national laws against owning illegal terrorist materials or are they making their own decisions about what is and isn't terrorist material? IMO this just touches on a wider problem that in many countries simply owning concern books without a good excuse is illegal. To be charitable I suspect Google doesn't have much of an option here. If the government has classified something as terrorist material, even if Google disagrees with them doing so, Google probably should still respect national laws on not allow that material to be stored, or worse, distributed on their platform.