What are your thoughs about using Google Docs and Sheets as a quick-and-dirty way to create and distribute content, especially by non-tech-savvy users?
It appears that the use of this format has been growing, especially during the recent events (coronavirus pandemic, climate change then BLM protests).
I always felt strangely about it. It is quick, dirty, free, and easy, but the fact public docs hosted on Google Docs are very unstable, i.e. they don't get archived, and they're prone to removal by the writer at any moment, or by Google if either it breaks rules or if they get asked to by law enforcement/governments, I don't trust the URL to stay the same (not sure why), accessibility is poor, some docs require to be logged into google (and this also means identities are tracked) and they're not indexed. The list helps but I imagine it's quite a lot of work to keep it up, and in a year from now will be abandoned.
I can't say a static webpage is any better, since that requires quite a bit of know-how, hosting costs, and other in-conveniences than just making the google doc public.
I also feel confused when celebrities et al. share their deep thoughts, apologies, outcries, and other information by screen-shotting a story written in their phone's notes app and posting the images, but there really isn't anything simpler and more reliable than that (since writing in non-native apps, especially iOS, tend to reset themselves and delete your text if you exit the app for too long).
Those are very good points. Without going into too many details, I am hoping to resolve some of the issues you've mentioned and provide a bit more stability to this format.
Haven't thought about celebrities screen-shotting their thoughts but it's definitely a thing :) there could be something there.
It appears that the use of this format has been growing, especially during the recent events (coronavirus pandemic, climate change then BLM protests).