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by hangphyr 2213 days ago
It could be an action from a rogue employee. Possibly not a management decision or specific company policy, just a filter added by an employee with access to it. There might be some 'lively' discussion internally in Google right now over this specific issue. In the past some Google employees have taken actions against individuals based on their personal political beliefs or other personal grudges. A good example of that was when Jordan Peterson was temporarily locked out of all Google services, including his Gmail, insiders said it sparked a lot of internal arguments at the company (eventually his accounts were reinstated with no official explanation or apology, though some employees did apologize to him privately for their coworkers behavior).

It's likely at its core a problem with poor employee screening, insufficient training and supervision, and vague/over-reaching policies given to employees that they sometimes interpret as legitimizing them to censor or ban based on their personal political beliefs.

Some employee there likely is a communist sympathizer, or has other connections to China's authoritarian ruling party.

2 comments

This article says Peterson's account was deactivated due to an exploit of the spam account flagging system and not because some employee arbitrarily decided to deactivate it: https://medium.com/@zacharyvorhies/open-letter-dear-attorney...

Where did you get your version of the story from?

Or just someone PC enough that any derogatory slang term counts as hate speech to them.
I used the term “lesbian” in a comment on Facebook this week in a respectful and topical manner.

I received a notice that the comment was removed for violating community standards against “hate speech” and was told that’s my one warning for the next 12 months and any subsequent infringements would lead to a 24 hour ban. I used their process to disagree with the finding and they replied in a few minutes that they rejected my appeal.

Facebook is actually a lot better than others on this issue: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-...

Obviously they can make mistakes, but I’d also be curious about your specific usage.

Someone must have reported you.

And now you're on double secret probation as one who has not only engaged in "hate speech", but had the temerity to protest their notice that you have been convicted and found guilty of hate speech.
What was the exact comment?
Why do you think they removed your respectful comment and deemed it hate speech?