Hello. It’s me again, shouting into the wind and yelling at clouds. I’ve told you—warned you—over and over again to get off Google but you won’t listen. I’ve long since adopted the hard stance that I don’t care about your horror story. Lost several novels in progress? Don’t care. Lost a lifetime’s worth of pictures of your children? Don’t care. Lost your entire digital life? Sorry, you deserve it.
Still, it’s like looking at a train wreck. You know you should look away but you can’t. I keep thinking, “Why are people still doing that? It’s only going to end in tears.” But nobody listens. Of course, this is a niche blog for folks who like tech and things like Emacs so how many people have a chance to hear me?
How about someone with a larger audience. Someone like, say, Cory Doctorow. Still sort of geeky, I suppose, but at least he can get off his fingers when counting his followers. Here he is making exactly the same points I’ve been making and even using the same horror stories to point out the dangers.
A commonality among the stories he relates is that the people involved aren’t doing anything controversial—let along wrong—and they all felt secure in thinking, “Nothing bad will happen to me because I’m a good guy who’s doing nothing wrong.” Then they find themselves disappeared because some Google algorithm decided they are not worthy of being part of society.
Doctorow wants a legislative fix for this. Techies, of course, will scoff at that but hope springs eternal. Here’s a better solution: STOP USING THE SERVICES OF COMPANIES THAT ABUSE THEIR POWER IN THIS WAY. It may be a bit painful but not nearly as painful as waking up some day and discovering that all the pictures of your children or important, ongoing work has been deleted with no possibility of appeal. And, sadly, those are the least horrifying examples of what can happen.