Leaked Google Document shows the shift towards Censorship

[Taf the Ghost]

Just to drive home the point about "non-Monetary Objectives", it appears today was a Facebook purge day. Looks like general right-aligned, pro-gun, anti-war and more user-generated pages & lists got the delisting/removal. Keeping tack of Silicon Valley's actual "approved" position can be hard. They're Leftwing/Progressive/Corporatist, but they're for some wars & against other ones. Apparently they're pro-war in Syria, anti-war in Yemen and Afghanistan seems to just depend on the day of the week.

 

It's all so tiring. I look forward to all of them getting hung out to dry over this.

[EPENEX]

Any censorship of anything is bad. I know almost everyone will disagree with me as most people are hateful or prejudice against something- but I hope one day humans can be understanding and caring of all others.

[Dataanti]

9 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Reminder to keep this non-political

 

On a subject like this, that is entirely political, i don't think thats is possible XD

 

as for the topic it's self. it really comes to no surprise, to me this is someone on the inside trying to actually lesson the heavy hand of internet censorship that we have been seeing this past couple of years, mainly by the solution of moderating tone rather then content. which if people could actually moderate that without being bias in any way wouldn't be an issue, the main problem is who dictates what tones are okay and how far it can go. it leaves it open to abuse in my opinion, and personally if I was running the internet, I would have none of it and if you didn't like it, get out or learn to deal with it or block it. But that's just my opinion on it as a liberal guy who has always been against any sort of censorship, its funny how the right is now fighting anti censorship and the left is fighting to censor. crazy times but looking back at history, the political pendulum has always been swinging like this.

 

I would love to hear what google has to say about this, and if they pull another james damore.

[Deus Voltage]

1 hour ago, EPENEX said:

Any censorship of anything is bad. I know almost everyone will disagree with me as most people are hateful or prejudice against something- but I hope one day humans can be understanding and caring of all others.

Blanket statements like that are not as noble as you may think they are. Censorship in some very specific cases is a good thing. Examples:

 

-Child porn

 

-Revenge porn.

 

-Blood play.

 

-Extreme BDSM (no safe words).

 

-Downright rape.

 

ect....

 

So before anyone here tries to be noble, censorship in some very specific cases is a good thing.

[Delicieuxz]

There's coordinated censorship happening right now across the social media giants.

 

It's 1984 manifest as reality, with Facebook, Google, and Twitter working towards making CIA propaganda the only (dis)information available on their sites.

 

[DrMacintosh]

Unfortunately the only way around something like this is to pass laws to recognize social media and the internet as a public forum, and therefore those platforms must obey free speech laws.......in your country.

 

Just apply a little bit of thought and you will realize why this issue gets very complicated very quickly. 

 

Censorship of some things can be good. 

[DrMacintosh]

5 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

There's coordinated censorship happening right now across the social media giants.

 

It's 1984 manifest as reality, with Facebook, Google, and Twitter working towards making CIA propaganda the only (dis)information available on their sites.

It could be a self fulfilling prophecy. Idk about you but those groups did not seem to be havens of thought that did not violate the ToS of those respective platforms. 

[RejZoR]

5 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I don't know if I'm more worried about Google's evilness or its stupidity. The latter can often be more dangerous than the former...

 

Did you, though? You don't watch Youtube anymore? No android phone either? No third-party "powered by Google" services? Only visiting 100% tracking-free sites?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your intentions, but ditching Google is easier said than done. You may be done with Google, but unfortunately that doesn't mean Google is done with you.

Which is why I said "basically entirely". Only thing that I'm still using from them is Youtube and Android. Where in Android I've removed all Google apps, for the remaining apps that can't be removed I've blocked pretty much all of their permissions, usage access, network connectivity and I'm running Blokada on top of all this which blocks most of the remaining stuff externally.

 

In browser, I'm using Firefox Tracker blocking and Ghostery, blocking 3rd party cookies. For Youtube, I generally don't worry or care as much because I'm mostly just watching from same creators and those few things I search for in it, I hope it skews their analytics lol. I'm sure some of their shit is still tracking me, but when you're using all of their services they create almost complete image of you. If you use just one of their apps it's just a fragment. I think worst offenders are Google trackers/analytics on webpages, their search engine and GMail as they gather the most data which is also by far the most revealing about you.

[RejZoR]

6 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Look for phones that have Lineage OS support.  Android phones on custom ROMs are pretty secure as long as the ROMs don't come with the Google Apps preinstalled.

For a full list, see the left column on Lineage's download page : https://download.lineageos.org/

 

But if you want to do anything useful with it you need to install GooglePlay pretty much either way. F-Droid hardly has anything useful and it's clumsy as hell (like not showing any screenshots of the apps). Plus, if I root my phone, I can't use any of the banking apps.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Plus, if I root my phone, I can't use any of the banking apps.

When you flash Lineage OS, root isn't enabled by default.  When you're done flashing and tell the phone to reboot, it will warn you that root is disabled and ask you if you want to turn it on.  You can decline that offer, I run my S7 without root and never had any issues.   

My banking app (which indeed throws a fit whenever you try to run it with a rooted phone) runs just fine, I only had to sideload the .apk file because it's only available through the Play Store.

 

As for F-Droid hardly having anything useful and not showing screenshots, it is indeed true that their selection is limited, but that's because they don't want closed-source apps on there.  Apps only get in there after someone audits their code.  If every dev could just submit anything like they do on the Play Store, it would quickly be a virus-infested hellhole where most apps contain all kinds of trackers etc ... like for example the Play Store. 

The relative lack of choice is a trade-off that I'll happily make, but that's a personal preference.  Security vs convenience and all that.

Some apps do have screenshots nowadays, so that's being worked on. 

[Amazonsucks]

16 hours ago, Evanair said:

Seeing as the original source is Breitbart, I'll take this with a gain of salt. Most likely propaganda from them.

 

That said, seeing as Google did confirm it is authentic...

 

If people push back hard enough, Google will just go offshore and be able to do whatever they want without legislation from the US, such as to Europe if they are actually modeling after the European censorship model.

 

Google makes more money than a significant number of countries GDP (in 2014 it was would be country number 70 if a list was made). They have a ton of power and once they go offshore, no amount of legislation from the US can touch them.

I would trust Breitbart over Googles official position any day. You think Google isnt in the business of propaganda? At least the like/dislike ratio on YT propaganda is reflective of a lot of people being woke these days. Generation Z is probably going to topple idiots like Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey, Zark Cuckerberg, Susan Wojicki, Tim Cook, and hopefully Bezos and his Washington Compost propaganda arm of Amazon. 

 

@Deus Voltage thats a nice strawman but thats not the kind of censorship being discussed at all.

 

I think this video sums up whats going on best.

 

 

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

15 hours ago, poochyena said:

Even 4chan removes some content, its just a question of what they remove.

4chan died years ago, 2008 4chan shits all over 2018 4chan

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

When you flash Lineage OS, root isn't enabled by default.  When you're done flashing and tell the phone to reboot, it will warn you that root is disabled and ask you if you want to turn it on.  You can decline that offer, I run my S7 without root and never had any issues.   

My banking app (which indeed throws a fit whenever you try to run it with a rooted phone) runs just fine, I only had to sideload the .apk file because it's only available through the Play Store.

 

As for F-Droid hardly having anything useful and not showing screenshots, it is indeed true that their selection is limited, but that's because they don't want closed-source apps on there.  Apps only get in there after someone audits their code.  If every dev could just submit anything like they do on the Play Store, it would quickly be a virus-infested hellhole where most apps contain all kinds of trackers etc ... like for example the Play Store. 

The relative lack of choice is a trade-off that I'll happily make, but that's a personal preference.  Security vs convenience and all that.

Some apps do have screenshots nowadays, so that's being worked on. 

I mean, when you're at a point of having very limited OS on a phone, I might just as well go with a feature phone in the end...

[rcmaehl]

14 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

The idea that this is some roadmap for control of the internet still seems dubious at best , paranoiac at worst.

Exactly why I tried to pick a more "neutral" news article that stated "Google is struggling with balancing free speech" over the several that state: "Google says Internet Free Speech may not be viable"
 

2 hours ago, RuffRuffmcgruff said:

4chan died years ago, 2008 4chan shits all over 2018 4chan

4chan was never good

[Misanthrope]

11 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

You're making the assumption that Google is run by Capitalist for monetary objectives. YouTube has lost upwards of 10 billion USD and likely still runs at a loss. Everything but AdWords & AdSense losses money for Google/Alphabet. Their objectives, while already have a cartel in Search, are clearly beyond basic monetary aspects.

 

Power, Money & Control. They have the Money already, this is about Power & Control. And it's exactly why the backlash will be severe. 

Not everything a capitalist entity does has to be translated to immediate profits for it to still be the ultimate main directive. What you give is a nice example: Google wanted youtube to bring people into their ecosystem and have a very far reaching and pervasive presence but there's no altruistic reason to run the site: just an overall, company wide strategy that requires what we perceive as a tremendously long time to produce any results.

 

For more on those types of strategies refer to Besos and Amazon: a lot of what Amazon did in their early days was considered huge mistakes but Besos always reassured his board of directors and employees that it was part of his very long term strategy and today well look at them: almost impossibly successful.

[suicidalfranco]

23 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

4chan was never good

you're just a normie

[Misanthrope]

5 hours ago, Amazonsucks said:

I would trust Breitbart over Googles official position any day.

You have substantial reason not to trust either: Breitbart has been caught blatantly lying numerous times to the point they can only be characterized as propaganda.

 

I am sure you're not interested at all in watching somebody who has thoroughly debunked your video source multiple times with great effect plus you're already quite off topic but for the benefit of the rest of the thread: No, Breitbart is not at all a reliable source, not even to just state their opinionated bias version of an event they do manipulate the actual news with colossal omission to the point it can only be characterizing as lying.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[rcmaehl]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

you're just a normie

[Sauron]

20 hours ago, Levent said:

whats going to stop them from complying to govermental requests?

It's not like Google has much of a choice in the matter... they either comply or get blocked. That's a problem with specific countries though, not with Google. Sure, we can advocate for Google to resist and just stop servicing those countries, but in the end having a censored internet might be better than having none at all... it's not like Erdogan will care if Google stops working in Turkey.

18 hours ago, Drak3 said:

1. Not a democracy.
2. Democracy is cannot be healthy. It is mob rule and mob rule us inherently evil.

Quote

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

[Doobeedoo]

Censorship... Aside from very specific cases and good reasons, it's just bad in general. 

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

-Blood play.

I was about to ask but... on second thought... I don't think I want to know what this is

[Drak3]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

-Snip-

Democracy is a horrible system. A Republic is simply superior. Monarchies also have the capacity to be far better than ideal (on paper) democracies.

 

No government or country should pursue democracy.

[rcmaehl]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Democracy is a horrible system. A Republic is simply superior. Monarchies also have the capacity to be far better than ideal (on paper) democracies.

 

No government or country should pursue democracy.

What about a Democratic Republic?

[Drak3]

Just now, rcmaehl said:

What about a Democratic Republic?

Depends on how it's set up. How the US is doing it is working pretty well.

[Sauron]

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Democracy is a horrible system. A Republic is simply superior.

Fair enough, the two words are often used interchangeably. I don't think any country has what you'd call a democracy by the word's dictionary definition.