Authors Locked Out of Files Because of Their Ideological Content?

Today's post by Prof. Victor Mair (Language Log) also led me to this story, which is covered in the Wall Street Journal (Wenxin Fan) (paywalled) and also at Gizmodo (Passant Rabie) (unpaywalled) and MIT Technology Review (Zeyi Yang); I quite from Gizmodo:

A Chinese software developer is facing backlash after a writer accused its word processing software WPS of locking her out of a novel draft, claiming that the document contains "sensitive content." …

The Chinese novelist, who goes by the alias Mitu, was using WPS, which is similar to Google Docs, to write up her novel, when she suddenly could no longer access the document on June 25. Mitu spoke out about her experience through the Chinese literature forum Lkong, saying that WPS was "spying on and locking my draft," according to MIT Technology Review. Her plight was shared through different online platforms, with several people reporting that the same thing had happened to them before.

Meanwhile, WPS issued a statement on Weibo, denying that the software would lock one of its users out of a document. However, WPS went on to clarify that any online service in China is obligated by law to review the content on their platforms, but that they would protect the security of user information. Mitu said that she reported the issue to WPS, and was eventually granted access to the document, according to the South China Morning Post….

Related to this, recall that Google Drive (including both "Drive" and "Docs") is governed by Google's "abuse" policies, which provide, among other things:

Do not engage in hate speech. Hate speech is content that promotes or condones violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

To be sure, Google is a private company, but such an influential one that such policies, if invoked, may well have a serious effect. Fortunately, I'm unaware of Google actually using this policy to cancel people's access to their own documents, but then again ten years ago I hadn't expected AirBnb to cancel the accounts of people based on the ideological rallies to which they were apparently going, or Facebook or Twitter to block the accounts of prominent elected officials.

Comments

[kkoshkin]

... "or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization."

In other words, Google has reserved for itself the unilateral right to define hate speech in any way it sees fit on a case-by-case basis, because the above-quoted phrase is so vague, ambiguous, and meaningless that its application could never be meaningfully challenged or reviewed.

[Bored Lawyer]

Amibuguity is the handmaiden of tyranny -- Me, today.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Is that your tale? Or ambiguities'?

[DaivdBehar]

Do not engage in hate speech. Hate speech is content that promotes or condones violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

Does my loving correction of the lawyer profession meet this definition of hate speech?

[DaivdBehar]

Eugene remains in denial these companies have become utilities. They are censoring private word processing now. It is time to clamp down on them.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Sounds like .... hate speech!

[DaivdBehar]

No. I love the lawyer profession. It is love speech. There is no greater love than one loving enough to correct.

[abhudd47]

Good article that speaks to this exact tactic: https://mises.org/wire/language-vandals#.YtnTMy-45b0.mailto

[Mr. Bumble]

Why would anyone, anywhere trust something important (or personal) to the internet?

[Life of Brian]

Why would anyone, anywhere trust something important (or personal) to the internet?

They shouldn't. But most do, because (quite reprehensibly in my view) the market is continuing to push us in that direction, and we're continuing to let it.

Time travel with me back to the 60s and 70s, where mainframe computers centralized processing and storage. Users interacted with the computer via "dumb terminals" which literally were just a keyboard and screen, sending inputs to the mainframe and displaying results from the mainframe.

Then came the personal computer -- revolutionary because it centralized processing and storage on a user's desktop, allowing a user to do anything they wanted, when they wanted. Sure, processors were slower and memory scarce, but the tradeoffs were well worth it for most.

Today, computers with memory and processing power unfathomable in that era are mainly used to run a web browser. Major market players like Microsoft and Google are increasingly turning toward web-based interfaces for basic word processing and other software traditionally installed on the local computer. Cloud storage makes access to your data subject to the whims of both the Internet in general and the cloud provider.

That's the infrastructure that makes the sort of shenanigans in the article childishly simple to pull off. And we're generally just allowing it to happen, because Oooo Shiny. Web-based tools certainly have their place, but articles like this show we've become way too reliant on them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" To be sure, Google is a private company, but . . . "

This, from the "free speech champion" who imposes viewpoint-driven censorship at his blog and whose "libertarianism" is tellingly congruent with right-wing politics.

Right-wingers have to settle for the junior varsity in almost every aspect of modern American life.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Rev, you people will never be able to butt bang other people's kids.

Just let it go.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You and Prof. Volokh deserve each other.

Enjoy your time at the disaffected, un-American fringe, awaiting replacement.

[DaivdBehar]

Rev. No grooming. Just quit it.

[DaivdBehar]

Rev. You give a kid the monkey, get your ass beat.

[Estragon]

ButtbangCharlieDelta has a nice ring to it

[StellaLink_the dog]

"has a nice ring to it"

As does a prolapsed anus. Or Donald Trump's mouth.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It's been memory holed now but in 2016 Google banned a stats professor because of a blog he wrote analyzing illegal immigration.

He ran all his courses off Google Drive. Gone.

Old, dead, reference here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15066518

It's what caused me to stop doing my classes on Google Drive.

[Longtobefree]

" . . . but then again ten years ago I hadn't expected AirBnb to cancel the accounts of people based on the ideological rallies to which they were apparently going, or Facebook or Twitter to block the accounts of prominent elected officials."

You aren't paying attention.

[Ed Grinberg]

compare:

After [Vasily Grossman] submitted for publication his magnum opus, the novel Life and Fate (1959), the KGB raided his flat. The manuscripts, carbon copies, notebooks, as well as the typists' copies and even the typewriter ribbons were seized.

source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Grossman#Conflict_with_the_Soviet_regime

[Ed Grinberg]

In 2017 Google locked Jordan Peterson out of his Gmail account.

source:
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2017/08/google-owes-jordan-peterson-an-explanation/

[StellaLink_the dog]

"Google locked Jordan Peterson out of his Gmail account"

So Peterson claims. Perhaps he just forgot his passwords while in a drug induced psychosis.

[dirc]

Remember that all of Google's services are linked together. If you get locked out of Gmail, you get locked out of your content on Docs, Drive, YouTube, Photos, everything. If you have two Google accounts and they have some way to associate the two, they will lock you out of both accounts if they find you in violation of their terms of services on one of the accounts.

It is a good idea to use Google's "Takeout" service to download all your Google content that you care about. You can only schedule schedule downloads every two months, but it will minimize the pain of losing everything. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout for more information.

[Ben_]

If you wouldn’t trust Stalin with your content, you shouldn’t trust Google. Anyone can be declared an enemy at any time, with no notice or recourse.

So many people who should know better continue to use them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

People make mistakes.

UCLA Law and Georgetown Law, for example.

[Cheerio]

As usual, you conflate the (admittedly) most uncivil of *commenters* on this blog with the right half of the country more broadly -- and in this case with the bloggers themselves, who are widely respected scholars even among most intellectuals who disagree with them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your implicit contention -- that the leaders and most of the faculty of UCLA Law and Georgetown Law do not regret a couple of hiring decisions -- is unpersuasive.

It is not merely the belligerent, sometimes threatening, delusional conduct of right-wingers that places them at the dwindling fringe of our society. It is also their old-timey intolerance (often bigotry), flattery of superstition to suppress science and reason, and all-around backwardness -- and while the aggressive ugliness is usually limited to the commenters at the Volokh Conspiracy, the Conspirators embrace the bigotry, backwardness, and second-class treatment of science and reason. They're not the worst of the clingers, but they left the modern American mainstream long ago, headed in the wrong direction.

If Prof. Volokh went to Liberty or Regent and Prof. Barnett headed to Ave Maria or South Texas tomorrow, I would wager that champagne sales would experience a noticeable bump in L.A. and D.C., and for sound reasons.

[Nige]

Republicans will mutter darkly about this right up until they start using them to scrub abortion information, anything they tag as CRT and anything related to LGTBQ issues and locking out anybody who puts that info up or even looks for it.