Comment by superchroma
4 years ago
"Google’s review team [then] flagged a video he made and the San Francisco Police Department had already started to investigate him."
That sounds like a permanent stain on his records.
4 years ago
"Google’s review team [then] flagged a video he made and the San Francisco Police Department had already started to investigate him."
That sounds like a permanent stain on his records.
Also a permanent stain on Google's reputation.
It will be forgotten about by tomorrow.
By many people, yes, but they'll be reminded in future discussions about trusting Google.
1 reply →
A stain on Google’s reputation? You won’t see a trace of this mild brown smudge on that layer of tar.
Google has a responsibility, to a limited degree, to turn over to law enforcement anything that they know about abuse that comes through their system. More likely, the trigger for that is set really low as a corporate CYA and to pass the buck. I can totally see Google's point of view on this: We're providing a free* service to you, we're not going to stick our neck out and risk ANY liability of being blamed of storing/harboring/distributing abusive content... we would rather err way over on the side of insane caution and let law enforcement sort it out.
And after law enforcement cleared the guy, was it also Google's responsibility to ban him forever based on their own mistake?
I'd disagree. The rules seem to be either that you moderate and you're on the hook, or you don't and you're not, and you just need to respond to reported abuse. I personally think it would be better if Google acted like a blind medium; like a mailman. We've seen targeted abuse by employees to others they know, and we've seen anonymous, non-targeted abuse through application of policy, like here, and in all cases, because Google has pioneered a cutting edge zero-support system and also employs a large pile of lawyers, there is absolutely no recourse to be had unless you're famous on twitter or know a Google employee.