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Comment by grinsekatze | Hacker News Reader

> “Do not publish sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos. Writing about adult topics is permitted as long as it is not accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos, or any material that promotes or depicts unlawful or inappropriate sexual acts with children or animals. Additionally, we do not allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography.

> We do allow naturalistic and documentary depictions of nudity (such as an image of a breastfeeding infant), as well as depictions of nudity that serve a clear educational, scientific, or artistic purpose.”

I don’t understand the fuss being made. It is clearly stated that sexual content is not allowed.

Just because sharing pornography isn’t illegal does not mean that it should be allowed on every platform on which it is possible.

Instead of violating TOS of a service they could just use a service that doesn’t prohibit pornography?

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For me the first realization is that puting files on Drive is considered publishing.

Mentally it was closer to a private space that can be shared in parts. For instance I synchronize pics from my phone to Google Photos, and it’s labelled “backup” in the app. But now I need to readjust.

Also now that an algorithm can start deleting files here and there depending on the mood and flavor of the TOS that day (because, really, the last time I even tried to read the TOS was years ago), Drive becomes basically useless as a file storage/backup service, and as you point out I’m back on the long journey to find a decent storage provider to back my NAS and a photo service at the same time.

Considering an awful lot of people must have operated under the same assumptions until now, I think having a fuss is justified.

> For me the first realization is that puting files on Drive is considered publishing.

Putting stuff on Drive isn't publishing in the usual sense, but Drive can be (and often is) used for publishing, just like every file storage service that makes it possible to share a link to access stores files ever has been.

It's not clear if all the issues are with shared rather than merely stored content, but it certainly seems that the primary context of the issues in TFA is shared content.

Burning books is not illegal, but we are rightfully appalled when someone publicly burns books. This is book burning.

Are you appalled if someone says "hey, I'm gonna burn any books in this box", then people put books in that box? This content is explicitly against Google's published ToS.

"Here's a box where you can put all your books in to make sure they're protected against any disaster."

"Here's also a long list of rules and conditions to this box. We know you won't read it."

"Can I get a quick rundown on what I can and can't do?"

"No."

"Alright, sounds good to me."

Fast forward 4 months:

"Hey, it looks like I'm missing a few books here, what's the deal?"

"We said you couldn't have anything about: [insert political side here], guns, chemistry, sexual acts outside of marriage."

"What, no you didn't."

"You agreed to the terms and conditions."

Thanks, Satan.

The list here:

https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505?hl=en

has 13 items on it. Not exactly unreasonably long list to check, especially if you are in the porn industry where you should be aware that there are plenty of restrictions (justified or not) around porn. If you didn't happen to be aware of that, consider this a lesson learned the hard way.

Do you see them in this format when you sign up for Google Drive, or do you simply see one of those checkboxes that say "I have read and agree to Terms and Conditions," with a link to a huge wall of text of legalese?

I have been using Google Drive for many years and I was never aware of these restrictions. I wonder how many Drive users were aware before seeing this article. If it is less than 50% (and I would be surprised if it isn't) it is Google's fault not individual users.

> If it is less than 50% (and I would be surprised if it isn't) it is Google's fault not individual users.

This misses the second point of my parent comment; if you are in the porn industry, you should know that plenty of services do not want your business, and as such be far more diligent than the average joe in checking ToS for the services you are building your business on.

Systematic oppression makes ignoring ToS the default. Businesses choose not to cater to sex workers and such workers find themselves in the situation where there's no option but to ignore the ToS. You find that when services you take for granted aren't available, things get... harder. So you do what everyone else does to the best of your ability even if you are an "undesirable" that has been asked to stay outside the group, even when that's illegal. So yeah, sex workers are going to do what they need to do to survive and make ends meet, the terms of service for websites is the very least of their concerns when they don't know if they'll make rent this month.

Were you "aware" that two categories have been added since October? Reading the explanations, "terrorist content" seems likely to be "depictions of everyday life in poor Muslim areas". As for "public streaming", that seems to be "more downloads than we like". Regardless of what these things actually mean, there's no way to know how how much time elapsed between the additions to the document and the deletion of material.

I would be appalled as soon as someone says "I'm gonna burn any books in this box", whether any people puts books in that box or not. It is a promise for an appalling act.

You may not like to look too closely at the book industry then. It is full of such boxes.

Porn == Books? I don’t understand how you can make that comparison .. and in this context.

Banning porn sounds great until you realize it means you lose HBO's The Wire, House of Cards and a long list of other iconic media because they contain scenes of sex acts and naked women in strip clubs.

There is no objective standard to distinguish them from "bad" porn.

It's legal speech. It's being destroyed because Google doesn't like the content. In this context, there's no particular difference between video and a book.

Are you comparing books to porn? Lets go with the comparison... Nobody is burning books. It's more like the publisher is saying to aspiring author: "Your book contains pornographic content, we will not publish this. Please find another publisher. And by the way, we lost your manuscript, hope you have another one."

Well, actually they sort of do - trash the books that haven't sold.

Of course they're burning books. They're burning all manner of "indecent" content, not just this "porn" but also content about guns and other subjects they consider too taboo.

I don't think it's ok for a company to decide to target a specific content. Pornography is no different than any content. Next day they decide to ban firearms, nature, space photos etc.

Pornography has a special status, to say it is no different is just disingenuous.

I think it mostly has a special “canary in the coal mine” status.

For a lot of people pornography has no clear definition and is decided on a “I know it when I see it” basis. And it gets worse when it comes to an AI flagging it or a service’s staff reviewing content from another country.

This means it’s the perfect ground to train a banning content process, because it can be fuzzy, can fail a bunch, and a good chunk of people won’t be willing to openly defend their possession of “porn” (even if it’s a false positive for instance).

Otherwise I genuinely think we should recalibrate our vision of porn, its place in our societies and how we relate to it. I have the feeling it’s one of the subject that we dragged our feet the most to revise, when the world has been changing leaps and bounds compared to two or three gneerations ago.

It is fuzzy but only if you measure decency on a spectrum rather than black and white -- for some there is a fine line and for others the line is nine miles wide. Not only that but there is a difference between intended usage and actual usage.

Miley Cyrus may have no qualms about posting nudes of herself on her Twitter account and protect her expression via artistic license but sexual puritans will argue that anything that inflames the sense is deserving of censorship.

Given this data, recalibrating our vision of porn would require recalibrating our vision of sexuality in generally -- is a public expression of sexuality something that most people can tolerate? As it is now, that answer is no.

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