anyone else get hit by google's auto-deleting qubes users mail responses the moment they are send?

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Yuraeitha

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Mar 11, 2018, 7:25:38 PM3/11/18
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As the title suggests, the very moment sending mail responses, it changes and turns into a deleted message. This has now happened twice in a row. So this is a heads-up for google's new level of censorship craziness. Though I have to wonder why it only hits some people, maybe it's because of certain Tor nodes out there..

Case of point, double deletes
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/b84gHvES2Bc

I have to wonder if creating a new mail topic will be deleted too, if so, then at least some of you will read it.

Given the above double accident twice in a row, and also the increased number of deleted messages here and there lately, it seems like google's auto-delete bot system is going overboard on its censorship. No harmful content was included, just a normal message like any other.

- Yu

sevas

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Mar 11, 2018, 11:30:32 PM3/11/18
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I have not experienced this and you may be right, it wouldnt suprise me from them these days.

sevas

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Mar 12, 2018, 12:16:28 AM3/12/18
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actually... maybe I did. I made a reply to the KDE/Template sec discussion and it was gone.

Yuraeitha

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Mar 12, 2018, 1:07:16 AM3/12/18
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On Monday, March 12, 2018 at 5:16:28 AM UTC+1, sevas wrote:
> actually... maybe I did. I made a reply to the KDE/Template sec discussion and it was gone.


maybe it'll help if we say we love google? Joke aside... it's very frustrating. but at least we got a topic on it now, so if others see it, they know they're not alone. Exiting moment to see if this message will disappear too or not... I mean, maybe we can outsmart it by having love and google in the same sentence (sarcasm).

Yuraeitha

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Mar 12, 2018, 2:40:40 AM3/12/18
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This is getting ridiculousness, another two posts automatically removed straight after or shortly after posting, it's inhuman speeds, it is certainly google-bots pretty censorship handy-work non normal content/language.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/oZnaHZROW0c

If I can post here again now, for some reason, this thread is immune. Maybe it's because I hosted the original mail... either way, google... yeah, I'm lost for words.

799

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Mar 12, 2018, 2:55:35 AM3/12/18
to Yuraeitha, qubes-users
Hello,


Am 12.03.2018 7:40 vorm. schrieb "Yuraeitha" <yura...@gmail.com>:
This is getting ridiculousness, another two posts automatically removed straight after or shortly after posting, it's inhuman speeds, it is certainly google-bots pretty censorship handy-work non normal content/language.

Honestly I haven't understand why Qubes Team is hosting it's Mailinglist on Google.

[...] Google collects and maintains information about your account activity, including the groups that you join or manage, lists of other members or invitees in the groups, messages or topics you track, custom pages you create or edit, ratings you make, and your preferred settings when using Google Groups [...]

I am sure that there are solutions where a Mailinglist can be hosted and as others have suggested maybe run a forum.


[799]

Message has been deleted

Steve Coleman

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Mar 12, 2018, 10:02:15 AM3/12/18
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I would say that if somebody has such an email in their out box, and you
know it was removed, then contact Google and resolve the issue rather
than just complaining here. No offense meant by this, its just that you
have exactly what they need to tack down the problem sitting in your
outbox. How on earth would they benefit by randomly deleting your mail
on purpose? Their business it learning about you, to better market you,
not pissing people off. Deleting legitimate information about you and
what you like to talk about is exactly what they want to keep on file.
Deleting it make so sense in their business model.

The explanation I would offer is their infantile
data-collecting/spam-eliminating AI filter has been mistrained, and
needs to be slapped silly by a human and corrected. The problem we have
is that much of the "logic" they use these days is due to machine
learning algorithms that one can not even ask the model why it did
something completely stupid. It's merely the result of it learning the
wrong logic from what data we gave it during the "training process".

There was once a DoD contractor who jumped on the AI bandwagon back in
the 70's, who trained the system to pick out tanks hiding in camouflage.
It did great, so they wanted to show the top brass. Before doing so they
took new photographs because the old ones were quite worn, and the new
photos flunked the test. What the system learned was cloudy vs sunny
days, not tanks and no-tanks. Filtering emails based on the same "logic"
is bound to have its problems.

So, don't attribute to malice where it can be the result of complete
incompetents in machine learning. This unfortunately is the reality of
the 'new software' era we now live in. Make them get it right if you
disapprove.

btw - If this email response to you disappears then I will want answers
from them myself. The more people who point out actual instances of
missing legitimate emails, the sooner they will be forced to reevaluate
their own methods of verification of this kind of ML mistraining.


On 03/12/18 02:55, 799 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Am 12.03.2018 7:40 vorm. schrieb "Yuraeitha" <yura...@gmail.com
> <mailto:yura...@gmail.com>>:
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "qubes-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to qubes-users...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:qubes-users...@googlegroups.com>.
> To post to this group, send email to qubes...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:qubes...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/CAJ3yz2vqmL64MVPVOLkfeJKRNYsi24Do6Dzgs%2BkcnxX3CWdvHw%40mail.gmail.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/CAJ3yz2vqmL64MVPVOLkfeJKRNYsi24Do6Dzgs%2BkcnxX3CWdvHw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Yuraeitha

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Mar 13, 2018, 7:27:32 AM3/13/18
to qubes-users
First, I'll apologize if I sound a bit grumpy today, it's not on you, and I hope you will remember that below, even though I strongly disagree with you, it's nonetheless nothing personal.

Originally the off-topic I made was secondary mentions, my on-topic was the reason for posting, which was to make others aware why their post are deleted too here on Qubes users mailing list. I actually searched for an existing thread on it, but I found none, hence why I made this post for future users who use the search system for this issue, and not just the current users.

In regards to contacting google, it will be useless. I already know the core issue at hand, I don't need to write to google, because it won't solve anything by doing that, google won't change it, it's not a bug, it's a system pushed forward by political movement. This is google increasing their bot censorship from that movement, but scre*wed up in the process. These censorship systems are something that is hard to do without building democratic censorship, but on the other hand it's very easy to use them for just that, intentional censorship. It's only a few clicks away to prevent democracy, and who decides what is censored anyway? and who controls who controls them? and who controls the future leaders who might someday go rogue on the democratic system which is only a few clicks away from becoming locked down and controlled? This is an anti-democratic political movement, which google is enforcing. This is a wide known problem, I'd expect everyone here knows this issue, which is inflamed by i.e. American politicians who wants to force organizations to monitor all conversations and make automatic censorship systems. The problem isn't something you can fix by contacting google, you can only fix it by ditching google altogether for someone that doesn't try do censorship. While the issue happened probably due to a bug, it doesn't change that everything we write here is censored, hence it doesn't matter if we fix the bug or not, it just puts focus on why these hidden automatic censorships are a bad idea to begin with.

This is a poor political decision made by people that doesn't understand technology, and who doesn't care about democracy. They are control freaks who think they can make everything work through strict rules, and at that point, you build the internet of a dictatorship nation, then you only need the nation to become dictatorship as well. In an era where internet is becoming synonymous with society, it's dangerous for a democracy to have an internet of a dictators, it'll only shift people into becoming blind followers of a dictatorship system.

Censoring content, will only shift power to a centralized location, you cannot expect a democracy to keep working if it's eaten up slowly by mechanics that prevents a democracy to work. This is just one part destroying democracy, we don't need to tell google to fix the bug, we need to tell them to remove this censorship entirely.

Furthermore I've seen other people get their mails deleted recently, it's building up as of late, and this message was an attempt to reach out so that we can increase awareness of the issue, rather than leaving people with frustrations.

The deleted posts don't tell anyone if googled deleted them, or if the person deleted them, which is also a big issue, but telling google to fix that, won't fix that they censor everything anyway.

This, as [799] pointed out, can also serve as a discussion as to why we use something anti-freedom like Google, when it isn't aligning with Qubes core values. That's why all this is much more on-topic, that you might at first think about it.

I'll have to copy/paste this message, just in case it gets deleted (once again).

Steve Coleman

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Mar 13, 2018, 10:10:56 AM3/13/18
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On 03/13/18 07:27, Yuraeitha wrote:

>
> First, I'll apologize if I sound a bit grumpy today, it's not on you, and I hope you will remember that below, even though I strongly disagree with you, it's nonetheless nothing personal.

No offense taken here. You have a right to be grumpy!

> Originally the off-topic I made was secondary mentions, my on-topic was the reason for posting, which was to make others aware why their post are deleted too here on Qubes users mailing list. I actually searched for an existing thread on it, but I found none, hence why I made this post for future users who use the search system for this issue, and not just the current users.

What if any evidence of deliberate censorship do we have? Are there
keywords that target ones email for censorship? For what reason do you
think your email was specifically targeted?

I would agree that any censorship is likely from "a bot" in the sense of
an algorithm running on a machine at Google, but then why should I just
throw up my hands and _not_ contact them to tell them they are screwing
up badly? Even a bot can be tweaked to minimize collateral damage.

When somebody wrongs you in this way as you are suggesting, they are
actually wronging us as a group, and we should stand up and push back,
or nothing will ever change. So far you have not told us why this should
be seen as a deliberate and/or malicious act. I may have missed it,
that's quite possible, and I would appreciate being corrected if that is
the case. I still think/feel its a matter of incompetence on some level
without at least some evidence pointing to the contrary. If there is
hard evidence of it, then there is all the more reason to complain. Its
the volume of the public back-pressure that will illicit changes in
corporate behavior, so the more complaints the faster the fix.

This reminds me of a situation with the Chinese government censorship,
where some analysts monitored their social media and watched for what
messages disappeared. After analyzing the messages that went missing
they determined exactly what kinds of issues they were specifically
censoring. The reasoning and logic of what they were doing was then
public and the people could adjust to remain under the radar. That same
technique could be used here if one could determine at what step in that
exchange process those things were being censored. Knowing what they are
censoring would be quite newsworthy.

btw - With 100% probability, this reply would have been censored by the
Chinese government. Any guesses why? It may not be what you think.
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