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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

This is where e.g. much of "free market" rhetoric and e.g. Libertarianism need to take a severe backseat.

Given the reach, it's absolutely time for "government interference." Now, I'm not actually saying that we definitely should shut things down. But we absolutely need to drag Google people into public hearings and such. Google et al have inserted themselves into their lives to an extent that they ought no longer be able to claim "but we're a private company." It's increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to opt out.

Example; I fully intended for my children to not have anything like a Google account until a certain age -- but then the pandemic and remote schooling happened. It is true that with a great deal of pain to teachers et al I could have opted out, but that would have been literally unreasonable, not to mention unsustainable for other people.

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I think I largely agree with you about getting the government involved. But the nature of that involvement is important here.

As I see it the fundamental problem is not that Google isn't behaving as a responsible steward of free speech. The problem is that Google shouldn't have this power to begin with. By law, Google should be allowed to capriciously and arbitrarily shut down a user's account. It's their service, they shouldn't need to provide a justification. But Google shouldn't be in a position where they control so much of the market. There needs to be real competition in this area so users can easily switch to a different provider if they lose faith in Google's reliability. Where the government needs to be involved is in ensuring real choice in a free market, rather than the current duopoly.

Ensuring a free market isn't easy. It's much easier to simply pass a law that says that Google (or a company in a similar position) needs to provide better service or offer users recourse to dispute this sort of service interruption. But that's just putting wallpaper over a crack. We need the government to commit to the hard work of enforcing open standards of interoperability so smaller entrants can get into the market.

I'd like to see a private equity style Competition Authority. The idea being the gov would come into a monopolized market and fund new competitors. I say PE because I'd rather the people profit if successful rather than subsidies but the real point is funding more choice vs only having the power to breakup or constrain existing corporations. Another tool in the toolbox.

Essentially, though -- this is just "more regulation with extra steps."

Just pass the regulations and competition will likely find a way around it. Honestly, this to me is the biggest blind spot in all of "pro free market capitalism." The good flavor of capitalism is antifragile, You can make competition better precisely by making things HARDER on private companies, not easier. Stuff gets better because the weak die.

I think this is roughly my stance as well.

If we've allowed Google (and a few other select tech companies) the privilege of becoming de-facto monopolies in their space (and I believe we absolutely have, often intentionally as government policy in the international space) then they should be bound by the same rules that the government is.

I think this is even more obvious when you consider how some of these companies creep into government processes.

Ex: Google classroom is estimated to be in use in more than 60,000 schools across the US. This means that a Google account is required for all students in these schools (opt-outs exist, but are impractical, hard to enforce, and often cause you to be labeled as troublesome by teachers and staff).

If my child attends a public school that is using Google software and requiring a Google account - The government damn well is involved, and I expect the government to require the same rights & due process for a Google account as they do for other governmental actions.

> By law, Google should be allowed to capriciously and arbitrarily shut down a user's account. It's their service, they shouldn't need to provide a justification.

I strongly disagree.

While there should be some level of protection for large companies ability to terminate customers at will, there also need to be consumer protections against unreasonable EULAs and capricious decisions. (Edit: some such protections already exist, so it is a question of if and how we shift the balance between consumer rights and corporate rights. I think as the companies grow larger, more powerful, and more integral to our daily lives, that balance needs to shift further towards consumer rights given the power imbalance.)

When companies sell us digital goods and become integral parts of our digital lives, there arises a need to balance their rights of free association against the rights of their users to due process.

That is not to say that simply mandating a fair dispute resolution system is a sufficient solution, but it is a necessary step.

I think mandating data portability and maybe even interoperability is also necessary (though an interoperability mandate seems tricky to do well.)

> When companies sell us digital goods

Google is not selling you any digital goods. They provide services like GMail for free to people. That is a big part of the problem: users are not paying customers and so have no leverage, as they would in a proper customer relationship. Instead, users are the product, and the actual paying customers have all the leverage in determining how the product is treated.

Google operates a numer of stores for books, movies, music, apps, electronics and more.

But that being said, I meant the "and" following the statement quoted to be an "or".

The cliche of "if you aren't the customer, then you're the product" leaves out the important detail that you can always be both.

Being a paying customer is no protection when you are in a business relationship where your have no power, especially when tou have few alternatives.

> Google operates a number of stores for books, movies, music, apps, electronics and more.

None of which are relevant to the issues of privacy being discussed. The relevant Google services, such as GMail, are provided for free (meaning no money is paid); that's why so many individuals and institutions, including government-run schools, shortsightedly adopt them without considering the actual (non-monetary) costs.

> Being a paying customer is no protection when

...you are only a paying customer for products that have nothing to do with what you're complaining about. Google isn't going to care any more about your GMail privacy just because you happen to have bought some books, movies, music, or apps on Google Play or own a Pixel phone. They have demonstrated that quite clearly for years now.

> None of which are relevant to the issues of privacy being discussed.

The issue being discussed is a company like Google banning your account with no recourse. Privacy only comes into play in this discussion because the given reason for the ban comes from the scanning of Google Drive uploads for CSAM, which has nothing to do with Google selling your data or targeting ads at you and is done regardless of whether you pay for Google Drive storage or not.

Google operates a single account across all their services, so a ban for a Google Drive CSAM false positive means that you lose access to not only the contents of your drive, but also any books, movies, music, apps, cell service, advertising campaign, hosting, etc.

> But we absolutely need to drag Google people into public hearings and such

We have dragged Google into public hearings. The problem is that the purpose of these hearings has always been to collect soundbytes rather than to try to define a relationship between internet services, the people, and the government.

What should the government do? The article discusses how it is not clear what should be different (other than turning the relevant accounts back on).

It is easy to ask for public hearings but if there’s no intended remedy or change they will just be a show trial and nothing will change.

Your example is great, because to me it illustrates my point well. What would you like to have had be different?

I think good places in the past to look are "warning labels" and/or "common carrier"-like ideas.

Warning labels today, I think means "fixing voluminous EULA crap," which we've done in other fields reasonably well, e.g. the FDA I think is pretty solid here. Simply requiring "readable" terms of services I think would go a long way (though you have to wait a bit for things to shake out.)

The general principles behind "common carrier" type services would also be a good idea to start thinking about; they essentially just say "When your product or service becomes a day-to-day thing for a lot of people, we're going to hold you to certain accessibility rules."

> This is where e.g. much of "free market" rhetoric and e.g. Libertarianism need to take a severe backseat.

No, it's where we the people need to understand that rights come with responsibilities. If you want to claim the right to keep your data private, you need to not give it to third parties that you know are not going to honor that. And knowing that is easy when it comes to Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., because of the simple rule that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

The problem here is not too much free market and libertarianism, but too little. The ultimate reason for this...

> It's increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to opt out.

...is that the government has inserted itself more and more deeply into our lives, and we have let it. For example, your kids' schools are beholden to Google because they are run by the government, which is insulated from free market competition and can just punt on providing proper infrastructure. And the reason why Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. can survive on the ad-supported business model, instead of having to make their users actual paying customers as would be the case in a real free market, is that the government has set things up to favor them. They can get cheap loans to build the massive infrastructure they need because of government monetary policy. They can insulate themselves from any effective legal challenge because of the way the legal system is set up.

> your kids' schools are beholden to Google because they are run by the government, which is insulated from free market competition and can just punt on providing proper infrastructure.

Private schools are just as beholden to Google. No school is going to compete on the basis of "we don't use Google services (we pay for more-private infrastructure)", in any world, ever.

> we the people need to understand that rights come with responsibilities. If you want to claim the right to keep your data private, you need to not give it to third parties that you know are not going to honor that.

So if I'm a parent of a school-age child, what exactly do you think I should do? If I don't decide that Google accounts are enough of a reason to homeschool my child, will you claim I don't understand that rights come with responsibilities, and that I (and my child) don't have any right to expect our data to be private?

We live in a society. Sometimes the only way to crack collective action problems is government intervention.

> No school is going to compete on the basis of "we don't use Google services (we pay for more-private infrastructure)"

Um, what? Didn't you just get through saying you don't want your kids to have to have Google accounts just to go to school? Do you think you're the only parent who wants that? Isn't the protection of your kids' privacy by the school worth something?

If you're unwilling to pay anything more than zero for something you claim you value, then your claim that you value it becomes, to say the least, questionable.

> if I'm a parent of a school-age child, what exactly do you think I should do?

You mentioned homeschooling yourself. In our current environment, unless you are very lucky in what school district you happen to live in, that is probably the only option to avoid giving up your kids' privacy.

> don't have any right to expect our data to be private

Google apparently doesn't think so, and neither do your kids' current schools (and I suspect your implication that the vast majority of schools in the country are similar is correct), which means the government that runs those schools doesn't think so either.

> Sometimes the only way to crack collective action problems is government intervention.

No, that's my point: governments do not solve collective action problems. They grab power using the excuse that they are going to solve such problems Real Soon Now, but they never actually do. Governments run all the public schools in this country: they have had all the tools they need to solve the collective action problem of how to protect kids' privacy in a digital world for quite some time now. And they don't care. And this is just one of many, many examples.

> If you're unwilling to pay anything more than zero for something you claim you value

I'm willing to pay something for it. That doesn't imply I'm willing to pay an unlimited amount for it. Google accounts are not in the top 10 things I care about with regard to schools.

> You mentioned homeschooling yourself. In our current environment, unless you are very lucky in what school district you happen to live in, that is probably the only option to avoid giving up your kids' privacy.

My mention of homeschooling was intended to drive home the point that the only way to avoid Google in this situation has incredibly high cost, out of proportion to its benefit. If you truly think that a parent should homeschool to avoid giving data to Google, that's an extreme view.

That does not mean I don't think giving data to Google is harmful!

> No, that's my point: governments do not solve collective action problems. They grab power using the excuse that they are going to solve such problems Real Soon Now, but they never actually do.

Apparently your solution to collective action problems is that individuals must take action, without coordination, even when it's individually counterproductive. And you view failure to do so as indicative that they place no value on the problem getting solved. In other words, you seem to dismiss the notion of the "collective action problem" as a phenomenon at all. Frankly, I find this view absurdly naïve.

> you seem to dismiss the notion of the "collective action problem" as a phenomenon at all

No, I'm just objecting to the claim that governments can solve such problems.

> the only way to avoid Google in this situation has incredibly high cost, out of proportion to its benefit

That's because the current situation was created by a collective action failure, one which governments have not done anything to help and have in fact made worse, by doing the same thing individuals have been doing: shortsightedly taking advantage of "free" services from Google without considering the actual (non-monetary) costs.

Governments are not going to fix this situation. The only way to fix it is to invert the collective action that caused it in the first place. I agree that, because of the depth of the hole we have dug ourselves into, climbing out of it is a huge effort. That doesn't change the fact that the problem won't be solved any other way.

This is tangential, but your opening statement threw me for a loop. As a Libertarian, I've spent a lot of time arguing with people on the left and right who are on the pro-censorship side when it comes to corporations. While it wouldn't surprise me to see a Libertarian take a position against individual liberty on this issue, I have not seen that happen. Your ire may be better directed at the ones in the driver's seat who have the power to address this and refuse to do so rather than the powerless minority who consistently get this right.

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