When Google plays judge and jury: account gone, zero due process

https://medium.com/@russoatlarge_93541/when-youre-accused-you-re-erased-what-happens-when-tech-companies-play-judge-and-jury-7a09ebe8bf6a

by markatlarge • 12 months ago

3 3 12 months ago

medium.com

throwaway29303• 12 months ago

  I turned to Academic Torrents, a platform widely used by researchers to share datasets. There, I downloaded a large NSFW dataset often cited in AI research. I unzipped the file in my Google Drive to begin preprocessing. A few days later, my entire Google account was banned — without warning, without explanation, and without any clear path to appeal.

Why did you think this was a good idea?

markatlarge• 12 months ago

Because in research circles, it is a good idea — or at least standard practice. Academic Torrents is a public data-sharing platform run for researchers, and the dataset is cited in peer-reviewed AI papers and used in university projects.

I wasn’t browsing porn — I was benchmarking an on-device NSFW detection model. I never reviewed every file; my workflow was automated preprocessing. The only “mistake” was unzipping it in Google Drive, not realizing Google scans those files automatically and can flag them without context.

If Google truly cares about stopping harmful content, why not give researchers the exact file names so they can verify and have dataset maintainers remove it? That’s how you improve the data and prevent future issues — assuming it was a violation at all and not a false positive.

The real issue is that whether it’s for research, unintentional, or a false positive, there’s no fair process outside of Google to resolve it. Instead of an immediate, irreversible account ban, they could quarantine the suspected files while preserving access to the rest of the account. That would protect both children and innocent users.

tencentshill• 12 months ago

I unzipped the file in my Google Drive to begin preprocessing

Deliberately uploading gigabytes of NSFW data to Google Drive? What on earth did you think would happen?

When Google plays judge and jury: account gone, zero due process

Related Stories