Romance author gets locked out of Google Docs for “inappropriate” content
Romance author gets locked out of Google Docs for “inappropriate” content
Aspiring Author K. Renee was reportedly locked out of her own content on Google Docs after Google flagged it as "inappropriate."
Aspiring Author K. Renee was reportedly locked out of her own content on Google Docs after Google flagged it as "inappropriate."
Yet another reminder that “the cloud” is really just “someone else’s computer”. The end users of cloud based products are controlled by “someone else’s” rules and whims.
126And by "someone else", it normally boils down to gigantic corporations that would exploit everything about you to earn money
42
You will own nothing and you will be grateful.
42What did she purchase or pay for?
-35she gave google the valuable rights to monitor her activity, in exchange for access to some pretty shitty web services which come with no customer support.
it was probably a bad deal for her, but there isn't a lot of competition, there's a lot of pressure for people to undervalue the rights they're paying with, and it's hard to compare how much of those rights are at stake between different companies without the assistance of a lawyer - so it's understandable that so she and so many people fall for it.
2
Google is going puritan now? It's a lot more concerning to me that companies are scanning all of your personal documents than the fact that someone wrote some potential indecent content.
37yeah that was my first thought. you would think it would just get locked into no sharing or something.
7We're going to end up with a digital world in which corporate AIs are the arbiters of acceptable and nothing will exist without their approval. They have successfully seized control of the internet and even people's personal devices. It's terrible.
5
They've always been strict at blocking potentially offensive text. Ever kept trying to compose a helpful, constructive YouTube comment reply that doesn't disappear when you refresh? The AI there is really draconian. Once, someone wanted details of a rather wholesome story I had shared in a top level comment. Replying with the follow-up always failed despite no obvious trigger words. I resorted to editing the parent comment but then struggled to get a "see edit" reply through. At least 10 attempts at expressing "look at the root comment for updates" failed, eventually I managed to get a reply through with nothing but "🔝". It got removed after I tried to edit it to a clearer expression so I just posted another "🔝" reply and hoped for the best.
4
How do you tell people that you are now using shitty AI to evaluate the content of documents on your site without telling people you are using shitty AI to evaluate the content of documents on your site.
18"Romance" is such a crap term! She was writing porn. Likely with minors. I'm involved with a lot of authors, some also write porn
open-door spice, and the only things that get Google bans (from what I've been told) are kiddie porn and extreme gore.While the dangers of handing your documents to Google can't be overstated, don't sympathise too much with this person.
EDIT: y'all know she was only blocked from sharing, right? She did not lose access to any of her work and no one has the right to demand a middle man for their content.
Scenario: Jack draws some heinous CP cartoon. He wants to share it with Alice. He asks Jill to hand it to Alice. Jill says "I am not handing this to anybody." Should Jill be on blast for censoring Jack?
Scenario 2: Jack draws some middling soft-core porn. He wants to share it with Alice. He asks Jill to hand it to Alice. Jill says "I am not handing this to anybody." Should Jill be on blast for censoring Jack?
18Original Wired article says later in it that Google thought she was spamming. This is relayed through the author though and not Google directly.
And you're right. She still had all her work, just couldn't share it.
Also, I haven't read the author's content, but nothing I saw when I searched the name seems to indicate it was CP. Also, the fact that Google didn't remove the content entirely indicates it wasn't illegal content.
30"Google never specified which of her 222,000 words was inappropriate. There were no highlighted sections, no indicators of what had rendered her documents unshareable. Had one of her readers flagged the content without discussing it with her first? "
So much of her work could have broken the T&Cs that she can't identify what it could be without highlights.
Original Wired article says later in it that Google thought she was spamming
Different author, but if that's the case (and it seems this author shares files to over 80 people in one go) then it's a spam filter issue? Again, non story.
The headline is a complete lie.
3
It’s a bit creepy that google peaked at their own private document though.
1
They should switch to LibreOffice then, with Syncthing if they need to sync it across multiple computers.
15After months and months of hrm-ing and haw-ing I think about to pull the trigger but Is this the right link
Ik it seems silly but I thought I’d ask
9This link seems to be correct indeed, if anything, their code is on that domain: https://git.libreoffice.org/
6
I like this idea, except sometimes I need to access my notes on mobile. Can we open Libre files on mobile? Haven't tried that.
1Collabora office can open open document format files, yes
2
Glad I switched to proton drive.
7Hmm I wonder if my novel started years ago and never finished past the first scene is still on hiveword...
2Not AI? No longer profitable.
Remind me in five years.
2Couldn't she just copy the text to a text file or .odt file and perhaps email it (or better yet, physically copy it with a USB drive) if she can't direct share it?
2That might be her working copy. Google docs is fine for text editing. Of course she could work offline or use other platforms, but that's kinda besides the point of the article.
2