
Google has destroyed the lives of revenge porn victims - zxcvbn4038
https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/how-google-has-destroyed-the-lives-of-revenge-porn-victims/
======
envy2
This article focuses on _Google_ not being liable, but ignores the fact that
the specific creators and posters of the content appearing in Google's search
results certainly can be sued.

There have been a lot of anti-CDA 230 sob stories lately, which have indeed
highlighted real victims of online content and abuse, but imposing liability
on platforms simply destroys the free and open internet. Search engines would
cease to exist if they became liable for simply indexing content created by
others, and sites like Hacker News wouldn't be able to allow user submissions
and comments.

We need to be careful to avoid victim-blaming, but equally important to
recognize that very real harms to some people don't justify upending policies
that have created enormous value for society as a whole.

Not to mention that, even _without_ CDA 230, the majority of the problematic
speech online would remain legal in the US because of the First Amendment.

~~~
geofft
But the "free and open internet" is a vague term. We would not say, for
instance, that an internet without HTTPS or end-to-end encryption is
desirable, despite it being less "open" in a surface-level sense, because we
know that our underlying goals of a "free and open internet" are better served
by reliable security and privacy.

I would also argue that an internet where you are afraid to send nudes to your
partner is less "free and open" than one where you can. It's both technically
and ethically challenging to build one where you can (one very promising
approach, for instance, is DRM, which has the ethical issues of whether to
build DRM and whether to portray DRM as reliable - see in particular Snapchat,
whose DRM is used for this exact purpose), but it still seems like a
worthwhile long-term goal.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I hope nobody really believes Snapchat DRM is going to prevent their nudes
appearing on a porn site. Just take a photo of the screen with another phone.

If anybody is suggesting that it makes sending nudes safe should also be held
liable for extreme stupidity.

~~~
geofft
One valid threat model for revenge porn is, I trust this person _now_ , but if
we break up I might not trust them anymore. So Snapchat disappearing messages
do actually solve that problem. (And more generally, "I trust this entity now
but they might become compromised in the future" is a model with some
precedent in encryption, cf. forward secrecy and deniable messages which are
for related, similar problems.)

It's also not unreasonable to hold that the additional effort of taking a
photo of the screen falls into the locks-keep-honest-people-honest category.
Of course nobody believes that a lock on their front door will prevent a
sufficiently determined attacker from breaking in, yet we all lock our doors.
(And we wouldn't say that "change the locks" is useless advice against an ex
with a key.)

~~~
AstralStorm
No they don't. Taking a picture or screenshot of such an image immortalizes
it. Stopping people from taking screenshots is essentially rootkit or virus
functionality. (Plus it doesn't stop anyone from taking a picture of the
screen.)

You're trusting the person to not make this image permanent. Could be valid,
could be a serious problem.

That's if they just don't make the revenge porn out of slightly enhanced
deepfake cloth.

------
floatingatoll
Search engines came into existence back in the late 90s as a way to _replace_
human-curated indexes of content so that the CPC (cost per click) for display
advertisements could be reduced.

Twenty years later, we are still realizing the price that we pay for universal
indexing of all human-created content: we have enabled hate groups to
congregate safely under anonymous identities, while simultaneously enabling
the complete loss of having a "private life" away from the prying eyes of
others.

Yahoo's human-curated index, and the many "books about the Internet" that were
published back in the day, certainly did not have the breadth of coverage that
search engines did. But in return for that, _every site_ you visited could be
assumed to have at least the value the index stated it would have. Topical,
relevant, curated. And safe.

This article isn't the best at expressing this point, but they're realizing
the same thing that few of my tech friends wish to consider: Stripping away
the human review and approval process of maintaining a "card catalog" index of
websites may have been profitable, but it comes at the cost of our humanity.

~~~
kibibu
A human-curated list would be significantly shorter today, with the way the
Web has centralized.

~~~
floatingatoll
That seems false. There are more domestic airlines, more web hosting
companies, more blogging platforms, and in general more ways we use the
Internet.

I agree it might not be much longer in any given leaf category node.

------
zxcvbn4038
The part that that had always intrigued me is how data aggregators seem to
really enjoy the fight when someone wants their data removed. If it were
really just about marketing - why waste time and money peddling to people who
don’t want to be peddled to? I think at some level it’s more about being able
to cause people discomfort and annoyance without repercussions, and I think
there is a significant population of disempowered people that appeals to. Like
some variant of the Stanford prison experiment perhaps?

------
blunte
Google needs to inject a bit more humanity into its business. Yes this is a
special case, but certainly they already have a mechanism for skipping some
listings. This is an issue of goodwill, which perhaps still Google doesn't
feel the pressure to build (due to something related to monopoly position).

If businesses, from the very largest to the smallest, do not behave as
collections of real humans, then we might as well be living under Skynet.
Honestly, if what makes us empathetic and caring is ignored, then at some
point software should replace us.

But regarding revenge porn, porn, sexuality, nudity, etc., I think it's way
past time that people realize that we all have naked bits. It's really no more
astonishing than a tree having leaves and bark, and the occasional fruit! I
believe religion has something to do with the largely artifically-ignorant
view of nakeness and sexuality, but most religion is just a disguise for
population control. So whatever the name of the leadership, the fact remains
that people without clothes have nipples and other bits that US television can
fine you for showing (honestly, it had never occurred to me that Janet Jackson
had nipples!).

For these women who have been duped and taken advantage of, based on the
current societal norms, it's terrible. Google should have some human sympathy
in its organization, and it should have some executing willing to demonstrate
the importance of Google being part of humanity. But at the same time, I hope
the younger generations can finally return humans to their more natural state.

------
kraig911
So who is more liable. The card catalog with a reference to something awful or
the actual thing that did something awful?

~~~
geofft
The "awful" part of revenge porn is not (in most cases) the image itself, but
its publicity.

------
merpnderp
I really feel for these people, but if Google gets into the content moderation
business it will never end. They could spend all their resources trying to
manage the floodgate that would open, but it wouldn’t be enough trying to
appease all the different jurisdictions, advocacy groups, and lawsuits once
they become anything besides a neutral entity.

Actually I really don’t like Google and would love to see them drown under the
onslaught. Plus a lot of people would get some temporary relief until search
moves to someone still neutral.

------
ahmetyas01
any google worker here?

~~~
blunte
You know there is; HN is full of Googlers. But it's very, very tricky for them
to make public statements about hot topics like this.

Executive and people with authority to actually handle situations like these
are probably not here, or even they are afraid to speak openly. It takes a lot
of commitment and guts to risk a career and really good income to just make a
statement on a forum.

------
cybersnowflake
lol "destroyed"? "merciliessly"? I love it in a world where a lot of bad shit
goes down only the stuff that involves women and sex is automatically hyped up
to the most important, even more than genocide. So every woman automatically
gets a sort of 'supercopyright' where she can decide 20 years down the line
what happens to every single copy of certain 'embarrassing' images of her
across the entire world. Why not other types of images? I mean Bush puking on
the Japanese PM was pretty embarrassing. Oh so because its a woman, even
though she openly and knowingly released the pics in public, its still
special. Man we really are still Puritans, still pedestalizing sex and the
honor of our ladyfolk.

~~~
jshaqaw
There is clearly more at stake here than you acknowledge. The creep job one
stalkers who made the lives of these women hell beyond personal embarrassment.
And these were cases of non consensual sex cited in the article. For gods sake
man grow a little empathy and honor before you keyboard blast.

~~~
cybersnowflake
Harassment and rape are separate crimes. There is no need to institute a
special global supercopyright for poor oppressed womyn and trample the free
flow of information to prosecute those.

------
writepub
Search engines should treat searches on individuals as a separate, special
category. Laws need to be protect personal information from Google's excuses.
When federal laws on personally identifiable information were drafted, they
weren't intended for a world where a megacorp indexed it all, and made it
widely accessible, with no course for challenge.

U.S. laws need to catch up with reality.

~~~
merpnderp
Information wants to be free regardless of virtue of your claim, and the first
amendment will make an impossible hurdle for would be censors.

~~~
whoopdedo
You beg the question that free information is always a good thing, and that
anything which gets in the way is censorship -- in other words, evil.

There are ways that information can be used to cause harm. If it were not the
case we wouldn't need encryption. As a society, we must be capable of enacting
laws that define when information is harmful and thus not allowed. Is this
censorship? Is it evil?

