Google Removes ‘Pirate’ URLs from Users’ Privately Saved Links::undefined

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    77
    arrow-down
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    This feels like a corporation complying with their obligations under the DMCA.

    To maintain their safe harbor status, companies have to remove allegedly infringing content in response to a properly filed takedown notice. This does include links stored in google’s search results. This is what a company like google has to do when storing user data on servers in any country that signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

    They don’t seem to be doing this in a malicious way. They have done their duty and removed the offending links from their service. But they quite kindly chose to notify the user by email, including the exact URL that was removed. The user can store that link elsewhere.

    It would have been far easier to remove the link silently.

    • RubberColby@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      See, this is why I like reading comments. Cooler heads prevail. Thank you for the context.

  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Don’t rely on online service to save your stuff.

    Edit: how can i exclude < and > from being interpreted?

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Usually a backslash (the one under the backspace key, not the one that shares a key with ”?") before a character that would usually be treated as a formatting instruction will stop it from being interpreted as such. Could be different for other machine-interpreted languages but when used this way, the backslash is called an “escape character”.

      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        The \ key. And you might ask how I wrote that symbol without it gettting interpreted. Well, by writing \\.

      • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        But that didn’t work for ‘angle braket open’ text ‘angle braket close’? Not even in code tag right now.

        • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          How about using “&lt;” and “>” (“<” and “>”, respectively)?

          Edit: Okay, I see what you mean. That is strange. Not sure what to do about that but will look around.

        • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I specified the location of the backslash as a way to tell the difference between that and the forward slash. Probably could have made my intent more clear if I’d stated that the slash sharing a key with the question mark was the forward one as you mention but didn’t see a need.

        • Jax@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Imagine being downvoted because someone else can’t figure out the difference between a forward and back slash.

          Lemmings, weird breed. Lots of chuds, it seems.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    What excuse are they using if it turns out that the takedown request was false?

    Would they undelete the private user’s lists?

    Would they reimburse anybody for the damage?

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Maybe it will make people see Google for what they are. So many are stuck in some kind of illusion.

    • danielton@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      They did a lot of good for the FOSS community for many years. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.

      • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        “You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain” — Harvey Dent

    • Saneless@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      They’re an advertising company that tries to collect information about targets through products those targets use. That’s it

      • Akuchimoya@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I signed up for a Google Ads account for a non-profit I volunteer with. I had to verify the organization with governing documents, okay, fair enough. They also “require” my drivers license or passport. Excuse me? We will no longer have a Google Ads account after Sept 15 (the cut off to verify my identity).

    • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think because the moment you admit to yourself that Google is not so good a company, you are forced to recognize most are not and that is too much for many to swallow.

  • CaptObvious@literature.cafe
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, the only useful Google service these days is gmail. And that’s only because I don’t want to deal with changing providers after 15 years.

    • Yoru@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s gotta be an app for that, though that could ve dangerous since you’re letting it access your Gmail.

    • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I wish other providers had the tab system that Gmail has, I’d switch in a heartbeat if it did. Folders just aren’t as convenient.

  • johnyrocket@feddit.ch
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s wierd. 4 Days ago I got an email saying they removed a link from my saved websites. Only the link, in the email, was of a reddit post from 8 years ago on how to plug in speakers into a Motherboard I used to have??? How is that piracy? Its on the buildapc subreddit.

    • Brownian Motion@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      You should be asking how the fuck do these cunts still have a reputation that you are supporting?

      Googles new, but not announced motto is, “We are the evil”.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    it also removed all of my saved places from google maps. thanks i like it

  • tym@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think the word private in “privately saved” should be in quotes, clearly.

    Remember kids - firefox was built off the netscape navigator kernel. A download for FF is a vote for the right side of antitrust history (and therefore future)

    • miridius@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This has got nothing to do with browsers. The article is saying that if you use an online Google service to save Google search results, then when they are forced to take said search result down due to DMCA then it also is (obviously) gone from the saved collection. This could just as easily happen in Firefox if you use Google’s saved pages service, which is a bit like Pinterest. Meanwhile Chrome, like Firefox, never touches your actual bookmarks

  • darkkite@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    kinda makes sense. it’s like if a youtube video or soundcloud track gets DCMA’d then they’re going to remove the link.

    if it was you actual browser bookmark i would understand the outrage.

    im still on FF tho

      • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I skimmed through the article and didn’t see it mentioned, but in another post I read that this was only done for a shared collection, as in it was at least semi public if not public

      • darkkite@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        yeah but it’s nice to know what has actually been removed so you can get the song/video elsewhere

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Isn’t removing the bookmarks from people’s browser what they’re mad about? Now that Google is selling content through YouTube TV, I’ll bet they crack down hard on piracy. The old reddit /r/NFLstreams moved to a site a lot of people know. Now that Google owns Sunday ticket, I will not be surprised if it gets DDoS’d to shit this year and becomes borderline unusable. We’ll find out next week I guess.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        22
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not from the browser. As stated in the article:

        Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google’s synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that’s not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google’s saved feature.

        It’s a feature specific to the google app that lets you share collections of bookmarks:

        https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/13128452?hl=en

        They don’t want people sharing links to pirate sites.

        It’s still bad, but saying they are going through bookmarks in chrome and deleting them is misinformation.

    • baked_tea@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Just yesterday I saw a post that they did in fact remove bookmark and notified user about it with detail

  • miridius@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    ITT: nobody actually reading the article

    Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google’s synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that’s not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google’s saved feature.

    This Google service allows users to save and organize links, similar to what Pinterest does. These link collections can be private or shared with third parties.