
Draft of a story about wildlife crime was frozen for violating Google Docs' TOS - LeoNatan25
https://twitter.com/Rachael_Bale/status/925352538110595072
======
j_s
Better the document than the account!

Anyone know of a Google Drive equivalent for [https://github.com/jay0lee/got-
your-back/wiki](https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki), which
implements backup and restore for GMail? Closest I could find was
[https://github.com/odeke-em/drive](https://github.com/odeke-em/drive), a
popular command line client.

\--

It appears my Google account is slated for deletion |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15234207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15234207)
(Sep2017:266 comments)

> _My YouTube account was suspended for uploaded /embedded portions of AQ vids
> used for analysis for U.S. v Pfc. Manning. It appears my Google account is
> also slated for deletion_

Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended
today? |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880008)
(Jun2016:116 comments)

> _I think it might have something to do with the "ruin my search history"
> viral thing yesterday_

Dumped by Google |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133)
(Apr2013:193 comments)

> _My data was intact save for the last thing I’d worked on–a spreadsheet
> containing a client’s account numbers and passwords_

Google account disabled for 6+ days. Some thoughts |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354593)
(Nov2008:53 comments)

> _I haven’t been told yet why it was disabled for a week yet, oh well…_

------
jboynyc
Apparently it's not an isolated case:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/ismh/status/925367292346683392](https://mobile.twitter.com/ismh/status/925367292346683392)

The Google Docs team claims they're on it:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/googledocs/status/925377864677158...](https://mobile.twitter.com/googledocs/status/925377864677158912)

Even so, Zeynep Tufekci sees a larger unaddressed issue: Is Docs a publishing
platform?
[https://mobile.twitter.com/zeynep/status/925368098303160320](https://mobile.twitter.com/zeynep/status/925368098303160320)

~~~
detaro
Is that really "unaddressed"? People share documents publicly directly from
Docs (including Google employees), it has tools to support that (e.g. you get
a "light mode" warning if you access a doc with many active viewers), ...

~~~
jboynyc
Yes, of course, on the technical level it works. The legal and editorial side
of it has not really been addressed. When somebody can publish arbitrary
content on a Google domain, then Google pretty much has to start taking on an
editorial role.

~~~
detaro
I would assume that this freezing of documents means this is already happening
from Googles side, with them applying variations of the filtering they use on
their other publishing platforms to answer these issues.

------
jabot
Well, what did you expect?

To add something constructive: There are several solutions for collaborative
editing that you can host yourself, like Etherpad or gobby.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etherpad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etherpad)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobby)

------
oblib
Just the realization that Google is scanning and evaluating everything I put
in a document I make on their platform is more than reason enough to never use
that service.

Everyone here knows it's just snippet of code to set a flag and trigger a
reaction.

We should also be able to conceive what might be reacted to and how, and know
that we could still be surprised with the truth being worse than we imagined.

------
j_s
This post came first, but much more discussion (45+ comments already) is
currently on the front page as well:

Google Docs Is Randomly Flagging Files for Violating Its Terms of Service |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594163)

------
pavement
It seems to be a server-side bug, affecting a random (or at least apolitical)
population of users:

[https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/10/31/1734232/google-
docs-i...](https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/10/31/1734232/google-docs-is-
randomly-flagging-files-for-violating-its-terms-of-service)

------
ProAm
Is he a paying customer of Google Docs? Or using the free version.

Dont know why the downvotes, legitimate question since he turned to twitter to
seek tech support, and he is storing important documents in someone elses
cloud instead of just using a normal word processor on his computer. Im
curious if he is paying for that privilege or going with freemium.

------
peterwwillis
Well, I guess I need to move all my documents out of Google Docs. Suggestions
for alternatives?

~~~
confounded
The Drive API allows you to export to docx, which can be converted to markdown
(or whatever) via Pandoc. This works surprisingly well for me.

For web-based collaboration, you could self host something like Etherpad
(there are a few alternatives).

~~~
LeoNatan25
Actual desktop Office and an encrypted blob on OneDrive or Dropbox.

