
Google is now applying its coronavirus misinformation policies to personal files - walterbell
https://reclaimthenet.org/google-drive-takes-down-user-file-plandemic/
======
walesminutecopy
This might be the relevant section in the Terms of Service:

Public streaming Drive allows you to store, share, and stream video content,
but should not be used as a replacement for a content distribution network.
For large-scale public streaming, YouTube is a better fit. Drive will restrict
usage when it appears that it's being used for large-scale public streaming.
Repeated violations may result in additional action, including terminating
your account or ability to use Drive.

[https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505?visit_id=63725...](https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505?visit_id=637257739027213395-534836487&rd=1)

~~~
berns
> Drive will restrict usage...

> ... including terminating your account or ability to use Drive.

I think that the controversial part is that the file was deleted. I'd find it
surprising if some file from my Drive is just deleted instead of restricting
public access or using another form of enforcing the policy.

~~~
threatofrain
Google has no obligation to be anyone's mouthpiece or loudspeaker, and we have
no information on whether any files were deleted.

~~~
orestarod
Next step will be, "Verizon has no obligation to be anyone's loudspeaker". No
one is obliged to be anything to anyone if you put it that way, but then
there's this thing called discrimination that goes counter to that - it
expects a VERY GOOD reason to deny service to someone. "I have no obligation
to sell to blacks", for example, does not stand. "I have no obligation to
hosts anyone's word when I don't agree with that they say" stands? Perhaps we
should get a list of all the things we are allowed to say and stop
communicating through the internet altogether, as the list will have every
information we will ever need to access.

~~~
mitchdoogle
Stopping the spread of harmful misinformation is a VERY GOOD reason to deny
service to someone.

~~~
AstralStorm
Who decides what is disinformation? A politburo in Google? Some high office in
the USA?

I understand if they give a safebrowsing warning that the document contains
potential misinformation, like for sites with potential malware. Blocking is
not the right way to solve it. Censorship is always abused, in the end.

------
jrockway
I don't see any evidence that Google applied a misinformation policy here. It
could be that they simply don't want to pay for the bandwidth to serve video
without any ads in it. It is a big file and a lot of people want it. That can
get super expensive.

I don't know how big this file is, but let's say it's a 4GB DVD image. That
ties up 1Gbps for 32 seconds, which means that with a 1Gbps link to your
server, you can serve it to less than 3000 users a day. Even if you're getting
budget residential ISP prices for your transfer, you're talking 1 cent per 10
copies of the video. At AWS prices, you're talking 36 cents for every copy of
the video downloaded.

This sort of thing is why you either peer with an ISP at 10Gbps or more,
charge money for file hosting, or use a p2p file sharing application.

Until I see some evidence that this is misinformation censorship (for example,
Google removing a private file with a transcript of the video), I'm going to
assume this is just limiting the impact on other users from a free user with a
popular huge file. As HN always says, if you're not paying for something,
you're not the customer.

~~~
Eduard
On the other hand, they could support freedom of speech by not limiting
access.

They _do_ block access, therefore suppressing freedom of speech.

Arguing with "they're just saving resources" is ridiculous, especially when
considering Google's wealth.

~~~
mike503
Also, freedom of speech is not guaranteed on a privately owned platform... not
sure why anyone expects that.

~~~
chroem-
Windows 10 is a free subscription, and users don't necessarily own a license
of their operating system. Under this precedent, what is to stop Microsoft
from deleting problematic files off of users' computers? After all, it's a
privately owned platform.

~~~
jrockway
Windows 10 routinely deletes problematic files from peoples computers; it's
called "Windows Defender". Most users are happy to let Microsoft delete
malware. The reason that propaganda videos aren't detected as malware because
none of these companies give a damn about what you're using your computer or
your private storage for. It is a ton of extra work for them to run some
censorship side business to specifically annoy conspiracy theorists. The
reason that YouTube deletes propaganda videos is because nobody will advertise
on them. They cost money to store and serve to viewers, but will never
generate revenue. Some are so bad that they drive advertisers away from other
videos. All this "censorship" is at the behest of advertisers, or fear of
backlash from advertisers.

The thing with YouTube is that its greatest power is its greatest weakness.
They let anyone in the world serve 4k or 8k videos to an infinite number of
users. They find advertisers for your videos and automatically run their ads
on your videos, so that you can get cash money from producing them. And, there
is a recommendation engine so that viewers can discover your video and
channel. With those advantages, come disadvantages -- the service as a whole
is called YouTube, and so a bad video on your channel reflects poorly on other
channels and the service as a whole. So they have guidelines to protect their
success, at the cost of not making all the advantages available to you. That
is why there are "guidelines". I am sure if you buy a Google Cloud account and
pay for the transfer and storage of your content, and find your own
advertisers to fund it, you can host as many conspiracy theory videos as you
want and nobody will stop you. But I think you'll find that you make negative
money on this proposition.

(Also, I personally paid $200 for Windows 10, so I'm not sure how people are
getting it for free.)

~~~
true_religion
If you had a previous version of Windows, the upgrading to Windows 10 was
free.

Additionally, you can download Windows 10 and never activate it and all it
will do is show a watermark indicating it is not activated.

You can always pay for Windows.

I think Windows 10 Pro is pay only.

~~~
mlvljr
Still just watermarked, in fact.

~~~
fao_
Hi there! It looks like you're shadowbanned, although I don't see the reason
why. I vouched for this comment so people can see it, as it doesn't seem to be
inherently harmful or against the guidelines. You should probably message
Dang.

------
chockablocker
Note that the article doesn't say explicitly whether Google deleted the video
from drive, or simply disabled the public sharing of the video. If they only
disabled sharing (like they would for spam, pirated materials etc.) this may
be understandable.

~~~
darkerside
This is a hugely important distinction. Can we please figure this out before
we pick up the pitchforks?

~~~
jfoster
The headline ("Google Drive takes down user’s personal copy...") is suggestive
of the file being entirely gone. There's a couple of paragraphs in the article
that would seem to support this, but agree that it would be good to have it
made very explicit.

~~~
deepl_derber
Since Drive doesn't generally delete users' files for policy violations maybe
the safer assumption is to assume that it wasn't deleted unless there's
evidence that strongly suggests otherwise.

------
yegle
Similar news:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16668267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16668267)

What I learned from that post is that as soon as you start share your file,
it's no longer a private file and stricter guideline/requirement applies.

This is also indicated from the TOS:

> Files in your individual drive are private, until you decide to share them.

~~~
jeffbee
Yes, it turns out the the web is not, in fact, a giant virtual seastead
unbothered by the norms and rules of society. If you distribute information
via computer networks it will be subject to scrutiny to see if it is malware,
copyrighted by someone else, exploitative, seditious, etc.

~~~
centimeter
It's disingenuous to conflate Alphabet Corporation's political strategies with
"the norms and rules of society".

~~~
hootbootscoot
It's disingenuous to conflate a private entities exercising their rights to
"refuse a problematic client service" with infringement of the
constitutionally protected free speech by a governmental entity.

~~~
Thorentis
Oh boy, another "private entities can do what they want" argument. What's the
point in saying freedom of speech only applies in public places and protection
from the government, and then turning around and handing over control of the
biggest tool for sharing information (the Internet) to private companies?
Sorry, but the "private companies can do what they want" argument is old and
tired when it comes to censorship.

~~~
34679
Anyone who doubts this argument should also take a look at the increasing role
of private companies to circumvent your 4th Amendment protections on behalf of
your government. A limited set of examples:

-License plate location databases -Cell location databases -Contact databases

The 4th may prevent your local PD from gathering all that data on every
citizen, but it doesn't stop them from buying it from private companies that
collect it. This is a problem.

------
neuronexmachina
From the article, it seems like they stopped public sharing of the video via
Google Drive:

> In an article reporting on the takedown, The Washington Post’s Silicon
> Valley Correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin complains that after the coronavirus
> documentary Plandemic was censored on social media, some YouTube clips were
> telling users how to access “banned footage” from the documentary via Google
> Drive.

> She then notes that after The Washington Post contacted Google, Google Drive
> took down a file featuring the trailer for the Plandemic documentary.

~~~
pnako
So "journalists" are now colluding with platforms to censor information. Brave
new world.

~~~
AaronFriel
Not collusion, not "journalists". I imagine it went something like this:

Journalist: Hey, can I get a comment on this video, "Plandemic", being
distributed on Google Drive?

Google employee: No comment.

And then Google employee sends a message to another employee and says, "Hey,
do we need to do something about this? It looks like that video we took down
off YouTube for violating our ToS is being hosted elsewhere."

Is it collusion every time a journalist asks someone to comment on a thing
happening, and that someone then responds in some way beyond just saying "Yep
that's a thing!"

~~~
pnako
It's like sending a picture of your neighbor's garden to the police, "asking
for clarification" about what is permitted.

You can do that, but at least call it what it is.

------
013a
This is crossing a very bad line, and is absolutely unacceptable.

My company of about 50 people on G-Suite will be canceling our subscription
and moving to Office 365 within the next three months. We had discussed it in
the past due to their history of flagrant disregard for the security and
privacy standards we require, but this has galvanized the conversation and
we're prioritizing it on the near-term now.

I'm sure we'll eventually discover that Microsoft has similar policies, and
that there isn't any good option when it comes to putting sensitive data on
another company's servers. Maybe we'll eventually need to self-host more
system capabilities. But, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

~~~
drummer
The future is all about self hosting and/or peer to peer technology not
controlled by a central authority.

~~~
icedchai
Self hosting was 20 years ago. Who do you think is better at running a mail
server, you or Google? Do you want to deal with spam complaints, security, OS
upgrades, DMARC, SPF, etc? It's all a pain.

FYI I run my own mail servers as a hobby, but still have my main personal
account on gmail.

~~~
pdonis
_> Who do you think is better at running a mail server, you or Google?_

Neither. My hosting provider is better than either me or Google at that, and
there are other companies providing email services who are better still.

What Google is "better" at with GMail is providing email whose suckage is just
short of the level of suckage that would make it worth its users' while to
give up having to just go to one place, their Google account, for everything
in order to have email services that were bearable.

~~~
icedchai
That's fine. The point was really, hosting it yourself vs someone experienced
with all the nuances of email hosting. The fact is, it IS a pain.

------
knorker
Wow, so you're saying a free of charge Google Drive way to share files isn't
without restrictions? I'm shocked!

I really thought this misinformation video people found a loophole to not have
to pay for what bandwidth actually costs. I really thought that Google had
offered a free CDN for everyone, limitless, when they (and Amazon, and
Microsoft, and Akamai) charge huge amounts for this as a cloud service.

Yeah, that was sarcasm.

Bandwidth costs actual money. What's next? They think they can build a Youtube
competitor by storing and streaming all the videos from a collection of free
Google Drive accounts? Or even a business Google Drive plan? Read the ToS, or
better yet use common sense.

~~~
smichel17
> I really thought this misinformation video people found a loophole to not
> have to pay for what bandwidth actually costs. I really thought that Google
> had offered a free CDN for everyone, limitless, when they (and Amazon, and
> Microsoft, and Akamai) charge huge amounts for this as a cloud service.

> Yeah, that was sarcasm.

Maybe so, but I came across a streaming site (of questionable legality) that
did exactly this. Loaded an iframe with what looked like a random domain
(always two first names, like "PedroMaria.xyz"). Then the iframe made a bunch
of XHRs to load chunks of movie data from Google Drive. It was really quite
fascinating.

Aside, this is one of my favorite things about using uMatrix with aggressive
defaults -- as you unbreak sites, you learn a lot about what services are
commonly used to build websites.

~~~
knorker
Yeah, I'm not surprised. Having worked for multiple service and content
providers I would assume that abuse like this happens.

One notable case was when a deal to license a database fell through when the
would-be client said "I've found a different free way to solve this".

Turns out that "different way" was to scrape our website in real time and
present it to their clients as their own, without attribution or payment.

Abuse happens. Shoplifting happens. That doesn't mean that the shoplifter
"found a loophole", nor that it's morally or legally right.

And it's not unfair if the selective enforcement is based on "bandwidth
actually used" or "in addition to violating our policies you're also hurting
the world" (or even "we just plain don't like you"). I.e. in the case above
about scraping our data, we just dropped it. They weren't going to be our
customer, clearly, and suing (they were in a different country too) or
technically blocking them would not be worth the cost. And they didn't consume
that many resources at our scale, so whatever.

But if that site had been a porn site or something then the cost of doing
nothing would include potential PR issues of being associated with them[1].

So in short: This (CDN from article, and using google drive like this) is
abuse. A proof of concept likely won't get shut down, but it's not something
that'll work in the long run.

[1] I'm not against porn as such, but let's say our database was one of
children's toys. That kind of company would understandably be hurt by
apparently making deals with porn sites to show up there.

------
CapriciousCptl
The file was widely shared on Google Drive and linked to from a public twitter
message— it was very much not a personal file. And the title literally was,
“An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus” referring to hydroxychloroquine.
Google’s doing its part to purge pandemic misinformation and prevent harm. The
authoring “doctor,” as far as I can tell has never had postgraduate medical
training and cannot practice medicine without supervision, is trying to
achieve writing a document with a title like that I don’t know.

~~~
thu2111
The goalpost moving by people here on HN is quite entertaining to watch.
Hydroxychloroquine was just bought in bulk by the UK in case it turns out to
be a cure.

Apparently the only people who are allowed to have opinions these days are
academics employed by governments?

~~~
CapriciousCptl
To be clear, the UK is undergoing a clinical trial with hydroxychloroquine.
Hopefully it works, but as of now it's not known if the harms outweigh the
benefits.

~~~
thu2111
There are trials yes. And, to be clear, they're also bulk buying it:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/uk-to-test-
hyd...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/uk-to-test-
hydroxychloroqine-as-coronavirus-treatment)

I have no idea if this medicine will have any impact but at this point, I've
seen so many people claim it's some sort of quack medicine/conspiracy/etc that
it's important people realise that it's being taken seriously. As far as I can
tell the moment Trump mentioned it a huge number of people decided it must,
inherently, be wrong and have been wrongly attacking it ever since.

------
addicted44
It's not entirely clear to me, but did Google delete the file from the user's
personal, private drive, or did they delete public access to the file?

Because the former is unacceptable, but the latter is not as big a deal at
all.

~~~
virmundi
The trouble is where do they draw the line. Say I share a pamphlet about how
Jesus reclaims humanity from the corruption of sin. If Google thinks all
Christians are superstitious bumpkins, does that give them the right to remove
my public share?

~~~
tinus_hn
They have the right to stop hosting whatever they are hosting for any reason
or no reason at all. What makes you think they can be forced to host your
files?

~~~
virmundi
The implicit idea that they are not a publisher. Now they are. They should
lose their protections.

~~~
joshuamorton
What protections do you believe platforms have that publishers do not?

Article 50 doesn't make a distinction between the two, if that's what you're
thinking of.

------
Barrin92
does anyone know who the people behind the reclaimthenet.org domain are? The
headline seems intentionally misleading and the entire article is biased, as
seems to be the case for most of the site, almost exlcusively focussing on
censorship of fringe figures out of conspiracy and far-right political
circles.

There is no reference to organisations, writers or editors anywhere on this
site if I'm not missing anything.

~~~
panarky
If it's hard to find out who is funding a campaign, it's a pretty good bet
it's malicious disinfo.

~~~
brandonmenc
Or, they don't want to be doxxed and harassed.

------
muststopmyths
what does "take down" mean ? did they turn off public sharing or delete the
file ?

Why anyone would trust a corporation with their only copy of anything is
mystifying to me anyway.

~~~
tssva
Since they didn't say delete I'm guessing they stopped the public sharing but
that isn't as rage inducing so the article stuck to using "take down" hoping
people would interpret it as delete.

------
bitL
Oh wow, this is bad! Google went from my favorite geeky company in the 00s to
something I would like to avoid now as much as I can. I guess next on their
list will be refusing to host any encrypted content on their GDrive just in
case it contains something the head honchos at 10E100 don't like... From a
disruptor for the better, ending up as an enforcer of the conformity. I guess
that's the fate of every winner.

------
tinus_hn
Is it really personal files if it’s used as a file sharing service?

~~~
elliekelly
It definitely seems like the “share a Drive file” method was used to widely
distribute a video that didn’t comply with Google/YouTube’s policies. And
using Drive in that manner is, of course, also a violation of their policies.

------
WillPostForFood
_The Washington Post contacted Google, Google Drive took down a file featuring
the trailer for the Plandemic documentary._

Why is the WaPo out there policing other people's content? That's as bad a
Google taking it down.

~~~
hootbootscoot
Neither are bad. A private company can refuse service to a problematic
customer violating their TOS. Google is under no obligation to provide free
services to liars who are intent upon stirring up trouble.

Think of how many bars ban problematic ex-clientele.

The WaPo is acting in the public interest, for once in their miserable life.

These Plandemic fans are a public health menace, give them no quarter.

Oh, as to the troublemakers: knock it off at once. this is serious.

------
MattGaiser
Google Drive is not meant as a mass distribution service for video. Do they
let you use it as a back door streaming service?

------
panarky
It's not a personal file if you share it publicly.

No private business should be forced to use their resources to promote
dangerous bullshit.

------
pbreit
I cannot believe the bizarro world we've entered.

"the problems that social media companies face: the weaponization of their
services to amplify dangerous content"

Wut?

~~~
walshemj
Have you not been paying attention

------
hkt
It seems to me that if Google (and the other platforms) don't tackle this kind
of thing, the state _somewhere_ will. It only takes one country to make
distribution of this stuff illegal or close to it, and that will amount to an
edge of self regulation for the tech giants. They don't want that, so they do
something to prevent it.

------
jimmaswell
Wouldn't be surprised if this results in a Streissand effect.

~~~
harrylepotter
totally agree. This is like fuel for an alt-right fire.

------
s1artibartfast
I understand that corporations are private entities and currently within their
legal rights to remove content.

This means, if they so choose, they could remove speech they oppose form
youtube, google search, and emails.

Why are most people comfortable with a reactionary approach to this problem,
and waiting to see if they exercise this right in a disagreeable manner?
Wouldn't it be better to develop a solution _before_ the need arises and
legislate a clear limit?

------
njharman
Censoring is a losing battle. Because it attacks a symptom.

The cure for ignorance is not trying to hide missinformation (that just
empowers the spreaders, gives it credence (they wouldn't bother suppressing it
if it weren't true), or drives it into dark places you can no longer detect
how much of a problem it is).

The cure is to educate people and teach them critical thinking (both of which
are expensive and honestly most governments/companies/people in power don't
really want a free thinking populace (they want a populace that believes their
propaganda)) and to spread the truth (not that effective on populace who lacks
high level of education and critical thinking skills)

~~~
logicslave
Most people dont have the capacity for critical thought on every area of
ambiguity/complexity. Its too wide a thought surface, and we have too few
hours in a day. So we have things like dictionaries in our minds, filled with
information via lots of sources from childhood, tv, peers, etc. Human brains
arent logical, they are mostly look up systems.

~~~
godelski
> Most people don't have the capacity for critical thought on every area of
> ambiguity/complexity.

I'd change that to "most people haven't been taught to think critically". It's
clear that the average person has the mental capacity, genetic variations in
intelligence aren't that large.

------
etaioinshrdlu
Do the same rules apply to google cloud storage... or really any google cloud
resource?

~~~
izacus
Last I checked anything under GSuite has very different rules than consumer
Gmail accounts.

------
nafix
I did not expect to see platform censorship accelerate at this rate. It always
seems to be government and media dictating the terms of the censorship as
well, which should be very concerning.

~~~
csharptwdec19
> It always seems to be government and media dictating the terms of the
> censorship as well, which should be very concerning.

I'm not incredibly shocked. This is on some levels history repeating itself.
Media has historically been 'self-regulating', if only because they want to
avoid having regulations imposed on them.

However, this also has the not-unintentional side effect of those self
regulating bodies also acting as gatekeepers.

Another parallel to draw: When the Hays code was challenged due to 1FA, the
MPAA created the 'rating' system, in which movies have their content rated on
by an unknown group of people impose their moral code, and remember before the
age of the internet, you -had- to hit certain ratings to have any hope of a
decent number of people seeing your movie. Any Adults-only rating would result
in the overwhelming majority of theaters refusing to show the film.

Sure, you could still release it somewhere else.

Sound familiar?

------
onyva
Anti-Google article -> Brave ad -> Eye roll.

------
heavenlyblue
In a slightly parallel universe, it’s going to be quite hilarious if all of
the decentralised technologies are going to end up being developed by the
types of anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers, neo-nazis because they were the only
ones needing them (and not the illusory political dissidents). So in the end
it’s going to have a positive impact.

Here’s a supporting example: Snowden didn’t need any of this tech to share it
with us. Paedophiles and drug dealers use Tor.

I am not being entirely serious.

~~~
pnako
It's not that simple. In the west it's the "alt right" or similar that needs
to bypass censorship. But in China, it's pro-democracy people.

Even inside a country, it changes. Dissenters 50 years ago are not the same
ones as today. The left protested globalization 20 years ago; today it's the
right.

My point is: we should let all ideas out there and not fight to censor the
other side. Fight ideas with arguments and evidence, not censorship.

------
a3n
Then they aren't really

 _your_

personal files, are they?

------
rhizome
Nobody's stopping them from signing up for AWS and throwing the vid into an S3
bucket or whatever, nor are they prevented from buying internet access from a
company that offers static IPs and serving the file from an old PC in
someone's closet.

~~~
mindslight
Until AWS and that ISP apply the same policy...

------
LeoPanthera
This headline is very misleading. They didn't delete the file from the user's
Google Drive - they disabled public sharing for the file.

~~~
dang
Ok, we've swapped out the article title for its subtitle.

------
AwaAwa
Looks like they are flexing all the work done for Project Dragonfly. Waste
not, want not.

~~~
walterbell
Good point. There could be a new free-speech AI project for time-based
"declassification" of previously censored material, to inform public study of
censorship technologies.

------
arkitaip
This is gross and unethical but we should let them continue digging their own
grave.

~~~
nafix
I don't think they are digging their own grave unfortunately. The majority of
people seem to be Ok with this, and the majority will continue to use these
platforms. I still use these platforms even though I hate what they are doing.
We really do need some alternatives...

~~~
adrianN
There are alternatives, but they don't have a free tier.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Regarding the sharing of controversial video content, isn't Bitchute pretty
much a free alternative?

------
cgb223
Further proof that when you upload a file to Google Drive, you don’t own that
file, they do

~~~
thephyber
You use the platform, you abide by the contract. My only concern is that
contract violations (or even gray area violations) are not always predictable
by the customer because the legalese in the ToS is so vague.

You are overloading the term "own" and your use of "that file" is ambiguous.
You "own" (in many senses) the local copy of the uploaded file. You only lease
the space and hosting for the remote copy, assuming you pay your bill and
abide by the contract. My coworker overflowed his Google Drive quota and
learned that lesson the hard way.

~~~
deepl_derber
> My coworker overflowed his Google Drive quota and learned that lesson the
> hard way.

This sounds a lot more sinister than "my coworker had to delete some files to
go back under his quota".

~~~
thephyber
He lost many MBs of files. He had a local filesystem directory synced with
GDrive. He _moved_ (didn't copy) lots of files into the directory and ended up
losing all copies of some of the files (we still aren't sure how it picks
which subset to keep). It was basically a few weeks of work because he didn't
understand the implications of the change (and because he didn't have drive
backups).

------
ThePowerOfFuet
This seems apropos:

[https://shop.fsf.org/stickers/there-no-cloud-sticker-
pack](https://shop.fsf.org/stickers/there-no-cloud-sticker-pack)

------
hootbootscoot
Good. A private entity (corp) exercises it's right to free speech.

Google is under no obligation to provide services for anyone it deems
troublesome.

Would you question a bartender or bar staff for refusing entry to a
problematic client?

