9 ms·

Google suspends romance author's account for writing sexually explicit content

207 points by gcr 3y ago

HERBEI014 3y ago
[flagged]
Zambyte 3y ago
Google repeatedly letting it be known that they are simply a huge liability.
- diggan 3y ago
  American companies are prudes, as the country tends to lean that way, nothing new really. Seems people never learn though, which is more worrisome.
  - isodev 3y ago
    Many years ago, I used to work for a company specialising in IoT devices. One of their projects was about teledildonics and required the purchase of some ... testing gear. At the time they had their book keeping on Google Drive and when the invoice for said purchases had passed through their emails, their entire workspace was suspended for a couple of days until they could clear it up.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    The companies are prudes because the countries they operate in, as well as the payment providers they use, have laws and regulations regarding age-rated content. Having terms & conditions and blocking users that violate them is easier than dealing with the legal problems that may cause them. Restricting access entirely is another way, like what US based websites do for EU based visitors, or what Pornhub does for Florida.
    - diggan 3y ago
      I think the prudence is why the US have those laws, regulations and morals, not the other way around which you seem to point towards.
thrdbndndn 3y ago
The post only says "An author lost access to her explicit writing", which sound to me that she cannot access that document anymore, not her account got suspended (I skimmed over comments and didn't see people said otherwise). Of course in this particular case, it might be worse (because she lost her entire writing if without backup), but it's not the same as losing an account. Anyway, it won't surprise me if she did also lose the account. In my experience, any shared documents or files (for Google Drive) are always very strictly moderated.
- diggan 3y ago
  The Instagram post (https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO) states: > one romance author explain that all her work was suspended by Google [...] She has no access to these files or her other works That would seem like an account suspension, not just one document. Edit: I guess it might also be a Google Drive/Docs specific suspension, rather than Google-wide.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    I don't think Google does per-service suspensions, except for Google pay/adwords/adsense/YouTube.
    - Sayrus 3y ago
      I'm not sure if the author is in Europe but DMA lead to Google offering services separately[1]. The services are: Search, YouTube, Ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, Google Maps. I think Workspace (Mail, Docs, Drive, ...) are still a single service. If I remember correctly DMA or another recent law targeting gatekeepers also requires suspension to be followed with a way to appeal, proper justification and to only suspend "one service" (you don't loose your Mail if you get Youtube strikes). [1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14202510?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14202510?hl=en
      - 3y ago
23B1 3y ago
The only thing I use gdocs for is collaboration. What are some of y'all's favorite alternatives?
- gostsamo 3y ago
  backups in managed next cloud in hetzner.
- diydsp 3y ago
  Notion is okay. a bit heavy mem-wise(). i don't know how much it costs. () Recently I had a tab taking 644MB in Chromium (with no pix). After a ctrl-A, ctrl-C, and ctrl-V into notepad++, it was 52kB. That's about 10,000x...
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Notion is $99/yr + $99/yr for AI access. While its database is useful, having no offline access is a big bummer. I don't use its AI features.
- rabbits77 3y ago
  I always liked Quip. https://quip.com/ https://quip.com/
- RedShift1 3y ago
  Self hosted owncloud with onlyoffice
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I continue to use Dropbox & Google Drive, with weekly backups to a hard drive, which are versioned with Borg.
- otachack 3y ago
  I remember this from HN or otherwise when looking for an alternative solution: https://cryptpad.org/ https://cryptpad.org/ There's a public instance in France to try it out.
paxys 3y ago
"I keep all my work on Google/Apple/Dropbox/Office" is really the new version of "I kept all my work on my hard drive and didn't back it up". All of these companies have shown repeatedly that they will cut off your access with no notice for any or no reason and with no recourse. Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability.
- the_other 3y ago
  They were always a liability. They were only ever "the smart thing" because they took some hassle away at the point of creating the backup.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    They can still be smart for off-site backups in case of local catastrophic issues (like your house burning down). But they are just part of the solution and shouldn't be a single point of failure.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  All your eggs in 1 basket is never good. Local hard drive + a cloud provider should give you like 99.999999% reliability
  - jlkuester7 3y ago
    > Local hard drive + a cloud provider This has been my general strategy for personal data. I have also been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable way to get long-term very-cold storage (e.g. backups of family pictures). Something that would last decades just sitting in a fire-box somewhere (reasonable temps, no moisture). Been considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC, but interested to know if anyone has other ideas...
    - Filligree 3y ago
      Don't quote me on this, but Bluray is apparently supposed to be long-term stable. I haven't explored the claim.
jlkuester7 3y ago
Good open source self-hostable alternatives exist! https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ (no affiliation, just a longtime happy user) is great for file sharing and even collaborative online document editing. If you do not want to host your own instance, there are many great providers who will host one for you at a low cost.
- nicbou 3y ago
  My nextcloud instance killed itself during an update. I wrote a blog post about it and people regularly write to thank me, so it wasn't an isolated instance. Syncthing is much simpler, and practically bulletproof. It really just works.
  - jlkuester7 3y ago
    Yeah, Nextcloud is not the first thing I would reach for if all you want is "simple" and "bulletproof". I am not a pro-SRE, but I have managed, with the help of backups, the successfully run a Nextcloud instance for a small group of people for the past ~5+ years. It has not been without glitches, but the challenges have been no worse than any other service I host. The more features you have, the more things can go wrong...
  - BanazirGalbasi 3y ago
    I have never once had Nextcloud updates work properly. It doesn't matter if I update as soon as the new version is ready or if I wait long enough for my current version to go EoL, the updater breaks something critical and my instance is non-functional. Despite that, nextcloud/owncloud do what I want/need and I'm not sure if Syncthing does. So I keep stubbornly re-trying and just spin up a new instance when the old one dies.
    - wazoox 3y ago
      Weird, I've been running and updating NextCloud since version 13, and I never had any problems as long as I didn't try to upgrade 2 release up at once and carefully applied the recommended database updates, etc.
sriyati 3y ago
[flagged]
endisneigh 3y ago
Doesn’t seem like a big deal - unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing. Google really needs to stop preemptively locking accounts, though. They also need to warn ahead of time when someone is going to do something “bad”.
- inetknght 3y ago
  > unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing Ahh you think Discord has better policies? You might want to rethink that.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    Ironically, I think the users are partly to blame for that. They were definitely complaining about some of the stuff that was on discord and discord then stepped up their enforcement of everything.
    - wredue 3y ago
      I mean. For a time, I couldn’t use discord for game parties cause 99% of the time, it was just man-children yelling n-bombs. I can very much see why people might’ve wanted some clean up.
      - Aerroon 3y ago
        But that's just a question of which kind of discord servers you're in. That stuff is still going to happen, you just won't be invited to those servers. I never encountered that in discord and I've been using it daily since early 2016.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      It was less the users, and more hitpieces from censor-happy journalists. Kind of forces your hand when journalists are digging up relatively obscure discord "servers" with edgy jokes and racism, or trying to get 'activist' discords they disagree with banned, or finding leaked military documents and framing them all as Discord's fault.
dbspin 3y ago
This is terrifying. I'm a writer, and all my work is backed up on Google. Some of it likely only exists there. I'm literally shaking my head here in incredulity. How could anyone at Google have thought that this was a good idea?
- Filligree 3y ago
  From the rumor mill: The beta-reader reported the author for CP. I'm not sure there's much of a story here.
  - darby_eight 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Hizonner 3y ago
    It's a "story" if any random idiot can make a random claim about your work and get you cut off. For that matter, it's a "story" if you're exposed to judgements that affect your livelihood being made by automated crap and "reviewed" only by overworked near-slaves with almost no agency of their own.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      That wouldn't be a 'random idiot'; it would be the story's beta-reader, and someone the document is shared with. Also- if it's true, then... what else was google supposed to do here?
      - Hizonner 3y ago
        > That wouldn't be a 'random idiot'; it would be the story's beta-reader, and someone the document is shared with. The System(TM) doesn't know what a "beta-reader" is, and will react the same way to any random idiot's report. You're pretending that Google somehow responds to categories that neither Google's policies, Google's automated systems, nor probably many of Google's employees and agents, even know or care about. Not that a "beta-reader" can't also be an idiot anyway. > Also- if it's true, then... You seem to be relying on the idea that Google might have been legally required to act against child pornography, so the "it" that would have to be true would be that the text was in fact child pornography. As far as I can find, US child pornography laws don't mention or apply to pure text. Even if the unsubstantiated rumor you're spreading were true, then the unsubstantiated claim underlying it still could not possibly be true. Any automated system or set of procedures that acts on the impossible supposition that a pure text document could even possibly be "child pornography" under those laws is automatically wrong. ... and the more credible claim is that the suspension was for "sexually explicit content", not "illegal child pornography", or the ever-popular "illegal obscenity", or illegal anything. That's a purely voluntary choice by Google. And even if that weren't true in this case, it is definitely true in many, many others. > what else was google supposed to do here? For the legal side, notice that text can never be "child pornography" in the US, and have it actually read for violations of any other law you're worried about by somebody who's actually qualified to evaluate its legal status and actually taking the time to do so. For the "completely voluntarily chosen Google policy" side, which is the one that actually seems to be at stake here, hold off on doing anything until the material has been reviewed by a human who actually understands the issues, actually has authority to make meaningful decisions, and has the time and motivation to do so. Also, don't adopt pointless, silly policies. Of course, commercial incentives assure that Google won't do any of that. And neither will any other provider of a similar cloud service. So what every single user should do is get the hell off of all of those services. That would be a good idea even if policies weren't silly and if policy enforcement weren't hair-trigger, error-prone, capricious garbage, but it's especially important because this and other stories give every reason to believe that they are. On all of them. That applies even if there is no commercially viable approach to handling these issues correctly. If a service can't be offered in any reasonable way, then that service should not be offered, or at least should not be used. "What are they supposed to do?" isn't a valid reason to use an unreliable, dangerous service. ... and the "story" is that many, many people are in fact using dangerous systems and should be moving off of them.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
The other day, I saw a movie scene on YouTube where a guy is knife-fighting with another guy. There is a stab in the throat at the end, where all the life drains from his face. Blood is gushing and we see a human being kill another human being. I really don't understand why Google (and Western society) condones this sort of content while having a near zero-tolerance policy towards sex and love. But I figured it out today: violent media re-directs our rage against the unsustainable culture and gives it an outlet. I'm not bashing on violent entertainment BTW: I like martial arts movies. But it does have a deeper function: to give us a sense of justice (good versus bad), and distract us away from the atrocities of consumerism (destruction of the planet which gave us life). In short, violent media HELPS global capitalism and its destructiveness. Then why is sex banned? Yes, we can look for the superficial reasons, like "oooh, parents don't want their kids to view this stuff". But that does not even apply here, especially because this was in a private Google docs. No, sex is treated harshly because it is primal and goes against civilization: it represents a more primal human connection, and human connection is antithetical to consumerism and the destruction of the environment. Yes, we can also look for historical religious reasons, but there is a reason why such religious motivation survived, and other religious practices do NOT: any social practice which survives does so because it confers benefits to those who promote the practice. In this case, it confers benefits to the capitalists.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Watching violent films doesn't make you violent. Watching sexual content does (occasionally) make you want to have sex. There really isnt anything more to it than that. People who want to censor sexual content are accurately assessing its disposition to arouse audiences; and accurately assessing violent film's disposition to induce catharsis.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Citation needed...
    - mjburgess 3y ago
jsemrau 3y ago
The new puritans.
shagie 3y ago
Scrolling through the screen shots linked on Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO... ) > I find out at midnight tomorrow if I lose my docs all together. I've transferred them to word and backed up onto my hard drive. Further along ... > ... As of today, I'm unable to share my docs with my alpha and Beta readers. After reading the policies the only rule my docs "violate" is that they contain ̶s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ explicit content. I've since backed everything up to my computer and filled an appeal. ... Further along ... > As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment. Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. After processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.
- shagie 3y ago
  In the Instagram screen shots was a message that I believe linked to Abuse Program Policies & Enforcement - https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505 https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505 > Sexually Explicit Material > Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes.
- btbuildem 3y ago
  > My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it There's a third outcome: the appeal is never finalized, all you get is "your account is suspended while under review" and it leaves you with absolutely no recourse. Maybe if you know someone at the company internally, or have a way to effectively threaten someone with decision-making power there -- otherwise, it's permanent limbo.
hoosieree 3y ago
Wow, I'm so glad I use $OTHER_SERVICE. This will definitely never happen to me.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yep, I wonder how many of these stories it's going to take for people to learn that if the data is not on your physical metal, inside of your physical property, it's not yours.
- ijijijjij 3y ago
  upload an encrypted version?
kyrra 3y ago
The currently linked site is just a forum post, which links to Instagram, which is a screenshot of a discord chat. Instagram has the screenshots at least: https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO/ https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO... It does look like the author just lost access to docs they shared with others, not their entire account. Author is currently appealing. We have seen this kind of thing in the past. Drive has to be careful, as people will use private drive links and doc links (could have embedded images) to share explicit material that may be illegal. From my understanding, Google will start running some kind of automation against things when they are shared with other people if they might contain things that could be illegal. I have no idea what the heuristics are, or how often they get it wrong. But they are kind of between a rock and a hard place. Googler, opinions are my own.
- gcr 3y ago
  Author’s last screenshot states that her whole account was frozen just after submitting the appeal and she no longer has access to her docs. I would have far less of an issue with this if certain docs were marked unsharable, or even if her entire account could no longer share, but losing access to previous work written before the policy change feels like a big misstep to me. Here’s what she said: > “As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.”
  - beeboobaa3 3y ago
    > Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review Google presuming guilt until proven innocent. An appeal locking the account in retaliation is absolutely disgusting.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Meta does this too. My guess it appears as some signal to some "AI" somewhere that this is Legit Bad Stuff, and they then send it over to an underpaid overworked exploited moderator somewhere who doesn't care, and just takes it to the next level.
vsnf 3y ago
Something related I’ve been wondering about is the change in language catalyzed by social media companies and their morality / fear of advertisers. You see it especially in TikTok videos. When people aren’t straight up censoring themselves with bleeps, dead audio, or cuts, they use euphemisms instead: kill -> unalive, rape -> grape, sex -> seggs. Even more concerning is that what is considered in need of censoring is expanding. I saw a video where the creator censored “white” when referring to Caucasians.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Part of it is feared censoring / demotion in the algorithms; part is hypersensitivity / hyperconsiderate, because some people have indicated they are triggered by certain words, and I'm guessing another part is maximising reach. That is, if you use explicit language, your content may be marked as 12, 16, 18+ content, and half your engagement may drop because people in comment sections seriously underestimate how much "engagement" a teenager with a phone and infinite time generates.
  - vsnf 3y ago
    Yes, those are the the proximate causes. I'm worried about the effect these causes will induce going forward. With enough time, this expanded hypersensitivity will move out of TikTok and into wider culture permanently.
- somedude895 3y ago
  You see that on Youtube as well. Creators will also censor su*cide, both in audio and video, because Google / advertisers don't like sensitive content and the video will make a lot less money if Google thinks it's about mental illness or suicide.
  - indrora 3y ago
    Google will straight up take down your videos if you mention suicide or death now. Two creators I follow had to re-upload censored versions of their videos after the youtube audio filter decided that "dead" was too spicy.
kome 3y ago
americans-try-not-to-be-puritanical-and-impose-their-bigotted-moral-standards-on the-rest-of-the-world-by-the-means-of-their-techno-feudalist-corporation's challange: impossible.
- buescher 3y ago
  It's weird and paradoxical isn't it? I have no idea what this lady was writing, but smutty romance novels and horror novels with weird sex scenes have been sufficiently acceptable to "community standards" all over the US to have been available in grocery stores at least as early as the seventies. Not so frequently seen anymore, but that's a death-of-brick-and-mortar-and-print-media problem. You could leave one on your desk at work without a visit from HR (just don't leave it open to a spicy page or read aloud from it). But share similar material from your google drive? I don't know! I really don't.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no customer service, and delegate more and more to "AI" to manage these things. This has all been giving me anxiety since the time I had my Facebook account partially locked for over a month because I shared a picture of my son at the beach with no shirt on and their "AI" couldn't tell the difference between him and a girl because he has long hair and somehow concluded I was sharing explicit imagery. When I appealed, they extended my lock. I worked @ Google for 10 years and still wouldn't trust them even though I could possibly find someone on the inside to ring some bells for me (questionable). I backed up all my photos recently and am trying to figure out what to do about email.
- squirrel 3y ago
  Google Takeout will give you an archive of your email (and everything else).
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Yes I've done that recently, too. But it's really something that needs to be done periodically. By "figure out about email" I meant: where to move my email & whole life to. I'm thinking about registering a domain and taking up residence on another email hosting provider that lets me use my own domain. I have started self-hosting my own photos on my own local NAS running Immich, with limited, controlled exposure via tailscale for when I'm out.
    - whitehexagon 3y ago
      I switched to hetzner hosted 'own domain' a few weeks ago, which includes webmail (I use thunderbird client). YouTube failed to delete, even though I'd deleted all content a couple years back, but deleting the complete google account worked! (and feels great!) Funny thing was that I was then blocked from sending email to other gmail accounts. Turns out there are a couple simple switches in the hetzner web interface to enable some of the anti-spam measures these big tech receivers require.
nickelpro 3y ago
Misleading title, none of the authors involved are claiming they're locked out of the accounts. The exact quote from the OP's mastadon is "An author lost access to her explicit writing when she shared it with alpha and beta readers." Google says you may not use its services to distribute sexually explicit content. This is a very common and reasonable policy. The authors violated that rule, and while none of them are being straightforward about exactly what happened what seems to be the case is the violating content has been removed/locked.
- causi 3y ago
  This information wildly alters the circumstances. Your comment should be at the top of the page.
- gcr 3y ago
  That’s not what the author wrote. A popup said her account was frozen. See the last screenshot. “As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.“
  - shoelessone 3y ago
    I have no position here but reading this a few times (and not digging further for additional context) it's unclear of what the situation is here, at least to me. > ... I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment ... "at the moment" makes it sound like they were not on a computer, or out to eat or something where they couldn't easily check? > ...I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal... Makes it sound like they still have access to their account and were able to access the content in order to download a copy?
    - gcr 3y ago
      Your point about "at the moment" makes sense. I should have considered that when submitting. However, the point about downloading to her laptop is consistent with her story. Here's what we definitively know: 1. First, something about her ability to share her docs was disabled, but in a way that still left them accessible to her; 2. She then submitted an appeal; 3. Upon submitting the appeal, her account was summarily frozen pending review, and her docs were no longer accessible to her.
bradley13 3y ago
The cloud is "someone else's computer". You don't make the rules, they do. Keep your stuff on your own system, and maybe use the cloud for backup. Honestly, I don't even recommend that, unless you have actually read the T&C. The simplest solution is to get two memory sticks and copy your data to them. One stays with you, the other is in a safe-deposit box. Rotate them regularly. It's really not that much effort. That all said, WTF? Is this a new round of Puritanism come to visit? Why does Google care if adults are writing porn and sharing it?
- ijijijjij 3y ago
  > The simplest solution is to get two memory sticks and copy your data to them. One stays with you, the other is in a safe-deposit box. Rotate them regularly. It's really not that much effort. Another option is to keep a memory stick is in your car or even at work, if you keep it encrypted.
zb3 3y ago
What's wrong with sexually explicit content? Is Google controlled by Taliban or something?
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Where have you been living for the last 30 years? Most major tech companies have similar policies, for better or worse.
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    They usually have them in order to not spook the advertisers who don't want to see their ad near anything remotely objectionable. Don't see why they care about somebody sharing a document from their Drive.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Not sure where you're getting your information from: Google platformed hardcore porn up until 2015 [0]. Tumblr permitted it through 2018 [1], while Reddit and Twitter allow it today. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098875 ("Google bans 'explicit' adult content from Blogger blogs", 2015) - "Until today, Google's Blogger platform previously allowed "images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity," and stated that "Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944 ("Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th", 2018; 464 comments)
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Google operates in many countries and is subject to many laws. Even in the US websites need to check whether you're over 18 to view (or read?) pornography, and Google Docs does not appear to have an age check at 18. Do you think this is an important feature that Docs should be working on? I'm not sure I do personally.
  - struant 3y ago
overflyer 3y ago
Fuck yeaahhhh murrica ...we like all kinds of sick fucked up shit but nonono don't show my kid any titties on TV or lord behold text with sexually revealing vocabulary. Laughs in European ...
mrtksn 3y ago
Wow, the state of freedom of speech is probably worse than the soviets ATM, since during the soviet times the speech scanning tech was primitive and the thought control was rudimentary and blunt. Back in the old school totalitarian days at least your writings were banned after they were written. Even 10 years ago it was fine, the worst was about blocking keywords and making printers refuse to print images of money. What a sad state of affairs for the civilisation that used to claim to be about freedom not too long ago, even when The Matrix was released the internet was just catching on with the promise of global freedom. It turned into personalised police.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I'm not sure why you think getting your account blocked is equatable to being sent to the gulags.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    You are unsure because you are making both a strawman argument and historical inaccuracy. You don't go straight to gulags most of the time. Most of the time the officer screams at you and takes your books and notes your name. I also don't claim that this is the same as being sent to a gulag. This is just suppression of speech and mind control. It's going to be so much fun when those in power lose power to those they hate. Then they will be introduced to the value of privacy and freedom of speech.
rasengan 3y ago
If you're not self hosting in 2024, you're doing it wrong. With our internet connections being so fast and plethora of server daemons out there, there's really no excuse.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  An unfortunately reasonable excuse is the ever-increasing complexity of the systems most people access. Trying to host something on my pocketable computer with cellular access ranges from nightmarish to impossible, for no good reason. And that's even on the Linux-based option (Android).
b800h 3y ago
This looks as though the author shared the document with around 20 people, which combined with the nature of the content would have flagged the author for sharing explicit spam. May be less of a big deal than is being suggested.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Or just that it got flagged for review, and upon review was found to be in violation of the terms of service perhaps? The ToS say you can't distribute sexually explicit material.
chucke1992 3y ago
Puritans are taking over.
kmfrk 3y ago
When YouTube Gaming was doing livestreaming, people who posted in stream chats also risked having their entire accounts flagged. In the EU, Google now offer the option of separating your Google accounts from each other (Gmail, YouTube, etc), but someone warned me that it broke a lot of stuff for their friends, so it sounds a little like the usual malicious compliance with regulators we're used to. Has anyone in the EU actually taken Google up on the offer and split up their Google/Alphabet accounts, and did you live to tell the story?
- Lacusch 3y ago
  I didn't because of what you mentioned: I don't want to break all my stuff. But I would also be happy to hear what others have to say.
Havoc 3y ago
Companies need to stop being morality police
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Do they also need to stop meeting legal obligations such as age verification for distributing/viewing sexually explicit material?
  - Havoc 3y ago
    Legal obligations <> morality police and you know it
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      This is my point. Are Google being "morality police" here, or are they just meeting some possible legal requirements (IANAL)? All things being equal, a company would most likely rather do nothing, as that's the cheapest option. The fact they aren't suggests a good motivating reason, and potential legal obligations trump personal moral opinions, which are hard to pin down anyway in a large multinational company.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bsuvc 3y ago
It sounds like the author got her account suspended after sharing ("distributing" in Google's view) the book's sexually explicit content. Here is Google's Program Policies document that their Terms of Service references: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Csexually-explicit-material https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Csexua... The section about Sexually Explicit Material says: > Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes I'm not defending Google's actions here. I'm just trying to interpret what led to this situation and what it means in a general sense.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  probably an automation fuckup as this is clearly "artistic" in nature
AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
Cases like this always make me think of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. 3 copies of the data, 2 different media, and 1 off site. I sometimes feel like I'm paranoid when backup up my files and photos like this until I read stories like this. I don't know how people outside of IT would even think of making 3 copies.
perihelions 3y ago
For the curious, here's what Google's official corporate communications on this general topic were, back in 2015: - "Until today, Google's Blogger platform previously allowed "images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity," and stated that "Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-content-from-blogger-blogs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-con... Everything surrounding this current zeitgeist is a recent cultural development. It was not always this way.
zackmorris 3y ago
How about a law that states: If a business profits from the personal data of its users, then it must back up their data for a duration (say 3 years after upload) and make that data available to them, even if it removes that data from public access due to terms of service (TOS) violations. Failure to do so would result in the business being dissolved, this clause would mainly be to protect stakeholders who go out of business and can't afford to maintain backups. This would work similarly to how a bank must be FDIC insured to lend out its customer deposits. Data is money in the information age and needs similar protections, especially with the rise of AI and profits generated from derivative works. A business which refuses to follow this law would be unaccredited, meaning that Google would be unaccredited in this case, so probably nobody should be using their services. IANAL, but personally I might extend this to work something like personally identifiable information (PII) laws, where all of the user's data is considered private, but part or all of it may be shared publicly under the TOS which the user agrees to. The sharing would be at the discretion of the business, but the data would always belong to the user under copyright law until proven otherwise. The process of proving copyright ownership would first require full sharing of the data back to the user under court discovery laws. The crux of the matter is that we have laws preventing the sharing of PII, but to my knowledge we don't have laws that protect access to a user's own information. Which seems doubly odd since companies profit from that data. Holding a user's data for ransom so that a business can make money from it seems akin to extortion, although I can't find the exact word for it. Maybe the California Consumer Privacy Act of (CCPA) or similar laws could be extended to protect access to one's own information? https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/sites/default/files/course-materials/A4ID_DataProtectionLaw%20.pdf https://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/sites/default/files/c... (pdf) Apologies if what I'm suggesting already exists, in which case filing a lawsuit should be straightforward.
johnea 3y ago
The modern puritanism is really shocking to a '60s child 8-/ How we've regressed...
bosco_mcnasty 3y ago
truly the darkest side of these is the opportunity to exploit if someone shares a document with the internet with read/write access, can I upload smut (or anything very naughty or illegal) onto their google doc from some anon connection/account? Can I get them banned thusly? Can I log into their wifi and post threats on whatever renowned toxic boards and again, get a person in trouble? The problem with the right-think industrial complex is the heavy hand itself can be fooled easily and thus weaponized.
raydev 3y ago
Since this relates to Google Docs, is anyone aware of open source hostable replacements for Google Docs? Rich text editing, inline comments, maybe concurrent editing as features?

207 points by gcr 3y ago

HERBEI014 3y ago

[flagged]

Zambyte 3y ago

Google repeatedly letting it be known that they are simply a huge liability.

diggan 3y ago
American companies are prudes, as the country tends to lean that way, nothing new really. Seems people never learn though, which is more worrisome.
- isodev 3y ago
  Many years ago, I used to work for a company specialising in IoT devices. One of their projects was about teledildonics and required the purchase of some ... testing gear. At the time they had their book keeping on Google Drive and when the invoice for said purchases had passed through their emails, their entire workspace was suspended for a couple of days until they could clear it up.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  The companies are prudes because the countries they operate in, as well as the payment providers they use, have laws and regulations regarding age-rated content. Having terms & conditions and blocking users that violate them is easier than dealing with the legal problems that may cause them. Restricting access entirely is another way, like what US based websites do for EU based visitors, or what Pornhub does for Florida.
  - diggan 3y ago
    I think the prudence is why the US have those laws, regulations and morals, not the other way around which you seem to point towards.

thrdbndndn 3y ago

The post only says "An author lost access to her explicit writing", which sound to me that she cannot access that document anymore, not her account got suspended (I skimmed over comments and didn't see people said otherwise). Of course in this particular case, it might be worse (because she lost her entire writing if without backup), but it's not the same as losing an account. Anyway, it won't surprise me if she did also lose the account. In my experience, any shared documents or files (for Google Drive) are always very strictly moderated.

diggan 3y ago
The Instagram post (https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO) states: > one romance author explain that all her work was suspended by Google [...] She has no access to these files or her other works That would seem like an account suspension, not just one document. Edit: I guess it might also be a Google Drive/Docs specific suspension, rather than Google-wide.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I don't think Google does per-service suspensions, except for Google pay/adwords/adsense/YouTube.
  - Sayrus 3y ago
    I'm not sure if the author is in Europe but DMA lead to Google offering services separately[1]. The services are: Search, YouTube, Ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, Google Maps. I think Workspace (Mail, Docs, Drive, ...) are still a single service. If I remember correctly DMA or another recent law targeting gatekeepers also requires suspension to be followed with a way to appeal, proper justification and to only suspend "one service" (you don't loose your Mail if you get Youtube strikes). [1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14202510?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14202510?hl=en
    - 3y ago

23B1 3y ago

The only thing I use gdocs for is collaboration. What are some of y'all's favorite alternatives?

gostsamo 3y ago
backups in managed next cloud in hetzner.
diydsp 3y ago
Notion is okay. a bit heavy mem-wise(). i don't know how much it costs. () Recently I had a tab taking 644MB in Chromium (with no pix). After a ctrl-A, ctrl-C, and ctrl-V into notepad++, it was 52kB. That's about 10,000x...
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Notion is $99/yr + $99/yr for AI access. While its database is useful, having no offline access is a big bummer. I don't use its AI features.
rabbits77 3y ago
I always liked Quip. https://quip.com/ https://quip.com/
RedShift1 3y ago
Self hosted owncloud with onlyoffice
bayindirh 3y ago
I continue to use Dropbox & Google Drive, with weekly backups to a hard drive, which are versioned with Borg.
otachack 3y ago
I remember this from HN or otherwise when looking for an alternative solution: https://cryptpad.org/ https://cryptpad.org/ There's a public instance in France to try it out.

paxys 3y ago

"I keep all my work on Google/Apple/Dropbox/Office" is really the new version of "I kept all my work on my hard drive and didn't back it up". All of these companies have shown repeatedly that they will cut off your access with no notice for any or no reason and with no recourse. Cloud backups used to be a smart thing to do. Now they are a liability.

the_other 3y ago
They were always a liability. They were only ever "the smart thing" because they took some hassle away at the point of creating the backup.
- giantg2 3y ago
  They can still be smart for off-site backups in case of local catastrophic issues (like your house burning down). But they are just part of the solution and shouldn't be a single point of failure.
brianwawok 3y ago
All your eggs in 1 basket is never good. Local hard drive + a cloud provider should give you like 99.999999% reliability
- jlkuester7 3y ago
  > Local hard drive + a cloud provider This has been my general strategy for personal data. I have also been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable way to get long-term very-cold storage (e.g. backups of family pictures). Something that would last decades just sitting in a fire-box somewhere (reasonable temps, no moisture). Been considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC, but interested to know if anyone has other ideas...
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Don't quote me on this, but Bluray is apparently supposed to be long-term stable. I haven't explored the claim.

jlkuester7 3y ago

Good open source self-hostable alternatives exist! https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ (no affiliation, just a longtime happy user) is great for file sharing and even collaborative online document editing. If you do not want to host your own instance, there are many great providers who will host one for you at a low cost.

nicbou 3y ago
My nextcloud instance killed itself during an update. I wrote a blog post about it and people regularly write to thank me, so it wasn't an isolated instance. Syncthing is much simpler, and practically bulletproof. It really just works.
- jlkuester7 3y ago
  Yeah, Nextcloud is not the first thing I would reach for if all you want is "simple" and "bulletproof". I am not a pro-SRE, but I have managed, with the help of backups, the successfully run a Nextcloud instance for a small group of people for the past ~5+ years. It has not been without glitches, but the challenges have been no worse than any other service I host. The more features you have, the more things can go wrong...
- BanazirGalbasi 3y ago
  I have never once had Nextcloud updates work properly. It doesn't matter if I update as soon as the new version is ready or if I wait long enough for my current version to go EoL, the updater breaks something critical and my instance is non-functional. Despite that, nextcloud/owncloud do what I want/need and I'm not sure if Syncthing does. So I keep stubbornly re-trying and just spin up a new instance when the old one dies.
  - wazoox 3y ago
    Weird, I've been running and updating NextCloud since version 13, and I never had any problems as long as I didn't try to upgrade 2 release up at once and carefully applied the recommended database updates, etc.

sriyati 3y ago

[flagged]

endisneigh 3y ago

Doesn’t seem like a big deal - unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing. Google really needs to stop preemptively locking accounts, though. They also need to warn ahead of time when someone is going to do something “bad”.

inetknght 3y ago
> unshare it and copy to another platform, e.g. directly on discord, for sharing Ahh you think Discord has better policies? You might want to rethink that.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  Ironically, I think the users are partly to blame for that. They were definitely complaining about some of the stuff that was on discord and discord then stepped up their enforcement of everything.
  - wredue 3y ago
    I mean. For a time, I couldn’t use discord for game parties cause 99% of the time, it was just man-children yelling n-bombs. I can very much see why people might’ve wanted some clean up.
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      But that's just a question of which kind of discord servers you're in. That stuff is still going to happen, you just won't be invited to those servers. I never encountered that in discord and I've been using it daily since early 2016.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    It was less the users, and more hitpieces from censor-happy journalists. Kind of forces your hand when journalists are digging up relatively obscure discord "servers" with edgy jokes and racism, or trying to get 'activist' discords they disagree with banned, or finding leaked military documents and framing them all as Discord's fault.

dbspin 3y ago

This is terrifying. I'm a writer, and all my work is backed up on Google. Some of it likely only exists there. I'm literally shaking my head here in incredulity. How could anyone at Google have thought that this was a good idea?

Filligree 3y ago
From the rumor mill: The beta-reader reported the author for CP. I'm not sure there's much of a story here.
- darby_eight 3y ago
  [dead]
- Hizonner 3y ago
  It's a "story" if any random idiot can make a random claim about your work and get you cut off. For that matter, it's a "story" if you're exposed to judgements that affect your livelihood being made by automated crap and "reviewed" only by overworked near-slaves with almost no agency of their own.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    That wouldn't be a 'random idiot'; it would be the story's beta-reader, and someone the document is shared with. Also- if it's true, then... what else was google supposed to do here?
    - Hizonner 3y ago
      > That wouldn't be a 'random idiot'; it would be the story's beta-reader, and someone the document is shared with. The System(TM) doesn't know what a "beta-reader" is, and will react the same way to any random idiot's report. You're pretending that Google somehow responds to categories that neither Google's policies, Google's automated systems, nor probably many of Google's employees and agents, even know or care about. Not that a "beta-reader" can't also be an idiot anyway. > Also- if it's true, then... You seem to be relying on the idea that Google might have been legally required to act against child pornography, so the "it" that would have to be true would be that the text was in fact child pornography. As far as I can find, US child pornography laws don't mention or apply to pure text. Even if the unsubstantiated rumor you're spreading were true, then the unsubstantiated claim underlying it still could not possibly be true. Any automated system or set of procedures that acts on the impossible supposition that a pure text document could even possibly be "child pornography" under those laws is automatically wrong. ... and the more credible claim is that the suspension was for "sexually explicit content", not "illegal child pornography", or the ever-popular "illegal obscenity", or illegal anything. That's a purely voluntary choice by Google. And even if that weren't true in this case, it is definitely true in many, many others. > what else was google supposed to do here? For the legal side, notice that text can never be "child pornography" in the US, and have it actually read for violations of any other law you're worried about by somebody who's actually qualified to evaluate its legal status and actually taking the time to do so. For the "completely voluntarily chosen Google policy" side, which is the one that actually seems to be at stake here, hold off on doing anything until the material has been reviewed by a human who actually understands the issues, actually has authority to make meaningful decisions, and has the time and motivation to do so. Also, don't adopt pointless, silly policies. Of course, commercial incentives assure that Google won't do any of that. And neither will any other provider of a similar cloud service. So what every single user should do is get the hell off of all of those services. That would be a good idea even if policies weren't silly and if policy enforcement weren't hair-trigger, error-prone, capricious garbage, but it's especially important because this and other stories give every reason to believe that they are. On all of them. That applies even if there is no commercially viable approach to handling these issues correctly. If a service can't be offered in any reasonable way, then that service should not be offered, or at least should not be used. "What are they supposed to do?" isn't a valid reason to use an unreliable, dangerous service. ... and the "story" is that many, many people are in fact using dangerous systems and should be moving off of them.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

The other day, I saw a movie scene on YouTube where a guy is knife-fighting with another guy. There is a stab in the throat at the end, where all the life drains from his face. Blood is gushing and we see a human being kill another human being. I really don't understand why Google (and Western society) condones this sort of content while having a near zero-tolerance policy towards sex and love. But I figured it out today: violent media re-directs our rage against the unsustainable culture and gives it an outlet. I'm not bashing on violent entertainment BTW: I like martial arts movies. But it does have a deeper function: to give us a sense of justice (good versus bad), and distract us away from the atrocities of consumerism (destruction of the planet which gave us life). In short, violent media HELPS global capitalism and its destructiveness. Then why is sex banned? Yes, we can look for the superficial reasons, like "oooh, parents don't want their kids to view this stuff". But that does not even apply here, especially because this was in a private Google docs. No, sex is treated harshly because it is primal and goes against civilization: it represents a more primal human connection, and human connection is antithetical to consumerism and the destruction of the environment. Yes, we can also look for historical religious reasons, but there is a reason why such religious motivation survived, and other religious practices do NOT: any social practice which survives does so because it confers benefits to those who promote the practice. In this case, it confers benefits to the capitalists.

mjburgess 3y ago
Watching violent films doesn't make you violent. Watching sexual content does (occasionally) make you want to have sex. There really isnt anything more to it than that. People who want to censor sexual content are accurately assessing its disposition to arouse audiences; and accurately assessing violent film's disposition to induce catharsis.
- nottorp 3y ago
  Citation needed...
  - mjburgess 3y ago

jsemrau 3y ago

The new puritans.

shagie 3y ago

Scrolling through the screen shots linked on Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO... ) > I find out at midnight tomorrow if I lose my docs all together. I've transferred them to word and backed up onto my hard drive. Further along ... > ... As of today, I'm unable to share my docs with my alpha and Beta readers. After reading the policies the only rule my docs "violate" is that they contain ̶s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ explicit content. I've since backed everything up to my computer and filled an appeal. ... Further along ... > As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment. Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. After processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.

shagie 3y ago
In the Instagram screen shots was a message that I believe linked to Abuse Program Policies & Enforcement - https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505 https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505 > Sexually Explicit Material > Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes.
btbuildem 3y ago
> My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it There's a third outcome: the appeal is never finalized, all you get is "your account is suspended while under review" and it leaves you with absolutely no recourse. Maybe if you know someone at the company internally, or have a way to effectively threaten someone with decision-making power there -- otherwise, it's permanent limbo.

hoosieree 3y ago

Wow, I'm so glad I use $OTHER_SERVICE. This will definitely never happen to me.

ryandrake 3y ago
Yep, I wonder how many of these stories it's going to take for people to learn that if the data is not on your physical metal, inside of your physical property, it's not yours.
ijijijjij 3y ago
upload an encrypted version?

kyrra 3y ago

The currently linked site is just a forum post, which links to Instagram, which is a screenshot of a discord chat. Instagram has the screenshots at least: https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO/ https://www.instagram.com/sloan_spencer_author/p/C48JN_TrvxO... It does look like the author just lost access to docs they shared with others, not their entire account. Author is currently appealing. We have seen this kind of thing in the past. Drive has to be careful, as people will use private drive links and doc links (could have embedded images) to share explicit material that may be illegal. From my understanding, Google will start running some kind of automation against things when they are shared with other people if they might contain things that could be illegal. I have no idea what the heuristics are, or how often they get it wrong. But they are kind of between a rock and a hard place. Googler, opinions are my own.

gcr 3y ago
Author’s last screenshot states that her whole account was frozen just after submitting the appeal and she no longer has access to her docs. I would have far less of an issue with this if certain docs were marked unsharable, or even if her entire account could no longer share, but losing access to previous work written before the policy change feels like a big misstep to me. Here’s what she said: > “As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.”
- beeboobaa3 3y ago
  > Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review Google presuming guilt until proven innocent. An appeal locking the account in retaliation is absolutely disgusting.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Meta does this too. My guess it appears as some signal to some "AI" somewhere that this is Legit Bad Stuff, and they then send it over to an underpaid overworked exploited moderator somewhere who doesn't care, and just takes it to the next level.

vsnf 3y ago

Something related I’ve been wondering about is the change in language catalyzed by social media companies and their morality / fear of advertisers. You see it especially in TikTok videos. When people aren’t straight up censoring themselves with bleeps, dead audio, or cuts, they use euphemisms instead: kill -> unalive, rape -> grape, sex -> seggs. Even more concerning is that what is considered in need of censoring is expanding. I saw a video where the creator censored “white” when referring to Caucasians.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Part of it is feared censoring / demotion in the algorithms; part is hypersensitivity / hyperconsiderate, because some people have indicated they are triggered by certain words, and I'm guessing another part is maximising reach. That is, if you use explicit language, your content may be marked as 12, 16, 18+ content, and half your engagement may drop because people in comment sections seriously underestimate how much "engagement" a teenager with a phone and infinite time generates.
- vsnf 3y ago
  Yes, those are the the proximate causes. I'm worried about the effect these causes will induce going forward. With enough time, this expanded hypersensitivity will move out of TikTok and into wider culture permanently.
somedude895 3y ago
You see that on Youtube as well. Creators will also censor su*cide, both in audio and video, because Google / advertisers don't like sensitive content and the video will make a lot less money if Google thinks it's about mental illness or suicide.
- indrora 3y ago
  Google will straight up take down your videos if you mention suicide or death now. Two creators I follow had to re-upload censored versions of their videos after the youtube audio filter decided that "dead" was too spicy.

kome 3y ago

americans-try-not-to-be-puritanical-and-impose-their-bigotted-moral-standards-on the-rest-of-the-world-by-the-means-of-their-techno-feudalist-corporation's challange: impossible.

buescher 3y ago
It's weird and paradoxical isn't it? I have no idea what this lady was writing, but smutty romance novels and horror novels with weird sex scenes have been sufficiently acceptable to "community standards" all over the US to have been available in grocery stores at least as early as the seventies. Not so frequently seen anymore, but that's a death-of-brick-and-mortar-and-print-media problem. You could leave one on your desk at work without a visit from HR (just don't leave it open to a spicy page or read aloud from it). But share similar material from your google drive? I don't know! I really don't.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

How topical. My wife and I were having a freak out this morning about how vulnerable we are to having our lives choked out at Google's whims. They have no customer service, and delegate more and more to "AI" to manage these things. This has all been giving me anxiety since the time I had my Facebook account partially locked for over a month because I shared a picture of my son at the beach with no shirt on and their "AI" couldn't tell the difference between him and a girl because he has long hair and somehow concluded I was sharing explicit imagery. When I appealed, they extended my lock. I worked @ Google for 10 years and still wouldn't trust them even though I could possibly find someone on the inside to ring some bells for me (questionable). I backed up all my photos recently and am trying to figure out what to do about email.

squirrel 3y ago
Google Takeout will give you an archive of your email (and everything else).
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Yes I've done that recently, too. But it's really something that needs to be done periodically. By "figure out about email" I meant: where to move my email & whole life to. I'm thinking about registering a domain and taking up residence on another email hosting provider that lets me use my own domain. I have started self-hosting my own photos on my own local NAS running Immich, with limited, controlled exposure via tailscale for when I'm out.
  - whitehexagon 3y ago
    I switched to hetzner hosted 'own domain' a few weeks ago, which includes webmail (I use thunderbird client). YouTube failed to delete, even though I'd deleted all content a couple years back, but deleting the complete google account worked! (and feels great!) Funny thing was that I was then blocked from sending email to other gmail accounts. Turns out there are a couple simple switches in the hetzner web interface to enable some of the anti-spam measures these big tech receivers require.

nickelpro 3y ago

Misleading title, none of the authors involved are claiming they're locked out of the accounts. The exact quote from the OP's mastadon is "An author lost access to her explicit writing when she shared it with alpha and beta readers." Google says you may not use its services to distribute sexually explicit content. This is a very common and reasonable policy. The authors violated that rule, and while none of them are being straightforward about exactly what happened what seems to be the case is the violating content has been removed/locked.

causi 3y ago
This information wildly alters the circumstances. Your comment should be at the top of the page.
gcr 3y ago
That’s not what the author wrote. A popup said her account was frozen. See the last screenshot. “As of right now, I don't know. I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment Thankfully an alpha reader of mine saw it happening and I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal. Atter processing the appeal, a pop up said my account was frozen pending review. My assumption is after the review I'll either get everything back or lose it, but I don't know for sure.“
- shoelessone 3y ago
  I have no position here but reading this a few times (and not digging further for additional context) it's unclear of what the situation is here, at least to me. > ... I cannot access any of mine to check at the moment ... "at the moment" makes it sound like they were not on a computer, or out to eat or something where they couldn't easily check? > ...I downloaded everything to my laptop before I submitted an appeal... Makes it sound like they still have access to their account and were able to access the content in order to download a copy?
  - gcr 3y ago
    Your point about "at the moment" makes sense. I should have considered that when submitting. However, the point about downloading to her laptop is consistent with her story. Here's what we definitively know: 1. First, something about her ability to share her docs was disabled, but in a way that still left them accessible to her; 2. She then submitted an appeal; 3. Upon submitting the appeal, her account was summarily frozen pending review, and her docs were no longer accessible to her.

bradley13 3y ago

The cloud is "someone else's computer". You don't make the rules, they do. Keep your stuff on your own system, and maybe use the cloud for backup. Honestly, I don't even recommend that, unless you have actually read the T&C. The simplest solution is to get two memory sticks and copy your data to them. One stays with you, the other is in a safe-deposit box. Rotate them regularly. It's really not that much effort. That all said, WTF? Is this a new round of Puritanism come to visit? Why does Google care if adults are writing porn and sharing it?

ijijijjij 3y ago
> The simplest solution is to get two memory sticks and copy your data to them. One stays with you, the other is in a safe-deposit box. Rotate them regularly. It's really not that much effort. Another option is to keep a memory stick is in your car or even at work, if you keep it encrypted.

zb3 3y ago

What's wrong with sexually explicit content? Is Google controlled by Taliban or something?

jupp0r 3y ago
Where have you been living for the last 30 years? Most major tech companies have similar policies, for better or worse.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  They usually have them in order to not spook the advertisers who don't want to see their ad near anything remotely objectionable. Don't see why they care about somebody sharing a document from their Drive.
- perihelions 3y ago
  Not sure where you're getting your information from: Google platformed hardcore porn up until 2015 [0]. Tumblr permitted it through 2018 [1], while Reddit and Twitter allow it today. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098875 ("Google bans 'explicit' adult content from Blogger blogs", 2015) - "Until today, Google's Blogger platform previously allowed "images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity," and stated that "Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944 ("Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th", 2018; 464 comments)
danpalmer 3y ago
Google operates in many countries and is subject to many laws. Even in the US websites need to check whether you're over 18 to view (or read?) pornography, and Google Docs does not appear to have an age check at 18. Do you think this is an important feature that Docs should be working on? I'm not sure I do personally.
- struant 3y ago

overflyer 3y ago

Fuck yeaahhhh murrica ...we like all kinds of sick fucked up shit but nonono don't show my kid any titties on TV or lord behold text with sexually revealing vocabulary. Laughs in European ...

mrtksn 3y ago

Wow, the state of freedom of speech is probably worse than the soviets ATM, since during the soviet times the speech scanning tech was primitive and the thought control was rudimentary and blunt. Back in the old school totalitarian days at least your writings were banned after they were written. Even 10 years ago it was fine, the worst was about blocking keywords and making printers refuse to print images of money. What a sad state of affairs for the civilisation that used to claim to be about freedom not too long ago, even when The Matrix was released the internet was just catching on with the promise of global freedom. It turned into personalised police.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I'm not sure why you think getting your account blocked is equatable to being sent to the gulags.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  You are unsure because you are making both a strawman argument and historical inaccuracy. You don't go straight to gulags most of the time. Most of the time the officer screams at you and takes your books and notes your name. I also don't claim that this is the same as being sent to a gulag. This is just suppression of speech and mind control. It's going to be so much fun when those in power lose power to those they hate. Then they will be introduced to the value of privacy and freedom of speech.

rasengan 3y ago

If you're not self hosting in 2024, you're doing it wrong. With our internet connections being so fast and plethora of server daemons out there, there's really no excuse.

Zambyte 3y ago
An unfortunately reasonable excuse is the ever-increasing complexity of the systems most people access. Trying to host something on my pocketable computer with cellular access ranges from nightmarish to impossible, for no good reason. And that's even on the Linux-based option (Android).

b800h 3y ago

This looks as though the author shared the document with around 20 people, which combined with the nature of the content would have flagged the author for sharing explicit spam. May be less of a big deal than is being suggested.

danpalmer 3y ago
Or just that it got flagged for review, and upon review was found to be in violation of the terms of service perhaps? The ToS say you can't distribute sexually explicit material.

chucke1992 3y ago

Puritans are taking over.

kmfrk 3y ago

When YouTube Gaming was doing livestreaming, people who posted in stream chats also risked having their entire accounts flagged. In the EU, Google now offer the option of separating your Google accounts from each other (Gmail, YouTube, etc), but someone warned me that it broke a lot of stuff for their friends, so it sounds a little like the usual malicious compliance with regulators we're used to. Has anyone in the EU actually taken Google up on the offer and split up their Google/Alphabet accounts, and did you live to tell the story?

Lacusch 3y ago
I didn't because of what you mentioned: I don't want to break all my stuff. But I would also be happy to hear what others have to say.

Havoc 3y ago

Companies need to stop being morality police

danpalmer 3y ago
Do they also need to stop meeting legal obligations such as age verification for distributing/viewing sexually explicit material?
- Havoc 3y ago
  Legal obligations <> morality police and you know it
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    This is my point. Are Google being "morality police" here, or are they just meeting some possible legal requirements (IANAL)? All things being equal, a company would most likely rather do nothing, as that's the cheapest option. The fact they aren't suggests a good motivating reason, and potential legal obligations trump personal moral opinions, which are hard to pin down anyway in a large multinational company.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bsuvc 3y ago

It sounds like the author got her account suspended after sharing ("distributing" in Google's view) the book's sexually explicit content. Here is Google's Program Policies document that their Terms of Service references: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Csexually-explicit-material https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Csexua... The section about Sexually Explicit Material says: > Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes I'm not defending Google's actions here. I'm just trying to interpret what led to this situation and what it means in a general sense.

geraldhh 3y ago
probably an automation fuckup as this is clearly "artistic" in nature

AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago

Cases like this always make me think of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. 3 copies of the data, 2 different media, and 1 off site. I sometimes feel like I'm paranoid when backup up my files and photos like this until I read stories like this. I don't know how people outside of IT would even think of making 3 copies.

perihelions 3y ago

For the curious, here's what Google's official corporate communications on this general topic were, back in 2015: - "Until today, Google's Blogger platform previously allowed "images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity," and stated that "Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-content-from-blogger-blogs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-con... Everything surrounding this current zeitgeist is a recent cultural development. It was not always this way.

zackmorris 3y ago

How about a law that states: If a business profits from the personal data of its users, then it must back up their data for a duration (say 3 years after upload) and make that data available to them, even if it removes that data from public access due to terms of service (TOS) violations. Failure to do so would result in the business being dissolved, this clause would mainly be to protect stakeholders who go out of business and can't afford to maintain backups. This would work similarly to how a bank must be FDIC insured to lend out its customer deposits. Data is money in the information age and needs similar protections, especially with the rise of AI and profits generated from derivative works. A business which refuses to follow this law would be unaccredited, meaning that Google would be unaccredited in this case, so probably nobody should be using their services. IANAL, but personally I might extend this to work something like personally identifiable information (PII) laws, where all of the user's data is considered private, but part or all of it may be shared publicly under the TOS which the user agrees to. The sharing would be at the discretion of the business, but the data would always belong to the user under copyright law until proven otherwise. The process of proving copyright ownership would first require full sharing of the data back to the user under court discovery laws. The crux of the matter is that we have laws preventing the sharing of PII, but to my knowledge we don't have laws that protect access to a user's own information. Which seems doubly odd since companies profit from that data. Holding a user's data for ransom so that a business can make money from it seems akin to extortion, although I can't find the exact word for it. Maybe the California Consumer Privacy Act of (CCPA) or similar laws could be extended to protect access to one's own information? https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/sites/default/files/course-materials/A4ID_DataProtectionLaw%20.pdf https://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/sites/default/files/c... (pdf) Apologies if what I'm suggesting already exists, in which case filing a lawsuit should be straightforward.

johnea 3y ago

The modern puritanism is really shocking to a '60s child 8-/ How we've regressed...

bosco_mcnasty 3y ago

truly the darkest side of these is the opportunity to exploit if someone shares a document with the internet with read/write access, can I upload smut (or anything very naughty or illegal) onto their google doc from some anon connection/account? Can I get them banned thusly? Can I log into their wifi and post threats on whatever renowned toxic boards and again, get a person in trouble? The problem with the right-think industrial complex is the heavy hand itself can be fooled easily and thus weaponized.

raydev 3y ago

Since this relates to Google Docs, is anyone aware of open source hostable replacements for Google Docs? Rich text editing, inline comments, maybe concurrent editing as features?