Censorship by Google Drive and Google Docs
Back in June 2019 I had warned about relying on cloud platforms for your business and for storing your (personal) data, with some examples of what could go wrong. With all the recent online censorship related to the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ more examples are piling up showing what can happen when you rely on the current centralized Software As A Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms.
Google recently took down a video and a document from two of their services, taking their online censorship to users’ personal files. Here’s from “Google Drive takes down user’s personal copy of Judy Mikovits’ Plandemic after it was flagged by The Washington Post” (May 20th 2020):
Ever since Big Tech platforms started cracking down on what they deem to be coronavirus misinformation, the media has been willfully flagging alleged violations to social media companies and getting content taken down. And now the file storage and sharing service Google Drive has started to take down users’ files in response to media complaints about them containing coronavirus misinformation.
In an article reporting on the takedown, The Washington Post’s Silicon Valley Correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin complains that after the coronavirus documentary Plandemic was censored on social media, some YouTube clips were telling users how to access “banned footage” from the documentary via Google Drive.
She then notes that after The Washington Post contacted Google, Google Drive took down a file featuring the trailer for the Plandemic documentary.
Dwoskin also writes that The Washington Post reported 12 videos to YouTube, 61 Facebook posts and Instagram links to Facebook, and 24 videos to TikTok for featuring the Plandemic trailer. In response, YouTube removed five of the videos, Facebook removed nine of the posts, and TikTok said it removed most of the videos.
And here’s from “Google censors Google Doc of medical hydroxychloroquine coronavirus treatment trial paper” (March 25th 2020):
It seems like a lifetime away now, as the world struggles to get the spread of coronavirus under control – but on March 13, James Todaro, who holds medical degree from Columbia University, posted about some potentially promising research on Twitter. Todaro linked to a Google Doc file and said there was “growing evidence of chloroquine as a highly effective treatment for COVID-19.”
…
The research Todaro referred to was authored by him and two colleagues – Gregory Rigano of Johns Hopkins, and Thomas Broker of Stanford University. Nevertheless, Google managed to block access to the linked Google Docs file for violating the giant’s terms of service, as well as its anti-abuse program and enforcement.
I have more examples of videos from various medical professionals around the world being censored in the notes below my COVID-19 post.
Fortunately it’s impossible for Big Tech to completely censor information from the Internet due to its inherent nature. There are countless other places where you can look for censored or ‘banned’ content. In the case of video content you can check out Bitchute and LBRY.tv and simply search for the title of the video you’re looking for. Archive.org might also be an alternative, although I’ve seen evidence of censorship on that platform recently as well.
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