Forbidding Google docs to be used for journalistic purposes to question official government narratives is pretty totalitarian. And there’s no limit to Western governments in that policy either.
Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:
Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: Content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.
Misleading content related to harmful health practices: Misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm.
Manipulated media: Media that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm.
Misleading content may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand this context. In some cases, no amount of context will allow this content to remain on our platforms.
This is about content distribution, so it’s not about what sort of documents you can compose on the platform, but about what sorts of documents they’re willing to host for sharing. The general idea of having this kind of restriction makes sense to me: if you don’t have these restrictions then people use your platform to host harmful content, and I think any individual company should be able to decide they don’t want to be associated with that.
I definitely think there should be some places where you can post whatever you want, and the market for general web hosting is big enough and competitive enough that it does work out this way. Additionally, hosts are much less concerned when it’s not their domain in the URL.
As for the specifics of this policy, how do you see it as prohibiting journalistic use for documenting lies by governments? It looks to me like the exceptions at the end cover that. I do think, in practice, this is a difficult distinction for content moderators to enforce, which is not great. But again, there are lots of places you can publish journalism, and Google docs is not even a common place to do that?
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
I think any individual company should be able to decide they don’t want to be associated with that.
Yes, and everybody should be able to decide not to give that company any data because they are not trustworthy. “A company should be legally able to do X” and “A company that does X deserves trust” are two very different claims.
As for the specifics of this policy, how do you see it as prohibiting journalistic use for documenting lies by governments? It looks to me like the exceptions at the end cover that.
There’s a list of uses that are allowed and journalistic use is not among them. Which also makes sense as journalists are the kind of people who are usually in the best position to spread misinformation.
This is about content distribution
The term content distribution has a legal meaning and “sharing” isn’t the legal meaning. Any use of Google Docs includes content distribution in the legal sense. If the legal sense isn’t meant the policy should be worded differently. Besides there a question of “content staying on our platforms” and not “we will stop your ability to share objectionable content.
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505?fbclid=IwAR0fmSQihmU1GHJ8oU5SySyrMzTtGXR23ga92KazXxsToHpJD1gnyEOQhF0#zippy=%2Cmisleading-content
Forbidding Google docs to be used for journalistic purposes to question official government narratives is pretty totalitarian. And there’s no limit to Western governments in that policy either.
This is about content distribution, so it’s not about what sort of documents you can compose on the platform, but about what sorts of documents they’re willing to host for sharing. The general idea of having this kind of restriction makes sense to me: if you don’t have these restrictions then people use your platform to host harmful content, and I think any individual company should be able to decide they don’t want to be associated with that.
I definitely think there should be some places where you can post whatever you want, and the market for general web hosting is big enough and competitive enough that it does work out this way. Additionally, hosts are much less concerned when it’s not their domain in the URL.
As for the specifics of this policy, how do you see it as prohibiting journalistic use for documenting lies by governments? It looks to me like the exceptions at the end cover that. I do think, in practice, this is a difficult distinction for content moderators to enforce, which is not great. But again, there are lots of places you can publish journalism, and Google docs is not even a common place to do that?
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
Yes, and everybody should be able to decide not to give that company any data because they are not trustworthy. “A company should be legally able to do X” and “A company that does X deserves trust” are two very different claims.
There’s a list of uses that are allowed and journalistic use is not among them. Which also makes sense as journalists are the kind of people who are usually in the best position to spread misinformation.
The term content distribution has a legal meaning and “sharing” isn’t the legal meaning. Any use of Google Docs includes content distribution in the legal sense. If the legal sense isn’t meant the policy should be worded differently. Besides there a question of “content staying on our platforms” and not “we will stop your ability to share objectionable content.