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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."
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!
...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.
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.
"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.