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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.
Sounds like the perfect time to finally ditch WordPerfect and use a modern, cloud-based word processor.
Anyone who follows any sort of weapons or gaming or political channel on YouTube knows just how over-aggressive the Google's flagging bots can be. Very bland content now routinely gets flagged for no apparent reason and must be manually appealed. Sure, the bots are intended to do something Google actually wants: demonitize genuinely offensive content so that advertizers aren't embarassed, but that's not what the bots actually do. The collateral damage seems to be 10x the intended effect, with real harm done to people earning their living as vloggers.
I'm betting this is just more of the same. Google has some stuff they legitimately want to ban (e.g., sharing pirated content form you Google drive), but then the bots are badly written and poorly tested, and wreak havoc.
I'd call it poor customer service, but of course we know we're not Google's customers - only their ad buyers are their customers. Still, seems a bad way to treat your product.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Cloud is a nicer way of saying 'someone else's computer that you have no control over'."
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Presumably, Google is scanning files uploaded to Docs for more than just viruses, which they do to any file uploaded there which is under a certain fairly large size. They are probably also scanning them for copyright violation, and also searching for their confidential documents because why wouldn't you? They almost certainly have given themselves the right to scan your documents for basically any reason they see fit, which is limited only by law, and not very much. They can't retain your medical information even if they find it, for example, and they can't trade stocks based on information they find in your docs which are not public, and they probably can't assign themselves copyright of any of your information, but they can do basically anything else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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!
Google Drive Terms of Service
We may review your conduct and content in Google Drive for compliance with the Terms and our Program Policies.
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through Google Drive, you give Google a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our services unless you delete your content. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to Google Drive.
Our automated systems analyze your content to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is received, shared, uploaded and when it is stored. You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in our Privacy Policy. If you submit feedback or suggestions about Google Drive, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.
Google’s Privacy Policy explains how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use Google Drive. By using Google Drive, you agree that Google can use such data in accordance with our privacy policies.
Google Privacy And Terms: Privacy Policy
We collect information in the following ways:
Information you give us. For example, many of our services require you to sign up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number or credit card to store with your account. If you want to take full advantage of the sharing features we offer, we might also ask you to create a publicly visible Google Profile, which may include your name and photo.
Information we get from your use of our services. We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you watch a video on YouTube, visit a website that uses our advertising services, or view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes:
Device information
We collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.
Log information
When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This includes:
details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
Internet protocol address.
device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and re
Apple haters gonna hate to admit this, but Apple's iCloud Drive does not read your docs.
Now cloud, which is actually water vapor, is all the rage and everyone and his brother wants to put their stuff in the cloud.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They can't retain your medical information even if they find it, for example
No, they absolutely can do that if they want, well, in the US at least. In Europe they would be subject to privacy laws....
...Still, seems a bad way to treat your product.
ssshhhh... be quite or they'll print a EULA under your clothes and shrink wrap you!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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.
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.
Just how would you propose supporting it as a true commons? The only two sources of support I can think of are ads and subscriptions, and subscriptions don't meet much approval. (Possibly when I get a refillable credit card I'll consider supporting a lot of places I approve of, but I don't really trust committing funds over the open web. I need a way to limit my exposure that isn't too inconvenient.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This probably doesn't apply to google docs or any other online office systems. But it certainly applies to online storage like dropbox or whatever the fuck microsoft is calling theirs this week. If you are going to use such services encrypt your damn documents. They can't remove if they can't read it, unless they just decide to remove all encrypted documents.
And for god sakes keep recent, local backups. Since dropbox stores shit in a folder on your computer just have that folder get backuped up in your normal back up routine.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Anyone who follows any sort of weapons or gaming or political channel on YouTube knows just how over-aggressive the Google's flagging bots can be.
I don't think "aggressive" is even the correct category of term to use here.
The most amazing and baffling example I've seen was after a live stream.
The stream lasted almost 3 hours, and all was well. At the end of the stream the VOD was marked to post to the channel in its entirety.
Either the stream or the archived full copy was flagged at all.
The next morning editing began, which was to cut the original video into segments aligned to the few topics discussed on stream. 5 segments in all.
2 of those 5 were flagged as not suitable for advertisers. Keep in mind, those 2 segments were exact copies from the original stream, which is still suitable for advertisers.
So the bot had decided that one copy of the video was not suitable for ads, which is an exact copy of time marks 36m-72m within another video which was sutable for ads
What this shows is that you can upload the exact same video multiple times, with the exact same description text, and the same title but with " - 1" or " - 2" etc. appended, and have a non-zero chance that some but not all of those copies will get flagged while the other copies will remain fine, despite being identical copies.
This is not simply being aggressive, this is being broken and incapable of basic pattern matching.
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.
A "true commons" is not something that can exist under US law, thankfully. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Here all land is owned. Even land you have a right to access is owned, probably by a government entity, and that entity is charged with regulating access. For example, in the traditional example of common land used for grazing, in the United States grazing on government-owned land is regulated and requires permits. There is no Commons.
Youtube may or may not be a "defacto" monopoly as that is a loose and subjective phrase that can mean anything. Here in the US we only care if a monopoly results in the two banned things; harming consumers, and harming competition.
To claim harm to competition you'd have to be able to show losses or lack of access because of youtube's monopoly; but nobody else (other than pornographers) have even been able to make a profit on user-contributed internet video. They would have to be able to show that youtube is somehow preventing competition. But the nature of the internet makes that unlikely unless they were using some sort of active strategy that keeps people out; yet, their market dominance is based solely on customer preference! Customers aren't even locked in in any way. (As for the pornographers, youtube doesn't allow porn and so don't compete directly, and therefore doesn't harm them at all)
To claim harm to consumers you'd have to be able to show that prices were higher because of youtube. That's not going to happen, it is a free service!
If something is bad for the "vloggers" it doesn't matter; they're only protected as a consumer, and they're being paid so they're not even a consumer they're a business partner. It is only customers and competitors, rather than business partners, that are protected.
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Unplug from wall, remove cover, tap out chuck,pull bearing,press new bearing in, insert chuck, screw cover back on.
It could be certain word(s) that are above a threshold in the smaller segments but those things are talked about in the other segments so the appearance rate is lower, and below the threshold, in the combined video.
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).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> Very bland content now routinely gets flagged for no apparent reason and must be manually appealed.
It is worse then that. When even a black screen gets flagged for "copyright violation" you know YouTube is seriously broken.
Google doesn't give a shit about quality assurance. Witness their mentality -- everything is in "Beta" aka "Broken".
"Gaming" is hardly fringe these days. It's a bigger business than the movies. Is your mind still in the 90s?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
MAYBE IT HAS A YELLING FILTER?
Ahem. Take two. What I mean to say is, maybe it's got some metrics about the density of certain words or topics. Spread over a bigger piece, it doesn't trigger the alarms but in the shorter clip it does. Just a wild guess, though. It could also be a bug in the algorithm that just doesn't work on longer pieces or something. Or randomization. Or wild inconsistency.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Is your mind still in the 90s?
Doesn't asking this question worry you? Don't you wonder why you changed your way of thinking? Whose idea was it?
Me, I'm darn proud of the fact that I'm trying to keep my mind as close to what it was in the 90s as is practicable given the onslaught of garbage data.
YouTube has an effective monopoly over the community produced video streaming sector, just as Microsoft had an effective monopoly over the desktop operating system back in the late 90's, when they got in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer in an deliberate move to undermine Mozilla.
YouTube is using its control of its monetization tools to undermine whatever content they think should not be produced. Do you really want to pretend that Google's massive advertising operation is just some glorified web host running on AWS and claim that anyone could "do that in 30 minutes"?
I never said the other options were as convenient. Freedom usually isn't convenient; just ask any Linux desktop user about their selection of common proprietary applications (Photoshop, etc.). But YouTube is not a monopoly as claimed before: there other other options out there, even if you don't like them as much.
HIPPA, Pretty sure they'd be in deep shit in the US too if they kept *medical* info about you.
HIPAA regulations apply SOLELY to HIPAA-Covered Entities which are health plans and clearinghouses (Insurance companies) and health providers; the rules don't have any affect and cannot be enforced against anyone else, Except sometimes when a covered entity engages the services of a 3rd party company who will handle some PHI, the covered entity may be required to make the 3rd party sign a special agreement called a "Business Associate Contract" assuming some liability regarding the security of the information.
HIPAA rules DON'T apply to Google, with respect to messages in your Gmail box, or even your Google G Suite Inbox, that is, at least, unless you have a signed BAA contract on file covering that e-mail account.