He's not "seriously upset" about the photo. He thinks what's happening is ridiculous, and therefore took the time to ridicule it. He's clearly right. But it's not a moral crusade.
Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point.
The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either.
The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network?
Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?
There are public sections of G+ and private sections. If you have a private album limited to 4chan buddies or whatever with tubgirl, goatse, the lemon party, etc. and they took that down, I would find issue with it. But if you've got goatse as your public profile picture, that is an issue that Google has to deal with. I use those examples not because they are directly comparable to what Siegler put up, but because I imagine most of the people here on hn would find those images offensive.
When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.
So what if people are horribly offended? Let them be offended. It's not like anything bad will happen. "Someone flipped me the bird, I found it offensive and the next morning I had leprosy!" (Riffing off Steve Hughes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycXuYzmzNg watch this, it's pretty much my whole argument)
It's a finger for fuck's sake. It's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by it you really need to grow up and stop living in 19th century Victorian England.
Yes, pictures of dicks and gore is disgusting, but a finger? That's just childish, and reacting to that is also childish.
My point is that it's all relative, and from Google's perspective, something bad will happen--people won't use their service. Telling your potential users to grow up and act like reasonable people is not going to be a successful strategy when your goal is getting literally everyone with an internet connection to use your service. Lots of people are not rational, reasonable or mature. Personally, I don't find dicks and gore to be disgusting. It's just absurd to me. Of course, I understand perfectly well that other people find it disgusting, just as I can understand that there are a lot of people in the U.S. that find the middle finger to be objectionable (hey, maybe they aren't even offended by it, maybe they just don't want to explain what that gesture means to their kid, who then runs around flipping off everyone at their school [true story, I did that when I was about 4 years old]).
Almost any business that is targeted at a mass audience understands this and governs their products accordingly. If you find their censorship to be prudish and ridiculous, you can boycott them and use the Fuck You Network. I suppose if enough people boycott G+ for being unreasonably prudish, maybe they'll change their position, but judging by past performance, it seems like the prudes win these fights. Social networks are not like content distributors like HBO, that can appeal to a relatively small niche and be successful, for G+ it's all or nothing.
You've inadvertantly identified precisely what the real issue is: where is the line drawn? To you, it's at dicks and gore. Dicks and gore HAVE to be taken down!
Well, I've got news for you. Not everyone has the same threshold for tolerance of offensive material. Maybe the middle finger is devastating to me, but I love seeing gore. Who are you to tell me that's childish?
There are rules. Even HN has a set. If you don't like them, don't play.
The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. Siegler's little renegade act probably wouldn't work so well with the people who still think you can be a badass tech writer if he refrained, though.
MC Siegler and his fans are completely and totally allowed to share pictures of them fingering at each other (that came out wrong, but I'm leaving it for posterity) in private circles on G+, aren't they? But Google doesn't want it in people's public feeds.
I don't find it offensive--I do find it stupid in that sort of "oh, look at the Internet Tough Guy" way, but that's a far cry from taking offense--but at the same time I can entirely get why Google wouldn't be all happy and such with that sort of picture in folks' public feeds. Like it or not, there are some venues where you get to be a little civilized if you want to be out in public, and Google's decided that they have a bit of a dress code in their neck of the woods: shirt optional, pants optional, tie not required, birds verboten. Not a big deal; the total of this tragedy is pretty much that MC Siegler will have to resort to other methods than a bird in a profile picture to show what a trendy rebel with his fingers on the pulse of Technoeverything he really is.
Maybe he could do it with a thoughtful, well-written, incisive arti...ahahahahaha. I made myself laugh. =)
>The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of.
That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.
No, the new "adult thing" to do is try to control what other do and say, so that no one ever has to experience the traumatic effects of being offended.
I think many people here are conflating offensiveness and propriety. You don't have to be offended by something to find it inappropriate for a service that you run. (I don't find profanity offensive, but I also don't find it appropriate for business conversation. I doubt Googlers find a bird all that offensive, but the people making decisions apparently don't find birds appropriate for public G+ feeds. Oh noes?)
He, and you, and I, have no inherent right to do whatever we want on a private service. Their house, their rules. Maybe he should start his own social network (with blackjack, and...). He can call it CrunchPlaid. =)
He's not on my feed. I don't use G+ and wouldn't follow Siegler if I did.
I don't really see many people not minding their business, though. I see a few (including me) saying "meh, it's Google's house, they choose the rules", and that's about it.
It's Google's social network that they give everyone for free, they can refuse service to anyone. I don't agree with the level of censorship personally (it's a little bit too PC), but I respect Google's right to run their website how they see fit.
Of course they have a right to run their website how they see fit. But we also have a right to talk about what they're doing, and make informed decisions as to whether we'll be a part of their social network.
It's a <insert whatever YOU find ofensive> for fuck's sake, so get over it.
The amount of moralizing over what people are "allowed" to find offensive here is amazing. If it were my network, I wouldn't give a rat's ass what MG was doing in his picture, but it isn't my network.
The adult thing would be to act responsibly in the first place. Simplicity describes that spirit best: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or another sentiment is: would you do/show that to your grandmother (any beloved elder)?
So if it would in the slightest bother you, then don't bother doing it.
The MG criticism is over the top, as expected, since G+ is far more "public" out of the gate than previous networks it needs to be more proactive rather than reactive. As FB becomes more public they will begin to grapple with the same issues, it's only a matter of time...
Actually, Tom gets it right. It's called discretion. Use his public example, for instance. If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?
"But this is who I really am, and it's how I want to portray myself in public!"
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences. You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
I find it interesting that most attempts to support Google in this instances uses far more extreme examples to justify it.
I don't think anyone is insisting that there are no types of images that are so bad that it wouldn't be ok for Google to remove them. At least I haven't seen anyone claim so.
As long as that is the case, using examples that the vast majority would agree are worse than the one that was actually taken down just weakens your point dramatically.
If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?
No, but one can disagree with both Google and the general public.
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences.
That doesn't mean we can't publicly disagree with the rules.
You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
Mall cops don't decide the rules, they just apply them. It's different.
If I do that in public there are laws and elected officials, there are courts and ways for me to appeal. A clear and explicit notification is always given and if not I can sue. Most importantly, some things I’m definitely and always allowed to do are explicitly written down.
If you are in favor of Google treating their site like a public space then Google is doing very poorly.
Maybe he should stop to think that more than one person could have reported the photo. It would then be google's obligation to remove it because at that point you could not justify NOT removing it.
Seems silly. I could possibly see that point if you HAD to view his public profile, but it seems like that's entirely optional. Millions of users never see his public profile image. Those offended can simply not "follow" (circle?) him.
It would be easy to justify NOT removing it, even if EVERYONE else found it offensive. There's an option to not follow/view his profile. Under your view, the only votes would be those who found the picture offensive. If the criteria to remove something is that more than one person finds it offensive, almost everything on the internet would be removed.
A (much) better solution is that items that are flagged as potentially offensive come with a warning. Google+ users could choose the level they're comfortable with, much like they do with Google's search results. They deserve to be called out for making an arbitrary decision here, on something so trivial.
> If the criteria to remove something is that more than one person finds it offensive, almost everything on the internet would be removed.
Reductionist strawman. While a middle finger may not be particularly offensive to most people (including me), more people are likely to be offended by it than are likely to get their knickers in a twist over such a photo being removed. Ergo, it gets removed.
Waste time with warnings about offensive content and blah-blah-derpa-blah? No. Your potentially-offensive content can be kept in private circles and you can exercise good judgement about what you make public. That is the better solution. (And just in case--save the "well, what is offensive, how do we know?" silliness. That little brat Siegler knew perfectly well that he was doing something stupid and possibly/probably in contravention of Google's rules. Anderson called him out on it, too.)
It's not at all a reductionist straw-man argument. The post I responded to argued that if more than one person flagged the post as offensive that the content should be removed. The argument assumed that there should/could be a vote on if something is offensive, and if more people found it offensive it should be removed.
That line of reasoning is flawed, especially since there's no way to vote that you're not offended (other than the original person posting). That's an absurd system, where only the offended can voice their opinion. Even if those not offended could vote, who would vote on everything they're not offended by. That's still silly. Any system that attempts to allow people to vote/flag offensive material is inherently flawed.
That leaves us (or really Google) with an arbitrary decision on what should be allowed and what should be banned. Asking me (or anyone else) to save the "well, what is offensive" argument is silly. That's the WHOLE point. It's an arbitrary decision, one we all might come to different conclusions on. That underlines my point, that it's an arbitrary decision, and one that's been made for no good reason, given a system where you don't have to follow MG on Google+. There's a natural option (and given your obvious attitude on Mr. Siegler, the one you'll likely take), just don't follow him or look at his Google+ page. There's no reason to remove the content, and Google should be called out for it. MG might have over-reacted, and might be worthy of being called out too. I'm only calling out the system of "voting" to determine what's offensive. That's just a silly system.
Right. It's an arbitrary decision. The fact that they made a (arguably silly) decision doesn't prevent that decision from being called out for being silly. It is silly. G+ is certainly entitled to make whatever decisions they want to, provided those decisions are legal. That doesn't make them impervious to criticism.
I definitely disagree that he's "clearly" right, and disagree that he's right at all. Tom made the good point that this is Google's social network, and if you want to use it, then you should play by the rules, which are IMO mor than reasonable (why do I want to see people flipping me off).
I don't know why everyone is making it sound like this sets a precedent for more "censoring" when this is already the standard for any currently popular social network.
Wait. Wait. Wait. I'm not wading into the "debate" about whether Google can or should mess with people's profile photos. I could care less. I'm saying:
It is clearly ridiculous for Google to be policing profile photos looking for people flipping other people the bird.
Right? Wrong? Who cares? It's ridiculous. It can't possibly work. By doing it, Google sends a message that they're fundamentally unserious about taking on Facebook. Nobody who's serious could possibly have the time to deal with stuff like this. It's like Facebook banning cartoon profile pictures --- which is the kind of thing you can sort of do when you're the social network for a bunch of colleges, but couldn't even consider doing when you're the default social network for the entire world.
Actually, one of Tom's core arguments was that Google just happens to be policing content better than its competitors.
While I can't claim to know for certain exactly what content Facebook moderates, it most certainly does moderate. Is it purely a coincidence that the entire ecosystem on FB is noticeably 'cleaner' than its predecessor MySpace?
I think Tom is right that MySpace lost out to facebook because it is underpoliced. It became the cesspool of the internet. Policing can take many forms, for instance, Facebook doesn't allow people to add a lot of "bling" to their profiles as MySpace does/did. Reddit and Slashdot crowdsource their policing, by having a rating/karma system that discourages people from posting stuff that is bothersome to others. There are all kinds of things that can be done.
But just letting anyone do anything is not a good approach. The small minority who will get up in arms about such a thing is nothing compared to the masses that will leave when they decide that the anything goes approach has allowed G+ to become a cesspool like MySpace.
In my opinion, Facebook was better not because of it's policing, but because it had a better UI and lacked the hideous looking profile themes of MySpace.
I read most of the guy's article, I think, but I might have missed this last point you're making. I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying it's too technically difficult to do it (via machine learning or whatever) or there would be too many false positives?
If there's one company that doesn't usually use humans to do any kind of spam filtering, it's probably Google. Also, I'm pretty sure they'd work out the kinks eventually.
Both of those, and also: the amount of effort it takes, for no benefit whatsoever. They're doing it because they don't know what they're doing yet. It's not a moral outrage. It's a "tell".
As far as I'm concerned, if a service you like, does something you dislike, you should complain, and you should tell people about it. Especially if the service is used by tens of millions of people and is growing at the rate that Google+ is.
It sounds like you disagree with this though. Why? Why do you think he should have kept his mouth shut?
"this is already the standard for any currently popular social network"
And it will remain so, if people don't complain loudly enough that an alternative is created which behaves differently.
He's not complaining about anything that anyone has a problem with (ok maybe SOME people do want to see people giving them the finger in their stream). He's just whining about G+ like he always does, like a baby.
Your general statements don't apply here. If you want to argue, then tell me why you want to see people flicking you off on G+ and why you think that's something that should be OK for everyone.
I dont "want to see people giving them the finger in their stream" but at the same time I want even less for Google to censor minor stuff like that. If they're going to be that restrictive I have very little reason to believe they won't also censor things I'd care a lot more about.
I already use Google+ far more than Facebook, but they keep stepping in it and making me less and less hopeful about it being long term viable as a replacement.
If you want to argue, then tell me why you want to see people flicking you off on G+ and why you think that's something that should be OK for everyone.
It has nothing to do with wanting to see people flicking someone off, but with not wanting to see Google take the role of moral censor and deciding for us what's "offensive" or not.
I see. So the reason you think he should keep his mouth shut, is because you perceive his issue to be a minority issue. How many people need to have a problem with something before it's ok for them to complain about it?
Just because you disagree with somebodys opinion, doesn't mean they were wrong to express it.
I didn't say any of these things. He can keep his mouth open if he wants and he has every right to express his opinion. It's just a matter of judgement on which opinions to express, and "clearly" he misused his judgement here.
However, the point I'm making is, all things considered, I don't think he had much of an argument for this case, and it's more of just a cheap shot at G+ (he could have instead addressed it to all social networks instead of G+ too..). He kind of has a track record for these things though..
Let me put it this way: if somebody's profile picture bugs me, and it appears in my stream more than a couple times, that's on me. It's quite simple to take somebody out of your circles, and even to block them completely.
