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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
by 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 agoThis information wildly alters the circumstances. Your comment should be at the top of the page.
- gcr 3y agoThat’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 agoI 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 agoYour 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 3y agoWhy is it reasonable?
- danpalmer 3y agoDistributing sexually explicit material is subject to many tricky laws around the world. It's illegal in some places, requires age restrictions in others. It's reasonable for any hosting provider to say they are not going to get involved in that legal quagmire.
- margana 3y agoIt is also reasonable for any client to say they are not going to involve themselves with a platform that will freeze their account and cause them to lose data because some faulty heuristic triggered and the company is not even willing to manually review things (even though they sometimes falsely claim they do review things when they didn't).
- nickelpro 3y agoYes, both things are reasonable, neither makes the other untrue.
- danpalmer 3y agoThat's reasonable, but a non-sequitur here surely. The author's account is not suspended, they have not lost data, and any heuristics were clearly correct in that they were publishing sexually explicit material.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoFor one example, Florida introduced a law enforcing age verifications for pornographic content; it's easier to prohibit using a platform to distribute said content, than to introduce a content rating and age verification system.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aqme28 3y agoI understand the idea behind banning sexually explicit writing, but that basically means that large large percentage of literature cannot use Google services. Anyone writing a novel basically shouldn’t use docs in case they might someday want to include sex in their writing.
- rsynnott 3y agoOr, presumably, Office 365 (does Office still have a pure-offline mode?). What's an aspirant writer of Naughty Literature to do? Or, as you say, really any writer who might at some point add a sex scene, which is fairly common.
- nickelpro 3y agoGoogle's policy doesn't say anything about using their services to create sexually explicit content, only using their services for distribution. > 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. This squares with what happened to the authors here, who were only subject to enforcement actions when they shared the content via Google Docs. But yes I think the basic idea of being unable to "trust" a free service which has no contractual obligations to you as a user is a given under any circumstances.
- lupire 3y agoThe problem is that the rules are Byzantine, and not every user has legal department. It's not true that you cannot share sexual material. What is true is that if you share sexual material, your whole account might be locked or disabled. That's a big difference.
- soraminazuki 3y agoYeah, share "1984" and get ready to be banned from Google because guess what Winston does with Julia in the novel?
- jupp0r 3y agoWhy not remove the sharing flag instead of locking the author out of their own writing?
- nickelpro 3y agoThings are very unclear. The author claims to have been able to download their own work prior to filing the appeal, so perhaps that's exactly what happened. We're following a bread crumb trail of discord screenshots and instagram posts, no one is being straightforward about what is going on. Google of course is a black box about enforcement actions on the foundation that transparency benefits spammers and doesn't help their bottom line, which is likely also true.
- soraminazuki 3y agoThe title is accurate. The linked Instagram post clearly states that the account was frozen. > This is a very common and reasonable policy. Common? Maybe. Reasonable? Debatable. At least the response isn't proportionate. Not even remotely. Locking people out of their digital lives like that is not okay. > none of them are being straightforward about exactly what happened That's some cheap victim blaming. It's hard to see this type of vague unfalsifiable claims as being made in good faith. Especially considering that you haven't even bothered to read the actual claims of the victim that you accuse of being unforthcoming.