This was exactly what happened to Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic and critic of identity politics. Prior to the Damore controversy, Peterson was inexplicably locked out of his Google accounts, including gmail and YouTube. (My interview with Peterson about the incident will be published in the coming week).
According to Beckett, Google already employs technology to scan its users’ email accounts for unwelcome content.
“Google already has a policy of proactively scanning user data (Drive and Gmail) for illegal pornography, by matching files and attachments against a database of known image hashes” says Beckett.
“The only thing stopping them from scanning user data for other things, like pirated music and movies, is that someone in charge of that policy has decided illegal porn is harmful enough to justify snooping on users’ data, and piracy isn’t. But that’s just one person’s opinion.”
“What if that one person were replaced by someone else who believed offensive speech was a form of violence? If they insisted it was OK to proactively scan users’ emails and comments for links to sites that promoted the wrong views, and everyone who disagreed with them was afraid to speak up…?”