Google Loves Revenge Pr0n

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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I have to say, I did not see this one coming. Google just pushed to shoot down revenge pr0n legislation according to the New York Post. I guess I still should be worried about "that video" showing up one day. But when you watch it, don't blame me for your nightmares. Guess we should be glad that "do not evil" clause was removed.


“It’s deeply disturbing that Google and tech lobbyists were quiet as a church mouse for the five years this bill has been percolating in Albany and then literally the morning it’s up for vote, they bulldoze in with coercive demands on our lawmakers to change the language,” Goldberg said.

“It’s a disgrace how weak our lawmakers look for bowing down to these tech corporate overlords.”

The Internet Association — an influential lobbying group working on behalf of Google and a host of other websites used to disseminate revenge porn — fought the bill, which has passed the Assembly but needed Senate approval.
 
It's deeply disturbing that anyone would think every piece of "percolating" state legislation should be on a corporation's radar.

Also, what the hell is this nonsense: "Big Tech, especially Google, created the revenge porn problem."

I don't know the details of the bill, but as described I can see where Google wouldn't want to enable people to sue web hosts for revenge porn. How are they supposed to tell the difference between kinky exhibitionists (of which there are many) and assholes screwing over their exes?

This is typical New York Post trash journalism.
 
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Babbster said:
It's deeply disturbing that anyone would think every piece of "percolating" state legislation should be on a corporation's radar.
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They likely are. I imagine any new discussed legislation that might relate to big corporations' business is something they have their huge legal teams monitoring constantly. There are probably lobbyist groups or individuals whose job is specifically to report to companies any potentially-relevant new laws as soon as they appear in discussion.
 
Delicieuxz said:
They likely are. I imagine any new discussed legislation that might relate to big corporations' business is something they have their huge legal teams monitoring constantly. There are probably lobbyist groups or individuals whose job is specifically to report to companies any potentially-relevant new laws as soon as they appear in discussion.
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And maybe they were. Maybe their lobbyists were trying to get the bill changed the whole time, which is why it was "percolating" for five years. Either way, it's a crap quote in a crap article excoriating Google and "Big Tech" without offering any detail or information from the other side.
 
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I don't know the details, but if I had to guess they are probably supportive of a "no revenge porn" law, as long as it places all responsibility on the users posting the content, not on the internet giant hosting it.

In other words, they probably don't want to be held liable for things their users do, which is understandable.
 
Too many laws and too little personal responsibility. I'm honestly glad Google did this as this will (hopefully) make people think twice about sharing nudes.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't know the details
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Bah, who's got time to dive into details these days? :) 10 seconds is all the attention span anyone has to kneejerk-post something ignorant about a complex issue.

You're right there's more to the story, and something tells me that like many "protect the victims" bills proposed that sound good at face value, it's got ridiculous strings attached that they try to slide by under the guise of "We have to protect the victims, so don't question the fine print". And next thing you know, some new attack vector for trolls and scammers has opened up.
 
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DPI said:
Bah, who's got time to dive into details these days? :) 10 seconds is all the attention span anyone has to kneejerk-post something ignorant about a complex issue.
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You might want to consider passing on that sarcastic nugget of wisdom to the lazy reporters (it apparently took five of them) who wrote the "story." It's based entirely on quotes from one lawyer who was trying to get the law passed. A cynical person might suspect that she wanted the law passed so she could force settlements out of big companies.

That same cynical person might also suspect that, had the reporters bothered to properly investigate the other side of the story, good reasons for opposing the law (like the fact that Internet companies can't be expected to explore the motives of customers who use their services to host data) might have been revealed.
 
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Most of this revenge P0rn would not happen if the bimbos would quit shooting it themselves and sending it out.... It would be too hard to deal with because once an image or video is out on the internet it can not be completely erased.
 
Babbster said:
You might want to consider passing on that sarcastic nugget of wisdom to the lazy reporters (it apparently took five of them) who wrote the "story." It's based entirely on quotes from one lawyer who was trying to get the law passed. A cynical person might suspect that she wanted the law passed so she could force settlements out of big companies.

That same cynical person might also suspect that, had the reporters bothered to properly investigate the other side of the story, good reasons for opposing the law (like the fact that Internet companies can't be expected to explore the motives of customers who use their services to host data) might have been revealed.
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Reporters usually have to fact check and not copy and paste like these keyboard warriors.
 
I agree with google simple because while the higher level concept seems reasonable THE specific wording to realise the intent can have ramifications elsewhere
 
George said it ages ago and I still agree with it. The corporations run this country, and will only do what benefits their bottom line. Period.



None of us are in the "big club", and the politicians will always cave to the corps (and those sweet sweet campaign contributions).
 
I have said it before and I will say it again: If you are not OK with it being on the internet DO NOT MAKE IT. It will come out sometime somehow.

That being said I truly do appreciate all the young hotties that are willing to perform on camera ;)
 
Revenge porn? I thought that it was perfectly OK for people to have multiple partners and video themselves having all sorts of fun? I thought it was all cool, no stigma attached?

It is all cool. The fact that there is a bit of porn involving you out on the net is no big deal now. 30 years from now, video of you that person you banged in college is unlikely to affect your chances of getting a job or even getting elected to public office.

Google and the like are almost certainly just trying to limit their own liability. NY law tends to favor lawyers, heavily. So the law was very likely nothing more than paving an avenue for lawsuits against deep pockets with the pretense of protecting women from themselves brushed on top.
 
DPI said:
Bah, who's got time to dive into details these days? :) 10 seconds is all the attention span anyone has to kneejerk-post something ignorant about a complex issue.

You're right there's more to the story, and something tells me that like many "protect the victims" bills proposed that sound good at face value, it's got ridiculous strings attached that they try to slide by under the guise of "We have to protect the victims, so don't question the fine print". And next thing you know, some new attack vector for trolls and scammers has opened up.
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Well, the way I think of it is this way.

Google's business model is ad data based. While there is big money in this when you accumulate enough users and data, each individual user has a relatively small value.

The way they and others (Facebook, etc.) make this entire business model work is by having a skeleton crew with next to no moderation or screening, allowing users posts and advertisers ads go live straight with the click of the mouse and only dealing with any problems with content after the fact.

According to a quick search, Google has about a billion registered users and about 85k employees. (I'm not sure how current the data I found was.) I also don't know how many of those 85k employees are dedicated to moderation, but even if ALL of them were that's close to 12k users per Google employee. The real number is probably like 1% or less of Googles employees are dedicated to moderation, meaning approximately 1.2 million users per moderator.

Judging by how difficult it can be for Kyle to keep our sorry little bunch in line in some of the more political threads on these forums I think it is quite evident that one person cannot moderate 1.2 million users.

Google and Facebook and others try to address this with heuristics and AI, but that can only go so far and if they are held liable for the content of users posts, it seems clear they would need to increase moderation and screening headcount. Given how small a number of money each individual user is worth, massively increasing headcount to properly moderate users could completely destroy the entirety of the ad driven social media industry.

I saw an article a while back suggesting that a typical social media user adds about $20 of value per year. If Google has to hire a moderator at - let's say $15 per hour, which means their loaded cost (including benefits taxes, etc) is probably closer to $30 per hour - it would take 3,000 users just to pay for that one moderators salary. Even 3000 people is way too much for one person to moderate, and that doesn't even leave any money left over for anything else (buildings, servers, keeping the lights on, profit, tsxes etc.)

I think this example illustrates the scope of the problem.

This has already started to become a problem for Them in Europe with some of the draconian laws they have put in place there. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.


Given all of this, it is easy to see how Google might say something like:

Why of course revenge porn is bad, but there is no way to screen a billion users posts before they go live, and with the headcount that is feasible to dedicate to after the fact moderation it could take weeks or months this to take down a reported post. If we become liable for the content this very well could kill not just our company but our entire industry.

So, this is not a matter of Google being evil and not caring about the serious issue of revenge porn. For them legislation like this, holding them liable for any of their users content on their platforms is an existential threat.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with the entire concept of the whole big data privacy disaster coming crashing down, but that's another conversation all together.
 
dangerouseddy said:
2 years in prison in the uk if you do that sort of thing, sharing revenge porn.
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I think this is appropriate. Hold the offending user to account.

Where it becomes untenable is when governments try to go beyond that and hold the platforms the offending user uses liable for their actions. As noted in my longish post above, the sheer scale of these platforms make them nearly uncontrollable at that level, and holding the platforms liable is probably going to serve little more than to kill the industry.
 
FTFA
It would have also helped victims sue web hosts to remove the offending images
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Im guessing since a lot of that content might be on youtube, or other google owned servers, they didnt feel lilke making it easier to be sued

and thats why they went after it.
 
So, New York is trying to regulate the Internet again? I'm not sure this law would have survived the constitutional test anyways (interstate commerce clause).
 
so maybe someone can explain just exactly what revenge porn google hosts? - that does not get taken down after complaints?
or is the suggestion that they start policing the websites that the display in search results?
 
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