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Google should not be allowed to make libelous statements without consequences.
by account42 9mo ago
Google should not be allowed to make libelous statements without consequences.
- otterley 9mo ago(IAAL but this is not legal advice.) It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.
- ThunderSizzle 9mo agoGoogle is stating in a position of authority. It's therefore being stated as at least a professional opinion with the equivalent weight of fact, or representing facts. If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere.
- account42 9mo agoNot to mention that the whole point of the list is for blocking in e.g. web browsers. Claiming it is just an opinion would be like a mobster claiming they didn't actually order a hit.
- otterley 9mo ago> If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere. I agree with this! The registrar should not have triggered a suspension because of this. They're not obligated to, and the two processes should be decoupled.
- MadameMinty 9mo agoThe registrar should ignore reports of abuse, especially if coming from an authoritative source with vast resources that's been collecting reports on its own? No. The source should be more careful. It's the equivalent of a renowned newspaper printing warning a restaurant being unsafe to visit. Should the customers' willingness to visit be magically decoupled from this opinion?
- ryandrake 9mo agoIt's like a renowned newspaper saying the restaurant is unsafe, and then also the restaurant's landlord taking it at face value and locking the doors without further investigation. Both can be wrong.
- otterley 9mo ago> The registrar should ignore reports of abuse, especially if coming from an authoritative source with vast resources that's been collecting reports on its own? I'm not saying they should "ignore" reports of abuse but treat them as they are -- reports. They can then perform their own independent investigation. That may well have happened here. I suspect the author isn't telling us something.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- hackerman_fi 9mo agoHow is it any more of an opinion to "mark" a website as "unsafe" than say, "contains CSAM"?
- otterley 9mo agoOne is disprovable, the other is not.
- dspillett 9mo ago“contains CSAM” is likely an unarguable fact. “unsafe” is a term that is both broader and more vague, so I would consider it opinion unless backed up by appropriate facts (like “contains CSAM”, “contains malware”, and so forth).
- kmoser 9mo ago> “contains CSAM” is likely an unarguable fact. Except when it isn't. CSAM may be easier to define and identify than pornography, but there still exists material that treads a moral grey area.
- ses1984 9mo agoMaybe libel is the wrong term, but erroneously marking a website as unsafe can lead to damages.
- otterley 9mo agoOnly if it’s intentional (or maybe grossly negligent).
- pocksuppet 9mo agoGoogle is grossly negligent
- roger110 9mo agoIn my opinion, a .online domain is unsafe. 99% of people only visit ".com"s unless they clicked a scam link. Completely blocking the site is overkill, but the browser should warn you about it like it does with non-SSL sites.
- LoganDark 9mo agoWhat? I find myself on .net-s and .org-s all the time. For example... Wikipedia is .org. Do 99% of people not visit Wikipedia?
- roger110 9mo agoI mean .org or .gov is fine, just not stuff like .online or .info.
- master-lincoln 9mo agothanks for the laugh. Even if you only meant people from the US this is likely not true. What about government websites at .gov? 99% never visit them? In other countries local TLDs are of course normal (e.g. .it for Italy, .za for South Africa, .cn for China...) and not only used for scam links.
- grayhatter 9mo ago> Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion. No, it's not. You're welcome to cite case law if you want to insist. Otherwise, unsafe (in the context of infosec) has a definition of likely or able to cause harm or malfunction. Something that is provable or falsifiable with evidence.
- ifh-hn 9mo agoWhether that's true or not is irrelevant if it's defined by law differently. Even without case law and precedent you'd still have to test it in court, which for libel can be prohibitively expensive. For clarity I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but what means sense to the layperson (including experts in a particular field) is sometimes at odds with what the law says.
- jcalvinowens 9mo agoIsn't "oops we made a mistake" actually a valid defense to libel in most US states? I thought you had to prove it was intentional to some extent? Or reckless/negligent IANAL
- rtsam 9mo ago"I believed it to be true" is a defense. But negligence isn't. In fact, that is usually what you want to prove, that they acted on things that a reasonable person (or a person that is supposed to be skilled in that field) can see is not true.
- horsawlarway 9mo agoGoogle takes no action to review the reports that their warnings are false until you sign up for Google products (namely - registering the site in their search console). I reported a falsely flagged site repeatedly for weeks with absolutely no action from them. Mozilla and Microsoft both did actually remove the warnings after the reports (Edge and Firefox stopped displaying the warning). Google did not. Google strong armed me into registering for google products, like a fucking bastard of a company. This was the moment I went from "I don't love google anymore" to "Google can get fucked". I wish them bankruptcy and every damn legal consequence that is possible to enforce.
- RobotToaster 9mo agoDepends on jurisdiction. In the UK it's not an absolute defence, you still have to prove it's an opinion a "reasonable person" could come to based on facts.
- master-lincoln 9mo agoThat depends on jurisdiction. E.g. in South Korea true statements can constitute defamation too
- tshaddox 9mo agoThat sounds like a spurious distinction. Pretty sure you can’t say “Person X is a murderer” and then say “well I’m only expressing my opinion, and in my opinion if you do something that annoys me that qualifies as murder.”
- habinero 9mo agoNope, not in the US. It is perfectly legal to say, for example, "Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer" despite him being acquitted. You're entirely free to disagree with the result, that is an opinion. Any opinion based on public knowledge is ok. It doesn't even have to be reasonable or rational. What you can't do is imply non-public knowledge, aka "I heard from my cousin who works in law enforcement that Kyle murdered a hobo when he was 12 but the records were sealed", or state specific facts that can be proven true or false: "Kyle murdered a hobo on September 11, 2018 out back of the 7-11 in Gainesville, FL" The standard for libel/slander is much, much higher than people think. It's extremely difficult to meet them, and for public figures, it's almost impossible.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- otterley 9mo ago> It is perfectly legal to say, for example, "Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer" despite him being acquitted. That's ... not quite true. I wouldn't go that far.
- habinero 9mo agoSure it is, that's how the 1A works. Saying he was convicted of murder is not true, but calling him a murderer is an opinion. Your opinion doesn't even have to be reasonable. It just has to be based on facts that both you and I have. 1A rights are construed really broadly. The courts don't do the 'he wasn't legally convicted therefore it's illegal to call him one' thing.
- 9mo ago
- horsawlarway 9mo agoAs someone who has also been bit by this, and with the only possible resolution being that I sign up for google services and register my site with them in the google search dashboard... Fuck Google. This is absolutely libel. They put a big fucking red banner on top of my site, telling the world that it's unsafe, using all the authority they have as one of the largest tech companies in the world. In my case - it was a jellyfin instance I'd stood up to host family videos of my kids for my parents. It was not compromised, and showed only a login page. I reported it as a false flag repeatedly, for weeks, with Google doing jack fucking shit. Only after signing up in their search console and registering the site did the warning disappear. They are abusively forcing people into their products. Fuck Google. In case it wasn't entirely clear - Google can get fucked. Fuck Google.
- otterley 9mo agoThere’s nothing wrong with your dislike of Google. No matter how much you dislike them, though, the word “libel” has a meaning that should be respected. To opine that a site is unsafe is simply not libelous.
- pocksuppet 9mo agoIt's libelous in Germany unless you can prove it's true. In fact people regularly get punished in Germany for things like calling politicians idiots, because they can't prove they are idiots. https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675942 https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675...
- otterley 9mo agoThe article headline says “investigated,” not “punished.”
- pocksuppet 9mo agoThe investigation consisted of the police busting into their house and stealing all of their electronic devices, which is a punishment.
- mystraline 9mo agoThey should be held legally culpable for libellous claims they make. I dont care if their pre-LLM ai says "thingy bad". They are responsible for the scripts or black boxes they control. I dont care if they dont give a reason. Claiming bad/malicious/etc site is 100% libel. And doubly so, anybody who has been forced to agree to a ToS with binding arbitration should have it removed for libel.
- otterley 9mo ago> Claiming bad/malicious/etc site is 100% libel. No it isn't. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation Please, use words correctly.
- hamdingers 9mo agoThe words in your link do not support the words in your comment. Don't be snarky unless you are certain you're correct. > a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement. They falsely marked the site unsafe[1] on a published list[2], the results weren't checked and couldn't be appealed[3] and OPs site was taken down[4].
- MadameMinty 9mo agoSounds textbook to me.
- habinero 9mo agoIt does. "Unsafe" is not a fact, it's an opinion.
- rtsam 9mo ago"When Google marks a site as "unsafe" or "dangerous" in Chrome or search results, it is a factual finding based on automated detection of specific, technical security threats, rather than a subjective opinion. These warnings are triggered by Google’s Safe Browsing technology, which scans billions of URLs daily to protect users from malicious content" Opinions and facts in a legal context usually comes down to who is saying what. Someone personally says "this soup is bad" on a review site = opinion. A news site plastering it on their front page = fact. A person saying something as an individual is usually considered an opinion. A company doesn't have that same protection.
- acoustics 9mo agoHow is any kind of antivirus or threat detection software supposed to operate on this standard? Libel suits can be financially catastrophic, so even a tiny false positive rate could present risk that disincentivizes producing such software at all. And a threat detection mechanism that has a 0.0% false positive rate is conservative to the point of being nearly useless.
- rtsam 9mo agoI think that is the idea. They shouldn't exist without a prompt mitigation path. In other words, if you can't deal with the false positives in a timely manner. You SHOULD be liable for the damages. I can't build a budget car put together in an unsafe manner. Then complain I can't compete due to all the peoples cars crashing and blowing up and suing me.
- kevin_thibedeau 9mo agoYou document your claims with concrete evidence of fraud. That will be your libel defense. No evidence means you bear the full responsibility of a fuckup.
- acoustics 9mo agoAt internet scale, this would roughly be equivalent to not doing any warning or detection at all. Scalable systems need to use heuristics to catch threats. Needing concrete evidence in every case means that an enormously higher amount of malicious resources will not be flagged. There is a policy argument as to the right balance of concerns here. But there is a clear trade-off to make.
- donmcronald 9mo ago> Needing concrete evidence in every case means that an enormously higher amount of malicious resources will not be flagged. Giving everyone a fair trial just doesn't scale. It costs too much.
- pocksuppet 9mo ago