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I hope I'm not the only one who got a little squeamish at this...I understand the logic, "don't let people transfer/share things that are illegal". But it doesn't sit right that 1) A gigantic private company operating across most of the world/laws/jurisdictions/precedents etc...is in charge of determining (with little to no human oversight) what can and can't be shared between individuals. Who might even be in competing legal jurisdictions. Seems wonky. 2) that it's commonly accepted that they get to look into it period. It's similar to having every package/letter you ever send opened and looked through and judged (ik postal services sometimes scan) but I can't imagine they open every single envelope

>But it doesn't sit right

Your argument makes sense, and I share your feelings on an emotional level, but at this point, the whole argument can be reduced to "sharing video files streamed from google drive is an equivalent of hosting a video on youtube, so the same rules apply", and that's hard to beat.

If you want to store whatever material you want for personal consumption, you are welcome to. But if you enable sharing, that's when all those extra rules start applying, because you are effectively turning it into a personal youtube that is still hosted by google, and DMCA strikes and other stuff will apply just the same.

Similarly, you can make backup copies of a DVD movie for yourself by burning them onto writeable DVDs. The legality of it is dubious due to copyright law being plain awful at times, but you won't get prosecuted for that if you truly had it only for personal backup reasons. The second you start distributing those DVDs in massive amounts to people, you start inviting a pretty legal trouble to your doorstep.

Mind you, I absolutely disagree with the ban of both the historical footage, as well as the whole google account just because of that footage. However, I do believe that making video public via a shareable link or otherwise puts it in the territory where content rules similar to youtube might get reasonably applied.

>you are effectively turning it into a personal youtube that is still hosted by google

Then logically, why should it be available ad free either?

Because you actually have to pay for google drive to host your videos on it, and the storage space is pretty limited. You don't need to pay anyone to store videos on youtube.

>you actually have to pay for google drive to host your videos on it

I don't think so.

Google Drive is a paid service with different subscription tiers available depending on how much storage you are using. I know that video uploads count towards that storage limit, and you can easily test it yourself. Try uploading a video, and see it counting towards your Google Drive storage limit.

The rules don't require the person holding the content to scan the content. Normally a DMCA claim is issued before the host has to get involved.

Lets say you and I opened a joint safe deposit box at the bank to share USB drives together with movies on it. If the bank found out, they wouldn't be required to drill it open and scan the drive to make sure none of the movies were copyrighted. This is google drilling open the safe deposit box because someone shared the keys, and they think there may be a movie they don't like there.

>The rules don't require the person holding the content to scan the content. Normally a DMCA claim is issued before the host has to get involved.

Legally, you are 100% correct. The law doesn't require the host to do anything until a DMCA strike is received. But YouTube has its own rules, which is fully legal as well, as long as they are more restrictive than the law (e.g., establishments prohibiting alcohol inside are allowed, even though alcohol is legal; establishments allowing crack cocaine usage inside are not allowed, because crack cocaine is illegal).

And YouTube decided to take proactive approach here. The reasoning for why doesn't matter to the point at hand. The fact of the matter is, YouTube took a stricter approach to DMCA moderation and tends to not always wait until the video receives and actual DMCA strike.

>However, I do believe that making video public via a shareable link or otherwise puts it in the territory where content rules similar to youtube might get reasonably applied.

I actually think that not making a distinction between publishing to the world and sharing with a small group of people is the biggest source of unreasonableness in all of these debates.

When I'm interacting and sharing with a few people I know or who I just met, I expect companies and governments to stay out of it (unless there is a criminal investigation overseen by a judge). I don't think that's unreasonable at all. It used to be the status quo until not very long ago.

Everything from political activity to copyrights can be discussed in a far more sensible way if we make that distinction. As soon as we erase that distinction, which has sometimes happened because it's the default with some technologies, everything becomes essentially unsolvable.

E.g, I don't want to defend the right to anonymity of someone who directly and systematically influences entire populations just because I expect to be allowed to do the equivalent of talking to three strangers in a pub without showing ID.

Google knows how many different people access a particular piece of shared content. They should just set a reasonable threshold before unleashing their crude algorithms. 2 is not a reasonable threshold. How about 200?

The problem is, sadly, people scream at google because they "let people see bad things". So Google, for PR reasons, responds.

>But until the law makes the judgement, being banned from a grocery store cannot automatically and without any recourse get you banned from your bank, your car insurance, your mail service, and many other things.

in your analogy the grocery store also has a gun shop next door they own, you're in the grocery store and they decide that you are buying something to poison someone so they don't let you, you go next door to the gun shop where they say 'hey, customer 2214 potential murderer of course you can buy the gun!' You buy the gun and go kill the person you were intending to kill.

When the law gets involved the company owning the grocery store and gun store will find it has a lot of liability.

Basically anything where you think the law will get involved and have to make a determination will mean you will have to shut down all services.

Notice the law getting involved banning is of course different than the you were an asshole banning.

on edit: I of course think it's ridiculous that this account got banned, but that doesn't change the fact that the argument put forward here about wait for the law to make determination just isn't going to fly in any situation, and think about it if someone was a terrorist, got banned in service X but used service Y to coordinate their big attack that killed thousands would you really be sitting here saying service Y was right not to ban them? Maybe you would, but the law and general public opinion probably wouldn't.

> Without reading into the details, I don't think that google arbitrarily examines all user files on Google Drive (and please correct me if I am wrong, but that's what I remember since the last time this discussion was had).

They say that they process all of your data:

> To provide services like spam filtering, virus detection, malware protection and the ability to search for files within your individual account, we process your content.

They also have some weirdly specific claim about advertising, which I don’t trust bc it sounds like they’re mincing words:

> We don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—including Drive—for advertising purposes, period.

A better analogy would be if you made terroristic remarks to the sporting goods clerk, and walmart banned you not just from sporting goods but the entire store. Gmail and Google Drive are just different departments of the same place.

But in this case it's just that walmart zoomed in on your notebook with a security camera, saw some arabic scribbles about allah on a tank drawing you were sharing with your friend, and decided you were a terrorist. Sure, they absolutely should toss you out the store if they think you are one, but they shouldn't have been zooming in your notebook in the first place.

Not a fan of that analogy. Walmart can't brick your home thermostat, voice assistant, tv box, cable service, federated logins to Uber, DoorDash, your email account, cloud storage account, and so on.

So you think if google really thinks you're a terrorist that they are obliged to go on supporting you? There's a big difference between having no idea terrorists use your platform, and actually supporting them by enabling those you believe to be terrorists.

They seem to be banning accounts that are clearly not terrorists.

Also, I get there are some black and white cases here. But there's plenty of grey also. I imagine a lot of terrorist videos aren't posted by terrorists, but rather by some disenfranchised/angry person who hasn't done anything illegal.

Agreed. Intent is important.

Unfortunately, google clearly has stated they think terroristic acts are happening. Once you indicate that you believe a counterparty is engaging in terrorist acts, you mustn't support them. Quite a few people have gone for prison for a very long time because a fed or informant who had zero interest in actually carrying out a terrorist act, made someone believe they were. And all the prosecutor needs to show is that Google _thought_ they were aiding someone making terroristic acts, and the prison sentences could be lengthy.

Remember the legal system doesn't have much room for nuance when it comes to criminal conspiracy. Even if somebody else gives you all the tools to do something horrible and eggs you on to do it, you are responsible if you make any act whatsoever towards what you believe will have that end, even if the person egging you on is actually a fed who knows all along the act isn't meant to ever happen and in fact you were only presented with the idea that an act could happen on false pretense so you could be tricked into going to jail.

And this brings me back to my original thought, which is that google is pretty dumb for even putting themselves in the position where they have a very dumb system for deciding if they're dealing with terrorist material. Because it opens them up to huge liability that they wouldn't have had if they simply allow their users to exist in privacy.

Who is this "Google" person that "thinks" he is a terrorist? There is no actual human entity here that is doing any "thinking" at all. It is an automated system, that cannot be argued with or challenged by normal means.

Terrorism is an INCREDIBLY SERIOUS allegation. It should be dealt with by law enforcement and the courts. And the penalties for _false_ accusations, which is exactly what this is, should be severe as well. It can be life-ruining.

The entities that authored or authorized the system to identify the content as such are the persons that "think" so, because they wrote the definitions that identified him as such. You don't get to just make a system and totally disclaim all liability for what happens with it. If the people at google run the system, then they own what happens. In this case, they own the fact that they identified suspected terroristic activity and they should be held responsible if they don't stop it, at least until it can be reviewed.

Terrorism should not just be dealt with through the courts. If you think someone is committing violence against others your responsibility is to shut down all support of that person, you mustn't aid them in any way. There's no requirement that private entities wait for the courts before stopping commerce with suspected terrorists. If you are google, that means completely locking out all accounts that you identify as involved in terrorism.

The supreme court has held that when making statements of public concern, you haven't committed libel if you are acting without malice. It's pretty clear google wasn't acting with malice here, and that it is a great public concern if someone is actually amassing armored vehicles to use against others. And just because someone is a terrorist, doesn't mean you should or can act through the courts. If google believes someone is acting against non-US nationals in a foreign country, then there's very little the US courts could pragmatically do about it other than order entities in the US not to support them. Of course if evidence did emerge that google flagged that terrorist activity was happening, and they continued supporting that activity, I don't think that would look favorably during any prosecution.

Which, yet again, brings me to my original point, which is that google shouldn't even be putting themselves in the position to scan private data and open themselves up to the liability of having invade privacy and to suspect someone is engaging in crimes.

> If you think someone is committing violence against others your responsibility is to shut down all support of that person, you mustn't aid them in any way.

"If you think". What if you're wrong?

Intent matters. For instance, if a fed or informant asks to use your services and you think they are doing it for illegal purposes, such as terrorism, then you can be convicted (Even though the fed / informant never actually would have executed them, and it was a ruse to arrest you). If you come into my business, and I announce I believe you are engaging in terrorist activity, then the case is pretty much open and shut for my intent if I go on to support your ongoing concerns.

So if you're wrong, you merely didn't engage in commerce with someone you believe to be a terrorist. There's nothing wrong or illegal about that. The agreement for free services by google doesn't mean google can't end the service at any time, and I'd bet the boiler plate for any paid service has a pressure release valve to end the service if google merely suspects you of engaging in illegal activity. In short, Google owes you nothing, and they're not your slave to provide you service despite believing you're a criminal.

I'd say when you twig to google as a violent terrorist it should escalate to a real human to check before shutting the account down and forwarding it to the FBI.

And in the meantime before a human can check it, you think google will be completely without liability if they flag someone as a terrorist but let them continue on with their business, even aiding them with all of google services?

They most certainly should be, because an automated Google system having "flagged" a user as "a terrorist" means nothing in the eyes of the law. On the other hand, they should not in any way be without liability for wrongly suspending a user's account just because their automated system unjustifiably "flagged" them.

>they should not in any way be without liability for wrongly suspending a user's account just because their automated system unjustifiably "flagged" them.

A legal team of 1,000+ at google is betting that you're wrong. I have a feeling they came to a pretty logical decision that liability of aiding someone flagged of terrorist activity is greater than liability of shutting down someone to whom you owe nothing.

If Google thinks you do something illegal then they should call the police after a real human checked. If not they should not ruin your life, who knows tomorrow all your Google accounts get locked forever because an Artificial (Non)Intelligence found a word or a part of an image that looks like something "bad" but not illegal.

It's estimated 2 billion people use google. And in the US for instance, one third of the people here have records for criminal activity. Google doesn't have the manpower to call the police on millions of criminals actively using their services.

So what is the solution? Google (and others) are clearly not competent to implement a good algorithm, so why the hell not give the unfortunate users a simple way to demand a human to check that your image or words are not criminal?

Sony did this to me, they blocked my son account for 2 months,no reason why or a way to appeal. The good part is that I now have a reason to not buy Sony products again, the bad part is that until it happens to you , you will think that there are millions of users and only few are affected by this so for sure it will not happen to you.

I've already stated the solution, it is the parent to which we are all responding:

>What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all. They should not be in the position where they can even find out who is a terrorist.

The solution I advocate for is they shouldn't be looking at our data. I don't want them evaluating who is a terrorist or who isn't, because as soon as they do that they need to take action on that information or be liable for failing to do so.

But I think you have found a very good solution with Sony, and maybe we should apply this to google and simply not use their service rather than get upset because they've chosen not to support those they think are terrorists. Again google is not your slave that must perform a service for you.

All of those walmart departments are doing the same thing: they sell you different kinds of consumer goods in a single marketplace.

If you get banned from the entirety of Amazon marketplace by harassing sellers in the gardening equipment department, that seems fair. If you get your AWS account banned for doing the same thing that has nothing to do with AWS, that's a different story. One thing is a consumer goods store, the other is a cloud service provider.

We're not talking about harrassment, we're talking about google thinking this is a violent terrorist who is sharing pictures of their armored vehicles.

Can you really say with a straight face that once google thinks they have a terrorist, they should just go on supporting that person in any way whatsoever? There can be very serious penalties for knowingly aiding terroristic acts (even if it turns out it was say a "harmless" fed or informant instead of an actual terrorist).

The appropriate analogy is at the automated checkout, a computer vision algorithm can't assure you correctly scanned an item. So it automatically sends a robot to the parking lot to boot your car, and a drone hovers over you and jamming your cell phone. Why? Idk, why not. Maybe if the store is really enthusiastic they tape your mouth, bind your hands, dump you in an alley and forget about you.

Walmart will do that. I worked at a mall bakery where some lunatic threatened to blow up the place because he was dissatisfied with the cream cheese serving size.

He was banned from all properties owned the malls parent company.