It makes me so sad to see the increase in 'nanny' behavior.
In what world is that picture actually offending anyone? Is it useless? Maybe. Looks unprofessional to me as well, depending on context and recipient.
But offending? Mature? That's not even funny anymore. People that don't like that picture can choose to ignore it or drop that person from their circles etc.
I kind of see the point of objection if someone drops his pants in a picture that everyone can see. But this is so far beyond comprehension that I seriously hope the article is a hoax.
Absurd, people chose what pictures to upload because they want those particular pictures, they don't upload crap because they can't be bothered to do better and everyone else is doing the same anyway.
Personal image is the last thing that gets neglected. People neglect things they don't care about.
U kind of see the point of objection if someone drops his pants in a picture that everyone can see.
This logic always confounds me. We are born naked, our natural state is to be without clothes. Worse still we are born into a society whose rules are based on a religion we may or may not subscribe to, but we still have to follow these rules under penalty of enslavement (prison) or physical harm to our bodies. Those naked bodies we were born with which offends some sense of religious propriety.
I _understand_ the point of objection as soon as we're entering nudity, because that is something utterly oppressed/objectionable in most cultures I know about. No use pretending that nudity isn't censored, be it natural or not.
Do I agree with that though? Is that my stance? No, I tend to think the approach here [1, careful if you are overly sensitive or consider even wikipedia articles about nudity in culture obscene/inappropriate] is a much saner way to live. It's just not globally applicable and I won't try to force that on others.
"It makes me so sad to see the increase in 'nanny' behavior."
Do you dislike it enough to join or start a competing service? That's really the only response that matters.
Google doesn't have to justify how they run their site. They offer a particular service with particular rules, and people either use it or don't use it.
> Do you dislike it enough to join or start a competing service? That's really the only response that matters.
No it's not. Why do you think the other response doesn't matter? That's silly, there's thousands of people reading it. And on HN that even includes people from Google!
> Google doesn't have to justify how they run their site.
They don't have to, but they should. After all, just what you say, people either use it or don't and if Google can't or won't justify their actions adequately, people may stop using it.
Now for you, "adequate justification" obviously means nothing more than "it's in the terms". Which is absolutely fine and I must commend you for so courageously demonstrating your utter lack of spine which not only makes you inferior as an individual, but also negatively impacts those around you.
BY READING THIS POST YOU AGREE WITH MY TERMS (OTHERWISE GO AWAY AND WRITE YOUR OWN POST): My terms are that you will accept whatever is written in this post, with the typical sort of submissive sigh that you invariably utter when life takes yet another dump on you, believing that there's nothing you can do but sigh, accept it and move on.
I really don't like this 'Their house, their rules' answer. It adds nothing of value. I talked about this specific incident, sharing my (personal) thoughts and reaction. Your post didn't touch the issue at hand at all, it was just the all too obvious (but irrelevant) 'they set the rules'.
Did you actually expect google to be reasonable when it comes to this stuff? They sure as hell aren't reasonable / don't care when it comes to all their other customer service.
Except when you're paying for a product. At $DAYJOB, we use Google Apps, and pay $50/month/user to have google manage all of our mail/document/groups/etc. Problem: Our CEO tried to send an email to a company-wide group, and the group rejected the mail due to the "Bulk Email sending" guidelines. Funny -- there were no external email addresses. I opened a case with Google Support, explained the problem, provided the SMTP NDR....and it sat for 14 days before they closed it out with no action on their side. Our employee@ mailing list is still broken -- and google seems to be in no rush to fix it.
It's all good -- I'm taking my 35 users and moving to zimbra next year when our contract ends.
You would think so, right? Well, turns out they don't have any customer service in paid products either. Google App Engine for example has none even if you pay thousands. You need to pay an extra $500/month fee to specifically get customer service.
Supposedly, although I do not believe that the specifics have been announced yet. I think jwz's take on it is the best and pretty much mirrors my opinion:
So I thought google hired only geniuses:
what kind of interview does an "account picture reviewing associate" need to pass? Does he/she make more than the cleaner?
I just don't understand this "please behave yourself" attitude.
Freedom of speech is mostly about with regard to the state and government, but commercial services ought to similarly be obliged to follow its ramifications as well.
Basically freedom of speech means that you have the right to shoot yourself in your foot, for better or worse. And that nobody has the right to prevent you from doing so, for better or worse.
You have the right to offend people but you suffer the appropriate consequences, if any, if they decide to get offended. Google should have no say about the profile picture of the original poster: an offended individual could certainly report the picture to the police (although I personally assume that in no circumstances would there be a case). Still, it should never be Google who gets to decide this on behalf of the potential "victim".
Yes, businesses have very few obligations regarding free speech, in contrast to the government. That doesn't mean they should not support something just because nobody forces them to do it. It's not a question of legality, it's a question of ethics.
While that is true, it's hardly the end of the story.
This is all a bit slipperyslopey and devilsadvocatey, and definitely a 2am runon sentence, but when businesses maintain the most extensive and authoritative identity rosters on the planet (having millions of realtime and historical data points about each individual), and those businesses serve as the primary soapbox for citizens to shout from, and the businesses increasingly act as independent states, we may need to reevaluate how we make sure those businesses behave, and we may need to expand the definition of "behave".
Looking to the near-ish future: I expect Facebook to show all the "important" stories in my news feed - but as they continue to tweak what's "important", what happens if they hide everything related to a specific topic (be it Facebook redesign moaning, Ron Paul, Falun Gong...), effectively removing it from the public discourse? At the scale they currently have and will achieve, is their obligation to provide the "right" content mandated by user engagement metrics, PR, or just what advertisers will pay the most money for? What if they'd like to nudge an election?
It may be user engagement metrics are all that's necessary - Google+ is doing its best to prove folks won't use what they don't like. It may be that fiddling with newsfeed content is all it takes for Facebook's future as "that thing people used for a while after MySpace" to emerge. Or maybe something else happens. All I'm saying is this isn't quite so open and shut.
Oh man. I need to get some sleep before I start thinking I make any sense.
This is not the end of the story. The First amendment is about government, yes -- but not "free speech" in general.
Speech is not really free when you need to subscribe to a private service in order to express yourself, and those services can edict their own rules defining what can be said.
A business is not free to do anything it wants. For example, a business is not free to demonstrate prejudice in hiring.
Just because, as of now, businesses who are in the business of providing tools for self expression, can define their own rules as regards to how those tools are used, does not mean they will always be able to do so, nor that they should.
Free speech should be enforced in private companies. My guess is, it eventually will.
Speech is free in the sense of absence of legal restrictions on it, not in the sense of the presence of third parties obliged to unconditional bear the costs of broadcasting it. Why should Google be obliged to host and display MG Siegler's silly picture if they don't want to? Should misapplication of the First Amendment also oblige Google, at their own expense, to also deliver all spam to and from Gmail accounts, host every copyright-cleared hardcore porn video uploaded to YouTube and allow people to turn their Google Circle into the next Stormfront if it's their wish to do so?
Legislation implying that permitting some forms of user- generated content on your internet property cedes all owners' rights of control of what is broadcast would have the counter-intuitive effect of killing free-speech on the internet stone dead; better to shutter the comment field than be sued by spammers for filtering them.
In general you are, of course, correct. Constitutional rights only limit the government, not people or companies. It’s “Congress shall make no law …”, not “People and companies shall make no contract …”.
But it’s not that simple. In Germany† there is the third-party or horizontal effect of constitutional rights („mittelbare Drittwirkung“). This is, for example, relevant when it comes to discrimination.
The famous example you will always hear quoted if you learn about German constitutional law is the Lüth decision∆. Therein the German constitutional court decided that a call for the boycott of a movie is covered by freedom of speech and the film company can’t sue for damages.
Knowing that constitutional rights in general only limit the government (and the reasons for why that is so) is a great starting point, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation.
I think, for example, that critical communication infrastructure needs to allow for and enable freedom of speech – and because of that it can be necessary to limit what companies responsible for this infrastructure can do to their users.
The important question for me is then whether Google+ is critical communication infrastructure. I don’t think so. There are too many easily accessible alternatives. But Facebook might be …
—
† I’m not terribly familiar with US law. I want to have at least a half-decent understanding about what I’m talking.
Exactly the same as with SOPA and other laws.
Police/Judge etc are there to solve such matters. No company should be allowed to do so.
Not only that but judges, police and so on have specific safe guards to prevent, as much as possible, any unfair treatment or anything that would violate your human rights and/or constitutional rights.
People dying and fought their whole life for us to have those safeguards.
And many disregard them nowadays, or bypass them with such laws, without even bothering or feeling ashamed. That is so bad.
There is a good damn f* reason for those to be at the base of all laws. That's something that should never be forgotten.
I'd even say it's way more important than wars, terrorism, whatever other "never forget!" event (which are closer to "think of the children" events, in order to enforce bad stuff, to me)
> You have the right to offend people but you suffer the appropriate consequences, if any, if they decide to get offended.
Yes. He had the right to upload the image, and Google had the right to get offended, and the consequences were that they took the image down.
It's not like they put him in prison, or gave him a fine, or stopped him getting a job, or shut down his Google account. They just took down the image, with a polite explanation the second time he put it up.
I have to laugh when I see video or pictures from the US where the "finger" is censored.
For anyone who takes offence from that: grow up. It's a finger, it's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by that it's because you choose to be offended by it. Grow up and get past that.
Google+ just passed 62 million users. It is roughly the size of the United Kingdom. Because of its size, the idea of any sort of limitations on free speech just seems wrong to me. MG Siegler's middle finger isn't hurting anyone, and censoring it seems like starting on the slippery slope of censorship half way down the slope.
you could? the finger waving people enslaved and oppressed those without fingers and continue to live in a society in which the presence of fingers is a major determining factor in almost everything? news to me.
I wont comment about racial slurs, but I agree wholeheartedly with regard to abrasive language when it's not directed at anyone.
If your computer crashes and you mutter "for fucks sake" to yourself, you're not hurting anyone. Anyone who gets upset over your language in this situation is just being 19th century.
The degree to which saying something such as "fuck you" is abrasive depends entirely on the situation - sometimes they probably deserve it, sometimes you would be being a dick.
Please.. save the outrage for something that matters, like SOPA or protect IP. There is IMO no "issue" here. I dont see any problem with googles approach. I agree that you can probably find alot more offensive profile pictures and its borderline, but presumably they were reacting to a complaint and made a judgement call.
The issue that you're pretending not to recognise is quite clear. Google+ doesn't just censor things that they're forced to. They even censor pictures of mild, unthreatening, commonly used, gestures. That is a problem worth talking about.
They are free to do this, and rightly so. But people should be aware that this happens, and is a bad thing, so when a viable alternative is created, that doesn't suffer the same problem, they already know why they should move.
There is no "outrage". Nobody is being unreasonable by discussing this issue. Discussing this issue takes nothing away from the SOPA issue.
The concept of and the reaction to 'offense' is ridiculous.
When someone is offended, the immediate reaction is that everyone must be offended. Those who are not offended have absolutely no bearing on this.
Thus, one person complains about, say, someone flipping Vs in a picture, and the picture is removed. How many other people saw it and weren't offended? We don't know. But they're probably a majority.
Further to that, the singular offended person has an extraordinary power to censor that which offends no one else. And the press can take advantage of that to manufacture outrage to fit their agenda. As happened with 'Sachsgate'[1] in 2008.
In all the treatment of the act of being offended, it comes across sometimes as a base human right. One that, as evidenced with the referenced link, is easy to abuse.
"I have to laugh when I see video or pictures from the US where the "finger" is censored."
In the larger context of your comment, I have to cry when I see people moving their services outside the US, or moving to vendors outside the US, to ensure what used to be guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights.
I get the same feeling when I hear a beep in a song censoring a swearword - I mean, we all know that there was a swear word, some people are just too "pure" to actually hear it? Get over it!
The pressure to censor content often comes from advertisers. A lot of advertisers don't want their ads showing up next to photos with even minimally offensive content.
(This doesn't explain everything for Google, but I'm sure it was a factor.)
I used to work at an affiliate network where an advertiser's ad ended up next to a satirical video for "Tourette syndrome Barbie". Some national Tourette syndrome organization called the advertiser and threatened to boycott them. They pulled the entire campaign from us, despite our ability to make sure this particular affiliate would never promote the ad again. Long story short, knee jerk chain reactions are the norm. Advocacy group or other consumer group overreacts, advertiser is forced to overreact to avoid a boycott or press incident, publisher gets screwed out of a good campaign, picture of guy flipping off nobody is banned forever.
In other words, you're half-right. Don't blame Google. But probably don't blame advertisers either. Blame some overly sensitive consumer group or advocacy group for having no sense of humor and throwing their weight around because they have nothing better to do.
Google maximizes profit satisfying advertisers in my personal detriment. Of course I can blame Google for that. I never care about businesses making money, I only care about my personal comfort and welfare.
Lets be clear here, we're talking about Google removing a particular picture with an offensive gesture shown.
This is not to the detriment of your personal comfort or welfare. Please stop hamming this up beyond the reality of the situation. Google run a private service and while they should not censor political speech or genuine opinion, they certainly have the right to determine what they consider offensive.
It's okay for Google to make their site advertiser-safe.
It's not okay for Google to delete the image, without warning or notification to the user. They could have easily reset his profile pic to null and sent him a note.
Only looked at the file name. I'm allergic to nazi stuff/symbols/jokes/references.
If that is just a picture of Hitler I'd find that quite offensive (talking about different morality in different regions of the world again. Nudity doesn't scare me, childish gestures I couldn't care less about, but don't start this Nazi stuff around me).
Additionally I'd consider that nsfw for me. While I'm sure that I wouldn't face any repercussions whatsoever, I really dislike the idea of looking at whatever imagine is behind a file called ahitler.jpg while a coworker accidently runs by. In Israel. As a German.
Note that my home country even has various forms of laws against using symbols from that era.
That is an image of Hitler, wearing a swastika armband. Just for those in countries where that imagery is illegal and could result in criminal prosecution and fines or imprisonment.
1) You didn't state if that stuff was shared 'privately' with some circles or public and the first thing to turn up in searches, like a profile picture. This would help set the context to understand if we're talking about similar things.
2) 'hardcore nsfw 18+' is about as subjective as it gets in a diverse forum like this. You might think 'sex acts' or just plain 'completely nude and posing', while to me this reads as 'contains man/donkey interaction of an interesting sort'. Morality and ease of being offended are concepts that differ wildly.
(Of course this needs a final disclaimer: I do think that censorship of that picture is stupid, as written further up this thread. I agree with you that _if_ they decide to censor pictures they probably should focus on whatever you judge as being hardcore first, before they go for silly pictures of people flipping the bird)
Interesting to see the guy posted on his own blog, not G+ hehe. Note that I prefer posting on my own blogs too and link from G+/Twitter/FB/whatever. Cause I have backups and no ones going to go and delete it off my server (well, hopefully)
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a picture that was removed too. It was shared only with a close circle of friends with whom I share music-centric things. See for yourself:
While we can see the woman's nipples I'd consider this as a piece of art as both subjects are actors and singers and the picture itself was taken as part of a movie promotion campaign.
It really upsets me to see America's prude ways spread like this. That sort of photography is perfectly fine in France and nobody would see anything utterly sexual to it.
WAT? Google removed this in your private circle? Please elaborate on the circumstance, is it set to profile picture or what? Blogspot allows 18+ content with a warning, why would G+ sensor such things?
You use their network so you have to play by their rules. It's interesting that infants, the ones most likely to be 'severely emotionally damaged' by such a grotesque gesture, are in fact not allowed on G+.
"What if this was the only place I had stored the picture? " <-- now that's just plain silly.
Would they also remove a profile picture that showed the soles of someone's feet, I wonder? That can be incredibly offensive in some parts of the world.
I dont see G+ as a product, but rather as a service, that Google runs and you can use it for free. And all free social networks tilt inevitably toward user exploitation, because you're not their customer, YOU are their product.
It would be interesting to see how Google would handle the fig sign [1]. It represents the letter T in ASL, but it is considered quite a rude gesture (cunt in Turkish, for example) in many Eastern-European cultures.
Also some V variants are considered iconic Churchills V sign, which arguably could be considered rude to french people (it was a taunt from English archers to the french)
I have to say that I find this sort of behavior from Google extremely offensive and if I were still working at Google I would ask Larry Page about this at the next TGIF.
It would appear that Google have hired Dolores Umbridge to write the policies for Google Plus.
Summary: Guy doesn't read the fine print ("User Content and Conduct Policy") when accepting his account, posts a picture in violation, and is surprised when it is taken down.
Bottom line: don't like the policy, don't use the service. Don't have an alternative, go develop one where people can flip the bird all day long.
It's not. Politics are different from private property, Google+ being the latter. Just because it's free to use doesn't mean you own the infrastructure and it doesn't mean you are the customer. It is their server and service, and its their rules. I think it seems childish to break the rules, get caught, and act as if one is morally injured by enforcement. That said, (1) would be a courtesy, and perhaps a reasonable one, for Google to consider. Google already answered (2) in their user content guidelines.
Thought experiment: what if Google's policy was "anything goes"? What if advertisers decided not to use Google anymore once content degenerated into frat party and "rate my vomit" pictures? What if Google stopped making enough money to support Google+ and had to shut it down?
Isn't this a bit different than your analogy? Google+ is a free service, and is hardly the only content-hosting/blog-esque product available (and it's free). Certainly, if you (and others) don't like Google's policies, by all means, let them know, but realize that until those policies are changed, they will enforce them (and we know that Google's "customer service" is lacking, so it isn't a surprise that the poster didn't receive notification).
I don't necessarily agree with Google's actions here, but Google+ is what it is--a service provided by a corporation, bounded by rules for content. If you don't want to live with such rules, take your content and go elsewhere. If enough people do that (including high visibility users), I'm sure Google will listen.
Google+ is free in name only. In truth we pay by being there, filling it with our personal information. Google isn't a non-profit, they see a way to make money off all the users. Do you think google+ would still be around if it only had one million users, no, they would shut it down. They need us to use their toys just as much as we want to use them. And if they want us to use their toys then they better let us use them any way we like.
142 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 76.0 ms ] threadhttp://parislemon.com/post/14907295522/dear-google?dupe=true huh? you did it intentionally?
In what world is that picture actually offending anyone? Is it useless? Maybe. Looks unprofessional to me as well, depending on context and recipient.
But offending? Mature? That's not even funny anymore. People that don't like that picture can choose to ignore it or drop that person from their circles etc. I kind of see the point of objection if someone drops his pants in a picture that everyone can see. But this is so far beyond comprehension that I seriously hope the article is a hoax.
Personal image is the last thing that gets neglected. People neglect things they don't care about.
This logic always confounds me. We are born naked, our natural state is to be without clothes. Worse still we are born into a society whose rules are based on a religion we may or may not subscribe to, but we still have to follow these rules under penalty of enslavement (prison) or physical harm to our bodies. Those naked bodies we were born with which offends some sense of religious propriety.
I _understand_ the point of objection as soon as we're entering nudity, because that is something utterly oppressed/objectionable in most cultures I know about. No use pretending that nudity isn't censored, be it natural or not.
Do I agree with that though? Is that my stance? No, I tend to think the approach here [1, careful if you are overly sensitive or consider even wikipedia articles about nudity in culture obscene/inappropriate] is a much saner way to live. It's just not globally applicable and I won't try to force that on others.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur
Do you dislike it enough to join or start a competing service? That's really the only response that matters.
Google doesn't have to justify how they run their site. They offer a particular service with particular rules, and people either use it or don't use it.
No it's not. Why do you think the other response doesn't matter? That's silly, there's thousands of people reading it. And on HN that even includes people from Google!
> Google doesn't have to justify how they run their site.
They don't have to, but they should. After all, just what you say, people either use it or don't and if Google can't or won't justify their actions adequately, people may stop using it.
Now for you, "adequate justification" obviously means nothing more than "it's in the terms". Which is absolutely fine and I must commend you for so courageously demonstrating your utter lack of spine which not only makes you inferior as an individual, but also negatively impacts those around you.
BY READING THIS POST YOU AGREE WITH MY TERMS (OTHERWISE GO AWAY AND WRITE YOUR OWN POST): My terms are that you will accept whatever is written in this post, with the typical sort of submissive sigh that you invariably utter when life takes yet another dump on you, believing that there's nothing you can do but sigh, accept it and move on.
PS: This sigh was dismissive, not submissive.
Fwiw: No, I don't have a G+ account.
It's all good -- I'm taking my 35 users and moving to zimbra next year when our contract ends.
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/eff-declares-premature-victo... http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/google-nymwars-redux/
http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/private/portfolio/4j7e/704...
Nope. The slope is rather slippery.
Freedom of speech is mostly about with regard to the state and government, but commercial services ought to similarly be obliged to follow its ramifications as well.
Basically freedom of speech means that you have the right to shoot yourself in your foot, for better or worse. And that nobody has the right to prevent you from doing so, for better or worse.
You have the right to offend people but you suffer the appropriate consequences, if any, if they decide to get offended. Google should have no say about the profile picture of the original poster: an offended individual could certainly report the picture to the police (although I personally assume that in no circumstances would there be a case). Still, it should never be Google who gets to decide this on behalf of the potential "victim".
This is all a bit slipperyslopey and devilsadvocatey, and definitely a 2am runon sentence, but when businesses maintain the most extensive and authoritative identity rosters on the planet (having millions of realtime and historical data points about each individual), and those businesses serve as the primary soapbox for citizens to shout from, and the businesses increasingly act as independent states, we may need to reevaluate how we make sure those businesses behave, and we may need to expand the definition of "behave".
Looking to the near-ish future: I expect Facebook to show all the "important" stories in my news feed - but as they continue to tweak what's "important", what happens if they hide everything related to a specific topic (be it Facebook redesign moaning, Ron Paul, Falun Gong...), effectively removing it from the public discourse? At the scale they currently have and will achieve, is their obligation to provide the "right" content mandated by user engagement metrics, PR, or just what advertisers will pay the most money for? What if they'd like to nudge an election?
It may be user engagement metrics are all that's necessary - Google+ is doing its best to prove folks won't use what they don't like. It may be that fiddling with newsfeed content is all it takes for Facebook's future as "that thing people used for a while after MySpace" to emerge. Or maybe something else happens. All I'm saying is this isn't quite so open and shut.
Oh man. I need to get some sleep before I start thinking I make any sense.
Speech is not really free when you need to subscribe to a private service in order to express yourself, and those services can edict their own rules defining what can be said.
A business is not free to do anything it wants. For example, a business is not free to demonstrate prejudice in hiring.
Just because, as of now, businesses who are in the business of providing tools for self expression, can define their own rules as regards to how those tools are used, does not mean they will always be able to do so, nor that they should.
Free speech should be enforced in private companies. My guess is, it eventually will.
Legislation implying that permitting some forms of user- generated content on your internet property cedes all owners' rights of control of what is broadcast would have the counter-intuitive effect of killing free-speech on the internet stone dead; better to shutter the comment field than be sued by spammers for filtering them.
In general you are, of course, correct. Constitutional rights only limit the government, not people or companies. It’s “Congress shall make no law …”, not “People and companies shall make no contract …”.
But it’s not that simple. In Germany† there is the third-party or horizontal effect of constitutional rights („mittelbare Drittwirkung“). This is, for example, relevant when it comes to discrimination.
The famous example you will always hear quoted if you learn about German constitutional law is the Lüth decision∆. Therein the German constitutional court decided that a call for the boycott of a movie is covered by freedom of speech and the film company can’t sue for damages.
Knowing that constitutional rights in general only limit the government (and the reasons for why that is so) is a great starting point, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation.
I think, for example, that critical communication infrastructure needs to allow for and enable freedom of speech – and because of that it can be necessary to limit what companies responsible for this infrastructure can do to their users.
The important question for me is then whether Google+ is critical communication infrastructure. I don’t think so. There are too many easily accessible alternatives. But Facebook might be …
—
† I’m not terribly familiar with US law. I want to have at least a half-decent understanding about what I’m talking.
∆ Wikipedia has a great article about it, sadly only in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüth-Urteil
Not only that but judges, police and so on have specific safe guards to prevent, as much as possible, any unfair treatment or anything that would violate your human rights and/or constitutional rights.
People dying and fought their whole life for us to have those safeguards.
And many disregard them nowadays, or bypass them with such laws, without even bothering or feeling ashamed. That is so bad. There is a good damn f* reason for those to be at the base of all laws. That's something that should never be forgotten. I'd even say it's way more important than wars, terrorism, whatever other "never forget!" event (which are closer to "think of the children" events, in order to enforce bad stuff, to me)
Yes. He had the right to upload the image, and Google had the right to get offended, and the consequences were that they took the image down.
It's not like they put him in prison, or gave him a fine, or stopped him getting a job, or shut down his Google account. They just took down the image, with a polite explanation the second time he put it up.
tl:dr their website, their rules.
I have to laugh when I see video or pictures from the US where the "finger" is censored.
For anyone who takes offence from that: grow up. It's a finger, it's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by that it's because you choose to be offended by it. Grow up and get past that.
Google cannot and is not outlawing anything. They're just building a certain kind of website.
Anyone from Southern Europe here? North Africa?
If your computer crashes and you mutter "for fucks sake" to yourself, you're not hurting anyone. Anyone who gets upset over your language in this situation is just being 19th century.
The degree to which saying something such as "fuck you" is abrasive depends entirely on the situation - sometimes they probably deserve it, sometimes you would be being a dick.
http://humoroutcasts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The_Thin...
They are free to do this, and rightly so. But people should be aware that this happens, and is a bad thing, so when a viable alternative is created, that doesn't suffer the same problem, they already know why they should move.
There is no "outrage". Nobody is being unreasonable by discussing this issue. Discussing this issue takes nothing away from the SOPA issue.
When someone is offended, the immediate reaction is that everyone must be offended. Those who are not offended have absolutely no bearing on this.
Thus, one person complains about, say, someone flipping Vs in a picture, and the picture is removed. How many other people saw it and weren't offended? We don't know. But they're probably a majority.
Further to that, the singular offended person has an extraordinary power to censor that which offends no one else. And the press can take advantage of that to manufacture outrage to fit their agenda. As happened with 'Sachsgate'[1] in 2008.
In all the treatment of the act of being offended, it comes across sometimes as a base human right. One that, as evidenced with the referenced link, is easy to abuse.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Brand_Show_prank_teleph...
In the larger context of your comment, I have to cry when I see people moving their services outside the US, or moving to vendors outside the US, to ensure what used to be guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights.
(This doesn't explain everything for Google, but I'm sure it was a factor.)
In other words, you're half-right. Don't blame Google. But probably don't blame advertisers either. Blame some overly sensitive consumer group or advocacy group for having no sense of humor and throwing their weight around because they have nothing better to do.
This is not to the detriment of your personal comfort or welfare. Please stop hamming this up beyond the reality of the situation. Google run a private service and while they should not censor political speech or genuine opinion, they certainly have the right to determine what they consider offensive.
It's not okay for Google to delete the image, without warning or notification to the user. They could have easily reset his profile pic to null and sent him a note.
Only looked at the file name. I'm allergic to nazi stuff/symbols/jokes/references.
If that is just a picture of Hitler I'd find that quite offensive (talking about different morality in different regions of the world again. Nudity doesn't scare me, childish gestures I couldn't care less about, but don't start this Nazi stuff around me).
Additionally I'd consider that nsfw for me. While I'm sure that I wouldn't face any repercussions whatsoever, I really dislike the idea of looking at whatever imagine is behind a file called ahitler.jpg while a coworker accidently runs by. In Israel. As a German.
Note that my home country even has various forms of laws against using symbols from that era.
1) You didn't state if that stuff was shared 'privately' with some circles or public and the first thing to turn up in searches, like a profile picture. This would help set the context to understand if we're talking about similar things.
2) 'hardcore nsfw 18+' is about as subjective as it gets in a diverse forum like this. You might think 'sex acts' or just plain 'completely nude and posing', while to me this reads as 'contains man/donkey interaction of an interesting sort'. Morality and ease of being offended are concepts that differ wildly.
(Of course this needs a final disclaimer: I do think that censorship of that picture is stupid, as written further up this thread. I agree with you that _if_ they decide to censor pictures they probably should focus on whatever you judge as being hardcore first, before they go for silly pictures of people flipping the bird)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ExP28IheTlQ/TixbmTp_nNI/AAAAAAAAFL...
While we can see the woman's nipples I'd consider this as a piece of art as both subjects are actors and singers and the picture itself was taken as part of a movie promotion campaign.
It really upsets me to see America's prude ways spread like this. That sort of photography is perfectly fine in France and nobody would see anything utterly sexual to it.
"What if this was the only place I had stored the picture? " <-- now that's just plain silly.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_sign
It would appear that Google have hired Dolores Umbridge to write the policies for Google Plus.
Bottom line: don't like the policy, don't use the service. Don't have an alternative, go develop one where people can flip the bird all day long.
It's like saying "don't like the politics?" -> "leave the country"
We want to influence and change the policies.
1. Any forced changes to content posted on google+ should be accompanied by a notification (eg. an email).
2. Do we really need such stringent rules for content. What if I post a satirical photo? (Like those you see in the New Yorker)
Thought experiment: what if Google's policy was "anything goes"? What if advertisers decided not to use Google anymore once content degenerated into frat party and "rate my vomit" pictures? What if Google stopped making enough money to support Google+ and had to shut it down?
I don't necessarily agree with Google's actions here, but Google+ is what it is--a service provided by a corporation, bounded by rules for content. If you don't want to live with such rules, take your content and go elsewhere. If enough people do that (including high visibility users), I'm sure Google will listen.