5 ms·

> I'm curious what triggered this. 80/20 incomplete machine learning model. One day people and institutions will get the message and stop using Google for imp

by cube00 4y ago

> I'm curious what triggered this. 80/20 incomplete machine learning model. One day people and institutions will get the message and stop using Google for important things. Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all rusted into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their school districts.

FredPret 4y ago
Are we watching Google turn into IBM
mysterydip 4y ago
Pretty much by design, I imagine.
danso 4y ago
I taught data journalism at the graduate school level (not to the OP) and I regularly used Google Sheets as a channel for hosting data, which were typically U.S. public datasets, like city crime reports, Census demographics, election results, etc. This is in addition to hosting CSV and .sqlite files on the class homepage and Github repo. The reason why Google Sheets was so handy was because it's a great interface for data exploration. I could show students features about the data, and sort/filter/highlight, without having to distribute/create spreadsheet files. I guess if Google Sheets ends up being draconian with its content filters, I could link to Github-hosted CSVs, but it's not quite the same. Haven't checked my classroom Google sheets recently, but if they're untouched, it might have helped that they were all set to public view. Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private sheets with much more suspicion.
- jfoster 4y ago
  > Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private sheets with much more suspicion. You could be right, but jeez... shouldn't it be the opposite?
  - the_lonely_road 4y ago
    For sure no. If you are storing a trove of copyrighted movies, revenge porn, or child porn then you would for sure not have it marked for public access. Google clearly doesn’t want their storage to be used for these nefarious purposes but anyone who has tried to train a ML algorithm knows, false positives is the name of the game so they should really only be used in places where false positives do little to no harm.
jfoster 4y ago
It's a shame that Google are choosing to focus on policing what people think of as their private data. Meanwhile, they seem to be taking their eye off the ball when it comes to the spam filtering that many of their users might wish for. In just the past week, I've received noticeable amounts of spam via: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Photos. I'm puzzled about how Google are choosing to allocate their resources. It doesn't seem likely that governments would be asking Google to specifically police spreadsheets for possible phishing data. The owners of the files definitely aren't asking for their access to their own data to be cut off. So what are the origins of this effort? I have to admit, I originally thought that Google Drive was the obvious choice over every alternative that existed, but I can see now that I would prefer an offline or privacy-driven alternative. The risk of losing files to a Google Drive machine learning black hole & then facing Google's customer service black hole might be small, but it's also nightmarish.
- cube00 4y ago
  The spam that's allowed to be sent through Google Docs @mentions has been horrendous lately. What's even worse is they only let you ban the individuals. You can't turn off the notification email messages. Thankfully I'm about ready to close down my Gmail account (still stuck needing a Google account for now) but it's a good reminder of what I won't be missing when I finally get out. The risk of facing the "black hole" may be larger then you think. There's a person who posts a common "recovery how-to" in the support forums when people get locked out and that page got 83,878 views last month.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    I've never encountered this @mentions Spam, are they using it as some mechanism for verifying a Gmail account? I received a notification from Gmail the other day that "Someone added <made-up-email-address@my domain> as their recovery email.". And my only option was to disconnect the email. By disconnecting the email, I would be confirming to the account owner that the email landed in someone's inbox. By not confirming the email, I would be allowing my domain to be associated with a Gmail account potentially used for nefarious activity. Given Google's scorched earth approach to deactivating associated Google Accounts when it comes to things like the Play Store, I felt I needed to disconnect the account.
px43 4y ago
Have you tried using anything non-Google recently? Everything else is much, much worse IMO. Remember we all mostly moved to Google because they were the only ones who could actually deal with spam, gaming, and the more sophisticated attacks at scale. Now that they're the only game in town, adversaries are focusing hard on getting past their filters etc, and some are getting through. When you have literally millions of people whose livelihood depends on gaming algorithms, or getting past content filters, then some highly intelligent and motivated individuals are going to get through, that's a fact of life. When someone figures out how to train their robots better than Google, then Google will have some competition, but they seem to be about a decade ahead of everyone else, and only accelerating relative to the rest of the field, so I'm doubtful that anyone is going to catch up any time soon.
- cube00 4y ago
  In terms of spam using website specific email addresses has solved it for me (eg. hackernews@mydomain.example) No spam filter required. Of course Google and Microsoft both punish me by sending my mail to spam (even years later) for using my own domain but that's what I'd expect from the big players.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - balls187 4y ago
    Since you have your own domain, I'd assume yes--have you gone through the process of improving deliverability using SPF, checking reputation, etc?
    - cube00 4y ago
      I've done the lot. SPF, not blacklisted, DMARC signed and set to reject. From what I can tell it's just that small domains are guilty until proven innocent. However it seems at lower volumes you can never send enough email to get past the thresholds they've set so you're forever guilty in their eyes. Very convenient. I've also signed up to both Microsoft and Google's email tools and neither shows any information because I don't send enough mail while they still keep making my mail as spam. It's getting to the point where I'll probably have to use a 3rd party SMTP rely as the family don't appreciate their mail going to spam while all their friends on GMail go straight to the Inbox. A nice new addition is Microsoft is flagging any links I include in my message as "suspicious" and giving the users scary warnings. Meanwhile I can see they still take the opportunity to scan and fetch the URL and yet still can't determine it's safe.
dillutedfixer 4y ago
"Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all rusted into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their school districts. " This is so true that it hurts. I went back to college later in my life starting in 2018. It's astonishing to me how ingrained Google services are to the kids I'm in school with. Even though we have Office 365 and a full suite of apps available to us for free, when we do group work the de-facto decision that students come to is to create Google drive shares, or shared Google docs that are tied to personal accounts. It gets so stupidly messy and the apps just seem so inferior. Everyone uses the same Slides template so everything looks the same. Ugh.
- notagoodidea 4y ago
  Sometimes it is also due to the university changing their systems too often. When I was at uni, we had to switch from self-hosted + roundcube webmail to full Google suite to full Microsoft 365 : for mail and tooling in less then 9y. With transition period where everything was half-broken.
chaosharmonic 4y ago
> One day people and institutions will get the message and stop using Google for important things. I've taken to telling people for years now, for this exact reason, that friends don't let friends use Google's password manager.

by cube00 4y ago

FredPret 4y ago

Are we watching Google turn into IBM

mysterydip 4y ago

Pretty much by design, I imagine.

danso 4y ago

I taught data journalism at the graduate school level (not to the OP) and I regularly used Google Sheets as a channel for hosting data, which were typically U.S. public datasets, like city crime reports, Census demographics, election results, etc. This is in addition to hosting CSV and .sqlite files on the class homepage and Github repo. The reason why Google Sheets was so handy was because it's a great interface for data exploration. I could show students features about the data, and sort/filter/highlight, without having to distribute/create spreadsheet files. I guess if Google Sheets ends up being draconian with its content filters, I could link to Github-hosted CSVs, but it's not quite the same. Haven't checked my classroom Google sheets recently, but if they're untouched, it might have helped that they were all set to public view. Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private sheets with much more suspicion.

jfoster 4y ago
> Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private sheets with much more suspicion. You could be right, but jeez... shouldn't it be the opposite?
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  For sure no. If you are storing a trove of copyrighted movies, revenge porn, or child porn then you would for sure not have it marked for public access. Google clearly doesn’t want their storage to be used for these nefarious purposes but anyone who has tried to train a ML algorithm knows, false positives is the name of the game so they should really only be used in places where false positives do little to no harm.

jfoster 4y ago

It's a shame that Google are choosing to focus on policing what people think of as their private data. Meanwhile, they seem to be taking their eye off the ball when it comes to the spam filtering that many of their users might wish for. In just the past week, I've received noticeable amounts of spam via: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Photos. I'm puzzled about how Google are choosing to allocate their resources. It doesn't seem likely that governments would be asking Google to specifically police spreadsheets for possible phishing data. The owners of the files definitely aren't asking for their access to their own data to be cut off. So what are the origins of this effort? I have to admit, I originally thought that Google Drive was the obvious choice over every alternative that existed, but I can see now that I would prefer an offline or privacy-driven alternative. The risk of losing files to a Google Drive machine learning black hole & then facing Google's customer service black hole might be small, but it's also nightmarish.

cube00 4y ago
The spam that's allowed to be sent through Google Docs @mentions has been horrendous lately. What's even worse is they only let you ban the individuals. You can't turn off the notification email messages. Thankfully I'm about ready to close down my Gmail account (still stuck needing a Google account for now) but it's a good reminder of what I won't be missing when I finally get out. The risk of facing the "black hole" may be larger then you think. There's a person who posts a common "recovery how-to" in the support forums when people get locked out and that page got 83,878 views last month.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  I've never encountered this @mentions Spam, are they using it as some mechanism for verifying a Gmail account? I received a notification from Gmail the other day that "Someone added <made-up-email-address@my domain> as their recovery email.". And my only option was to disconnect the email. By disconnecting the email, I would be confirming to the account owner that the email landed in someone's inbox. By not confirming the email, I would be allowing my domain to be associated with a Gmail account potentially used for nefarious activity. Given Google's scorched earth approach to deactivating associated Google Accounts when it comes to things like the Play Store, I felt I needed to disconnect the account.

px43 4y ago

Have you tried using anything non-Google recently? Everything else is much, much worse IMO. Remember we all mostly moved to Google because they were the only ones who could actually deal with spam, gaming, and the more sophisticated attacks at scale. Now that they're the only game in town, adversaries are focusing hard on getting past their filters etc, and some are getting through. When you have literally millions of people whose livelihood depends on gaming algorithms, or getting past content filters, then some highly intelligent and motivated individuals are going to get through, that's a fact of life. When someone figures out how to train their robots better than Google, then Google will have some competition, but they seem to be about a decade ahead of everyone else, and only accelerating relative to the rest of the field, so I'm doubtful that anyone is going to catch up any time soon.

cube00 4y ago
In terms of spam using website specific email addresses has solved it for me (eg. hackernews@mydomain.example) No spam filter required. Of course Google and Microsoft both punish me by sending my mail to spam (even years later) for using my own domain but that's what I'd expect from the big players.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- balls187 4y ago
  Since you have your own domain, I'd assume yes--have you gone through the process of improving deliverability using SPF, checking reputation, etc?
  - cube00 4y ago
    I've done the lot. SPF, not blacklisted, DMARC signed and set to reject. From what I can tell it's just that small domains are guilty until proven innocent. However it seems at lower volumes you can never send enough email to get past the thresholds they've set so you're forever guilty in their eyes. Very convenient. I've also signed up to both Microsoft and Google's email tools and neither shows any information because I don't send enough mail while they still keep making my mail as spam. It's getting to the point where I'll probably have to use a 3rd party SMTP rely as the family don't appreciate their mail going to spam while all their friends on GMail go straight to the Inbox. A nice new addition is Microsoft is flagging any links I include in my message as "suspicious" and giving the users scary warnings. Meanwhile I can see they still take the opportunity to scan and fetch the URL and yet still can't determine it's safe.

dillutedfixer 4y ago

"Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all rusted into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their school districts. " This is so true that it hurts. I went back to college later in my life starting in 2018. It's astonishing to me how ingrained Google services are to the kids I'm in school with. Even though we have Office 365 and a full suite of apps available to us for free, when we do group work the de-facto decision that students come to is to create Google drive shares, or shared Google docs that are tied to personal accounts. It gets so stupidly messy and the apps just seem so inferior. Everyone uses the same Slides template so everything looks the same. Ugh.

notagoodidea 4y ago
Sometimes it is also due to the university changing their systems too often. When I was at uni, we had to switch from self-hosted + roundcube webmail to full Google suite to full Microsoft 365 : for mail and tooling in less then 9y. With transition period where everything was half-broken.

chaosharmonic 4y ago

> One day people and institutions will get the message and stop using Google for important things. I've taken to telling people for years now, for this exact reason, that friends don't let friends use Google's password manager.