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Sex Workers Say Porn on Google Drive Is Suddenly Disappearing
[...] Six porn performers I talked to and more on social media said that they suddenly can't download adult content they keep on Google Drive. They also said they can't a[sic] share that content with other accounts or send to clients. In some cases, the adult content is disappearing from Drive without warning or explanation. The porn performers I talked to started sounding the alarm on Twitter last week. They said that Google Drive no longer seemed sex-trade friendly, detailing error messages and sharing cloud storage alternatives with each other.
When I asked about sexual content being blocked on Drive, a spokesperson for Google directed me to the Drive policy page—specifically the section on sexually explicit material, which says, "Do not publish sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos.... Additionally, we do not allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography." Writing about porn and sex is permitted, the policy states, as long as it's not accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos. According to Google, Drive uses a combination of automated systems and manual review to decide what's in violation.
[...] "It seems like all of our videos in Google Drive are getting flagged by some sort of automated system," Stone said. "We're not even really getting notified of it, the only way we really found out was one of our customers told us he couldn't view or download the video we sent him."
Stone's files aren't removed from Drive, but when she tries to play the video or download it, she said Google gives her an error message: "Whoops! There was a problem playing this video" with an option to download the item, but the download link doesn't work.
Some sex workers are wondering if this has something to do with the impending vote on the SESTA-FOSTA bill, which is on the Senate floor for debate this week. [ed. note: it was passed]
It could also be that Google is suddenly enforcing its Terms of Service without warning.
[...] "I don't believe that Google should be allowed to dictate what you and another consenting adult send to each other through email."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @04:22AM (1 child)
What's the solution? Can USENET fill in somehow? Will I2P help? We need a way to stop the pigs. Let's work on that instead of bitching about Google.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 26 2018, @11:06PM
The solution is for people to stop expecting another company to manage all of their critical business infrastructure for them at no fee. They don't need I2P and crypto, they don't need to hide -- at least not yet. They aren't criminals and shouldn't act like it. They just need to hire a proper developer / sysadmin if they aren't capable of doing that work themselves.
If you visit your friend, and he tells you to help yourself to the fridge, do you think it's fine to then go and open a restaurant out of his house, cooking his food? Because that's basically what these people have been doing with Google...
And that is as it should be. Stop letting Google take over the entire damn Internet. Thank God they place some limits, because the more they allow, the more content they will monopolize, and the more screwed the rest of us will be. Hell, just last week I got a letter from the US Federal Government claiming they will arrest me if I do not respond to their pre-census survey. And the only option given so far for taking that survey is to use their website. And the survey won't even load unless you allow the site to send your data to Google and Akami. So they essentially are claiming that I am required, by law, to use Google services and let them profit from my data. And they can get away with it because so many people have no clue how the Internet works and act like for-profit companies like Google are a goddamn public institution.
...but I am NOT unblocking Google, so those Census fucks can just pretend I'm one of those people without Internet access and give me some other option...