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Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store
- amadeuspagel 6y agoThere was a thread on twitter recently about how app stores would have rejected the first web browser, asking what future innovations might not happen due to them. Guess federated social media is a part of the answer.
- splitrocket 6y agoYup. The internet is supposed to be "dumb" in the middle and "smart" at the edges. These app stores are centralized points of failure.
- jariel 6y agoThe problem is the 'App Stores'. Think of them as retail outlets, in a mall. Do you see shady stuff going on there? Would 'The Gap' sell porn to increase profits by 15%? Of course not. And for obvious reasons. We shouldn't think of 'App Stores' as some kind of truly open marketplaces, any more than a shopping mall is. What we need is just more independent means of distribution.
- kyriakos 6y agoShopping Malls can have Sex Shops. Play and AppStore don't allow them.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI have never seen a shopping mall with a sex shop. Maybe lingerie or some novelty items at a Spencer’s, but I doubt mall operators would want to deal with people complaining about their kids walking by a store selling pornography and sex toys. They usually end up in undesirable locations or in rundown strip malls.
- ben_w 6y agoI go past a mall with a dildo shop inside it on my current walking commute to work. I saw another one of the same chain in the main train station of… I think it was Hannover? I was travelling a lot by InterRail and the places are blurring together. Zürich has (or had) a sex shop with the wares clearly visible from the outside in the expensive bit of the city centre. Cambridge (UK) has an Ann Summers in its main shopping centre. Thinking of the UK, I’ve seen vibrating cock rings openly stocked in Tesco, which is the largest supermarket chain in the UK. Attitudes to such topics are surprisingly flexible.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoSorry, I meant in the US. I can easily see them in places with healthier attitudes about sex.
- t-writescode 6y agoI think most of the comments here are US-centric, which also happens to be where the app stores are mostly implemented, so they come with the same source values.
- stryan 6y agoThe mall down the street from my old apartment had one. It was small and discrete though; I passed it plenty of times before realizing what it was.
- jariel 6y ago"Shopping Malls can have Sex Shops." Why do people find a corner-case of an analogy, and somehow think it negates the analogy? It's just an analogy. Of course 'some malls have sex shops' - but obviously, most of them don't. The vast majority of corps don't want their brands anywhere near porn, sex, guns, politics, hate/contentious speech etc.. Most decent malls are actually selective of who they want in there, and the 'other residents' of the mall have a say as well. There are an infinite number of places porn/guns/politics can be sold, so that's not a problem, it's just not going to be in a system wherein the other players are wary of it. It's actually good reason why we need a lot of alternative points of distribution. I wonder if there should even be some legislation around that, in terms of the kinds of app stores that are preloaded must be more 'open' and that alternative options must be provided very easily.
- duckMuppet 6y agoPartially correct. Thinking about them in terms of the mall or a shopping plaza is good. However, you mistakenly compared the app store with the Gap. The app store is the mall space, numerous apps abound, as do shops. The gap might not sell porn, but Victoria secret, Spencers, Hollywood (nights?? I can't recall) exist in the mall and might not be porn but... Some retail plazas might have an adult section. Best buy or Fry's at one point had adult magazines and videos. Some retail plazas even have other things progressives and democrats find offensive, like guns and old classic literature. Occasionally you can also find a pawn shop in a retail plaza. There was a point where you would rent out your mall or retail space to anyone with the money to cover the cost plus a small profit. The decadence, wealth inequality, and unrealistic valuations from government interference have led to a world where it's fairly easy for some to cherry pick who they want renting from them based upon their ideological, political, or racial spectrum or beliefs. The same now occurs in our app stores.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoHigh end malls never had any of those things, anywhere I’ve been in the US. Victoria’s Secret and Spencer’s are pretty far from sex shops or pornography in my opinion. Not that I agree the policies of app stores to restrict items solely because they are pornography or sex related. But high end mall operators might reject sex shops for many of the same reasons.
- Sargos 6y agoThese threads make it obvious that most people would be okay with malls being the only place where shopping is allowed to happen. "Our local mall is great, I don't see a need for any other malls or standalone stores. Malls provide an air conditioned space, on-site site security, and even refreshments while you shop." I think it stems from a lack of empathy for others. I don't buy dildos so I see no reason to allow dildo stores to exist.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jariel 6y agoI don't read it that way at all. I think most people understand there are many places to buy stuff. Shopping malls are 'one kind of place' and they have special rules. I haven't set foot in a Mall in a few years literally, they can't be that important.
- langitbiru 6y agoThis is the tweet: https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1297199788316692480 https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1297199788316692480
- nabla9 6y agoThat was the original Microsoft vision (Blackbird project, MSN and other names). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform).
- kgwxd 6y agoSeems likely anyone using Mastodon would know about alternative "stores" and manual installs.
- aloisdg 6y agoIt still slow down neophytes to try it.
- doiwin 6y agoI know about them. But I would have to root my phone to install them. And that means trusting some binary blob from someone on the internet. So I would not do it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoYou don't need to root your phone to sideload on Android... at least I've never encountered an Android device where that was true.
- Hasnep 6y agoWhy would you have to root your phone? On my Android phone I just go into the settings app to enable third party appstores.
- daniel-s 6y agoNot true on Android, you just need to download and install F-Droid; a free software app store.
- djsumdog 6y agoTrue, but it's still a terrible user experience for the average person.
- pricechild 6y agoOn iOS maybe, but there's no problem installing 3rd party app stores on Android without rooting. See for example F-Droid. Recent versions of Android have also improved the permissions model... you can specify what apps (e.g. F-Droid) are allowed to install other apps. You don't need to add a blanket allow forever.
- 0xUser 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse " The Fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is the ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other. On different servers (instances), users can create so-called identities. These identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the instances because the software running on the servers supports one or more communication protocols which follow an open standard. As an identity on the fediverse, users are able to post text and other media, or to follow posts by other identities. In some cases, users can even show or share data (video, audio, text, and other files) publicly or to a selected group of identities and allow other identities to edit other users' data (such as a calendar or an address book)." (wiki)
- nottorp 6y agoWell said. It's always funny when some acronym no one's heard of shows up unexplained on HN.
- scrollaway 6y agoFediverse isn't an acronym, nor is it a term "no one's heard of". You haven't heard it before, and it's great to explain it, but don't project that either.
- bovermyer 6y agoTwo things: First, don't assume that just because you've never heard a word, that means no one has heard of it. There are quite a lot of us who know what the fediverse is. Second, and this is a little pedantic, fediverse is a portmanteau, not an acronym.
- FascistsAreLame 6y agoI feel you’re being overly literal to the point where I’m not entire sure you understand English as well as you think. Hyperbole is an acceptable literary device. To say “No one has heard of this band” is colloquial to English, but obviously other people have heard of the band, the hyperbole is used to emphasize how few people have heard, not that no people have. To correct someone here isn’t correct, it’s suggests a sheltered existence.
- scarface74 6y agoWithout getting into the details of this - yeah I disagree with it - but, Android allows side loading. Isn’t that what everyone wanted from Apple? On a higher level, what’s the problem and what should be changed? Google has a policy that people don’t like, Android can side load, isn’t that exactly what people want?
- superkuh 6y agoSorry to go off-topic, but the entire existence of the word 'side-loading' is some 1984-level language manipulation. As if installing applications without getting the permission of some abstract corporate owner is the weird thing. No, having to get permission is the weird way to install things.
- chii 6y agoas a computer moves ever more towards a white-label appliance with a single purpose, the act of "installing" becomes more and more alien. It sucks, but a majority of the computer-using population cares not for it, and only want it to work. Think washing machine - have you ever seen people want to install apps into their washing machine?
- mindslight 6y agoMany people complain about newer washing machines not using enough water to get their clothes clean, etc. So yes, even if they don't know it.
- 1_person 6y agoIf the singular fucking purpose of the washing machine was to run apps, I sure as fuck would expect to see people wanting to install apps on their washing machine.
- scarface74 6y agoAnd Android doesn’t stop you from doing that - from anywhere you wish. So what’s the problem?
- daniel-s 6y agoA reminder that F-Droid [1] is a free software app store that can be used to download free/open source software, including Mastodon clients. [1] https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- grahoho 6y agoA reminder that F-Droid banned Gab from their store. https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app/ https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app/
- gilrain 6y agoA reminder that Gab is not a gray area edgecase, but a purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate speech.
- djsumdog 6y agoand why does that matter? They later switched to ActivityPub/Mastodon for a bit. They still run a Mastodon fork, but defederated back in May. Gab was also banned explicitly by URL by any app makers and in many ActivityPub libraries (you can find checks where it hashes the URL and compares it to known Gab URLs). > a purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate speech We're in a bizarre world right now where you can label any opinion you don't agree with as hate speech, dehumanize police and call every conservative a literal Nazi and that's all okay now for some reason. At some point we have to remember that historically, a lot of people who thought they were right, about slavery, homosexuality, war, abortion, polygamy, and other controversial topics, eventually came down on the wrong side of history. The attack on speech and ideas has never been more profound. If you don't like an idea, you don't have to listen, but people are going to continue to go to fringes whenever their voices are silences. That will create more extreme platforms and more extremism, not less.
- cecja 6y agoThere is holocaust denying, calls to kill blacks and rape fantasies about female politicians and movie stars. There are literal calls for the rise of the white race to eradicate everyone else on the front page of gab daily. If you want to defend shit like this on the merit of free speech the probability that you are in fact a white nationalist are not to far. And the history is plastered with censorship the world was never more free than it is now you are just repeating non facts without even doing a hint of research.
- humanistbot 6y agoThe rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these apps, because some of the microblogging sites that can be accessed via Fediverse have this kind of content. Based on this rationale, I look forward to Google Play removing Chrome, Firefox, and all other web browsers from the store as well.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ng12 6y agoWell, we asked for this. We demanded Twitter and FB censor their content, we applauded Cloudflare* for deplatforming websites. Now those monopolies can use the precedent to control more of the web.
- sp332 6y ago*Cloudflare
- Avamander 6y agoWell, we didn't. Did we say that apps that give ubiquitous access to generally positive content should be removed? No, not really. Did we say that apps that contain user content should consider a bit what behaviour they enable and promote? Yes, and they have done so for a long while, remember, there's illegal content other than what people would call "hate speech".
- bccdee 6y agoAsking a platform to moderate the content on its website isn't the same as asking an app distributor to ban apps which could conceivably be used to communicate objectionable ideas. Those are completely different.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zucker42 6y agoWho is "we"?
- the_other 6y agoAs if their assault on the open web wasn't already painfully obvious.
- angio 6y agoMy favorite app is Tusky and is still available from F-Droid [0]. I think Tusky will be fine since they block Gab and so they won't be affected by this ban. [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/
- Avamander 6y agoAs much as I hate Gab, I hate the possible extension of "unwanted content" especially considering Google's possible interests in China. I would not be surprised if next up to be removed are apps that allow access to instances that discuss the Uighurs or 天安门大屠杀 freely.
- tadzik_ 6y agoFedilab is also available on f-droid and it doesn't do any silly blocking.
- dleslie 6y agoGab isn't the only source of hate on the fediverse; there's plenty of diversity in the hate speech to be found on the 'verse.
- crocodiletears 6y agoBeen looking for a good client. Can you disable the block on Gab? I know the place is a cesspool, but I don't like the idea of missing content because an app developer doesn't like an instance.
- angio 6y agoThere's Husky, a fork of Tusky that allows users connect to Gab.
- crocodiletears 6y agoThanks, that's good to know.
- 6y ago
- jhardy54 6y agoShouldn't this policy apply to all communication apps? Web, IRC, SMS, and even phone calls can connect you with a hate speech provider if you know the right address to dial. This sets a dangerous precedent and highlights why we should continue removing Google/etc as dependencies in our lives.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoDon't make the mistake of believing that systems run by human beings are required to be logically consistent.
- mindslight 6y agoDon't make the mistake of thinking we shouldn't demand that bureaucratic systems follow logical rules just because they're run by human beings.
- drummer 6y ago"Don't make the mistake of thinking" is where we are heading.
- IronWolve 6y agoLike google mail marking all Trump/Whitehouse emails as spam, Comcast banning SMS from Republican fund raising. All depends on who the companies consider a hate group.
- CodeArtisan 6y agoThere is probably more than what is being said here otherwise clients for reddit or 4chan would have been removed a long time ago.
- robrtsql 6y agoI don't think there is. This happens all the time--recently, a podcast app was removed from the Play Store because it could be used to listen to content which didn't meet Play Store guidelines. The only way to fix it is to post about it and generate enough outrage that Google hears about it and can undo the ban.
- vorpalhex 6y agoWhen you say that's the only way to fix it, you are literally correct. There is no real ticket or support mechanism, no appeals process, nothing. The fastest way to raise an issue with Google is to email a journalist or hitup your twitter followers.
- benologist 6y agoApps being rejected was a talking point for the anti-trust investigations for Apple. I don't think Google is quite so famous for its rejections but they were part of that investigation for other abuse, hopefully any changes that come about will apply to them too. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/26/antitrust-investigation-apple-disturbing-behavior/ https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/26/antitrust-investigation...
- pbronez 6y agoPerhaps the FTC should have an office dedicated to overseeing policy enforcement for the largest store platforms. There could be a mechanism for saying "hi, I was banned by store X under policy Y but I believe my app was unfairly targeted because Z circumstance and Q other apps should all be treated equally here, including the first party app they're trying to protect..."
- quotemstr 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cft 6y agoThis is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites in Chrome.
- tzfld 6y agoThat will be the moment when Chrome drifts into it's slow death spiral.
- codingkoi 6y agoDoes anyone know the US case law on the 1st amendment being applied to corporate actors? I see the argument often that things like this are a free speech violation but the 1st amendment says “Congress shall pass no law...”. It doesn’t apply to actors other than the state. I’m not defending Google’s actions here but I also don’t think it’s technically a free speech violation at least as the amendment is written, so I’m wondering if there are any cases addressing this sort of censorship w.r.t. the 1sr amendment.
- freehunter 6y agoNone, the Constitution only limits the power of the government, not private organizations.
- sp332 6y agoIt's not a 1st amendment violation, but it's still anti-free-speech. There's more to free speech than just the one sentence.
- ng12 6y agoThere's the first amendment and there's the concept of free speech. This absolutely violates free speech but does not violate the first amendment. The only current framework to protect freedom of speech from private companies is to designate them as common carriers, e.g. phone companies legally cannot police what is said over their wires.
- bccdee 6y agoI don't think it's necessarily anti-free-speech. The idea of free speech is that everyone should be able to express their opinions without being prosecuted for it, not that everyone is entitled to a platform for those opinions. You should be able to write an article about absolutely anything, but you're not entitled to put it in my newspaper. I of course agree that the mastodon ban is a bad move because it sets a double standard where browsers can access arbitrary web content but other apps can't, and because it grossly limits the things that the average user can do with their device. However, these are consumer rights issues, not free speech issues.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- humanistbot 6y agoThe rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these apps, because some of the microblogging sites that can be accessed via Fediverse have this kind of content. Based on this rationale, I look forward to Google Play removing Chrome, Firefox, and all other web browsers from the store as well.
- judge2020 6y agoThere is a specific exception to web browsers, so Mastodon app(s) could probably classify as one by prominently displaying the web url of a post above the post.
- danShumway 6y ago:) I wonder how this fits into the Chromium team's insistence that URLs are user-unfriendly and that browsers ought to redesign them?
- anoncake 6y agoUnless the rule these apps actually broke is that you aren't allowed to do things that go against Google's profit interests.
- mkl 6y agoWhere do we find the rules about exceptions? Are group communication apps excepted as well? It's not obviously in the Restricted Content policy page: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/topic/9877466 https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/topi... The rules there are extremely general, and technically cover all sorts of things which are currently let into the Store.
- headbansown 6y agoVague policies are very useful when those making them wish to engage in arbitrary and capricious enforcement.
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- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jakelazaroff 6y ago> Holy crap, google is apparently taking down all/most fediverse apps from google play on the grounds that that some servers in the fediverse engage in hate speech. Good thing you can't find any hate speech on Play Store–promoted corporate behemoths Twitter and Facebook!
- thelean12 6y agoThis is a bad faith argument. Twitter and Facebook do a lot to take down hate speech from their platforms (with exceptions made for "public interest" cases like high level politicians). Some servers on the fediverse specifically allow unfettered hate speech.
- kaibee 6y agoSo google is taking down Discord and anything that provides an IRC like experience too then?
- jakelazaroff 6y agoNo, it's bad faith to pretend that some random Fediverse server that allows unfettered hate speech has the same societal impact as the mountains of misinformation and bigotry that flourish on Twitter and Facebook, despite their half-hearted efforts to look like they're fighting it. Just look at the scale at which Facebook enables the distribution of right-wing propaganda: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/technology/what-if-facebook-is-the-real-silent-majority.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/technology/what-if-facebo...
- cft 6y agoThis is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites in Chrome.
- wow_yes 6y agoWe must - otherwise the continued takeover of America by White Supremacists like Trump and Ted Cruz will be the end.
- IncRnd 6y agoChrome already blocks websites.
- cft 6y agoFor hate speech? I thought only for malware so far.
- IncRnd 6y agoFor the most part, yes I believe the blocking is for malware sites. The current list I am aware: malware sites, deceptive sites, suspicious sites, sites with possible harmful programs, sites that load scripts from unauthenticated sources, sites that chrome believes were typed incorrectly. I didn't intend to imply that chrome currently, intentionally blocks sites on other criteria. However, the framework is already there. History shows that the ego of people always takes over if left unchecked. When it is possible to restrict something, that will eventually get restricted. This is especially true when discussing large companies, such as Google. I was agreeing with you and not correcting you :-)
- thesizeofa 6y agoSadly not yet but blocking sites for hate speech cant come soon enough.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y agoThey should ban Gmail too, what if some asshole sends me a death threat via email? Wait, Gmail is made „by us” and not „by pesky them”. Gmail is sure ok.
- brownbat 6y agoI feel like there's a whole series of articles that could be filed under "Tech industry decides aol really had the right model after all."
- john_moscow 6y agoFor anyone else concerned with the recent Big Tech censorship, people are actively building alternative social medial platforms and they are taking off. The RedditAlternatives subreddit [0] provides a fairly good overview of them. Some are rather extreme, others are more reasonable, but there are alternatives, and it's up to us, the reasonable people, to choose where we want to spend our time and money. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...
- bredren 6y agoWeird to see HN just four links away from 4chan.
- cft 6y agoWait till they start blocking those Reddit alternatives in Chrome.
- Icathian 6y agoHonestly such a brazen step might be good in the long run. People are all to happy to be boiled frogs, and an overreach like that might jolt some off their ecosystem.
- zeta0134 6y agoCan't the same offending toots be viewed in Google Chrome? Just screenshot their own browser with the same content they are reporting and ask when they will turn the lens inward. Or, find similar content in Twitter, or Facebook, etc. This sets a dangerous precedent.
- twirlock 6y agoI'm glad I degoogled. This kind of thing is why. It wasn't even hard after I got email switched over. If they didn't have a video monopoly, I would never have to use their stuff.
- Forbo 6y agoNot sure why this comment was dead, but I vouched for it. I've been slowly separating from Google for a while now for slightly different reasons, namely that I've grown increasingly distrustful of surveillance capitalism on the whole.
- pixxel 6y ago> Not sure why this comment was dead The amount of Google employees here on HN who enjoy surveillance capitalism salaries and bonuses might be the reason.
- disposekinetics 6y agoThe only thing still tying me to google is Gmail. I'm a bit timid about running my own mail servers.
- lucb1e 6y agoAny other mail service is already better than Google's. You don't have to host your own to get off Google, if that's what you're aiming for! There are a lot of other trustworthy providers. As someone who hosts their own email, I'd thank you for diversifying. While, one the one hand, I don't have a lot of trouble with delivery even from a residential IP address and I'd recommend self-hosting, I understand anyone who's hesitant. My mail lands in Google spamboxes much more often than it should (I don't send any automated mail these days, i.e. not even website notifications or anything: everything is hand-written or at least triggered by the person receiving the email; my sending IP has been stable for a decade). Another downside of Google is that they hide the existence of the spam folder and many people will simply never see it and be able to update its filters by replying to me or marking it as not-spam. Heck, some Google-for-corporate mail service even blocks your email at smtp level and there is no recourse. By diversifying receiving servers, at least Google doesn't get to set one standard: if your mail doesn't arrive in a Google inbox, it's currently extremely hard to argue that "but it's google's fault" (when it totally is). Clearly I as an individual have an issue and the big google doesn't.
- obenn 6y agoThis does highlight how important the relative freedom of Android is. This is unfortunate but it does not stop the ability for people to load the APKs or get them off of F-Droid. That being said, imagine if this happened on the Apple App Store...
- rvz 6y agoHere's a simple riddle: First they came for Alex. Then they came for the frog... then they came for the corona and now they come for all the elephants in the room. This isn't 'doing the right thing' and Google is not your friend.
- djsumdog 6y agoI hate how terribly locked down all modern operating systems are. I recently started using a PinePhone. It's up to people in tech to show that regular/ordinary people can get away from these mega corps that seek to control everything about the tech we use. Most people won't put in the effort though.
- Spivak 6y agoI think this is a good example of "you can't solve human problems with cute tech workarounds" because I think Google is actually in the right here (given you think their ban on hate speech is general is legitimate). It shouldn't matter at all the technical details of how an app works or the fact that it's federated or distributed. All that really matters to the policy is what a user sees when they download and open the app. And on that front I completely understand where Google is coming from. Because the fediverse has a laissez faire attitude towards moderation (i.e. instance owners don't really block much) much of what you see on the fediverse is stuff that would get you banned on mainstream social networks [1]. And that content is the default experience unlike a web browser/chat programs/communities where you have to seek out that kind of content. I expect that an app tied to a specific instance that put effort into moderating their content and put up some safeguards against seeing content on other instances by default with some popup like "content on other servers is not vetted, are you sure?" would be allowed to stay. [1] Which makes sense since these are some of the only havens for people who can't make it on Twitter/FB/Reddit.
- bccdee 6y agoThe technical details do matter quite a bit though, because the same logic could be used to ban (for instance) web browsers. Because the web is an open protocol that can be used to communicate with any website, even objectionable ones, every browser is an app that gives access to hatespeech content. Google may ban the 8chan app, but they don't ban browsers despite browsers being able to access the 8chan website. Of course, Google won't ban the web, but only because it doesn't suit them to. What we wind up with is Google having arbitrary control over which types of communication protocols are allowed on Android with no need to justify their decisions, because any protocol could carry hatespeech, and that's pretty concerning.
- mindfulhack 6y agoDisgusting censorship in such a position of power. Corporations like Facebook and Google and Apple shape society. There is no getting around it. It should no longer be acceptable to use the concepts of 'capitalism' and 'privateness' as an excuse for censorship on platforms that have become as good as public utilities. The open web has never been more important. What next, will Google's Chrome browser start blocking fediverse web domains? That's their 'platform', too.
- Lambdanaut 6y agoNot only are these apps web browsers of a subset of sites, other web browsers on the Play Store already allow access to these sites in exactly the same manner as the app, using the SAME PROTOCOL. In respect to this move by Google, there are no differences between web browsers and Mastodon browsers. The only difference is that if Google applies their ban equally and fairly, they lose tremendous amounts of money by banning all web browsers. We shall see if Google follows it's own policy on this manner or if they are descriminating based on what lines their pockets.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoDo Mastodon apps report your browsing preferences to google? If you browse with chrome, google knows what you browse.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoThere are plenty of web browsers on the Play Store that are not Chrome.
- mc32 6y agoIt always starts like that. People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government. Eventually the definition of hate or whatever it is that’s offensive is very removed from the original meaning, and now we all bear the brunt of the sensible people who with best intentions wanted to make things better.
- brightball 6y agoThe is what I believe is the goal of placing restrictions on people based on “mental health”. It’s so open ended and not easily verifiable that it becomes a sliding scale.
- claudiawerner 6y agoIf I'm understanding you right, the idea is that some harms, physical ones, are fair game for the law to cover, but other harms (mental ones) or a collection of boundary cases are less (if at all) within the purview of legislation. I think there's a good conversation to be had as to what in particular makes physical harms so special as compared to others, and how existing law in every country (including the US) can constitutionally include some non-physical harms within its legislation (such as laws against sending threatening letters, or child pornography law, or fraud).
- brightball 6y agoSpecifically, I’m concerned about government placing restrictions on individuals based on their mental health history. What is the process to dispute it? You can’t just take a blood test to say this isn’t really a problem.
- claudiawerner 6y agoOh right, I don't think I understood what you were saying, then. That's also a good question.
- 6y ago
- tinyhouse 6y agoOn a related topic. I was trying to search videos from the Wisconsin shooting of the 17 year old who shot and killed two people and injured one. Every video I clicked on was already taken down due to offensive content. I found it strange given that Youtube is full of videos of shooting incidents. Now, I do understand the families of the victims may want the videos taking down. But it seems to me the mob of people flagging these videos have a different motive. This shows that trusting the community to flag offensive content has its flaws. (although at Youtube's scale there's no alternative really)
- djsumdog 6y agoThat's actually very disturbing considering the amount of misinformation over this incident, and that they're charging that kid for murder! Were you able to find the videos? They tell a pretty different story than the media narrative. Every person he shoots attacked him or had a gun. He doesn't shoot the kid behind them who had his hands up, or any other bystanders. He then walks with his hands up and turns himself in to police. It's still up on several alternative sites (BitChute and PeerTube instances) along with some I can't mention here. I always use youtube-dl to download YouTube videos, Tweets and Reddit videos for anything that's going on right now; especially shootings. They get taken down pretty fast and it has a chilling effect because people are only seeing the CNN/MSNBC/FOX versions that are HEAVILY edited.
- tinyhouse 6y agoYes, I found it eventually. Although the video doesn't show the first fatal shooting so we don't know how it all started.
- crocodiletears 6y agoEarlier footage indicates the first man shot was attempting to start a fight with the militiamen, but there's a gap in the timeline where nobody was filming before the fight broke out. The NYT has a very good article on the subject (and I'm a man who's very critical of the NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting-video.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenos...
- vmception 6y agodoes that mean Blind is next?
- claydavisss 6y agoThis is how the status quo is maintained. But please no outrage, most tech folks have demanded "hate speech" crackdowns for some time.
- tiny_epoch 6y agoAt what point do we put these devices down? At what point are they causing more harm than good? Is humanity capable of looking away from the screens its created?
- chiefalchemist 6y agoI don't like this type of content. At all. But having Google or similar decide for me is freightening. More so are the people who buy into the idea of Google & Co being benevolent dictators. Marginalizing ideas that breed on marginalization is to me a fool's errand. Light the ultimate sanitizer.
- zeveb 6y agoWhen I opened up YT Music today, almost the entire scree was taken up by a link to a political playlist. I don't want to participate in politics — I just want to listen to some background music while I work. Why is Googling silencing one bunch of creators and promoting another bunch? How is this good for Google, the country or the world?
- djsumdog 6y agoBig tech is directly influencing people today in the way so many screamed "The Russians" were influencing us in 2016 (and back during McCarthy). I have a 500GB microSD card on my phone with all my music. I've been collecting it for decades, many from artists I meet in bars and pubs. I buy off Bandcamp when I have to, which only charges 15%, compared to Google/Amazon/Apple which charge 30%+, or streaming services that pay artists pennies. Take control of your music. Download it, buy it DRM free, save it, back it up. Take control of your video feed. Subscribe to YouTube channels using an RSS reader. Use 3rd party frontends like Invidious. If you're and tech and know how to do this, than do it, and help write posts to show how others can too.
- zelly 6y agoUnfortunately phones with SD cards are hard to come by these days. I think that was intentional to help prop up streaming because both each of the duopoly has heavy investments in streaming media.
- mangatmodi 6y agoI would say Google should ban Google search, because it allows links to the hate speech blogs. Sarcasm aside, I think its one of the big tech moves to control free web.
- oropolo 6y agoUsing this rationale the Facebook and Twitter apps should be removed from the Play Store as well: an abundance of hate speech can be found in/with those apps.
- thomascgalvin 6y ago> Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government. To be fully accurate, this is absolutely censorship, but it's not a violation of anyone's First Amendment rights. People often conflate the two. We can argue about whether or not Google should ban certain opinions on their platform, or where the line should be drawn, but it is arguable that hey have the legal right to do so. And the Federal Government, just as inarguably, does not have this right.
- croes 6y agoThat's a clever trick. Make the medium you want to censor a private property than it's legal.
- judge2020 6y agoI doubt the US Government has any hand in this, other than not wanting to be the ones running social media.
- huntertwo 6y agoI don't think it's a question of the medium but a question of the actor doing the censoring. If the feds mandate the censoring on a private medium, I don't think it makes it legal. I think one difference is the enforcement, Google can't censor an individual universally, just on their platform, whereas the government can enforce it universally with force/jail/etc.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> If the feds mandate the censoring on a private medium, I don't think it makes it legal FCC regulation of TV broadcast comes close, but apparently obscenity isn't protected under the First Amendment (perhaps you can tell I'm not a lawyer, or for that matter an American). https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...
- 6y ago
- throwawaysea 6y agoCensorship, deplatforming, and cancel culture are some of the most dangerous developments that have been normalized by progressives. I am not surprised to see Google do this given their internal culture has been weaponized by the progressive left.
- shadowgovt 6y agoCan they be side-loaded?
- lucb1e 6y agoOf course, this is Android and open source apps. There are almost always apks to be found outside of Google's kingdom for open source projects.
- throwaway189262 6y agoThere's racist stuff all over Google's biggest properties. Racist results on Google, videos on youtube, sites hosted on GCP. Give me a break with your fake trashy virtue signalling Google. This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn't like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google's position as the central hub of the internet.
- linuxftw 6y agoIndeed. The real story is federated applications undermine their search monopoly.
- dageshi 6y agoI really doubt google cares about federated applications at all. I suspect they're just trying to avoid a potential future shitstorm where they're accused of facilitating something nasty because they "approved" apps to be on the play store.
- linuxftw 6y agoNo, as others have said, you'd have to apply the same reasoning to a web browser. Google dominates the web search, so there's no need to prevent other browsers because it all drives Google's revenue anyway. Any app that allows you to break out of the garden is banned.
- dageshi 6y agoViewed through the lens of "what will cause the most bad publicity" a browser is understood by 90% of the population. The "fediverse" isn't. It can be spun to cause damage in the way a browser cannot. Google don't care about the federated stuff because it's not big enough to bother them, in fact it probably siphons all the crap they'd rather not index off to a place they no longer have to worry about. They care about bad publicity and being seen to implicitly support "bad" things via their app store.
- de6u99er 6y agoIt needs to be regulated first by law makers to prevent companies applying arbitrary rules and discriminate clients based on subjective/someone's personal preferences. Countries like Austria and Germany have a law called Wiederbetätigungsgesetz which prevents public display of neonationalistic symbolism or speech. I think such a law would be a great starting point for a new law preventing hate speech and discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. We can see a shift to the alt-right in the USA at the moment, where reasonable people and certain ideas like universal healthcare are being labeled as extreme left.
- moduspol 6y agoWe've survived 244 years as a country without government bureaucrats regulating what is and isn't "hate speech." I don't think we need it now.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoYou'd need to repeal the First Admendment to do that.
- jjcon 6y agoI find it hilarious how people here are so proud that Germany is not nationalistic... one might even say their pride borders on... nationalism.
- leotaku 6y agoAs an Austrian, while I have absolutely no sympathy for our local Neo-Nazi groups and far-right Parties, I would personally see the Widerbetätigungsgesetz to be repealed as soon as possible. While it might be true that most people who have been affected by this law were actually far-right bigots, it is still scary to me that my government is able and willing to prosecute based on opinion and speech. Maybe a tolerable law could be modelled using some concept of truth (eg. I think the Nazis were great vs. The Holocaust did not happen), but I am unsure how that could reasonably be applied when talking about contemporary affairs.
- logicchains 6y agoApparently the far-right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany became the third largest political party in 2017, winning 94 seats in the Bundestag. So doesn't look like those hate speech laws are very effective.
- rchaud 6y agoTaking it outside of the walled garden should always be Step 1 for apps like this. PWAs exist, and most users these days have seen the "Add to Home Screen" prompt on websites. There is no reason for this to be a native app. > This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all. I disagree. Users dependent on installing apps are the least likely to use fediverse apps to begin with. I use F-Droid or download APKs from XDA, but I have no idea how I would even get started with Mastodon or these other decentralized apps. I frequently hear the term "start an instance of ___". What does that mean? Can't I just create an account? When I hear "start an instance", I think of launching a Linux droplet on Digital Ocean and setting up an app there. I can't imagine what an average user that wants a Twitter alternative would think.
- seaish 6y agoYou can of course run your own instance, but yes, you can also just make an account. You need to decide which instance you're going to make it on, but after that it's 100% the same as any other website.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spamizbad 6y agoOkay, so take down twitter, reddit, and facebook too?
- mynameismonkey 6y agoOriginal post combined with this one, so just for completeness' sake here's the original toot from the lead Mastodon dev @Gargron: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818 https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818
- lawwantsin17 6y agoI guess they'll have to remove Youtube and Facebook apps next. F the App Stores anyway.
- rootsudo 6y agoI had no idea of Fediverse, and now I do. Thanks, Google censorship!
- mgn01 6y agoHow is anyone surprised? It is the grave you, the liberal tech people, have made. You can dig up threads here about Confederate Flags and how the people waving them (or not-burning the flags) need to be pushed into wood chipper. Suspect the outrage of this thread is largely performative too.
- robotron 6y agoNo you are. (See how that works)
- holidayacct 6y agoThis doesn't seem like a complete story or any kind of rationale for taking down apps, if you have a problem with hate speech you should probably get off the internet.
- lucb1e 6y ago> if you have a problem with hate speech you should probably get off the internet. The internet, yes, as one cohesive whole. There aren't safe places, adult content can't be hidden from kids so let's not let kids use google until they're at least 18, maybe 21, and hate speech is something we see continuously everywhere... I think you're overreacting.
- djsumdog 6y agoSome Fediverse apps have ban lists within them for certain instances. This has been hugely controversial in Fediverse community, to the point where some apps that fork apps with ban lists and republish them without those ban lists, sometimes get removed from F-Droid! You can't just keep banning Fediverse instances. It's like banning websites. So what is this going to mean? Approved instances. Here's a list of 200 instances ... get on our approved list to be a part of the app. That list might grow to 3000, but if you're not on it, your instance is not accessible. That is where we're heading.
- est31 6y ago> to the point where some apps that fork apps with ban lists and republish them without those ban lists, sometimes get removed from F-Droid! Do you have links? The only example I could think of was Freetusky, which was unmaintained while upstream Tusky itself got regular updates. That's what I'd guess as reason for its quite recent archival: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/commit/f9b7a9540f368f7cd4a85c574b1c1435beed299a https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/commit/f9b7a9540f368f... Latest version is 8.0.7 while upstream Tusky's latest version is 12.1. Back when it was new, the F-Droid devs actually defended Freetusky and didn't follow demands for its removal. https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/1736 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/1736 I don't think that F-Droid should pander to people who don't care about FOSS or maintaining software, no matter their views. Disclaimer: F-Droid maintainer/contributor (but gotten inactive for unrelated reasons). Edit to add: note that another Tusky fork had been uploaded to F-Droid (Husky) before Freetusky got removed.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoObligatory callout to Apple zealots who say that having a single AppStore and no sideloading capability is a good thing.
- HumblyTossed 6y agoI don't like hate speech. But the only thing that worries me more than the fact that there are so many people filled with so much hate is not allowing that to be out in the open where society can address it.
- arendtio 6y agoI think the problem is, that two things are getting mixed up. First, there are content providers like Facebook or Youtube. Those platforms store the content of their users and if the content can be publicized the content providers have to apply their rules. Second, there are software providers like the Play Store in its original function, Apples App Store or Amazons App Store. Those platforms should not care about content but just about software. If the software is malicious, ban it. But they should not ban software because if the content you can reach with it. That is the job if the distributing content providers. That said, I am not a particular friend of censoring content at all. I just accept, that some content providers have their own rules about which content they accept and which content they don't want to support.
- remram 6y ago"Content provider" usually refers to people making that content (e.g. individual users of YouTube or Facebook). Maybe "platform" or "service provider" is more appropriate?
- neiman 6y agoI'm surprised they take it down. Why would they do that? Is the fediverse a threat to Google? It's a super niche thing for the a small minority of people who are not Google target users anyway.
- thu2111 6y agoBecause they don't consider people who disagree with their political views legitimate, and wish to wipe them out via any means possible. The fact that the fediverse is small is neither here nor there: indeed, starting by picking off smaller players is a good way to establish a precedent and desensitise employees, so the next round of shutting down bigger players doesn't seem so bad. Boiling the frog, right in front of us. As for why they do it, this essay may prove enlightening: https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/
- eska 6y agoI'm sure all the people who were for taking down certain Fediverse apps for hate speech from the F-droid app store won't have a problem with being taken down from the Play Store on the same grounds, right? After all, one can still download their apps somewhere else.. Serves you right.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- motohagiography 6y agoThis will suffer from a backfire effect where the result is you just get more technically savvy radicals. Google's decision here exacerbates polarization. However, I actually welcome it because I would totally join a fediverse with a higher bar to entry, and where ideas had a longer period and participants were committed to building alternatives. It's the real punk. Everyone else can entertain and outrage themselves to death on public platforms where they compete for the reflected approval of a hive mind. I realize the sort of people who make decisions like this think they are doing this to "win," as the only thing on anyone's mind right now is influencing November, and making sure it "never happens again," but Googlers and tech people like this are creating a self-isolating minority of themselves. Exiting what has become the Karen-net is probably one of the most interesting problems to solve right now.
- bookmarkable 6y agoApple: In the headlines daily, called abusive monopoly. Google: Hold my beer.
- swiley 6y ago“Curation is necessary and won’t result in censorship.” Only free (free as in freedom and open source) software is ever acceptable. Everything else eventually leads to Hell.
- werber 6y agoI hope I’m being reactionary, but this feels like the possibility of leaving the walled garden is basically null
- jasonv 6y agoJustification for "all/most" in submission? Any confirmation of the broad speculation in this thread and the the linked thread..?
- mynameismonkey 6y agoFor the record, two submissions were combined, the title is not mine.
- thesizeofa 6y agoExcellent - not sure why this racist cancer is spreading so much and so fast across the internet, but any such tumour must be extirpated. If you refuse to police such content because of “free speech” then go back to the 30s, because expressing hatred for people is not an exercise of freedom. There are of course legitimate websites operating on the fediverse but sadly it is also thriving with crime and hatred.
- KirinDave 6y agoI guess Tusky's decision to ban a blocklist a bunch of instances citing that policy is looking pretty prescient, now.
- spiznnx 6y agoI think censorship of hate speech is good, but doing so through the play store is a terrible idea. This will just promote more side loading which is not good for the security of android as a platform. The play store needs to be fairly permissive in terms of content, so that people keep their phones secure. The primary purpose of app review needs to be security and quality, not censorship and rent-seeking.
- Longlius 6y agoContinue digging that antitrust grave, Google.
- franga2000 6y agoTime to start mass-reporting Google Chrome on the store because I can use it allows access to child porn and Nazi forums I guess? And also maybe revise all those antitrust laws into something actually useful - they're using their (kinda, mostly) monopoly to hinder competition by selectively applying their rules to whever they want and never themselves.
- sriram_sun 6y agoPretty soon Google is going to yank YouTube out of their App Store as well.
- justicezyx 6y agoI frequently visits 1 Chinese dota2 esports site. That's a small & independent site with 10+ years history. A vibrant community with mostly young gamers on dota2. Naturally, a lot of these visitors often engage in dynamic discussions on international relationships and domestic issues. Nothing too sensitive from my perspective. And most of the time, people contribute personal experiences that are quite valuable. The site is frequently shutdown for a few weeks, probably once every 2-3 months. And sometimes it can be a long one, as long as a few months. The reason is of cuz the site is engaged in "appropriate discussion". I want this to be a cautionary tale that, despite different motivation, the end results of these powerful entity, exert influence that is almost identify in behaviors. The good thing is that there is a process in US to correct the behaviors. While as there is none in China. And we have to stand up to protect the freedom.
- transfire 6y agoPlease outlaw paper. People have written many terrible things on it.
- DenisM 6y agoSo did anyone build a twitter-over-bitcoin microblogging platform yet? That would be pretty hard to censor.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI could see that backfiring pretty badly. Just think of all the politicians who want to regulate (or even try to ban citizens from using Bitcoin) being able to say it's chock full of 'Hate Speech'.
- DenisM 6y agoIt's hard to ban at this point - they could limit cashing out options, but the blockchain itself will live on as long as there are some places in the world where you can cash out.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI take the stance that the government can't actually ban or regulate Bitcoin - In the sense of changing the protocol or shutting it down. However the government can absolutely regulate my use of it as a citizen.
- dman 6y agoHow long before platforms start blocking websites using this logic? Or get rid of the web browser which suffers from this exact flaw? Disclaimer: Views expressed are my own and do not reflect my Employers position
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jokit 6y agoThey're letting us know what we should have already known for a long time. It's not the abuse of power that is the problem but the power to abuse. Decentralize all the things!
- zelly 6y agoRichard Stallman was right. The computer (smartphone) for millions of people has become a prison. The smartphone has been a tragedy for the human species. "Oh it doesn't matter they went after people I disagree with" Okay wise guy, what happens if the other side takes power? Think that's never happened historically? Then they'll come after you and I. How about we just not give this kind of power to anyone and let people make their own choices.
- ehsankia 6y agoIt has been shown time and time again that giving unrestricted uncensored access to billions will lead to the worst ideas proliferating. Look at QAnon and conspiracy theories running wild. Look anti-vaxxers and how America, one of the most advanced countries in the world, is now having Measles outbreaks after decades of having nearly 0 cases. Look at how simple things such as wearing a mask has become a controversial topic. Yes, everyone would obviously prefer a fully open and uncensored platform, but the reality is that those are very easy for bad actors to take advantage of. So many things on the web is disappearing thanks to these bad actors. Public APIs are getting locked down, Catpchas everywhere, passwords and 2fa are getting increasingly more complicated, and so on. If you really think every platform should be 100% open, you live in an idealistic universe that is not this one. The whole idea of "the solution to bad speech is more speech" simply does not work. It just doesn't.
- zelly 6y agoIt's easy to blame all the flaws of human character on its most highly available and proximate expression which is speech. There is violence, anger, hatred, envy, all kinds of evils in the world, the world isn't perfect, man isn't perfect, and trying to control others' thoughts isn't going to change that. That would actually be regressing several hundreds years back to the Dark Ages. If your assumption is that banning free speech would improve things, I would say that is the idealistic fantasy. There's no proof that it would work or wouldn't have the same unintended consequences as before. The more these platforms push back against their users, the more they turn the public against them, the more opportunities they create to be disrupted. In a recent poll 3 out of 4 Americans said they were willing to die for free speech.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoIf we're going to play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with "hate speech" (a term that's loosely defined, of course) then there simply isn't going to be any internet left.
- webjpa 6y agoIs reddit over
- webjpa 6y agoReddit, Twitter, should I keep going
- crazygringo 6y agoThe is the first I (as well as others here, apparently) had ever heard of the "fediverse". Wikipedia [1] helps me out with what it is technically... but can anyone who knows describe what its content is actually like? In terms of hate speech or illegal content... does that make up the vast majority of fediverse content, in the way that pirated media makes up the vast majority of torrents? (Even though torrents can also still be used for 100% legitimate and legal purposes.) Or is it like the dark web, which from what I understand is mostly legal content, but still hosts a sizeable proportion of content for illegal services and content? Or is it more like what Reddit used to be, where it's 99% all for good and fun, but with a tiny minority of super-hateful communities? (These days all those super-hateful communities have been banned for a while, which is why I mean the "old Reddit".) Just trying to get a basic context here. Not looking for speculation, but the impressions from people who actually use it... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- FalconSensei 6y agoI had some experience with Mastodon, which is a fediverse alternative to Twitter. So basically, think like this: Anyone could start their own 'Twitter' server, and doesn't matter which server you are in, you can send messages/follow anyone in any server, unless the person or server blocks you/your server. In Mastodon, it's mostly about legal content, but with different servers focusing on different subjects, or offering different levels of privacy and/or free-speech. Some servers focus on a safe-space for transgenders, others, a non-censored place for alt-right people.
- eitland 6y agoIf anything the instances I have visited have been cleaner than twitter and Facebook. On Twitter and in Facebook comments I've seen some serious hate speech.
- Miner49er 6y agoI haven't used Mastodon much, but in my experience, the Fediverse is mostly being created by people who are politically left (socialists, anti-capitalists in general), so the content I've seen leans that way and they mostly take a hard stance on hate speech. Check out dev.lemmy.ml (federated reddit) for an example of what I mean. However, anyone can create an instance in the Fediverse, like when Gab created their own Mastodon instance. Basically every other instance chose not to federate with them, though. That's what is nice about the Fediverse, you can pick what community with what rules is best for you.
- sriku 6y agoIs it hard for Google to blacklist these questionable domains and block them at the Android level instead? .. if the claimed issue is really a concern. That way browsers will also benefit from it.
- MivLives 6y agoTusky appears to still be up. Wonder if this has to do with the recent Husky/Tusky drama.
- pkilgore 6y agoJust the free markets at work nothing to see here! Its not like we have a MONOPOLY problem in tech! The markets will just sort it out.
- JeffreyFreeman 6y agoOP here, let me know if anyone has any questions I can help with, I'm the one who made the post this is linking to.
- monoideism 6y agoI'm not sure what the end-game here is for Google, or for Apple, both of whom have recently been pretty openly flexing their monopoly power. There seem to be too many of these changes to be a coincidence, although that's obviously a possibility. They seem rushed to establish some kind of precedent. Is there someone on Biden's team who is known to be a strong anti-monopolist, and this is in preparation for a administration change? I don't think Biden himself has ever had strong feelings here. Or maybe someone at the Trump admin has pretty much given them a green light? Rank speculation, all of what I wrote, but there seems to be a behavior pattern emerging recently among some of the most powerful tech companies.
- logicchains 6y ago>I'm not sure what the end-game here is for Google, or for Apple, both of whom have recently been pretty openly flexing their monopoly power. There seem to be too many of these changes to be a coincidence, although that's obviously a possibility. For Google, seems like it's because there's an election in a few months and Google's doing whatever it can to stop Trump winning again.
- ggggtez 6y agoI've never used this service, but let's play along for a moment. Let's say that 100% of the servers were bastions of hatespeech. It seems like the folks in this thread would be against banning it in that case. But I think that's wrong. If the app was 100% just hatespeech sites, then it should probably be banned. Now, then we get to reality: What is the real mixture? 80%? 50%? 20%? I don't have any background knowledge to make a guess. But I think it would not be difficult to show that whatever percentage it is, it would be far greater than say, what you can find on the average internet site. Why do I say that? Because instead of going on Facebook, which is so easy that over a billion people use it... you have to pick up an obscure piece of software and run a server, or something. So the only people who are going to pick this up are likely technophiles, and people who have been banned from mainstream sites.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- IronWolve 6y agoWouldnt this be the same as banning web browsers because you can goto hate sites? Ban irc clients because you can connect to evil irc servers? Ban email clients because you can email to hate domains? Its up to the user to configure and connect to a server in a open client.
- sascha_sl 6y agoWhether or not you agree with the action taken here, Gab has provoked this behavior for years, by calling itself uncensorable and asking its users to fork and resubmit fediverse apps with minimal changes to explicitly circumvent the Play Store Guidelines (even apps that did not implement a block of Gab to begin with), so it is hard for me to feel bad for Gab. That a few app developers have now been put in a position where they must implement the block is unfortunate. I always thought it was a good indicator of the developer's morals, but not much more.
- monadic2 6y ago"Don't be evil" my ass.
- devenblake 6y agoMeanwhile multiple 4chan clients are still up: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=4chan https://play.google.com/store/search?q=4chan Maybe it's too soon to say but given the reputation of 4chan vs the small user-group of fediverse I'd say these rules are being enforced selectively.
- aftergibson 6y agoI use an Apple device and it’s decisions like this that make me glad of that, however, it’s just the lesser of two evils right now. Both mobile platforms are making scary decisions lately and my faith in them decreases daily. I’m going to start supporting pine and any other open alternatives more. Pine is the only mobile platform I’m even vaguely optimistic about.
- ryukafalz 6y ago>I use an Apple device and it’s decisions like this that make me glad of that, however, it’s just the lesser of two evils right now. Be aware that while it's possible for Android users to download Fediverse apps from an alternative app store like F-Droid instead, the same would not be possible on an Apple device if Apple were to do the same.
- notananthem 6y agoTop comments in that article are one of the most well known hate speech sites is hosted therein.
- ipnon 6y agoThis was the first time in the history of Mastodon that a toot reached the front page of Hacker News. https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/104768703650147309 https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/104768703650147309
- raydev 6y agoThere’s not much to say on this subject anymore. We desperately need a mobile general purpose computing platform that doesn’t make side loading so onerous. Apple and Google are going to continue pretending they aren’t selling general purpose computers and they may well convince the regulators. Consumers need to be able to choose an operating system that gives users full control. I don’t want to be confined to a desktop or a laptop.
- qzx_pierri 6y agoI really wish people would just ignore hate speech online like we've been doing for forever. I'm so tired of Google & Twitter trying to be the "internet police". It's so infuriating. The internet feels too "safe" now. Obviously a "KKK Members" app in the app store is absolutely unacceptable, or something overt like that, but to dig into the content of an otherwise harmless app? Cmon, man. We're adults. Let us see what we want to see.
- krapp 6y ago>Obviously a "KKK Members" app in the app store is absolutely unacceptable, or something overt like that Why? if you want the internet to feel less "safe" and for people to simply ignore hate speech, why would this be unacceptable? It would certainly make the internet feel less safe for a lot of people, but maybe you're not one of those people, and those people can just ignore it as you said.
- MeatBro 6y agoIn case you want to know the alternative way, install F-droid from f-droid.org
- supergirl 6y agosubjugated by corporations, what a life.
- smonff 6y agoMiddle size Mastodon instance moderator here. When I see the amount of people registering with Gmail accounts on the Fediverse when it is supposed to be a tech giants escape (Twitter here but still) and then complaining and crying about a "Google Play ban", I am laughing very very strong.
- smonff 6y agoWait? Isn't the Fediverse full of nazis, freeze-peachers and non-moderated unsafe instances? Oh, yes! There we are. When framapiaf.org, mamot.fr and other "free speech" and "anti-censorship floss activists" will start to apply a proper moderation and clear blocks of fascists instances and users, maybe Google would reconsider to publish the Android clients on Google Play. Those spaces are totally out of control and this is a part of the problem.
- aiyodev 6y agoRemember when Google tried their own federated communication app and failed? Maybe they’re just jealous.