Notice anything different?

Yes, yes you probably do. The ads are gone and several posts are also missing, as well as links from posts and sidebars and things. Yep! Continued below.



So a couple of days ago I got a beautiful email from our lord and savior Google telling me that I was in violation of their user policy. I always make it a habit to read use policies, especially when I'm doing something publicly, like this blog. However, I apparently missed something and was greeted with a warning email. A very vague warning, to be specific. They told me that I was in violation of the use policy, but they didn't say exactly what. They just pulled a quote from their policy and didn't cite exactly what pages, what posts, what the problem was, or what I could do to fix it. Considering I only have this blog, I assumed it was a problem on here and removed anything that could possibly violate the policy. This included my ads and the bitcoin thing. What I'm guessing happened is that they saw that I posted a donation link and assumed that it was malicious in some way. I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong, but I took down the ads and donation post just in case and increased my audience to people over 18 because I discussed supplements at one point. If you are reading this Google staff, I sure would love some feedback on exactly what the issue was. I read over the policy very thoroughly and it was extremely vague on what was in violation and what was not. This actually makes sense from a business standpoint, because when a policy is vague, then it easily covers a broad range of issues. However, it also gives room for bias. I'm not saying that this happens, but it is possible that if someone is reported for something and somehow manages to change Google's mind, then there is a chance that the reported violation is not covered by, or is not in violation of, Google's use policy. I'm not saying that this ever does, or ever will, happen, but I'm only saying that it is possible. To eliminate this possible bias, it would require a list of every possible violation and exactly what should be done in every instance and what will happen if no action is taken in response to the warning. However, this is extremely impractical, and leaning on the border of impossible as it is completely unfeasible for anyone, or any technology created so far, to list every single possible combination of offenses and the appropriate action to be taken.

Does this mean that bias is inevitable, no matter what they do? Surprisingly, no. It is possible for Google, and similar companies, to identify and issue a statement of the issue to the owner. With Google's very deep wallet, it is possible to commission a filter that scans every pages' HTML looking for keywords or suspicious patterns and sends an automated message to the owner of the page specifying exactly the issue and pointing out how to fix the issue, and saying that if no action is taken that a Google representative will observe the issue personally and judge, from a human perspective, how bad the offense is and what should be done. Whether or not they do this already, I am not sure. I wouldn't doubt it that this kind of thing is already implemented, but if it is, it is not specific enough. What I was told by the warning was almost completely useless, as I don't believe that I have done anything in violation of their policy.

Youtube, another of Google's offspring, is also more or less guilty of having a sub-par violation system. The popular video browsing platform has an artificial intelligence that sweeps the videos searching for copyrighted content and then takes down the video and alerts the user. This might sound fine, so what is the issue? Well, the A.I. doesn't take into account things that are similar to something that is owned by someone else or is a free-use publication. See the problem yet? One somewhat famous instance of this is when a user uploaded a Vocaloid song (Vocaloid is a computer program that allows you to insert and compose music with lyrics and have a computer-generated voice sing it,) to Youtube. The video was a sample song. included free with the program, that is to allow users to learn how to use the software and is listed as free to publish and use with credit given. The user did give appropriate credit and uploaded the song, with some modifications made (as is the purpose of the sample/tutorial song,) and Youtube's copyright policy bot pulled it down even though there was no issue. What happened was that the A.I. saw that it was almost identical to the original song and assumed that it was in violation. The user eventually got the video back up and the issue was resolved, but it was still something that happened.

In short, Google's current warning policy is next to pointless. Unless you tell someone what they did wrong, chances are that they have no idea that they did something wrong. When posting things, you usually use common sense and don't publish anything that is in violation of the terms of use.