9 ms·

Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

187 points by zeppelin_7 15y ago

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- zitterbewegung 15y ago
  I have heard of people being thrown out of mall's because they were wearing an offensive t-shirt. I think the analogy that google+ is basically private property that is open to the public. The website isn't owned by the public instead it is owned by google. The point of google censoring offensive content is to not only follow their own rules but to make the company that provides this service to still look good and keep up their public image.
  - earbitscom 15y ago
    ...and, to add to your point, as a not-public organization they build this product for company benefit. They let you do things on it that they benefit from. Why on earth would they be required to let you do things that are bad for their business?
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Who says they would be required? The question is whether we should participate in their network considering these rules. Of course, if enough people decide to leave G+ due to them (which I doubt), these rules might actually becomes themselves bad for their business.
      - earbitscom 15y ago
        Sure, but good luck finding a company who cares more about letting you express your "fuck you's" than they do about money, and good luck to them in building to scale with money only from advertisers who don't mind being next to MG's middle finger.
        icebraining 15y ago
        good luck to them in building to scale with money only from advertisers who don't mind being next to MG's middle finger. But would they have to? I mean, Google's whole business model is to match ads to the right content, and they specifically say they're good with detecting such "offensive" images, so they could simply content match advertisers who were looking for "edgy" images.
  - brador 15y ago
    But, and I'm just throwing this out there so hold off on that downvote for a second, if a website has a comments section, doesn't such a feature act as something similar to a "town square"? In which case, if a website has a comments section or other area where users can interact with one another, should that area be a "public" place, and allow free speech etc.? Addition: since the purpose of free speech law is to allow anyone to say things that may well not be liked by an authority figure, companies being censors could act as a surprisingly effective loophole to free speech law. Just make all methods of communication between citizens pass through a company, who handles the censorship, leaving the tyrant free to go about their day.
    - tyree732 15y ago
      I mean, I didn't read it, but I'm sure somewhere along the way of my signing up for Google+ I agreed to their terms of service stating that they could remove whatever content they deemed unacceptable that I post or create. As for your addition, to make all methods of communications pass through a company would either require a law, which would be unconstitutional, or would require more insidious methods. The government already has plenty of insidious methods of dealing with people.
- jxi 15y ago
  I think it's offensive, and I would like to not see things like that pop up in my stream. Isn't this one of those things that are on the line where if just 1 person says it's offensive, then it should be treated as such. It's kind of like if there were only 10 men and 2 women in a room, then by democracy, you'd probably end up with rape being OK.
  - theorique 15y ago
    So by this measure: - if anything were said / written criticizing the Bible, then a single devout Christian could deem it offensive and it would be removed? - if a woman's picture without a burkha were posted, then a single fundamentalist Muslim could declare it offensive and it would be deleted? - if a "blonde" joke were posted, then a single radical feminist could call it offensive and it would be eliminated? Doesn't sound like an online world that I'd want to participate in.
    - jxi 15y ago
      IANAL, but I think your #1 and #2 do apply most of the time for anything that can be seen in the public. Defamation of people's religions in a dis-respectful way is generally unlawful (though maybe not illegal). The act of giving someone the finger is generally regarded as a sign of violence. You might have more liberal views than me, but I do think it's a violent gesture. I get the point you're trying to make, but I simply disagree that for this specific case, this should be something that is generally acceptable in a public social network with 13+ year olds on it.
      - vidarh 15y ago
        Generally acceptable where? Do you believe women posting profile pics on Google+ should be required to cover everything but their eyes? There are millions of people for whom a profile pic of a woman showing her hair and rest of her face is indeed highly offensive. What about someone holding their thumb up? That is grossly offensive in a number of countries.
      - JoshTriplett 15y ago
tptacek 15y ago
He's not "seriously upset" about the photo. He thinks what's happening is ridiculous, and therefore took the time to ridicule it. He's clearly right. But it's not a moral crusade.
- twp 15y ago
  Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point. The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either. The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network? Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?
  - rhizome 15y ago
    This is how he humanizes himself? I'm not buying it.
  - 9999 15y ago
    There are public sections of G+ and private sections. If you have a private album limited to 4chan buddies or whatever with tubgirl, goatse, the lemon party, etc. and they took that down, I would find issue with it. But if you've got goatse as your public profile picture, that is an issue that Google has to deal with. I use those examples not because they are directly comparable to what Siegler put up, but because I imagine most of the people here on hn would find those images offensive. When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.
redthrowaway 15y ago
I like how humble Tom is about MySpace. All these years later, and he's still my only friend... In all seriousness, he should be proud of what they accomplished. Yes, it kind of turned into a cesspool, but there was no model of how a social network should be until Facebook came along. MySpace was an evolution of Geocities, more than it was an attempt to have the kind of "respectable" social presence that facebook shot for. MySpace was still the startup that proved social would be huge.
- devolve 15y ago
  Rather, there was no widespread knowledge and/or consensus on how a social network should be at the time. Models were a plenty. For example, Lunarstorm started out some 3 years (2000) before MySpace and in a year (2001) reached 600k users (it would plateau at 1.2m in 2007) but it had none of the Geocities stylings of MySpace. Instead it had a feed of your friends' activities, private messaging, notes (called diary), and message boards. It's just that the Internet back then was not the sharing ground it has grown into today, and people in other countries than Sweden were probably not aware of this particular site.
jroseattle 15y ago
Pretty sure this would fall under Apple's "objectionable content" policies for their app store. Wonder if MG would complain about that policy, too? :-)
- masklinn 15y ago
  According to the linked complaint by MG, he is not whining about the policy so much as about the deletion without warning: > My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger — which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere — it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture. he does also take issue with the policy itself, but as an aside not as his main point: > Bigger picture: this seems like a ridiculous thing for Google to be policing. [...] > This also seems like a slippery slope. In certain cultures, various hand gestures mean different things. Is Google also going to delete my profile picture if I have my fingers up to my chin, for example?
  - rhizome 15y ago
    It betrays his technical competence to say they went "into my account," doesn't it? I don't think it's helpful or appropriate for him to use property terms for a topic like this.
  - jroseattle 15y ago
    Just read that again, yes he did do that. I think I was responding to the vibe of MG's post, which always turns into apple-good/non-apple-bad.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Which brings home the point: You are the product Google is selling, just as the apps in the App Store. Oh, and :-)
- amatheus 15y ago
  On the other hand, lots of people in this thread are saying google's policy is the right thing in this case. Would they say the same if apple was refusing an app with a middle finger icon? A book? A song? I think they're both wrong, but I understand that having something open for all, you'll get adults but children too, and as a parent your definition of objectionable content for your children may differ. But for me, simply removing the content is wrong. Maybe better parental control technology may make the situation better.
reso 15y ago
The TechCrunch crew has a long history of "calling out" major companies on their product decisions, in the absence of any of the data or context in which such complex decisions are made. P.S. I love how Tom has turned into the elder statesman of social networks.
- commnderkeen08 15y ago
  Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of calling out Google. Always skeptical. But totally loving the elder statesman analogy. Best part about Tom"s reply is his own humility--Myspace having "decent" technology.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of self-promotion.
    - ryguytilidie 15y ago
      not to mention EVERY TECHCRUNCH WRITER's long history of self-promotion. /fyp
      - rhizome 15y ago
        I have never seen any story like "ROBIN WAUTERS WONDERS WHY ROBIN WAUTERS ISN'T IN THE HEADLINES," like you see multiple times per week with MG...on HN. Is he the most gossipy person there, now? This is usually the kind of drama you see with Perez Hilton type personalities.
        tincholio 15y ago
        Well, we had those with Arrington, but fortunately he seems to have "vanished" from the HN mind...
        rhizome 15y ago
Punishker 15y ago
MySpace was never a cesspool... it's now a musician's website for posting about bands. The only thing more stupid than the internet comments on Hacker News is Google itself: the kings of know-it-all dumbasses!
- nknight 15y ago
  The "dumbass" you're talking about co-founded MySpace, and I don't think he's ever had any professional link to Google.
Stratego 15y ago
Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel? Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line? Imbecile. That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that people who use logic for a living would have higher standards.
- kevinh 15y ago
  The line is where they, as a company, decide to put it. I would not go to a social networking site that had gore or porn polluting my feeds. Similarly, you might not go to a website that disallows any content. That's our prerogative. It's facile to paint it as a free speech argument.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Why would you subscribe to users that post gore or porn to your feeds? Tumblr has plenty of porn, but you can certainly use it without ever getting it on your dashboard. It's just a matter of, you know, not following the people who post it.
- chc 15y ago
  Suppressing racist speech is also censorship, so it seems like you're actually affirming the parallel. Since you seem to think it's self-evident that racist content should be banned and equally self-evident that this content should not be, why don't you tell us where the line is? This is very fine line to walk — you will anger somebody no matter what you do — so if you have any insights, I'm sure the people faced with the decision will appreciate them.
- VikingCoder 15y ago
  It's not censorship. Your rights have not been abridged. It's a free service with terms of use, provided by a corporation. This is not a police action by an authoritarian government, stopping people from expressing Constitutionally-protected speech in the public square. Try to buy a full-page ad in any newspaper in the country showing goatse.cx in all its glory. Businesses generally limit profanity on their services. Act surprised if you want to, but methinks the lady doth protest too much.
jsz0 15y ago
removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.
- blurbytree 15y ago
  How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it? Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.
  - kelnos 15y ago
    Sure, Google can choose to do whatever they want, but those choices have consequences. This policy could have the effect of making people feel like they can't "be themselves" on G+, and cause a drop in participation. I'm not saying this particular incident would have that effect (MG Siegler appears to not actually care), but it could for other cases.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    And we can choose to criticize them for that choice. Ain't free speech wonderful? How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it? If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.
- turing 15y ago
  That's not a valid argument. At the end of the day, if Google wants G+ to succeed they have to draw the line on offensive profile pics somewhere. Regardless of where the line falls, there will always be people who think it should be moved in one direction or another. To just say "I'm not offended by this content, Google must be doing it wrong" is ignoring the reality of the situation and failing to contribute to the discussion on how the issue could be handled better.
  - jsz0 15y ago
    I'll expand a bit on why I think they're doing it wrong. When you choose to follow/friend/circle/whatever someone you are making the choice to establish a social connection with that person. Social connections are far too broad to police. I might want to be friends with someone because they make horribly offensive jokes. I might want to be friends with someone because they produce art that could be considered offensive to someone. I might be friends with someone who I like enough to tolerate their offensive side. Whatever the dynamics of that relationship may be Google has no role in its complexities. The next problem is consistency. I can be way more offensive with words than I can be with pictures. If they want to successfully police people's relationships they will have to also delete anything I say that might be offensive to someone else even if they're not my friend and even if I'm making a private post. As a user I don't think I can possibly understand everything that might offend Google or the millions of users of Google+. That's a huge burden to put on the user. Do I really want to spend the time writing a post on Google+ that may disappear because someone I don't know finds it offensive? I don't think they're doing this yet but if they're choosing to go down this road they are taking the responsibility so they will have to someday. A middle-finger is a pretty low bar. Right off the bat you have to ban 'fuck' from all posts because they are the same meaning. The solution is pretty obvious. Either hide the profile picture until you friend/circle/whatever someone or give users the ability to rate themselves which solves a variety of other potential problems. I have no problem marking my profile NC-17 or whatever the equivalent would be. Of course it's Google's site so they can do whatever they want with it. Questioning Google's policies is like a can of soup having an existential crisis.
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yanw 15y ago
When this sort of tech pundit makes himself the center of a non-story I do my best to ignore it, I recommend that everyone do the same. Tech blogging has deteriorated to parroting PR releases and slobbering over iStuff, I draw the line at appeasing the attention whores.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  Can you suggest a news aggregator that is not frequented by the usual bullies?
  - freehunter 15y ago
    Ars Technica, for the most part. Sometimes they get a little editorial, but they're far better than most others.
devilsadvocate9 15y ago
I don't think you'd actually get in trouble for an "I hate White People" t-shirt. It would probably be seen as a political statement. We have whole college majors devoted to elucidating the evils of white people. It's hip to hate them.
Steko 15y ago
"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. It seems pretty obvious how this should work: (1) Google enables a flag for offensive photos (some automated system might work in tandem with this). (2) Someone who's offended by a photo (or automated system) flags it. (3) The user sees that someone has flagged it, might change it himself. (4) Google sees the flag and reviews the image for possible action. Some sort of adjudication record is created and available for both the user the image belongs to and anyone who reported it. (5) The user has some recourse to appeal if Google takes action to remove the user's picture. Google, having a terrible customer service background, just went with the big brother approach.
- chc 15y ago
  The fifth point is a great idea that more services need to get behind in all areas. But aside from that one, this all sounds like pointless bureaucracy and foot-dragging, and well beyond what just about any other service on the planet does. (I've moderated a number of forums, and I can't think of a one where we routinely gave people a record of how their flags were resolved.)
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  > "If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." > And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. And that's the problem with analogies relating the Internet to the real world: they often fail because the Internet doesn't work like the real world. (I will say that this does come remarkably closer to the concept of "stealing bits" than how people usually use terms like "stealing", since the original owner might not have those bits anymore, but who would leave their only copy of a picture on a site they don't own, particularly one whose policies don't include preserving your data no matter what?) Another marginally more accurate analogy, though still potentially flawed if you try to read too much into it: if you rented space in a mall, and displayed offensive material there, they might ask you to leave, or they might just close up your shop for you and kick you and your stuff out, and either way they have every right to do so.
joshu 15y ago
This page reliably crashes safari on my iPad 1. Does anyone else have this problem or am I going insane?
- christoph 15y ago
  Not going insane. It repeatedly crashed for me to. Rebooted and still had the same problem. One of the crashes lost all my tabs too.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Me too. It happens only after scrolling though. Seems really odd that Google doesnt QA it's products on the iPad.
- rpeden 15y ago
  It crashed my iPhone 4. Seems like it is giving mobile Safari problems.
- Jgrubb 15y ago
  Same here, four times.
- PanMan 15y ago
  Same here. A lot of google+ pages have this effect. It seems safari on the ipad 1 got a LOT les stable with iOS 5. It used to never crash, and now I won't even try to visit techcrunch, as it crashes 100% of the time.
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darklajid 15y ago
I would love to see the mall that turns away people wearing a shirt that gives the finger. Is this a very exaggerated example or does this thing exist out there, in the modern world?
zerostar07 15y ago
What i 'd like to know is what Tom is doing in that - now historic - profile photo.
Pedrom 15y ago
Sorry but I still don't understand why deleting that picture is such big deal? Google has the right to build their community with the rules that they want and the people eager to accept those rules. Mr Sieger has also the right to complain and he did so that should close the case right? I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people downvote that post (not sure why because I wasn't say anything offensive) and that's the kind of things that you have to accept in social sites... There are rules.. You either accept them or just move on...
- zobzu 15y ago
  The "accept or move on" rule applies less when such sites are used by the majority of the population. When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not. That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Based on that new perspective, you may understand that restricting free speech on such services is actually "big" deal (yeah, the quotes are important here. i'd go for medium deal in the current state of affairs.)
  - Pedrom 15y ago
    >That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Sorry for disagree, but I think people should have more personality and do not take decision affected by what the majority is doing. Maybe I am being too naive, but if I can't find an online community that fixes with my way of think then I am going to build one... Isn't that what Internet is all about?
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    I found your reasoning so wrong it left me momentarily at a loss for words. No, sites don't ever become subject to a different set of rules just because the majority of people use them. That kind of thinking leads down a very dangerous road. And if you still care about "to be accepted at school", grow up. Speaking as a "four-eyes" and a nerd, some of us never bothered caring about that in the first place. Unfortunately, the people that did care grew up to form "the majority of the population", leading to quite a few of the social problems that currently plague us. Free speech only applies to governments, and it applies there specifically because there you truly do have a "whether you like it or not" situation when it comes to governmental policies. It does not, and should not, extend to speech made on someone else's site. That remains entirely subject to the policies of the site owner, who may set them however they wish, keeping in mind that any choice they make may gain them some users and lose others. Now, that said, I think better solutions existed for the particular issue at hand (so to speak) than immediate deletion without notification (such as hiding potentially offensive profile pictures for people who don't have that person circled), but that remains entirely up to Google's policy. I personally think that policy ought to change somewhat, but I'd never argue that anyone other than Google has the right to determine that policy.
Splines 15y ago
Like others, I'm surprised that G+ is spending time solving this problem. Why don't they flip the switch on their safesearch technology on G+ and call it a day?
billpatrianakos 15y ago
Tom makes a great point here. Policies are policies and the difference is that this policy actually has action behind it. Oh well. Social networks don't really hide their policies and this one isn't all that radical at that. If you don't like it, find another service or comply with the rules, (or if you're really that stressed about it make your own social network). If some random 16 year old from Middle-O-Nowhere Indiana complained on his blog about the same thing we wouldn't even read past the first paragraph. But MG Siegler does it and it becomes a real issue? The only difference between Siegler and the hypothetical teenager is that Siegler is well known and can write so his tantrum gets play. Really, the issue of the offensive profile picture shouldnt be the issue at all. The issue should be whether Siegler is allowed to use his notoriety to dupe us into thinking this is an issue worthy of discussion.
buff-a 15y ago
An image showing a middle finger: banned. News content from Fox perpetuating lies that cause soldiers and civilians to die: front page in search results. Google has demonstrated with the photo that its willing to act as a censor. Now that we've agreed that censorship is ok, can we now talk about what we would like to censor?
zobzu 15y ago
You see "Google has limited resources" and "cannot warn you before removal". Made my day. ps: most removals are actually automated, and warning are (as in would be) obviously automated. And of course, nothing bad with a finger up (or even in a naked body in fact, but hey). I much prefer the "adult filter" of YouTube, which uhm, is also automated (user vote based).
gerggerg 15y ago
I think you guys are all thinking about this the wrong way. Siegler's post is about finding the lines that define acceptable content not caring about his exact photo. Knowing what a company like google defines as inappropriate is important for being able to make informed choices about what products you should use and who you should be giving all your personal data to for free.
gcb 15y ago
So much for how "social" and "private" they intend google+ to be. Do not expect a conversation with close friends there. it's an open mall. officially. And the first people migrated from facebook boasting the privacy concerns.
zak_mc_kracken 15y ago
Apple doesn't allow offensive apps in its app store either, but somehow, this has never bothered MG Siegler. Double standards.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Let's petition Google to rename it as Google Real People Store+ then.
rickmb 15y ago
Completely misses the fundamental difference between "not allowing", "not displaying" and bluntly "removing" the photo. Online companies seem to be completely insensitive to what is pretty intuitive in the physical realm: you may tell me what not to do in your shop, but don't touch my stuff.
Raphael 15y ago
Anyone else find it funny that Tom uses the same old photo of him in front of a whiteboard?

187 points by zeppelin_7 15y ago

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zitterbewegung 15y ago
I have heard of people being thrown out of mall's because they were wearing an offensive t-shirt. I think the analogy that google+ is basically private property that is open to the public. The website isn't owned by the public instead it is owned by google. The point of google censoring offensive content is to not only follow their own rules but to make the company that provides this service to still look good and keep up their public image.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  ...and, to add to your point, as a not-public organization they build this product for company benefit. They let you do things on it that they benefit from. Why on earth would they be required to let you do things that are bad for their business?
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Who says they would be required? The question is whether we should participate in their network considering these rules. Of course, if enough people decide to leave G+ due to them (which I doubt), these rules might actually becomes themselves bad for their business.
    - earbitscom 15y ago
      Sure, but good luck finding a company who cares more about letting you express your "fuck you's" than they do about money, and good luck to them in building to scale with money only from advertisers who don't mind being next to MG's middle finger.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        good luck to them in building to scale with money only from advertisers who don't mind being next to MG's middle finger. But would they have to? I mean, Google's whole business model is to match ads to the right content, and they specifically say they're good with detecting such "offensive" images, so they could simply content match advertisers who were looking for "edgy" images.
- brador 15y ago
  But, and I'm just throwing this out there so hold off on that downvote for a second, if a website has a comments section, doesn't such a feature act as something similar to a "town square"? In which case, if a website has a comments section or other area where users can interact with one another, should that area be a "public" place, and allow free speech etc.? Addition: since the purpose of free speech law is to allow anyone to say things that may well not be liked by an authority figure, companies being censors could act as a surprisingly effective loophole to free speech law. Just make all methods of communication between citizens pass through a company, who handles the censorship, leaving the tyrant free to go about their day.
  - tyree732 15y ago
    I mean, I didn't read it, but I'm sure somewhere along the way of my signing up for Google+ I agreed to their terms of service stating that they could remove whatever content they deemed unacceptable that I post or create. As for your addition, to make all methods of communications pass through a company would either require a law, which would be unconstitutional, or would require more insidious methods. The government already has plenty of insidious methods of dealing with people.
jxi 15y ago
I think it's offensive, and I would like to not see things like that pop up in my stream. Isn't this one of those things that are on the line where if just 1 person says it's offensive, then it should be treated as such. It's kind of like if there were only 10 men and 2 women in a room, then by democracy, you'd probably end up with rape being OK.
- theorique 15y ago
  So by this measure: - if anything were said / written criticizing the Bible, then a single devout Christian could deem it offensive and it would be removed? - if a woman's picture without a burkha were posted, then a single fundamentalist Muslim could declare it offensive and it would be deleted? - if a "blonde" joke were posted, then a single radical feminist could call it offensive and it would be eliminated? Doesn't sound like an online world that I'd want to participate in.
  - jxi 15y ago
    IANAL, but I think your #1 and #2 do apply most of the time for anything that can be seen in the public. Defamation of people's religions in a dis-respectful way is generally unlawful (though maybe not illegal). The act of giving someone the finger is generally regarded as a sign of violence. You might have more liberal views than me, but I do think it's a violent gesture. I get the point you're trying to make, but I simply disagree that for this specific case, this should be something that is generally acceptable in a public social network with 13+ year olds on it.
    - vidarh 15y ago
      Generally acceptable where? Do you believe women posting profile pics on Google+ should be required to cover everything but their eyes? There are millions of people for whom a profile pic of a woman showing her hair and rest of her face is indeed highly offensive. What about someone holding their thumb up? That is grossly offensive in a number of countries.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

He's not "seriously upset" about the photo. He thinks what's happening is ridiculous, and therefore took the time to ridicule it. He's clearly right. But it's not a moral crusade.

twp 15y ago
Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point. The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either. The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network? Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?
- rhizome 15y ago
  This is how he humanizes himself? I'm not buying it.
- 9999 15y ago
  There are public sections of G+ and private sections. If you have a private album limited to 4chan buddies or whatever with tubgirl, goatse, the lemon party, etc. and they took that down, I would find issue with it. But if you've got goatse as your public profile picture, that is an issue that Google has to deal with. I use those examples not because they are directly comparable to what Siegler put up, but because I imagine most of the people here on hn would find those images offensive. When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.

redthrowaway 15y ago

I like how humble Tom is about MySpace. All these years later, and he's still my only friend... In all seriousness, he should be proud of what they accomplished. Yes, it kind of turned into a cesspool, but there was no model of how a social network should be until Facebook came along. MySpace was an evolution of Geocities, more than it was an attempt to have the kind of "respectable" social presence that facebook shot for. MySpace was still the startup that proved social would be huge.

devolve 15y ago
Rather, there was no widespread knowledge and/or consensus on how a social network should be at the time. Models were a plenty. For example, Lunarstorm started out some 3 years (2000) before MySpace and in a year (2001) reached 600k users (it would plateau at 1.2m in 2007) but it had none of the Geocities stylings of MySpace. Instead it had a feed of your friends' activities, private messaging, notes (called diary), and message boards. It's just that the Internet back then was not the sharing ground it has grown into today, and people in other countries than Sweden were probably not aware of this particular site.

jroseattle 15y ago

Pretty sure this would fall under Apple's "objectionable content" policies for their app store. Wonder if MG would complain about that policy, too? :-)

masklinn 15y ago
According to the linked complaint by MG, he is not whining about the policy so much as about the deletion without warning: > My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger — which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere — it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture. he does also take issue with the policy itself, but as an aside not as his main point: > Bigger picture: this seems like a ridiculous thing for Google to be policing. [...] > This also seems like a slippery slope. In certain cultures, various hand gestures mean different things. Is Google also going to delete my profile picture if I have my fingers up to my chin, for example?
- rhizome 15y ago
  It betrays his technical competence to say they went "into my account," doesn't it? I don't think it's helpful or appropriate for him to use property terms for a topic like this.
- jroseattle 15y ago
  Just read that again, yes he did do that. I think I was responding to the vibe of MG's post, which always turns into apple-good/non-apple-bad.
AllenKids 15y ago
Which brings home the point: You are the product Google is selling, just as the apps in the App Store. Oh, and :-)
amatheus 15y ago
On the other hand, lots of people in this thread are saying google's policy is the right thing in this case. Would they say the same if apple was refusing an app with a middle finger icon? A book? A song? I think they're both wrong, but I understand that having something open for all, you'll get adults but children too, and as a parent your definition of objectionable content for your children may differ. But for me, simply removing the content is wrong. Maybe better parental control technology may make the situation better.

reso 15y ago

The TechCrunch crew has a long history of "calling out" major companies on their product decisions, in the absence of any of the data or context in which such complex decisions are made. P.S. I love how Tom has turned into the elder statesman of social networks.

commnderkeen08 15y ago
Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of calling out Google. Always skeptical. But totally loving the elder statesman analogy. Best part about Tom"s reply is his own humility--Myspace having "decent" technology.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of self-promotion.
  - ryguytilidie 15y ago
    not to mention EVERY TECHCRUNCH WRITER's long history of self-promotion. /fyp
    - rhizome 15y ago
      I have never seen any story like "ROBIN WAUTERS WONDERS WHY ROBIN WAUTERS ISN'T IN THE HEADLINES," like you see multiple times per week with MG...on HN. Is he the most gossipy person there, now? This is usually the kind of drama you see with Perez Hilton type personalities.
      - tincholio 15y ago
        Well, we had those with Arrington, but fortunately he seems to have "vanished" from the HN mind...
        rhizome 15y ago

Punishker 15y ago

MySpace was never a cesspool... it's now a musician's website for posting about bands. The only thing more stupid than the internet comments on Hacker News is Google itself: the kings of know-it-all dumbasses!

nknight 15y ago
The "dumbass" you're talking about co-founded MySpace, and I don't think he's ever had any professional link to Google.

Stratego 15y ago

Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel? Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line? Imbecile. That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that people who use logic for a living would have higher standards.

kevinh 15y ago
The line is where they, as a company, decide to put it. I would not go to a social networking site that had gore or porn polluting my feeds. Similarly, you might not go to a website that disallows any content. That's our prerogative. It's facile to paint it as a free speech argument.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Why would you subscribe to users that post gore or porn to your feeds? Tumblr has plenty of porn, but you can certainly use it without ever getting it on your dashboard. It's just a matter of, you know, not following the people who post it.
chc 15y ago
Suppressing racist speech is also censorship, so it seems like you're actually affirming the parallel. Since you seem to think it's self-evident that racist content should be banned and equally self-evident that this content should not be, why don't you tell us where the line is? This is very fine line to walk — you will anger somebody no matter what you do — so if you have any insights, I'm sure the people faced with the decision will appreciate them.
VikingCoder 15y ago
It's not censorship. Your rights have not been abridged. It's a free service with terms of use, provided by a corporation. This is not a police action by an authoritarian government, stopping people from expressing Constitutionally-protected speech in the public square. Try to buy a full-page ad in any newspaper in the country showing goatse.cx in all its glory. Businesses generally limit profanity on their services. Act surprised if you want to, but methinks the lady doth protest too much.

jsz0 15y ago

removing offensive photos It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.

blurbytree 15y ago
How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it? Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.
- kelnos 15y ago
  Sure, Google can choose to do whatever they want, but those choices have consequences. This policy could have the effect of making people feel like they can't "be themselves" on G+, and cause a drop in participation. I'm not saying this particular incident would have that effect (MG Siegler appears to not actually care), but it could for other cases.
- icebraining 15y ago
  And we can choose to criticize them for that choice. Ain't free speech wonderful? How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it? If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.
turing 15y ago
That's not a valid argument. At the end of the day, if Google wants G+ to succeed they have to draw the line on offensive profile pics somewhere. Regardless of where the line falls, there will always be people who think it should be moved in one direction or another. To just say "I'm not offended by this content, Google must be doing it wrong" is ignoring the reality of the situation and failing to contribute to the discussion on how the issue could be handled better.
- jsz0 15y ago
  I'll expand a bit on why I think they're doing it wrong. When you choose to follow/friend/circle/whatever someone you are making the choice to establish a social connection with that person. Social connections are far too broad to police. I might want to be friends with someone because they make horribly offensive jokes. I might want to be friends with someone because they produce art that could be considered offensive to someone. I might be friends with someone who I like enough to tolerate their offensive side. Whatever the dynamics of that relationship may be Google has no role in its complexities. The next problem is consistency. I can be way more offensive with words than I can be with pictures. If they want to successfully police people's relationships they will have to also delete anything I say that might be offensive to someone else even if they're not my friend and even if I'm making a private post. As a user I don't think I can possibly understand everything that might offend Google or the millions of users of Google+. That's a huge burden to put on the user. Do I really want to spend the time writing a post on Google+ that may disappear because someone I don't know finds it offensive? I don't think they're doing this yet but if they're choosing to go down this road they are taking the responsibility so they will have to someday. A middle-finger is a pretty low bar. Right off the bat you have to ban 'fuck' from all posts because they are the same meaning. The solution is pretty obvious. Either hide the profile picture until you friend/circle/whatever someone or give users the ability to rate themselves which solves a variety of other potential problems. I have no problem marking my profile NC-17 or whatever the equivalent would be. Of course it's Google's site so they can do whatever they want with it. Questioning Google's policies is like a can of soup having an existential crisis.

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yanw 15y ago

When this sort of tech pundit makes himself the center of a non-story I do my best to ignore it, I recommend that everyone do the same. Tech blogging has deteriorated to parroting PR releases and slobbering over iStuff, I draw the line at appeasing the attention whores.

zerostar07 15y ago
Can you suggest a news aggregator that is not frequented by the usual bullies?
- freehunter 15y ago
  Ars Technica, for the most part. Sometimes they get a little editorial, but they're far better than most others.

devilsadvocate9 15y ago

I don't think you'd actually get in trouble for an "I hate White People" t-shirt. It would probably be seen as a political statement. We have whole college majors devoted to elucidating the evils of white people. It's hip to hate them.

Steko 15y ago

"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. It seems pretty obvious how this should work: (1) Google enables a flag for offensive photos (some automated system might work in tandem with this). (2) Someone who's offended by a photo (or automated system) flags it. (3) The user sees that someone has flagged it, might change it himself. (4) Google sees the flag and reviews the image for possible action. Some sort of adjudication record is created and available for both the user the image belongs to and anyone who reported it. (5) The user has some recourse to appeal if Google takes action to remove the user's picture. Google, having a terrible customer service background, just went with the big brother approach.

chc 15y ago
The fifth point is a great idea that more services need to get behind in all areas. But aside from that one, this all sounds like pointless bureaucracy and foot-dragging, and well beyond what just about any other service on the planet does. (I've moderated a number of forums, and I can't think of a one where we routinely gave people a record of how their flags were resolved.)
JoshTriplett 15y ago
> "If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt." > And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking. And that's the problem with analogies relating the Internet to the real world: they often fail because the Internet doesn't work like the real world. (I will say that this does come remarkably closer to the concept of "stealing bits" than how people usually use terms like "stealing", since the original owner might not have those bits anymore, but who would leave their only copy of a picture on a site they don't own, particularly one whose policies don't include preserving your data no matter what?) Another marginally more accurate analogy, though still potentially flawed if you try to read too much into it: if you rented space in a mall, and displayed offensive material there, they might ask you to leave, or they might just close up your shop for you and kick you and your stuff out, and either way they have every right to do so.

joshu 15y ago

This page reliably crashes safari on my iPad 1. Does anyone else have this problem or am I going insane?

christoph 15y ago
Not going insane. It repeatedly crashed for me to. Rebooted and still had the same problem. One of the crashes lost all my tabs too.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Me too. It happens only after scrolling though. Seems really odd that Google doesnt QA it's products on the iPad.
rpeden 15y ago
It crashed my iPhone 4. Seems like it is giving mobile Safari problems.
Jgrubb 15y ago
Same here, four times.
PanMan 15y ago
Same here. A lot of google+ pages have this effect. It seems safari on the ipad 1 got a LOT les stable with iOS 5. It used to never crash, and now I won't even try to visit techcrunch, as it crashes 100% of the time.

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darklajid 15y ago

I would love to see the mall that turns away people wearing a shirt that gives the finger. Is this a very exaggerated example or does this thing exist out there, in the modern world?

zerostar07 15y ago

What i 'd like to know is what Tom is doing in that - now historic - profile photo.

Pedrom 15y ago

Sorry but I still don't understand why deleting that picture is such big deal? Google has the right to build their community with the rules that they want and the people eager to accept those rules. Mr Sieger has also the right to complain and he did so that should close the case right? I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people downvote that post (not sure why because I wasn't say anything offensive) and that's the kind of things that you have to accept in social sites... There are rules.. You either accept them or just move on...

zobzu 15y ago
The "accept or move on" rule applies less when such sites are used by the majority of the population. When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not. That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Based on that new perspective, you may understand that restricting free speech on such services is actually "big" deal (yeah, the quotes are important here. i'd go for medium deal in the current state of affairs.)
- Pedrom 15y ago
  >That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is). Sorry for disagree, but I think people should have more personality and do not take decision affected by what the majority is doing. Maybe I am being too naive, but if I can't find an online community that fixes with my way of think then I am going to build one... Isn't that what Internet is all about?
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  I found your reasoning so wrong it left me momentarily at a loss for words. No, sites don't ever become subject to a different set of rules just because the majority of people use them. That kind of thinking leads down a very dangerous road. And if you still care about "to be accepted at school", grow up. Speaking as a "four-eyes" and a nerd, some of us never bothered caring about that in the first place. Unfortunately, the people that did care grew up to form "the majority of the population", leading to quite a few of the social problems that currently plague us. Free speech only applies to governments, and it applies there specifically because there you truly do have a "whether you like it or not" situation when it comes to governmental policies. It does not, and should not, extend to speech made on someone else's site. That remains entirely subject to the policies of the site owner, who may set them however they wish, keeping in mind that any choice they make may gain them some users and lose others. Now, that said, I think better solutions existed for the particular issue at hand (so to speak) than immediate deletion without notification (such as hiding potentially offensive profile pictures for people who don't have that person circled), but that remains entirely up to Google's policy. I personally think that policy ought to change somewhat, but I'd never argue that anyone other than Google has the right to determine that policy.

Splines 15y ago

Like others, I'm surprised that G+ is spending time solving this problem. Why don't they flip the switch on their safesearch technology on G+ and call it a day?

billpatrianakos 15y ago

Tom makes a great point here. Policies are policies and the difference is that this policy actually has action behind it. Oh well. Social networks don't really hide their policies and this one isn't all that radical at that. If you don't like it, find another service or comply with the rules, (or if you're really that stressed about it make your own social network). If some random 16 year old from Middle-O-Nowhere Indiana complained on his blog about the same thing we wouldn't even read past the first paragraph. But MG Siegler does it and it becomes a real issue? The only difference between Siegler and the hypothetical teenager is that Siegler is well known and can write so his tantrum gets play. Really, the issue of the offensive profile picture shouldnt be the issue at all. The issue should be whether Siegler is allowed to use his notoriety to dupe us into thinking this is an issue worthy of discussion.

buff-a 15y ago

An image showing a middle finger: banned. News content from Fox perpetuating lies that cause soldiers and civilians to die: front page in search results. Google has demonstrated with the photo that its willing to act as a censor. Now that we've agreed that censorship is ok, can we now talk about what we would like to censor?

zobzu 15y ago

You see "Google has limited resources" and "cannot warn you before removal". Made my day. ps: most removals are actually automated, and warning are (as in would be) obviously automated. And of course, nothing bad with a finger up (or even in a naked body in fact, but hey). I much prefer the "adult filter" of YouTube, which uhm, is also automated (user vote based).

gerggerg 15y ago

I think you guys are all thinking about this the wrong way. Siegler's post is about finding the lines that define acceptable content not caring about his exact photo. Knowing what a company like google defines as inappropriate is important for being able to make informed choices about what products you should use and who you should be giving all your personal data to for free.

gcb 15y ago

So much for how "social" and "private" they intend google+ to be. Do not expect a conversation with close friends there. it's an open mall. officially. And the first people migrated from facebook boasting the privacy concerns.

zak_mc_kracken 15y ago

Apple doesn't allow offensive apps in its app store either, but somehow, this has never bothered MG Siegler. Double standards.

AllenKids 15y ago
Let's petition Google to rename it as Google Real People Store+ then.

rickmb 15y ago

Completely misses the fundamental difference between "not allowing", "not displaying" and bluntly "removing" the photo. Online companies seem to be completely insensitive to what is pretty intuitive in the physical realm: you may tell me what not to do in your shop, but don't touch my stuff.

Raphael 15y ago

Anyone else find it funny that Tom uses the same old photo of him in front of a whiteboard?