Tuesday, August 02, 2011
G+ Spam Reporting, Circles and Censorship
I was about to post this comment in the thread of someone who is requesting more surgically precise spam reporting functionality. I decided that someone in that thread might report ME as a spammer for writing something approaching a page in length (heavens to Betsy!). I am under the impression that whenever we report something we possibly deprive someone else of their Google account. I witnessed several instances of what I consider "hate speech" but I did not report them because I do not want to deprive someone of their account and also what goes around comes around. Would it not be sufficient simply to de-friend or block someone who is doing something that annoys us? I thought one of the advantages of CIRCLES is that we may post to a limited audience. Someone had added me to a circle called ATHEIST and then began to bash religious groups with cartoons entitled "scumbag." When I pointed out that his posts might qualify as "hate speech" he explained that he would remove me from that "Atheist" circle. If it is the case that we may control who sees what we post and also control whose posts we see then what is the point of reporting features which will only be punitive and deprive someone of their account?Google's policy as I understand it is that they will not police anything posted to private circles but they will take action upon any post which is reported. What is to prevent someone with a vindictive, tattle-tale mentality to report people who are simply exercising their free speech right to hold some dissenting opinion?I have a circle called Google Devs and when I spot someone like that, I categorize them by adding to that circle. I have a circle for PHOTOGRAPHERS because, again, I want to quickly identify them. When I post I used to do PUBLIC and extended circles to get the widest readership. Then I learned that Google will not police content that is posted to private circles UNLESS it is reported so I decided that PUBLIC was a poor choice. I repost to blogs that hit the search engines anyway so PUBLIC is redundant. IF you have a circle of very trusted people, say, relatives, then you may post what you please assuming that no one of those trusted people will report you. If you have circles with people you hardly know then you cannot be certain whether a political or a religious or some other controversial comment might be reported. This aspect of "circle censorship" makes circles less useful.
