
Why Did Google Erase Cooper's Beloved Literary Blog? - the_decider
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/why-did-google-erase-dennis-coopers-beloved-literary-blog
======
advisedwang
This comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12102056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12102056))
from the previous discussion is interesting:

> From Reddit: "I've read a few of Cooper's books and the short answer is yes,
> pedophilia is a common theme in his writing (as is incest and necrophilia)."
> [1]

> I'm calling it now. It was child porn. Google doesn't like to go around
> deleting people's stuff. When this has happened in the past it's been child
> porn, which Google is obligated by governments everywhere to delete with
> extreme prejudice. And of course they're not going to go around publicly
> accusing the guy of having child porn, even if he did, so they will remain
> silent. Neither will they tell someone who had child porn which exact piece
> of child porn tripped their child porn detector, for obvious reasons. This
> is not a Google issue; this is a law enforcement issue.

> [1]
> [https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4sx9aa/dennis_cooper...](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4sx9aa/dennis_cooper..).

~~~
forgotpwtomain
Pedophilia and necrophilia in writing is protected as freedom of speech. If
google is now censoring literature (as opposed to pictures/media) -- that's
pretty bad..

I thought we'd finally (already) won this fight in the US with Howl/Naked
Lunch, but maybe not?

~~~
eng_monkey
Freedom of speech protects you from Government prosecution for expressing your
opinions. Google is a private company.

~~~
DavidWanjiru
My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being
made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by
a private company due to the space it occupies in the world's technology and
information zeitgeist, is because when the freedom of speech laws were
formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that
existed. A Google kind of threat to freedom of speech didn't exist.

The question then becomes, is Google stifling freedom of speech? Can their
impact on your freedom of speech by deleting your blog or posts be compared to
the govt's impact on your freedom of speech through prosecution?

I say yes. Freedom of speech and similar laws seek to give you an immunity
against govt, not because govt is evil, but because govt is powerful, and you
are not. Google is powerful, and they were alive to just how powerful they
were going to be when they came out with that don't be evil admonition.

Whereas Google took it upon themselves to not be evil, the writers of freedom
of speech and similar laws tool it upon themselves to tell govt to not be
evil. Should our societies protect individuals against entities who have power
beyond some kind of threshhold? I'd say yes.

~~~
dalke
If you make the argument that a private company, by shutting down a user's
account, is like government restriction on free speech, then how do you
determine the balance between the right of free speech and the right of free
association?

Remember, freedom of speech is only one part of the First Amendment. Those
same writers also included the freedom of association. An organization like
Google, Fox News, Amazon, or the Wall Street Journal is not obligated to
associate with everyone.

We can change things. We can pass laws which mandate that certain things are
public spaces. For example, the rise of the malls means that the migration
from public shopping streets to private shopping areas, where mall owners like
the Mall of the Americas can shut down protest much more readily than the
police could do in a truly public area. We can pass laws which force malls to
be public areas. The Supreme Court decided that in Pruneyard v. Robins. But
only a handful of states have done so.

We can similarly pass laws which say that any content hosting site must be
content neutral. Eg, if you want to use Stack Overflow to post your diatribes
against whale hunting, SO cannot shut you down.

That doesn't make sense. Okay, so we only require that of "powerful" sites,
which you suggest. Which is defined as .... what? Who gets to decide? Who gets
to challenge that? If Yahoo was once powerful but is no longer so, who gets to
decide when the transition occurs?

One possibility is to set up a common carrier status, where a company offers
its services without discrimination to the general public. This is how the
phone system works. But why would a company want to do this?

~~~
DavidWanjiru
Does using Google products qualify my relationship with them as an
association? In the same way that me buying you a cup of coffee is
association?

I realize that I'm suggesting calls that are difficult to make, but my wider
contention is that the current status quo, legal and valid as it is, is
missing something that we are going to have to address at some point.

~~~
dalke
Yes. Though they are different associations. They are subject to federal and
state laws which don't affect personal transactions.

For example, they are available to the general public so are not allowed to
discriminate on the basis of sex, race, and several other protected classes.
California and other states place even more restrictions on their ability to
discriminate.

On the other hand, you are free to discriminate as you wish. (Though not
without risk of criticism; such is free speech.)

There's another difference in your example. Google provides services to the
general public. You use their services. However, I do not provide a drinking-
coffee service. I don't even like the taste of coffee. There is no reason I
need to accept your offer to give me a cup of coffee any more than I need to
accept a flyer from someone in the street. But if I were a company which
provided coffee consumption services, then I would have less ability to turn
you down than I do as a private person.

 _My_ wider contention is that we have plenty of historical examples of
public/private space which help us understand what's going on. For example,
can a company town prevent someone from coming to town to distribute religious
materials? Decided in Marsh v. Alabama. Are AOL email addresses "public", so
AOL cannot block spammers? Decided in Cyber Promotions v. America Online.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Article reminded me how much I use my Gmail account for, and what a colossal
inconvenience it would be were it to be deleted. Just off the bat:

\- E-mail

\- Calendar

\- Android account, and all purchased apps, games, etc.

\- Drive storage (Somewhere around 1TB, although I don't even use 1/10th that)

\- Google Keep note-taking app

\- Blogspot blog

\- Domain host

\- Secondary phone number via Google Voice

\- Two-factor authentication device

\- Cloud music storage player via Google Play Music

It's really, really unsettling how entangled that singular account is with my
everyday workflow.

I've begun trying to compile a list of how each of these components could be
migrated to something self-controlled ala OwnCloud. Perhaps I'll make it into
a website when I'm done.

I am not sure what would happen to any of the Android apps I had downloaded,
however. Do we as consumers get any more legal redress if the account is
attached to things we actually paid for?

~~~
Spearchucker
Some friends of mine have similar concerns, and it surprises me. I have
multiple Exchange 360 accounts and multiple Gmail accounts, and OneDrive. I
use offline .PST files in Outlook to copy everything older than 3 months into.
Everything on my OneDrive is on my local hard drive. To be fair I don't do
cloud music - my entire 80Gb collection is on my hard drive and duplicated on
my phone. Do you just have so much stuff that something like what I described
isn't feasible?

~~~
thinkingkong
Are you serious? Nevermind all the complexity your solution introduces, how is
someone supposed to keep track of it?

When we're able to identify problems and come up with solutions that only help
people with tons of experience and obviously too much time on their hands, we
do others a disservice.

~~~
chao-
I have a different, but effectively similar, setup to Spearchucker for
managing and backing up my data, identity, etc.

 _> how is someone supposed to keep track of it?_

Very carefully. No sarcasm intended. Same as one's personal finances, for
example.

 _> and come up with solutions... we do others a disservice._

I can't speak for Spearchucker, but I devised my particular solution for my
own sake, and "doing others a service" didn't factor into that process.

Nor do I feel it necessarily should. If someone without experience asks how I
navigate our messy digital world (and they have), I give them my honest answer
and describe my system. Sometimes I propose a few less-effective, consumer-
friendly alternatives, along with their drawbacks. Yes, my solution involves a
lot of cobbled-together, semi-automated and semi-manual systems. That's
because these systems change so frequently that it was the best I could do to
get my own system working in the first place. It seems you are implying some
obligation exists to do someone else the "service" of managing their personal
digital hygiene, at some arbitrary ease of use that fits their level of
expertise.

It is not because I'm some blackhearted bastard with no regard for my fellow
man that I don't feel that obligation. It is because that, even if I have
crafted a solution that adds resilience to the failure of services X, Y and Z,
which I use, I don't know what I could/would do when the other person begins
to rely on service W, where W is a service I do not use and do not understand
the intricacies of.

In short, I find it strange that you frame someone having shared what works
for them on a service-vs-disservice axis for the broader world. I'm happy that
Spearchucker has a system for, and the discipline to, maintain his digital
hygiene.

~~~
delazeur
> Very carefully. No sarcasm intended. Same as one's personal finances, for
> example.

That is a very interesting comparison. I wonder how long it will take before
people start taking their digital footprint as seriously as they take personal
finance? Before digital maturity is seen as a mark of adulthood the way
finance savvy is seen today?

Your analogy is apt because they are both areas that the average person
doesn't understand, but is still forced to wade their way through. I look
forward to the day when there are digital security self-help books and blogs
like the personal finance and investing material we have now.

------
mgraczyk
Yep, definitely child pornography and solicitation thereof.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20091003234700/http://denniscoop...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091003234700/http://denniscooper-
theweaklings.blogspot.com/2009/09/greet-dcs-topnotch-international-male.html)

EDIT:

DC has also been untruthful in interviews about the blog's removal, claiming

    
    
       "I never used pornographic imagery and most didn’t even show the escort’s genitals. "
    

From the above link, that is clearly not true.

~~~
Freak_NL
These escort site ad reviews are mentioned in the article as being the
exception in terms of erotic content. Regardless of sexual explicitness
though, all the men appear to be of legal age. How are you concluding 'child
pornography and solicitation thereof'?

~~~
mgraczyk
It is possible that Google or some governmental entity believed that one of
the many naked "18 year olds" was not actually 18 when the posted photos were
taken. The comments on the linked post suggest that at least one reader of the
blog believed that at least one escort was not 18.

That seems like adequate evidence for scrutiny, and it is possible that Google
plays it safe in cases like these (I have no idea what their official policy
is).

~~~
Sylos
Something somewhere went horrible wrong when simply deleting a person's
artistic life is how you play it safe.

------
exolymph
I don't understand why Google won't just explain what the problem was and give
him a way to extract his data, even if they won't let him use Blogger anymore.
Would the precedent really be so bad? They're getting some not-great PR — I
feel like most companies would try to work something out.

~~~
amelius
Perhaps because they then have to accuse him of something, which could make
matters worse.

~~~
eumoria
This seems most likely maybe it's not worth the hassle for them but legally
releasing any illegal material back to him cannot happen so they're stuck
doing essentially nothing.

------
rdtsc
> “saw something on the blog they interpreted as out-of-bounds from Google
> policy and took it down.” The disastrous consequences probably stemmed from
> “just a stupid mistake,” she said.

So it is a bit like when the cat trips, falls down the stairs in some
undignified way, then immediately stands up keeps walking like nothing
happens, looking like "Yeah I totally planned to do that, it was not an
accident"

Perhaps after so much time has passed and so much stonewalling, it is just too
late to admit that they made a mistake apologize and restore content. (Well
and compounded by the fact that there is probably no content left to restore).
It seems in their best interest to keep quiet and stonewall the issue until it
goes away.

But on the other side, given that content there -- which included slightly
edited explicit ads, it is probably not surprising Google did what they did. I
imagine for every site with content like that, Google employees would go out
of their way to see maybe the user is a known artist or writer and this is
just art. That's understandable, however what is not understandable is not
having a way to restore, warn before, or explain what happened afterwards and
have a way to revert the action.

I imagine at this point Google is pretty much a monopoly. If it decided to
charge to use GMail, or force me to listen to a 5 minute ad every, I don't
know if there is an alternative that has email, docs, calendar, and others at
the same level of quality.

~~~
yolesaber
>(Well and compounded by the fact that there is probably no content left to
restore).

Google never deletes anything. Ever. The "deletion" is just another data point
for them. The content is certainly retained.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Can you please cite this or is this just BS speculation.

~~~
honkhonkpants
It's BS speculation from the tin-hat wing, frequently cut-and-pasted on this
site. At Google there is a finite time between when you delete something and
when it has to become unreachable through all frontends and APIs, and when it
later has to cease to exist, and then finally when the last backup of the data
must have been wiped. Source: I personally had to implement the monitoring and
alerting that ensures this is the case for a major, privacy-sensitive Google
product.

However you should note that if you used a managed Google account, such as
educational or corporate account, your ability to truly delete anything may be
curtailed by your domain's administration.

~~~
Karunamon
It's not a totally insane belief to have. Facebook infamously held onto a
"deleted" picture belonging to an Ars Technica writer for well over three
years. [1]

Hanlon's Razor would just dismiss that as "CDN's are hard", but it doesn't
explain why the one picture owned by the author that they emailed Facebook
about finally went away, but others they had the URLs for did not.

Whether it be malice or stupidity, I think the sane default belief is that
"delete" doesn't actually remove the bits in most cases, and that goes double
for PII brokers like Facebook and Google. Act accordingly.

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/nearly-3-years-
later...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/nearly-3-years-later-
deleted-facebook-photos-are-still-online/)

------
yolesaber
Interview with Dennis Cooper about the whole affair:
[https://frieze.com/article/unfriendly-
hosts](https://frieze.com/article/unfriendly-hosts)

~~~
Rexxar
Just a little warning: there are some NSFW images in this link.

------
gallerytungsten
We see these stories over and over.

The lesson is obvious: host your most important content on your own server
that you control; and make backups.

Some people will say that self-hosting isn't a practical solution. But when
the alternative is the potential for devastating data loss, it seems eminently
reasonable.

~~~
rwallace
More practically, _or_ instead of _and_ will suffice. That is, if you lack the
expertise to set up your own server, it's okay to use someone else's provided
you also keep local backups of all your work. For most people, keeping local
backups is far more practical than running your own server.

~~~
Sylos
There's one problem with that. If your hosting provider throws you out, you
may not lose your work, but your followership will still be dispersed.

~~~
erelde
Emotionaly I think I'd care more for my creations :/

------
vertis
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757)
(of the fusion.net version of the same story)

------
ksec
Slightly off topic: I think someday may be, once our Internet connection are
fast enough, we will go a full circle and have our own server and the Cloud
will be a dump storage or backup.

Think iCloud for example. My Router; Airport Server / Time Capsule Server.
Will have all my iOS / macOS backup, as well as Photos, video, game saves etc.
All iOS update and macOS update, App update are done through this proxy /
cache. I will have all my documents inside this little server. And a Backup of
these files will be done in the Cloud. So in the worst possible scenario, You
can cut off my Cloud backup and wipe it. I will still have all the info inside
my Router / Server.

You can provide me a Blog platform on my little server, and insert ads on it
all you want when it reaches your cache/proxy/CDN. But when you take down my
blog, all the content i spend my time writing is still on my server. In my
procession.

Sometimes with Cloud, i just get the feeling my precious data are being held
as hostage.

~~~
programmer_dude
> Internet connection are fast enough

And if our storage options are more reliable we might not need the could at
all!

------
jmspring
The only thing that stands out for me here, and I think directly applies to
Google's business overall, is the lack of a human factor. Google wants to move
into the enterprise, enterprises generally like talking to people --
especially when dealing with support -- that isn't a strong suit.

I will take some time and read the other links someone posted below, but the
story and the lack of human response parallels many other postings around
Google support.

------
DoubleGlazing
As an EU resident he can simply fire off a subject access request (referencing
the local Data Protection Acts) to Google and they have to tell him everything
they have on file about him.

------
transfire
Why don't they just send him a backup of his data and be done with it?

------
seesomesense
Will Hacker News ban you if you post the kind of material that Mr Cooper
hosted on his "beloved literary blog"?

------
fatdog
Brings up the question of what are some good tools to manage this kind of
risk.

You need your contacts, email archive, another credible email address to re-
establish contact, alternate credentials for SSO sites, and it needs to be
somewhere outside the political sphere that could cause this.

What does a resilient online identity look like? These companies own the
primary media of your relationships, which are the things people need to
survive.

~~~
heliumcraft
The solution probably lies in a decentralized/distributed platform such as
Ethereum or Maidsafe.

~~~
fatdog
a blockchain social network?

Someone has to have done this already and then abandoned it because it failed
to thrive.

~~~
vertex-four
Not really. All the low-level pieces simply don't exist as usable code yet -
yes, you can pay money in a convoluted way (compared to buying almost anything
else) to have a piece of data added to a globally distributed ordered list,
but it doesn't make a lot of sense to build every piece of interaction on the
network on top of that system. "Pay 5 cents to send a tweet!"

You also need a decentralized publish/subscribe system and a useful
decentralized search system, both resistant to attacks. The former has some
good solutions buried in people's PhDs, the latter not so much. Then you need
a _lot_ of UX research and people working on the low-level protocol, high-
level domain logic, and the UI.

It'd be a project on the scale of one of the largest open-source projects
currently in existence, IMHO.

------
seesomesense
Imagine the headlines if Google did not remove the blog :

"Google hosting child porn site."

------
sethherr
Change.org petition to restore his blog and email:
[https://www.change.org/p/google-restore-dennis-cooper-s-
blog...](https://www.change.org/p/google-restore-dennis-cooper-s-blog-and-
email)

------
kevingadd
Another example in the long, sad history of algorithm-driven companies having
no respect for art or creativity or culture. It's not really something out of
spite or distaste, but eventually you end up leaving a trail of bodies in your
wake because you can only solve so many problems by having people watch over
the algorithms, and your revenue takes priority over protecting culture.

Google ends up catching a lot of heat for this (rightfully so) if only because
so many people use their services. High-traffic youtube videos filled with
racial slurs and abuse staying up for 2 months before the abuse department
finally takes action, or important pieces of cultural history getting nuked
without explanation or recourse, or people's gmail accounts getting utterly
destroyed with no ability to transfer the address or take a backup. In the end
nothing can be done about this stuff because in many cases, nobody actually
knows what happened.

The youtube case was especially troublesome because I went to great lengths to
get it dealt with, and in the end it was a result of policy issues combined
with bad technology - the human oversight was prevented from doing anything
about the problem, and as a result vulnerable kids were exposed to torrents of
hate and the uploaders reaped the ad revenue all while stealing another
person's work.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Did you even read the previous comments from the earlier submission of this
article? People likely complained about the nature of his content in addition
to it being against their TOS.

~~~
kevingadd
I did not, no. Can you link to the dupe?

~~~
dgacmu
This comment has a great summary of the multiple discussions going on about
it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100891)

