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.
I'm being a bit extra but...
Your statement:
The article headline:
The general story in reference to the headline:
The article headline is accurate if you interpret it as
"A Developer Accidentally Found CSAM in AI Data. Google Banned Him For It" ("it" being "csam").
The article headline is inaccurate if you interpret it as
"A Developer Accidentally Found CSAM in AI Data. Google Banned Him For It" ("it" being "reporting csam").
I read it as the former, because the action of reporting isn't listed in the headline at all.
^___^
The inclusion of "found" indicates that it is important to the action taken by Google, would be my interpretation.
This is correct. However, many websites/newspapers/magazines/etc. love to get more clicks with sensational headlines that are technically true, but can be easily interpreted as something much more sinister/exciting. This headline is a great example of it. While you interpreted it correctly, or claim to at least, there will be many people that initially interpret it the second way you described. Me among them, admittedly. And the people deciding on the headlines are very much aware of that. Therefore, the headline can absolutely be deemed misleading, for while it is absolutely a correct statement, there are less ambiguous ways to phrase it.
This is pretty much the art of sensational journalism, popular song lyric writing and every other "writing for the masses" job out there.
Factual / accurate journalism? More noble, but less compensated.
It is a terrible headline. It can be debated whether it's intentionally misleading, but if the debate is even possible then the writing is awful.
Awfully well compensated in terms of advertising views as compared with "good" writing.
Capitalism in the "free content market" at work.