Google Docs Is Randomly Flagging Files for Violating Its Terms of Service (vice.com)

Louise Matsakis, writing for Motherboard: Google Docs, the collaborative, cloud-based word processing software, appears to be randomly flagging files for supposedly "violating" Google's Terms of Service. A member of Motherboard's team, as well as numerous users on Twitter, report that their documents are being locked for no apparent reason. Once a document is flagged, the owner of that document can no longer share it with other users. Users who have already been shared on a document that's been flagged are kicked out and can no longer access it. When a draft Motherboard article was locked on Monday morning, a message took over the screen that read "This item has been flagged as inappropriate and can no longer be shared." It's not clear why this is happening, but it may be the result of a glitch in the system Google uses to monitor Google Docs. DownDetector is currently reporting Google Drive problems in the US and Europe, which may be part of the problem.

Comments

And everyone, on three:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cloud is a nicer way of saying 'someone else's computer that you have no control over'."

The "cloud" is just someone else's computer.

[jcr]

I've been seeing a lot of messages on twitter about people who can't access their documents and don't have local copies. I guess they won't make that mistake again.

-jcr

Re:The "cloud" is just someone else's computer.

[Gravis Zero]

I guess they won't make that mistake again.

You really overestimate their intelligence. These are likely the same people who use Facebook and Windows despite repeated instances of blatant malicious behavior. There is a large portion of users that will not quit using abusive systems no matter the cost.

But it won't happen to me!

[bagofbeans]

It continues to astound me how many people I know, who'd I'd expect to know better, have all their emails only accessed by webmail. No POP client to save a local copy.

Ditto those who entire contact database is only on their cellphone.

Re:But it won't happen to me!

[sconeu]

IMAP is better, if you use both a mail client and a web interface.

Re:But it won't happen to me!

[Aighearach]

I use a custom IMAP script to interface with my mail, but keeping a local backup is not a universal need.

If my mail service went down, I'd care more about restoring access and moving my hosting so that I can send and receive mail again, much much more than having access to historical emails. Even the historical emails, there is very little data that cannot simply be re-requested!

What continues to astound me is how many people there are who seem at first glance to understand technology, but on deeper examination have no concept at all of the use cases and so don't actually understand how to apply the technology. They're like a person who is an expert at math, but can't read words at all and so can't apply the math to anything other than a math test.

You might be interested to know that people whose contact database is "only in their cell phone" probably have that contact list backed up by their vendor. A new phone would get that same contact list installed automatically when they activated it, they wouldn't need to enter the information in by hand from a paper backup. Also, even if they use a prepaid dumb phone, they can usually log into a website and access their call history and recover the important/common numbers.

In the old days, we didn't have cell phones, but we had little address books we would carry around with all our numbers. Sometimes it would get lost. And there was no automatic backup. When you lost it, you'd ask your friends to copy numbers from their book, so minimize the number of people you had to share the mistake with. People who compulsively made a second copy of their addressbook also had 100s of other things to back up too, because everything was on paper and nothing had automatic backups. Keeping backups as a default behavior was something that people with certain types of OCD did, and it consumed hours out of every day. The same people often take notes of all conversations; "said good morning to bagofbeans at 8:23am" and things like that. Endless notebooks, boxes and boxes full of filled notebooks. It is not an absolute requirement for life, but sadly for some people that point seems confused.

I'm not certain who their customers are

[H3lldr0p]

Maybe it's only the Wall Street crowd?

It's certainly not the advertisers because they're getting screwed every which way possible as well. It wasn't that long ago that several companies showed that the effectiveness of online advertising just isn't there. So what did Alphabet do? It must be those pesky content generating people who make their platform worthwhile in going to in the first place. We must crack down on them!

Let's not talk about how ineffective certain targeted ads are. Let's not talk about how the system was abused for propaganda purposes.

No. Instead let's work on cutting into people's livelihoods and make everyone nervous that instead. That's the distracting ticket!

Re:monitoring?

[Grishnakh]

I'm guessing his point in quoting all that is to show that, legally, when you upload your data to Google Drive, it's now *theirs*, and they can do what they want with it. If that means searching through it for stuff they don't like and then flagging it for violations, that's their right. If you don't like that, don't use it.

Re:Paging Ric Romero (again . . . )

[Bing Tsher E]

YouTube is a defacto monopoly at this point. It was set up to be a Commons where everybody could participate. It has no competitor of a similar scale.

So perhaps it should be broken away from Google and made a separate entity again. Google can still contract with them to sell ads on it.

Or maybe it should be made into a true Commons without a corporate overlord running it.

Use a "free" service, get what you pay for.

[MachineShedFred]

I've never had a word processing application on my laptop start denying access to my own files. Use a hosted service, get hosted service problems.

Re:Paging Ric Romero (again . . . )

[lgw]

Then maybe they should go get themselves a real job

If you work a full week in order to produce content, how is that not a real job? If you employ a staff, and are actually running a small business, how are these not real jobs?

They are new kinds of jobs, but real jobs nonetheless.

or set up their own video service if they're not happy with YouTube

Oh, everyone is very aware that YouTube is not their friend at this point. The problem is, most of the alternatives have either been scammers, or poor re-implementations of YouTube with all the same issues. None of them, for example, allow role-based administration of a channel (needed as soon as you grow beyond a 1-man shop).

Everyone I follow with a larger following is Patreon-funded now, but you have to build your channel to that point, and you need an established service to build that following.

No one's forcing these people to use YouTube.

It's the only realistic option today. Sure, Google may "owe them" nothing .. nothing that is beyond not being a dick to your fellow man (aka: don't be evil).