Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?
plus.google.com
plus.google.com
P.S. I love how Tom has turned into the elder statesman of social networks.
But totally loving the elder statesman analogy. Best part about Tom"s reply is his own humility--Myspace having "decent" technology.
/fyp
The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either.
The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network?
Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?
When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.
It's a finger for fuck's sake. It's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by it you really need to grow up and stop living in 19th century Victorian England.
Yes, pictures of dicks and gore is disgusting, but a finger? That's just childish, and reacting to that is also childish.
The adult thing is to just ignore it.
The amount of moralizing over what people are "allowed" to find offensive here is amazing. If it were my network, I wouldn't give a rat's ass what MG was doing in his picture, but it isn't my network.
Almost any business that is targeted at a mass audience understands this and governs their products accordingly. If you find their censorship to be prudish and ridiculous, you can boycott them and use the Fuck You Network. I suppose if enough people boycott G+ for being unreasonably prudish, maybe they'll change their position, but judging by past performance, it seems like the prudes win these fights. Social networks are not like content distributors like HBO, that can appeal to a relatively small niche and be successful, for G+ it's all or nothing.
http://theangrydrunk.com/2011/11/15/fuck-you-google
It's just one big circle. Oh wait! Doesn't Google+ have circles? And so it goes ... :)
Well, I've got news for you. Not everyone has the same threshold for tolerance of offensive material. Maybe the middle finger is devastating to me, but I love seeing gore. Who are you to tell me that's childish?
There are rules. Even HN has a set. If you don't like them, don't play.
It's not about this, it's about setting your rules for your property. You want to use a service, you agree to terms of use.
Imagine someone painted a giant middle finger on your house wall, how would you feel about that?
So if it would in the slightest bother you, then don't bother doing it.
The MG criticism is over the top, as expected, since G+ is far more "public" out of the gate than previous networks it needs to be more proactive rather than reactive. As FB becomes more public they will begin to grapple with the same issues, it's only a matter of time...
MC Siegler and his fans are completely and totally allowed to share pictures of them fingering at each other (that came out wrong, but I'm leaving it for posterity) in private circles on G+, aren't they? But Google doesn't want it in people's public feeds.
I don't find it offensive--I do find it stupid in that sort of "oh, look at the Internet Tough Guy" way, but that's a far cry from taking offense--but at the same time I can entirely get why Google wouldn't be all happy and such with that sort of picture in folks' public feeds. Like it or not, there are some venues where you get to be a little civilized if you want to be out in public, and Google's decided that they have a bit of a dress code in their neck of the woods: shirt optional, pants optional, tie not required, birds verboten. Not a big deal; the total of this tragedy is pretty much that MC Siegler will have to resort to other methods than a bird in a profile picture to show what a trendy rebel with his fingers on the pulse of Technoeverything he really is.
Maybe he could do it with a thoughtful, well-written, incisive arti...ahahahahaha. I made myself laugh. =)
That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.
He, and you, and I, have no inherent right to do whatever we want on a private service. Their house, their rules. Maybe he should start his own social network (with blackjack, and...). He can call it CrunchPlaid. =)
I don't really see many people not minding their business, though. I see a few (including me) saying "meh, it's Google's house, they choose the rules", and that's about it.
If flipping the bird isn't an adult thing to do, clearly the users are not adults. So the guardians have to clean up after them, as is customary.
Heck, apple has made a lot of money by taking that stance. Why shouldn't Google emulate it?
Rather than removing profile images they should offer optional filtering there, too.
"But this is who I really am, and it's how I want to portray myself in public!"
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences. You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
I don't think anyone is insisting that there are no types of images that are so bad that it wouldn't be ok for Google to remove them. At least I haven't seen anyone claim so.
As long as that is the case, using examples that the vast majority would agree are worse than the one that was actually taken down just weakens your point dramatically.
Now we are just arguing about where the line is.
No, but one can disagree with both Google and the general public.
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences.
That doesn't mean we can't publicly disagree with the rules.
You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
Mall cops don't decide the rules, they just apply them. It's different.
If you are in favor of Google treating their site like a public space then Google is doing very poorly.
(It’s a stupid comparison that gets us nowhere.)
I don't know why everyone is making it sound like this sets a precedent for more "censoring" when this is already the standard for any currently popular social network.
It sounds like you disagree with this though. Why? Why do you think he should have kept his mouth shut?
"this is already the standard for any currently popular social network"
And it will remain so, if people don't complain loudly enough that an alternative is created which behaves differently.
Your general statements don't apply here. If you want to argue, then tell me why you want to see people flicking you off on G+ and why you think that's something that should be OK for everyone.
Just because you disagree with somebodys opinion, doesn't mean they were wrong to express it.
However, the point I'm making is, all things considered, I don't think he had much of an argument for this case, and it's more of just a cheap shot at G+ (he could have instead addressed it to all social networks instead of G+ too..). He kind of has a track record for these things though..
I already use Google+ far more than Facebook, but they keep stepping in it and making me less and less hopeful about it being long term viable as a replacement.
It has nothing to do with wanting to see people flicking someone off, but with not wanting to see Google take the role of moral censor and deciding for us what's "offensive" or not.
It is clearly ridiculous for Google to be policing profile photos looking for people flipping other people the bird.
Right? Wrong? Who cares? It's ridiculous. It can't possibly work. By doing it, Google sends a message that they're fundamentally unserious about taking on Facebook. Nobody who's serious could possibly have the time to deal with stuff like this. It's like Facebook banning cartoon profile pictures --- which is the kind of thing you can sort of do when you're the social network for a bunch of colleges, but couldn't even consider doing when you're the default social network for the entire world.
If there's one company that doesn't usually use humans to do any kind of spam filtering, it's probably Google. Also, I'm pretty sure they'd work out the kinks eventually.
While I can't claim to know for certain exactly what content Facebook moderates, it most certainly does moderate. Is it purely a coincidence that the entire ecosystem on FB is noticeably 'cleaner' than its predecessor MySpace?
But just letting anyone do anything is not a good approach. The small minority who will get up in arms about such a thing is nothing compared to the masses that will leave when they decide that the anything goes approach has allowed G+ to become a cesspool like MySpace.
It would be easy to justify NOT removing it, even if EVERYONE else found it offensive. There's an option to not follow/view his profile. Under your view, the only votes would be those who found the picture offensive. If the criteria to remove something is that more than one person finds it offensive, almost everything on the internet would be removed.
A (much) better solution is that items that are flagged as potentially offensive come with a warning. Google+ users could choose the level they're comfortable with, much like they do with Google's search results. They deserve to be called out for making an arbitrary decision here, on something so trivial.
Reductionist strawman. While a middle finger may not be particularly offensive to most people (including me), more people are likely to be offended by it than are likely to get their knickers in a twist over such a photo being removed. Ergo, it gets removed.
Waste time with warnings about offensive content and blah-blah-derpa-blah? No. Your potentially-offensive content can be kept in private circles and you can exercise good judgement about what you make public. That is the better solution. (And just in case--save the "well, what is offensive, how do we know?" silliness. That little brat Siegler knew perfectly well that he was doing something stupid and possibly/probably in contravention of Google's rules. Anderson called him out on it, too.)
That line of reasoning is flawed, especially since there's no way to vote that you're not offended (other than the original person posting). That's an absurd system, where only the offended can voice their opinion. Even if those not offended could vote, who would vote on everything they're not offended by. That's still silly. Any system that attempts to allow people to vote/flag offensive material is inherently flawed.
That leaves us (or really Google) with an arbitrary decision on what should be allowed and what should be banned. Asking me (or anyone else) to save the "well, what is offensive" argument is silly. That's the WHOLE point. It's an arbitrary decision, one we all might come to different conclusions on. That underlines my point, that it's an arbitrary decision, and one that's been made for no good reason, given a system where you don't have to follow MG on Google+. There's a natural option (and given your obvious attitude on Mr. Siegler, the one you'll likely take), just don't follow him or look at his Google+ page. There's no reason to remove the content, and Google should be called out for it. MG might have over-reacted, and might be worthy of being called out too. I'm only calling out the system of "voting" to determine what's offensive. That's just a silly system.
"It doesn't meet the standards of public discourse G+ is made for." Blam. Done.
In all seriousness, he should be proud of what they accomplished. Yes, it kind of turned into a cesspool, but there was no model of how a social network should be until Facebook came along. MySpace was an evolution of Geocities, more than it was an attempt to have the kind of "respectable" social presence that facebook shot for. MySpace was still the startup that proved social would be huge.
Wonder if MG would complain about that policy, too? :-)
> My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger — which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere — it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture.
he does also take issue with the policy itself, but as an aside not as his main point:
> Bigger picture: this seems like a ridiculous thing for Google to be policing. [...]
> This also seems like a slippery slope. In certain cultures, various hand gestures mean different things. Is Google also going to delete my profile picture if I have my fingers up to my chin, for example?
Oh, and :-)
I think they're both wrong, but I understand that having something open for all, you'll get adults but children too, and as a parent your definition of objectionable content for your children may differ. But for me, simply removing the content is wrong. Maybe better parental control technology may make the situation better.
Online companies seem to be completely insensitive to what is pretty intuitive in the physical realm: you may tell me what not to do in your shop, but don't touch my stuff.
It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.
Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.
How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?
If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.
When you choose to follow/friend/circle/whatever someone you are making the choice to establish a social connection with that person. Social connections are far too broad to police. I might want to be friends with someone because they make horribly offensive jokes. I might want to be friends with someone because they produce art that could be considered offensive to someone. I might be friends with someone who I like enough to tolerate their offensive side. Whatever the dynamics of that relationship may be Google has no role in its complexities.
The next problem is consistency. I can be way more offensive with words than I can be with pictures. If they want to successfully police people's relationships they will have to also delete anything I say that might be offensive to someone else even if they're not my friend and even if I'm making a private post. As a user I don't think I can possibly understand everything that might offend Google or the millions of users of Google+. That's a huge burden to put on the user. Do I really want to spend the time writing a post on Google+ that may disappear because someone I don't know finds it offensive? I don't think they're doing this yet but if they're choosing to go down this road they are taking the responsibility so they will have to someday. A middle-finger is a pretty low bar. Right off the bat you have to ban 'fuck' from all posts because they are the same meaning.
The solution is pretty obvious. Either hide the profile picture until you friend/circle/whatever someone or give users the ability to rate themselves which solves a variety of other potential problems. I have no problem marking my profile NC-17 or whatever the equivalent would be.
Of course it's Google's site so they can do whatever they want with it. Questioning Google's policies is like a can of soup having an existential crisis.
Just because something offends you doesn't mean you have to go nuts, but being jaded to offensive things is not a good thing.
G+ is an international social network. It's interesting how you assume that what's offensive to a large number of people in the US (maybe 100M people) should be offensive to the world (7B).
News content from Fox perpetuating lies that cause soldiers and civilians to die: front page in search results.
Google has demonstrated with the photo that its willing to act as a censor. Now that we've agreed that censorship is ok, can we now talk about what we would like to censor?
I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people downvote that post (not sure why because I wasn't say anything offensive) and that's the kind of things that you have to accept in social sites... There are rules.. You either accept them or just move on...
When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not.
That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is).
Based on that new perspective, you may understand that restricting free speech on such services is actually "big" deal (yeah, the quotes are important here. i'd go for medium deal in the current state of affairs.)
Sorry for disagree, but I think people should have more personality and do not take decision affected by what the majority is doing.
Maybe I am being too naive, but if I can't find an online community that fixes with my way of think then I am going to build one... Isn't that what Internet is all about?
And if you still care about "to be accepted at school", grow up. Speaking as a "four-eyes" and a nerd, some of us never bothered caring about that in the first place. Unfortunately, the people that did care grew up to form "the majority of the population", leading to quite a few of the social problems that currently plague us.
Free speech only applies to governments, and it applies there specifically because there you truly do have a "whether you like it or not" situation when it comes to governmental policies. It does not, and should not, extend to speech made on someone else's site. That remains entirely subject to the policies of the site owner, who may set them however they wish, keeping in mind that any choice they make may gain them some users and lose others.
Now, that said, I think better solutions existed for the particular issue at hand (so to speak) than immediate deletion without notification (such as hiding potentially offensive profile pictures for people who don't have that person circled), but that remains entirely up to Google's policy. I personally think that policy ought to change somewhat, but I'd never argue that anyone other than Google has the right to determine that policy.
That doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as "used by the majority of people", since people can and do use many different sites rather than choosing one exclusively. Those laws also doesn't have anything to do with the absurd schoolyard notions suggested by the comment I responded to; monopoly laws exist primarily to keep monopolies from preventing others from entering the market and disrupting that monopoly.
> and that is right and proper.
In your opinion; I strongly disagree with the notion that such laws have any basis in morality.
Knowing what a company like google defines as inappropriate is important for being able to make informed choices about what products you should use and who you should be giving all your personal data to for free.
And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.
It seems pretty obvious how this should work:
(1) Google enables a flag for offensive photos (some automated system might work in tandem with this).
(2) Someone who's offended by a photo (or automated system) flags it.
(3) The user sees that someone has flagged it, might change it himself.
(4) Google sees the flag and reviews the image for possible action. Some sort of adjudication record is created and available for both the user the image belongs to and anyone who reported it.
(5) The user has some recourse to appeal if Google takes action to remove the user's picture.
Google, having a terrible customer service background, just went with the big brother approach.
> And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.
And that's the problem with analogies relating the Internet to the real world: they often fail because the Internet doesn't work like the real world. (I will say that this does come remarkably closer to the concept of "stealing bits" than how people usually use terms like "stealing", since the original owner might not have those bits anymore, but who would leave their only copy of a picture on a site they don't own, particularly one whose policies don't include preserving your data no matter what?)
Another marginally more accurate analogy, though still potentially flawed if you try to read too much into it: if you rented space in a mall, and displayed offensive material there, they might ask you to leave, or they might just close up your shop for you and kick you and your stuff out, and either way they have every right to do so.
Made my day.
ps: most removals are actually automated, and warning are (as in would be) obviously automated.
And of course, nothing bad with a finger up (or even in a naked body in fact, but hey). I much prefer the "adult filter" of YouTube, which uhm, is also automated (user vote based).
Double standards.
If some random 16 year old from Middle-O-Nowhere Indiana complained on his blog about the same thing we wouldn't even read past the first paragraph. But MG Siegler does it and it becomes a real issue? The only difference between Siegler and the hypothetical teenager is that Siegler is well known and can write so his tantrum gets play.
Really, the issue of the offensive profile picture shouldnt be the issue at all. The issue should be whether Siegler is allowed to use his notoriety to dupe us into thinking this is an issue worthy of discussion.
Do not expect a conversation with close friends there.
it's an open mall. officially.
And the first people migrated from facebook boasting the privacy concerns.
The only thing more stupid than the internet comments on Hacker News is Google itself: the kings of know-it-all dumbasses!
Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line?
Imbecile.
That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that people who use logic for a living would have higher standards.
Tumblr has plenty of porn, but you can certainly use it without ever getting it on your dashboard. It's just a matter of, you know, not following the people who post it.
This is not a police action by an authoritarian government, stopping people from expressing Constitutionally-protected speech in the public square.
Try to buy a full-page ad in any newspaper in the country showing goatse.cx in all its glory. Businesses generally limit profanity on their services.
Act surprised if you want to, but methinks the lady doth protest too much.
It's just not illegal.