this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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The article headline is wildly misleading, bordering on being just a straight up lie.
Google didn't ban the developer for reporting the material, they didn't even know he reported it, because he did so anonymously, and to a child protection org, not Google.
Google's automatic tools, correctly, flagged the CSAM when he unzipped the data and subsequently nuked his account.
Google's only failure here was to not unban on his first or second appeal. And whilst that is absolutely a big failure on Google's part, I find it very understandable that the appeals team generally speaking won't accept "I didn't know the folder I uploaded contained CSAM" as a valid ban appeal reason.
It's also kind of insane how this article somehow makes a bigger deal out of this devolper being temporarily banned by Google, than it does of the fact that hundreds of CSAM images were freely available online and openly sharable by anyone, and to anyone, for god knows how long.
so they got mad because he reported it to an agency that actually fights csam instead of them so they can sweep it under the rug?
They didn't get mad, they didn't even know THAT he reported it, and they have no reason or incentive to swipe it under the rug, because they have no connection to the data set. Did you even read my comment ?
I hate Alphabet as much as the next person, but this feels like you're just trying to find any excuse to hate on them, even if it's basically a made up reason.
they obviously did if they banned him for it; and if they're training on csam and refuse to do anything about it then yeah they have a connection to it.
Also, the data set wasn't hosted, created, or explicitly used by Google in any way.
It was a common data set used in various academic papers on training nudity detectors.
Did you seriously just read the headline, guess what happened, and are now arguing based on that guess that I, who actually read the article, am wrong about it's content ? Because that's sure what it feels like reading your comments......
Google doesn't ban for hate or feels, they ban by algorithm. The algorithms address legal responsibilities and concerns. Are the algorithms perfect? No. Are they good? Debatable. Is it possible to replace those algorithms with "thinking human beings" that do a better job? Also debatable, from a legal standpoint they're probably much better off arguing from a position of algorithm vs human training.
So you didn't read my comment then did you ?
He got banned because Google's automated monitoring system, entirely correctly, detected that the content he unzipped contained CSAM. It wasn't even a manual decision to ban him.
His ban had literally nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the CSAM was part of an AI training data set.