[rickspencer3]

I read the original NYT article as well.

I disagree with the position that the "AI failed." I suspect that the images were pretty much dead on for suspected child abuse image from how they were described in the original article.

What I think is terrible about the story is that Google seemed supremely uninterested in investing any effort whatsoever in helping their customers recover from the false allegations. The customers ended up losing all of the information that they had stored on Google, and the company seemed to treat exoneration of the hideous crime that they accused the customers of to be a triviality not worth their effort.

I am a big fan of Google's technology, and I am deeply wedged into their ecosystem for my personal life (Android, Google Maps, Google Photos, Gmail, etc...). I even pay for premium services. But, it's clear from how they treat Youtube creators and stories like this that, as a customer, they are wholly indifferent to customers as individuals. You have to play defense against their tech.

[account-5]

I don't trust Google with anything that I need to keep either private or access too. The company doesn't care about their "customers" because their actual customers are the advertising companies they sell their "customers" data to. Google has nothing of importance from me because they are unreliable and untrustworthy.

[candiodari]

Don't you think that the actions of governments have a lot more to do with what happened here than Google's own policies?

1) Google is forced to do CSAM scanning and report any offending material to authorities by EU

2) they are forced to close accounts where they find this account

3) they are forced to delete any accounts so closed by GPDR regulations

This isn't Google, Facebook or LinkedIn doing this, the only thing Google has to do with this is that they're big enough to be one of the first targets of police forces of multiple nations to implement this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act

https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-commission-prese...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

How the police actually deals with these companies:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/signal-unveils-how-far-us-law-...

"Though the judge approved four consecutive non-disclosure orders, the court never acknowledged receipt of our motion to partially unseal, nor scheduled a hearing, and would not return counsel's phone calls seeking to schedule a hearing," Signal wrote.

Oh ... and of course, now many US states have decided that for the police's sacred duty to prevent abortions, the police do NOT have to respect their jurisdiction (they get to attack people for crimes, proven ... or not, committed elsewhere when related to abuse, like CSAM)... Sorry, but the problem here is not tech companies, except in the sense that you may be more or less exposed to this problem depending on how much private info you store with them.

[eddyg]

see possible explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32562052 (basically, the data had already been expunged?)