Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

https://plus.google.com/112063946124358686266/posts/SMhmTHjuRuu

by zeppelin_7 • 15 years ago

187 117 15 years ago

plus.google.com

tptacek3• 15 years ago

He's not "seriously upset" about the photo. He thinks what's happening is ridiculous, and therefore took the time to ridicule it. He's clearly right. But it's not a moral crusade.

twp• 15 years ago

Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point.

The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either.

The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network?

Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?

rhizome5• 15 years ago

This is how he humanizes himself? I'm not buying it.

99992• 15 years ago

There are public sections of G+ and private sections. If you have a private album limited to 4chan buddies or whatever with tubgirl, goatse, the lemon party, etc. and they took that down, I would find issue with it. But if you've got goatse as your public profile picture, that is an issue that Google has to deal with. I use those examples not because they are directly comparable to what Siegler put up, but because I imagine most of the people here on hn would find those images offensive.

When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.

Cl4rity2• 15 years ago

Actually, Tom gets it right. It's called discretion. Use his public example, for instance. If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?

"But this is who I really am, and it's how I want to portray myself in public!"

It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences. You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.

jxi4• 15 years ago

I definitely disagree that he's "clearly" right, and disagree that he's right at all. Tom made the good point that this is Google's social network, and if you want to use it, then you should play by the rules, which are IMO mor than reasonable (why do I want to see people flipping me off).

I don't know why everyone is making it sound like this sets a precedent for more "censoring" when this is already the standard for any currently popular social network.

mike-cardwell2• 15 years ago

As far as I'm concerned, if a service you like, does something you dislike, you should complain, and you should tell people about it. Especially if the service is used by tens of millions of people and is growing at the rate that Google+ is.

It sounds like you disagree with this though. Why? Why do you think he should have kept his mouth shut?

"this is already the standard for any currently popular social network"

And it will remain so, if people don't complain loudly enough that an alternative is created which behaves differently.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

Wait. Wait. Wait. I'm not wading into the "debate" about whether Google can or should mess with people's profile photos. I could care less. I'm saying:

It is clearly ridiculous for Google to be policing profile photos looking for people flipping other people the bird.

Right? Wrong? Who cares? It's ridiculous. It can't possibly work. By doing it, Google sends a message that they're fundamentally unserious about taking on Facebook. Nobody who's serious could possibly have the time to deal with stuff like this. It's like Facebook banning cartoon profile pictures --- which is the kind of thing you can sort of do when you're the social network for a bunch of colleges, but couldn't even consider doing when you're the default social network for the entire world.

methodin• 15 years ago

Maybe he should stop to think that more than one person could have reported the photo. It would then be google's obligation to remove it because at that point you could not justify NOT removing it.

viscanti3• 15 years ago

Seems silly. I could possibly see that point if you HAD to view his public profile, but it seems like that's entirely optional. Millions of users never see his public profile image. Those offended can simply not "follow" (circle?) him.

It would be easy to justify NOT removing it, even if EVERYONE else found it offensive. There's an option to not follow/view his profile. Under your view, the only votes would be those who found the picture offensive. If the criteria to remove something is that more than one person finds it offensive, almost everything on the internet would be removed.

A (much) better solution is that items that are flagged as potentially offensive come with a warning. Google+ users could choose the level they're comfortable with, much like they do with Google's search results. They deserve to be called out for making an arbitrary decision here, on something so trivial.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

I like how humble Tom is about MySpace. All these years later, and he's still my only friend...

In all seriousness, he should be proud of what they accomplished. Yes, it kind of turned into a cesspool, but there was no model of how a social network should be until Facebook came along. MySpace was an evolution of Geocities, more than it was an attempt to have the kind of "respectable" social presence that facebook shot for. MySpace was still the startup that proved social would be huge.

devolve• 15 years ago

Rather, there was no widespread knowledge and/or consensus on how a social network should be at the time. Models were a plenty. For example, Lunarstorm started out some 3 years (2000) before MySpace and in a year (2001) reached 600k users (it would plateau at 1.2m in 2007) but it had none of the Geocities stylings of MySpace. Instead it had a feed of your friends' activities, private messaging, notes (called diary), and message boards. It's just that the Internet back then was not the sharing ground it has grown into today, and people in other countries than Sweden were probably not aware of this particular site.

jroseattle2• 15 years ago

Pretty sure this would fall under Apple's "objectionable content" policies for their app store.

Wonder if MG would complain about that policy, too? :-)

masklinn• 15 years ago

According to the linked complaint by MG, he is not whining about the policy so much as about the deletion without warning:

> My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger — which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere — it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture.

he does also take issue with the policy itself, but as an aside not as his main point:

> Bigger picture: this seems like a ridiculous thing for Google to be policing. [...]

> This also seems like a slippery slope. In certain cultures, various hand gestures mean different things. Is Google also going to delete my profile picture if I have my fingers up to my chin, for example?

rhizome5• 15 years ago

It betrays his technical competence to say they went "into my account," doesn't it? I don't think it's helpful or appropriate for him to use property terms for a topic like this.

jroseattle2• 15 years ago

Just read that again, yes he did do that. I think I was responding to the vibe of MG's post, which always turns into apple-good/non-apple-bad.

AllenKids2• 15 years ago

Which brings home the point: You are the product Google is selling, just as the apps in the App Store.

Oh, and :-)

amatheus• 15 years ago

On the other hand, lots of people in this thread are saying google's policy is the right thing in this case. Would they say the same if apple was refusing an app with a middle finger icon? A book? A song?

I think they're both wrong, but I understand that having something open for all, you'll get adults but children too, and as a parent your definition of objectionable content for your children may differ. But for me, simply removing the content is wrong. Maybe better parental control technology may make the situation better.

reso• 15 years ago

The TechCrunch crew has a long history of "calling out" major companies on their product decisions, in the absence of any of the data or context in which such complex decisions are made.

P.S. I love how Tom has turned into the elder statesman of social networks.

commnderkeen08• 15 years ago

Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of calling out Google. Always skeptical.

But totally loving the elder statesman analogy. Best part about Tom"s reply is his own humility--Myspace having "decent" technology.

rhizome5• 15 years ago

Not to mention MG Siegler's long history of self-promotion.

Cl4rity2• 15 years ago

What I loved most was Tom's handling of putting out MG's little fire: "You are a loveable renegade. :-)" and also "clearing not roaming the badlands." MG does come off as trying a little too hard to sound tough/badass on Twitter and elsewhere.

evilmushroom• 15 years ago

MG Siegler is like the Fox News of TechCrunch on top of that.

doktrin3• 15 years ago

Frankly, I've grown increasingly disinterested in anything TechCrunch(ers) have to say. Siegler's pieces in particular remind me of partisan political editorials.

Punishker• 15 years ago

MySpace was never a cesspool... it's now a musician's website for posting about bands.

The only thing more stupid than the internet comments on Hacker News is Google itself: the kings of know-it-all dumbasses!

nknight• 15 years ago

The "dumbass" you're talking about co-founded MySpace, and I don't think he's ever had any professional link to Google.

Stratego• 15 years ago

Really? An "'I hate white people' t-shirt" parallel?

Don't even get me started on that atrocious "we don't need to see this" line of argumentation. If the Google+ is going to censor (let's call things by their proper names) pictures that "people don't need to see", where's the goddamned line?

Imbecile.

That such a poorly constructed argument makes its way to the Hacker News homepage is worrisome. I had the hope that people who use logic for a living would have higher standards.

kevinh• 15 years ago

The line is where they, as a company, decide to put it. I would not go to a social networking site that had gore or porn polluting my feeds. Similarly, you might not go to a website that disallows any content. That's our prerogative. It's facile to paint it as a free speech argument.

icebraining5• 15 years ago

Why would you subscribe to users that post gore or porn to your feeds?

Tumblr has plenty of porn, but you can certainly use it without ever getting it on your dashboard. It's just a matter of, you know, not following the people who post it.

chc2• 15 years ago

Suppressing racist speech is also censorship, so it seems like you're actually affirming the parallel. Since you seem to think it's self-evident that racist content should be banned and equally self-evident that this content should not be, why don't you tell us where the line is? This is very fine line to walk — you will anger somebody no matter what you do — so if you have any insights, I'm sure the people faced with the decision will appreciate them.

VikingCoder• 15 years ago

It's not censorship. Your rights have not been abridged. It's a free service with terms of use, provided by a corporation.

This is not a police action by an authoritarian government, stopping people from expressing Constitutionally-protected speech in the public square.

Try to buy a full-page ad in any newspaper in the country showing goatse.cx in all its glory. Businesses generally limit profanity on their services.

Act surprised if you want to, but methinks the lady doth protest too much.

icebraining5• 15 years ago

Sorry, but it is censorship, which is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable."

It's just not illegal.

jsz02• 15 years ago

removing offensive photos

It's not offensive to me. I'm all grown up now.

blurbytree• 15 years ago

How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?

Google can choose to allow or disallow what they want.

kelnos• 15 years ago

Sure, Google can choose to do whatever they want, but those choices have consequences. This policy could have the effect of making people feel like they can't "be themselves" on G+, and cause a drop in participation. I'm not saying this particular incident would have that effect (MG Siegler appears to not actually care), but it could for other cases.

icebraining5• 15 years ago

And we can choose to criticize them for that choice. Ain't free speech wonderful?

How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?

If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.

turing• 15 years ago

That's not a valid argument. At the end of the day, if Google wants G+ to succeed they have to draw the line on offensive profile pics somewhere. Regardless of where the line falls, there will always be people who think it should be moved in one direction or another. To just say "I'm not offended by this content, Google must be doing it wrong" is ignoring the reality of the situation and failing to contribute to the discussion on how the issue could be handled better.

jsz02• 15 years ago

I'll expand a bit on why I think they're doing it wrong.

When you choose to follow/friend/circle/whatever someone you are making the choice to establish a social connection with that person. Social connections are far too broad to police. I might want to be friends with someone because they make horribly offensive jokes. I might want to be friends with someone because they produce art that could be considered offensive to someone. I might be friends with someone who I like enough to tolerate their offensive side. Whatever the dynamics of that relationship may be Google has no role in its complexities.

The next problem is consistency. I can be way more offensive with words than I can be with pictures. If they want to successfully police people's relationships they will have to also delete anything I say that might be offensive to someone else even if they're not my friend and even if I'm making a private post. As a user I don't think I can possibly understand everything that might offend Google or the millions of users of Google+. That's a huge burden to put on the user. Do I really want to spend the time writing a post on Google+ that may disappear because someone I don't know finds it offensive? I don't think they're doing this yet but if they're choosing to go down this road they are taking the responsibility so they will have to someday. A middle-finger is a pretty low bar. Right off the bat you have to ban 'fuck' from all posts because they are the same meaning.

The solution is pretty obvious. Either hide the profile picture until you friend/circle/whatever someone or give users the ability to rate themselves which solves a variety of other potential problems. I have no problem marking my profile NC-17 or whatever the equivalent would be.

Of course it's Google's site so they can do whatever they want with it. Questioning Google's policies is like a can of soup having an existential crisis.

prawn• 15 years ago

It's G+, not PG13+!

ars• 15 years ago

You say that like it's a good thing. It's not. It should offend you.

Just because something offends you doesn't mean you have to go nuts, but being jaded to offensive things is not a good thing.

diego• 15 years ago

Why should that offend him? Are you offended by a thumbs up picture? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbs_signal

G+ is an international social network. It's interesting how you assume that what's offensive to a large number of people in the US (maybe 100M people) should be offensive to the world (7B).

cousin_it• 15 years ago

Why?

yanw• 15 years ago

When this sort of tech pundit makes himself the center of a non-story I do my best to ignore it, I recommend that everyone do the same. Tech blogging has deteriorated to parroting PR releases and slobbering over iStuff, I draw the line at appeasing the attention whores.

zerostar072• 15 years ago

Can you suggest a news aggregator that is not frequented by the usual bullies?

freehunter• 15 years ago

Ars Technica, for the most part. Sometimes they get a little editorial, but they're far better than most others.

devilsadvocate9• 15 years ago

I don't think you'd actually get in trouble for an "I hate White People" t-shirt. It would probably be seen as a political statement. We have whole college majors devoted to elucidating the evils of white people. It's hip to hate them.

Steko• 15 years ago

"If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt."

And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.

It seems pretty obvious how this should work:

(1) Google enables a flag for offensive photos (some automated system might work in tandem with this).

(2) Someone who's offended by a photo (or automated system) flags it.

(3) The user sees that someone has flagged it, might change it himself.

(4) Google sees the flag and reviews the image for possible action. Some sort of adjudication record is created and available for both the user the image belongs to and anyone who reported it.

(5) The user has some recourse to appeal if Google takes action to remove the user's picture.

Google, having a terrible customer service background, just went with the big brother approach.

chc2• 15 years ago

The fifth point is a great idea that more services need to get behind in all areas. But aside from that one, this all sounds like pointless bureaucracy and foot-dragging, and well beyond what just about any other service on the planet does. (I've moderated a number of forums, and I can't think of a one where we routinely gave people a record of how their flags were resolved.)

JoshTriplett3• 15 years ago

> "If you had a T-shirt that said "I hate White People" and you walked into a mall wearing it, the security would probably ask you to leave, or ask you to cover up your shirt."

> And that's the problem with Google+ here. They didn't ask anything. They did the t-shirt in a mall equivalent of stealing his t-shirt while he wasn't looking.

And that's the problem with analogies relating the Internet to the real world: they often fail because the Internet doesn't work like the real world. (I will say that this does come remarkably closer to the concept of "stealing bits" than how people usually use terms like "stealing", since the original owner might not have those bits anymore, but who would leave their only copy of a picture on a site they don't own, particularly one whose policies don't include preserving your data no matter what?)

Another marginally more accurate analogy, though still potentially flawed if you try to read too much into it: if you rented space in a mall, and displayed offensive material there, they might ask you to leave, or they might just close up your shop for you and kick you and your stuff out, and either way they have every right to do so.

joshu• 15 years ago

This page reliably crashes safari on my iPad 1. Does anyone else have this problem or am I going insane?

christoph• 15 years ago

Not going insane. It repeatedly crashed for me to. Rebooted and still had the same problem. One of the crashes lost all my tabs too.

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

Me too. It happens only after scrolling though. Seems really odd that Google doesnt QA it's products on the iPad.

rpeden• 15 years ago

It crashed my iPhone 4. Seems like it is giving mobile Safari problems.

Jgrubb• 15 years ago

Same here, four times.

PanMan• 15 years ago

Same here. A lot of google+ pages have this effect. It seems safari on the ipad 1 got a LOT les stable with iOS 5. It used to never crash, and now I won't even try to visit techcrunch, as it crashes 100% of the time.

zerostar072• 15 years ago

What i 'd like to know is what Tom is doing in that - now historic - profile photo.

Pedrom2• 15 years ago

Sorry but I still don't understand why deleting that picture is such big deal? Google has the right to build their community with the rules that they want and the people eager to accept those rules. Mr Sieger has also the right to complain and he did so that should close the case right?

I made an analogy yesterday between this site and reddit and the differences between the cultures on both sites. A lot of people downvote that post (not sure why because I wasn't say anything offensive) and that's the kind of things that you have to accept in social sites... There are rules.. You either accept them or just move on...

zobzu2• 15 years ago

The "accept or move on" rule applies less when such sites are used by the majority of the population.

When it's used by the majority it becomes something you, in many cases, have to be part, that you like it, or not.

That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is).

Based on that new perspective, you may understand that restricting free speech on such services is actually "big" deal (yeah, the quotes are important here. i'd go for medium deal in the current state of affairs.)

Pedrom2• 15 years ago

>That even include "to be accepted at school", mind you. (just like you didn't have to smoke back in the days, but also you were gay if you did not, no matter how wrong that reasoning is).

Sorry for disagree, but I think people should have more personality and do not take decision affected by what the majority is doing.

Maybe I am being too naive, but if I can't find an online community that fixes with my way of think then I am going to build one... Isn't that what Internet is all about?

JoshTriplett3• 15 years ago

I found your reasoning so wrong it left me momentarily at a loss for words. No, sites don't ever become subject to a different set of rules just because the majority of people use them. That kind of thinking leads down a very dangerous road.

And if you still care about "to be accepted at school", grow up. Speaking as a "four-eyes" and a nerd, some of us never bothered caring about that in the first place. Unfortunately, the people that did care grew up to form "the majority of the population", leading to quite a few of the social problems that currently plague us.

Free speech only applies to governments, and it applies there specifically because there you truly do have a "whether you like it or not" situation when it comes to governmental policies. It does not, and should not, extend to speech made on someone else's site. That remains entirely subject to the policies of the site owner, who may set them however they wish, keeping in mind that any choice they make may gain them some users and lose others.

Now, that said, I think better solutions existed for the particular issue at hand (so to speak) than immediate deletion without notification (such as hiding potentially offensive profile pictures for people who don't have that person circled), but that remains entirely up to Google's policy. I personally think that policy ought to change somewhat, but I'd never argue that anyone other than Google has the right to determine that policy.

Splines• 15 years ago

Like others, I'm surprised that G+ is spending time solving this problem. Why don't they flip the switch on their safesearch technology on G+ and call it a day?

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

Tom makes a great point here. Policies are policies and the difference is that this policy actually has action behind it. Oh well. Social networks don't really hide their policies and this one isn't all that radical at that. If you don't like it, find another service or comply with the rules, (or if you're really that stressed about it make your own social network).

If some random 16 year old from Middle-O-Nowhere Indiana complained on his blog about the same thing we wouldn't even read past the first paragraph. But MG Siegler does it and it becomes a real issue? The only difference between Siegler and the hypothetical teenager is that Siegler is well known and can write so his tantrum gets play.

Really, the issue of the offensive profile picture shouldnt be the issue at all. The issue should be whether Siegler is allowed to use his notoriety to dupe us into thinking this is an issue worthy of discussion.

buff-a• 15 years ago

An image showing a middle finger: banned.

News content from Fox perpetuating lies that cause soldiers and civilians to die: front page in search results.

Google has demonstrated with the photo that its willing to act as a censor. Now that we've agreed that censorship is ok, can we now talk about what we would like to censor?

zobzu2• 15 years ago

You see "Google has limited resources" and "cannot warn you before removal".

Made my day.

ps: most removals are actually automated, and warning are (as in would be) obviously automated.

And of course, nothing bad with a finger up (or even in a naked body in fact, but hey). I much prefer the "adult filter" of YouTube, which uhm, is also automated (user vote based).

gerggerg• 15 years ago

I think you guys are all thinking about this the wrong way. Siegler's post is about finding the lines that define acceptable content not caring about his exact photo.

Knowing what a company like google defines as inappropriate is important for being able to make informed choices about what products you should use and who you should be giving all your personal data to for free.

gcb• 15 years ago

So much for how "social" and "private" they intend google+ to be.

Do not expect a conversation with close friends there.

it's an open mall. officially.

And the first people migrated from facebook boasting the privacy concerns.

zak_mc_kracken2• 15 years ago

Apple doesn't allow offensive apps in its app store either, but somehow, this has never bothered MG Siegler.

Double standards.

AllenKids2• 15 years ago

Let's petition Google to rename it as Google Real People Store+ then.

rickmb• 15 years ago

Completely misses the fundamental difference between "not allowing", "not displaying" and bluntly "removing" the photo.

Online companies seem to be completely insensitive to what is pretty intuitive in the physical realm: you may tell me what not to do in your shop, but don't touch my stuff.

darklajid• 15 years ago

I would love to see the mall that turns away people wearing a shirt that gives the finger. Is this a very exaggerated example or does this thing exist out there, in the modern world?

Raphael• 15 years ago

Anyone else find it funny that Tom uses the same old photo of him in front of a whiteboard?

Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

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