[ExI] Just say no to Google

[John Klos]

You missed answering the one thing that makes Google a definite no go: 
what do you do when you need to communicate with an actual human at 
Google?

> To avoid a monoculture is it necessary that competing book publishers 
> use printing presses that are made by different manufacturers?

This is a really poor analogy. Printing presses don't press new and 
different pages every day. If they did, then yes, printing presses from 
certain manufacturers that won't print certain sentences would need to be 
treated differently than printing presses from other manufacturers that 
don't.

> I am a militant capitalist and I like for-profit corporate entities, I 
> like them a lot, they sure beat the hell out of no profit corporate 
> entities. And I especially like Google, I certainly don't think it or 
> any of the high-tech companies as being one of the bad guys. At one time 
> most members of this list felt the same way I did about that, but 
> apparently not now.

Good for you, but being a fan of capitalism doesn't change the fact that 
Google is a shitty, evil company that does shitty and evil things. It 
doesn't change the fact that they don't care about standards, they don't 
care about common sense, and they don't care about you or me. Comparing 
them to "no profit corporate entities" without naming "no profit corporate 
entities" is, well, meaningless.

I really don't care about fans of Google. I care about what Google does, 
and how it affects me and my users.

I was a fan of Google ages ago (although never a user of anything more 
than their search engine). But when a corporation decides that "Don't be 
evil" is too restrictive, they're telling you about themselves. A 
discussion about how evil they are is not in the scope of this discussion, 
but there are many, many good reasons for feeling differently about Google 
now than perhaps twenty years ago.

>        > Google Groups functionality is limited in email clients that
>        >aren't basically web browsers
> 
> I don't know where you got that idea. You can read the stuff off the web 
> or on any computer that is capable of reading emails. And who has a 
> computer that is incapable of reading emails or doesn't have a web 
> browser?

This is no different than saying that because 95% of the world does 
something (like, for instance, running Windows twenty years ago), you 
don't know where anyone would get the idea that everyone can't do a thing 
that can only be done by 95% of the world.

There are many reasons to do text only email. I've done text only email 
for decades and still do. Many screen readers do text only email and don't 
render a page as though it's a web page. People who care about security 
and privacy don't parse HTML nor load web links in email. The point is 
that email should just work without assuming that email == browser.

But the point is that you not experiencing a problem doesn't mean the 
problem doesn't exist.

>       > Their filters are unknowable. They do what they want and don't tell anyone what
>       they do, so we have to guess.
> 
> I have seen no evidence for these mysterious "filters " during the last 
> five years, nothing has ever been censored on my list by me or Google or 
> anybody else.

Good! Can I send the people who have problems communicating to and from 
Gmail to you, so you can tell them that their problems don't exist?

With Google, you can't talk about spam or phishing. You can't discuss 
viruses or Trojans. Heck - even just reporting spam that comes FROM Google 
TO Google's own abuse address gets processed as though the complainer is 
the source of spam! That's how incredibly dumb they are, even if they 
choose to be dumb to avoid responsibility for the incredible amounts of 
spam and scams they facilitate.

You seem to lack awareness of Google's "AI" reporting a father for sending 
pictures of his naked child to a doctor. Even after Google reported this 
to the police, and even after the police indicated to Google that they 
were completely wrong, Google continued to act like a company devoid of 
humans or any kind of comprehension of anything at all. They don't care 
about the possible implications of their automated actions.

The point is that a problem might never happen to a billion Google users, 
but the people who are affected aren't going to be swayed by others 
saying, "it never happened to me".

>       > But most importantly, if someone lodges complaints and Google
>       >decides to take action, what will you do?
> 
> You're dreaming up hypotheticals that I have never seen in the last five years.  

You've never been an accident that has killed or almost killed you, so 
that means you can dismiss people who've been in bad accidents? Is your 
lack of experience of something proof that others haven't or don't 
experience that something?

> They sound like harmless imbeciles to me, and I'm sure people at Google 
> get even more ridiculous threats than you do, but those letters written 
> by nincompoops haven't affected the way you administer this list. and it 
> hasn't affected the good people at Google either.

OF COURSE those letters haven't affected the way I administer this list. 
That's my point. I have a brain, I can think, and I can evaluate things, 
unlike Google. That's why I wouldn't just hand things over to Google.

But what evidence do you have that 1) Google has good people, and 2) that 
people (good or not) at Google have anything to do with what I'm talking 
about?

I can show plenty of evidence of Google making all sorts of crazy 
decisions with not a shred of indication that an actual human brain had 
ever considered any part of those decisions.

And please tell this to people who've been deplatformed because of 
concerted complaint campaigns directed towards Amazon, Microsoft and 
Google. Again, the fact that it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it's 
hypothetical.

>       > Also, Google isn't as reliable as you might guess.
> 
> Maybe things have improved but I know for a fact that over the last five 
> years Google groups has been one hell of a lot more reliable than this 
> list had been from 1993 to 2021.

Good! Let's hope it stays that way, and let's hope that you don't run in 
to these issues. Let's hope that Google doesn't decide to cancel Google 
Groups the way it has cancelled countless other services that countless 
people were actively using:

https://killedbygoogle.com

My point is that I'd rather be in control of the data than concede control 
to a faceless megacorp with which we can't communicate.

John