Have You Tried to Delete Chat or Any Other Information from a Google System?
September 29, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]](http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t1-6.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[1]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Several years ago, I mistyped my email address on an Android device I was testing. When I set up another Android mobile, the misspelled email appeared. We searched available files on the mobile, Google’s email list for the account, and even poked under the hood to locate the misspelled email. There was no “delete” function, but its omission would not have made a difference. The misspelled email was there but not there. SMS messages are often equally slippery. Delete a thread and bang, it’s back. Somewhere, somehow, the wizards at Google have the ability to “find” information even thought the user cannot. Innovation, oversight, carelessness, or a stupid user? My thought is that the blame falls upon the stupid user.
A young engineer strokes the controls of the deletion and online tracking subsystem. With some careful knob twisting, the giant machine can output a reality shaped by the operator’s whims, fancies, and goals. Hey, MidJourney, how about that circular picture?
“History Is Turned Off”: What Google’s (Deleted) Chats Mean for Its Antitrust Battle with the DOJ”, if accurate, suggests a different capability exists for some Googlers. The article asserts:
lawyers for the U.S. government have tried to draw attention to a giant black hole at the center of the trial: a “remarkable” number of deleted employee chat conversations apparently about issues relevant to its lawsuit and others. “[A]lso can we change the setting of this group to history off,” CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in an October 2021 chat to one of his lieutenants ahead of a “leaders circle” meeting. History off meant their conversation would be deleted from the servers after 24 hours. Nine seconds later, Pinchai apparently tried to delete his message. When asked later under oath about the attempted deletion, he answered, “I don’t recall.”
True or false? The article adds this assertion:
In defending its auto-deletions, Google told the court that not saving all of those old chats would have been too burdensome, but it couldn’t prove that Google lawyers also argued that Chat was used primarily for nonbusiness, casual conversations, but the court found that the company does in fact use it to discuss “substantive business.”
The cited article contains additional information about missing data, deletions, or lapses of one sort or another. Googlers, it appears, are human.
Several observations:
- Those deletion tools appear to exist and work.
- Google’s storage subsystems do not contain certain information.
- Googler’s operate in a dimension which is different from the one in which users and possibly some non-Googley lawyers and advisors fellow travelers do not.
But will this assertion about “managing” information or “shaping” data matter? With the redacted documents and the restrictions placed on information reaching the public humming along, it seems as if a Silicon Valley reality distortion field is online and working. History is not turned off; it is framed and populated with filtered information. Thus, what Google does is the reality for many.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2023
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