My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google

zawisza

@yerrag There are two reasons why that might have happened: you run out of memory (see this post) in which case you should have had received an email (but maybe they bugged and "forgot" to send it); or there was some bug and your data was lost and then restored to some previous back up (see this). The latter is more likely if the PDFs were somewhat recently added (or reorganized in folders(?)) and older data is still there.

Unlikely option would be that they removed it due to terms violation as hate speech and misleading content is against terms of service, but in this case you should have too received an email.

Side note: it is funny how they state their ToS:

Program Policies
We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our Program Policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law. But that does not necessarily mean that we review content, so please don’t assume that we do.

Please don't assume we scan your content but we will delete if it's not cool. Kek.

Anyway, software is shit. Buy a hard drive or two.

yerrag

@zawisza

No doubt software is shit in the context of Google and their stealthy abuse of their position as being able to snoop and being able to work above the 11th commandment, which is "Thou shalt not get caught." Google Drive was a godsend for me since I have suffered many crashes that felt to me like the modern equivalent of a bricks and mortar fire that destroys memories. So it was easy for me to forget or actually cross my fingers regarding storing anything valuable with my enemy.

And that's shame on me. Knowing that many countries prior to WW2, entrusted their gold with the Zionist Federal Reserve only to be robbed of them. After the war, those gold were never returned. This happened to China and this also happened to the Philippines. I don't doubt that these two countries were outliers. But they had no choice really but to trust the Federal Reserve as they weren't aware of the malice of the Fed and if the gold wasn't transferred by submarine eventually to land in Fort Knox, those gold reserves would have been confiscated by the Japanese. My point was there was more risk in not entrusting their gold with the Fed, given what they did not know. Otoh, I know this kind of behavior was bound to happen, and still I slept with my enemy.

But not all is lost. I can find these books again. They may have culled a lot of ebooks as their bots combed the entire storage of Google Drive, but there are still many books, both digital and physical, that they would want erased from our consciousness, that are outside their reach.

But it's good to know that they have shown their hand. And knowing their hand, I am better positioned.

As for the scenario you spoke of, I can assure you there was no glitch involved on my part. It's inconceivable that what got lost were only the books. They were selective about what they needed to be erased. On my end, I have a 100gb drive subscription, of which only 25 percent is used. So no chance my storage became full.

Your point on having off-line storage is well taken though. As much as I hate being my own admin of my own home IT department, I am compelled to assume that role now.

Ecstatic_Hamster

so a few lessons.

If you use a cloud system, you need to pay for it. No free levels.

There is a great deal of difference between free and paid. They don't monkey much with paid accounts, don't spy on them as much.

Also, you need to back up your cloud info. You can use a service like cloudhq to make backups. Or you can back up to your local drive. But you must back up your cloud info.

Mulloch94

Cold storage is always the best way to store data like that. But if you did use a cloud, something like Skiff seems to be a reliable alternative to Google.

Kilgore

@yerrag check out cryptpad.fr kind of like google docs it also has file storage 1GB free probably enough for your books. Its more of an anti big tech/government type thing. I like it cause I can share docs with people anonymously.

Kilgore

but yeah everything should be on your own machine and once in a while backup onto an external hard drive.

yerrag

@Ecstatic_Hamster said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

so a few lessons.

If you use a cloud system, you need to pay for it. No free levels.

There is a great deal of difference between free and paid. They don't monkey much with paid accounts, don't spy on them as much.

Also, you need to back up your cloud info. You can use a service like cloudhq to make backups. Or you can back up to your local drive. But you must back up your cloud info.

I pay for my Google Drive. Used to be free, but I don't clean up my email and it exceeded the free cap. And the next level of 100 GB is what I am paying for.

I would like to divorce from Google, but it is hard especially when I use Google Voice, and it is not only convenient to have this service, but invaluable to me. Skype is a terrible alternative, with Microsoft's unMidas touch ruining it.

It doesn't matter if free or not. Google just knows it can do as it pleases, but does it so that it stays under the radar and under plausible deniability.

yerrag

@Mulloch94 said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

Cold storage is always the best way to store data like that. But if you did use a cloud, something like Skiff seems to be a reliable alternative to Google.

What is cold storage? I gather it can only mean that it's on deep freeze away from discovery by tptb?

Will consider Skiff. Just hoping I can find time to do that. I'll first have to whittle down my email storage at Google. Then still use Gmail as migrating from it risks losing something I might regret later losing.

I use custom Roms on old Samsung phones, but have continues to use Google's Play Service. I should get another Samsung phone, and play with a custom ROM and apps, Maybe, I'd have to establish a second identity altogether.

yerrag

@Kilgore said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

@yerrag check out cryptpad.fr kind of like google docs it also has file storage 1GB free probably enough for your books. Its more of an anti big tech/government type thing. I like it cause I can share docs with people anonymously.

Thanks. I should begin familiarizing with these tools and start moving towards that form of life. It would too late if I don't begin now. It's just like ignoring bioenergetics and one day having cancer, and you're stuck with desperation and throwing yourself at the mercy of the establishment, who not only cannot save you, but will keep you from getting saved.

Ecstatic_Hamster

@yerrag said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

@Ecstatic_Hamster said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

so a few lessons.

If you use a cloud system, you need to pay for it. No free levels.

There is a great deal of difference between free and paid. They don't monkey much with paid accounts, don't spy on them as much.

Also, you need to back up your cloud info. You can use a service like cloudhq to make backups. Or you can back up to your local drive. But you must back up your cloud info.

I pay for my Google Drive. Used to be free, but I don't clean up my email and it exceeded the free cap. And the next level of 100 GB is what I am paying for.

I would like to divorce from Google, but it is hard especially when I use Google Voice, and it is not only convenient to have this service, but invaluable to me. Skype is a terrible alternative, with Microsoft's unMidas touch ruining it.

It doesn't matter if free or not. Google just knows it can do as it pleases, but does it so that it stays under the radar and under plausible deniability.

Yes it does matter if it’s free or not. Google treats paid customers differently. Businesses are not able to tolerate a vendor that spies on them.

Also, you never want to make any documents publicly available. They will scan those. You must always only share with specific people. If you don’t share publicly in my experience they do not scan your documents (if you are a business customer.)

It is far better to get out of Google, and run a Nextcloud instance or something similar on a server you host yourself. But it is a lot of work and technically beyond many people.

We use Dropbox, Google, Tresorit, and Nextcloud. Tresorit is very secure and private, the way Dropbox should be but isn’t. But it’s expensive. Nextcloud is a great option if you can handle hosting it yourself.

Also, we use Google Apps, but we use Jitsi for anything sensitive (we host that ourselves), for meetings.

Nowadays you have to be flexible because there are great tools out there, but they will also spy on you, so you have to use the right tool for the job and be careful.

yerrag

@Ecstatic_Hamster said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

Nowadays you have to be flexible because there are great tools out there, but they will also spy on you, so you have to use the right tool for the job and be careful.

That is the crux of it!

Mulloch94

@yerrag Sorry for being vague, yeah by "cold storage" I simply mean stored on an external SSD that you can carry with you. Kind of like "cold storage" crypto wallets.

I guess I should've used better wording, anyone not in the crypto world might think I mean freezing something, which isn't recommended, lol.

Kilgore

@yerrag said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

I should begin familiarizing with these tools and start moving towards that form of life.

I use proton mail, yt-dlp scripts to download all videos I liked on youtube, and Manjaro linux.

It's just like ignoring bioenergetics and one day having cancer,

do not use the c word ever again when we have a conversation.

Mulloch94

@yerrag said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

I should begin familiarizing with these tools and start moving towards that form of life.

The anti-censorship fuck Big Tech starter pack:

No black box software - Debian, Fedora, CentOS. Linux nerds may like Arch too, most customizable because it's a bare bones OS. For mobile devices use stock android (no google).

Acceptable browsers - Firefox and/or Tor. No shortcuts here. Some people say "well about Brave or Chromium" blah blah blah blah blah.

Email clients - Self-hosted is best, but Proton, Skiff, and Tutanota are fine alternatives for less savvy folks.

Social Platforms - Use front-ends like invidious, libreddit, nitter, etc.

Finances- Privacy coin like Monero (XMR). Set-up local node on drive for best anonymity.

Time to disappear - Use tails or whonix, or better yet destroy all your electronics lmao.

zawisza

@Mulloch94 said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

Some people say "well about Brave or Chromium" blah blah blah blah blah.

Other than fighting Chromium's near monopoly, Brave will be better for most people. Also, if you're paranoid, Chromium will allow you to blend into crowd better since it's more popular.

@Mulloch94 said in My Collection of Ebooks in Google Drive Confiscated and Deleted By Google:

Self-hosted is best

Why? Sure, it's "anti-big-tech" to self-host but it's not any more private or secure - in fact, it's probably less so. Loads of hassle and you won't be able to use encryption anyway. That's why Gmail is quite nice, because everyone has it and emails will be encrypted so only Google will read them. IMO, for most people, someone sniffing your traffic on your probably poorly configured email server is bigger risk than Google. It's not uncomman to be forced to send medical information or tax stuff through email, with Gmail it will likely be encrypted. I guess best is then to have Google and MS accounts and use the one that the addressee is using.

Using Gmail is also a constant remainder that email is not private and you shouldn't be using it for communication.

peatolish

@yerrag it's such a shame, i think you can find a lot of your collection at zlib org.

yerrag

@peatolish Thanks. Glad that it;s still around.