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The 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

The 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 ago
There 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 ago
    Unless the rule these apps actually broke is that you aren't allowed to do things that go against Google's profit interests.
- mkl 6y ago
  Where 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 ago
    Vague policies are very useful when those making them wish to engage in arbitrary and capricious enforcement.
matsemann 6y ago
Haven't podcasts apps recently been removed as well? Something about it being possible to listen to stuff about covid on them. Edit, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427 And well, they should probably remove the apps of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc as it's plenty of hate speech there too.
- newacct583 6y ago
  They didn't remove Podcast Addict, it's right here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po... That was a mistake, presumably. It's likely this is too. The deep desire on the part of posters here to assume malice and scream CENSORSHIP is really off-putting. I actually don't know anything about fediverse, but if it's like other pseudoanonymous obscure communications media it's probably filled with awful stuff. It's not that hard to imagine a naive reviewer who doesn't understand the architecture to be confused if they get a report showing screenshots of the app with the content available in it.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Honestly it's somewhat telling that Automation for app review can get messy fast and that Google should invest in Apple's approach to app review (but I also agree that the poster is extrapolating the app denial into something much more than what it is)
  - matsemann 6y ago
    It's not a desire to scream about sensorship. It's more about how the rules are arbitrarily enforced. And how every app's fate is in the hand of two big players, so you're sol if they ban you. Even if the ban is a mistake, good luck getting it reversed unless you're going viral.
  - kspacewalk2 6y ago
    The only reason Podcast Addict has been restored (multiple times) is that it's high-profile, and the owner raised enough stink to cause widespread (enough) outrage about this. Otherwise, whether through malice or incompetence, it would be gone forever.
raverbashing 6y ago
Cool. So if the issue is hate speech I'll be waiting for Google to ban the FB app as well
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Goggle doesn't protect users, they oppress wrongthinkers. Moderation of facebook is delegated to facebook.
rvz 6y ago
Exactly. This is Google drawing the line on where this "hate speech" is from and they believe that such "content" can be accessed via the Fediverse. To see how ridiculous this sounds, Google might as well completely take down the entire social media and internet browsing category on the Play Store since I keep seeing the same content from both extremes on all these platforms. Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser since you can find this "content" with a simple search. They will soon realise that "drawing the line on hate speech" is more tougher than solving leetcode CS questions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- noworriesnate 6y ago
  I get what you're saying, but I don't think this is because Google cares about hate speech. Google is simply using hate speech as an excuse to get rid of apps that it doesn't like. Deciding which apps you like and which you don't isn't that hard of a line to draw.
  - tsherr 6y ago
    That's precisely what they are doing. They don't care about hate speech. If they did, they wouldn't have Trump ads on the YouTube banner. This is justification to get rid of apps they don't like.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Not allowing a parties political ads would be clear favoritism in a political situation. You might not like Trump, but it's quite the jump to say republican ads are "hate speech." .. in fact that's quite literally weaponizing the word "hate speech" to censor political opinions you don't like.
      - VLM 6y ago
        Which is the whole point of hate speech laws. Can't market censorship of one party, but who could ever oppose censoring hate... then redefine hate to be anything you'd like censored, and ... that's what we have now. Any time anyone complains about censorship, roll out the excuse of holocaust denial, regardless whats actually being censored.
Hamuko 6y ago
You don't even have to go that far because you can just find plenty on Twitter.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
one of the problems we have in Tech (as an industry and on social media) is to allow individuals who make poor and bad decisions to hide behind the collective of a company/organization. And we continue applauding them for their great work they do in areas that are removed from the political. But these days innovation acts as a shield where we let the innovators get away and reap praise as individuals (the inventors of golang, the teams who standardized QUIC, the guys doing netflix propaganda about their simian-devops-army, facebooks React, Amazon's DSSTNE...) all of them have engineers who wear these things like a badge and are proud to give talks. Yet when they are responsible for projects that violate human rights, remove the Taiwanese flags from their app, or censor speech as in this case then we're never talking about people but it's always the opaqueness of the firm that hides these abuses. We need a list of these lizards so we know when to throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at them whenever they give a talk or share feel-good posts on LinkedIn. people should be ashamed instead of proud when they write "disclaimer I work at X"
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The tech industry is a place where people generally prefer to talk things out rather than yelling and shaming. I think that's worth protecting, even if we see short term gains that might be available from defection. After all, once Google realizes the norms have changed, won't they be able to leverage their resources to find people who yell louder and shame more frequently than you?
  - VLM 6y ago
    The old days are gone.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The old days were never as controversy-free as most people remember. There was a time not that long ago when common techie opinions like "Internet piracy isn't a big deal" or "shooter games are fun and kid-friendly" were seen as quite immoral in some circles, and calling your forum "Hacker News" was kinda subversive. If we're headed back to that kind of environment, just with a different set of moral issues enforced by a different set of people, that seems solidly OK.
mfer 6y ago
Or, might Chrome start censoring... If this is the Google policy they may want to bake that policy into the way Chrome operates.
- coldacid 6y ago
  What do you think AMP is a prelude to?
ulucs 6y ago
Not even web browsers, Twitter should go first
tus88 6y ago
Why not just get rid of that troublesome feature called the internet?
Legion 6y ago
> Firefox Don't give Google ideas.
retpirato 6y ago
Don't forget twitter & facebook, but they won't because that's not really the reason.
api 6y ago
Guess they should ban Chrome, since hate speech appears on the web. All these Fediverse things can be accessed via web apps and progressive web apps (PWAs) too.
avivo 6y ago
This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr...). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps, but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific communities which encourage hatred and real-world violence. Other implementations block these instances, and I believe are not banned. Whether or not this is a good thing is a complex question. If you happen to be the target of this hatred and violence, and feel it is an existential threat to your livelihood, you might believe that it is a good thing to make it more difficult for those who are engaging in this behavior to enlarge their communities. On the other hand, if you believe eliminating communities by platform fiat is an existential threat to your livelihood, this may seem like a very bad thing. (You might also think it's hypocritical, since you can access most of these communities via a browser. Google also controls the browser, and does make it difficult already to access some sites https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 . However, it does seem to have a higher bar for browsers than for social apps (e.g. malware, csam, iirc); some have suggested that there are legal reasons for this, I'm curious to learn more on this, but I have not seen any substantiation yet.)
- retpirato 6y ago
  So Google somehow knows which apps block certain instances, which generally get reputation among other instances & are quickly blocked? That's not believable.
  - jfarina 6y ago
    Why isn't that believable?
    - retpirato 6y ago
      How does Google know this unless they have some access to the databases of each of those sites/instances? Why would google have that kind of access?
throwaway082920 6y ago
It's pretty rich that Google claims to be removing these apps for hate speech when their own search engine returns results from sites like Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica on their victims so prominently. (throwaway since the former name searches themselves to find new targets.)
laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
I got a bunch of hate mail via GMail. When can I expect gmail to be removed too?
dkersten 6y ago
Following that logic, they should also remove Google search.
intpete 6y ago
Hate speech is bad.
- nichos 6y ago
  Censorship is much worse.
znpy 6y ago
Don't forget Twitter and Facebook. Twitter/Facebook basically created hate speech, by the way.
m0zg 6y ago
Twitter is literally a platform for hate speech right now, and people have been killed because of it. Will they be taking down Twitter?
- nomdep 6y ago
  I really hope they do.
eanzenberg 6y ago
You joke about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years (or maybe 1 year?) open browsers are banned and only “allowed” browsers are used that allow access to “allowed” websites and content.
- headbansown 6y ago
  Finally, the killer app for mesh networks.
Stubb 6y ago
I prefer the term "hated speech" since it's in the eye of the beholder.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  That's needlessly confusing. Half the posts on https://www.reddit.com/r/TIHI/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TIHI/ are "hated speech" while being miles away from anything that would get called hate speech.
RedComet 6y ago
That's coming soon enough.
euske 6y ago
And they'd replace it with a special browser that limits to the amp-enabled sites only. This is so obvious.
coronadisaster 6y ago
Why not go all the way and just ban all ISPs?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  That actually might be an improvement over the current situation.
ekianjo 6y ago
They should also ban chat apps because you never know, someone may one day say something that Google does not agree with. lets be on the safe side.
Zamicol 6y ago
They wouldn't be doing this unless they had serious reason to do so. They aren't dumb, they know everyone is looking. The far more likely reason is that they know we have an issue. They've been monitoring and they don't like what they've been hearing.

judge2020 6y ago

There 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 ago
  Unless the rule these apps actually broke is that you aren't allowed to do things that go against Google's profit interests.
mkl 6y ago
Where 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 ago
  Vague policies are very useful when those making them wish to engage in arbitrary and capricious enforcement.

matsemann 6y ago

Haven't podcasts apps recently been removed as well? Something about it being possible to listen to stuff about covid on them. Edit, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427 And well, they should probably remove the apps of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc as it's plenty of hate speech there too.

newacct583 6y ago
They didn't remove Podcast Addict, it's right here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po... That was a mistake, presumably. It's likely this is too. The deep desire on the part of posters here to assume malice and scream CENSORSHIP is really off-putting. I actually don't know anything about fediverse, but if it's like other pseudoanonymous obscure communications media it's probably filled with awful stuff. It's not that hard to imagine a naive reviewer who doesn't understand the architecture to be confused if they get a report showing screenshots of the app with the content available in it.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Honestly it's somewhat telling that Automation for app review can get messy fast and that Google should invest in Apple's approach to app review (but I also agree that the poster is extrapolating the app denial into something much more than what it is)
- matsemann 6y ago
  It's not a desire to scream about sensorship. It's more about how the rules are arbitrarily enforced. And how every app's fate is in the hand of two big players, so you're sol if they ban you. Even if the ban is a mistake, good luck getting it reversed unless you're going viral.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  The only reason Podcast Addict has been restored (multiple times) is that it's high-profile, and the owner raised enough stink to cause widespread (enough) outrage about this. Otherwise, whether through malice or incompetence, it would be gone forever.

raverbashing 6y ago

Cool. So if the issue is hate speech I'll be waiting for Google to ban the FB app as well

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Goggle doesn't protect users, they oppress wrongthinkers. Moderation of facebook is delegated to facebook.

rvz 6y ago

Exactly. This is Google drawing the line on where this "hate speech" is from and they believe that such "content" can be accessed via the Fediverse. To see how ridiculous this sounds, Google might as well completely take down the entire social media and internet browsing category on the Play Store since I keep seeing the same content from both extremes on all these platforms. Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser since you can find this "content" with a simple search. They will soon realise that "drawing the line on hate speech" is more tougher than solving leetcode CS questions.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
noworriesnate 6y ago
I get what you're saying, but I don't think this is because Google cares about hate speech. Google is simply using hate speech as an excuse to get rid of apps that it doesn't like. Deciding which apps you like and which you don't isn't that hard of a line to draw.
- tsherr 6y ago
  That's precisely what they are doing. They don't care about hate speech. If they did, they wouldn't have Trump ads on the YouTube banner. This is justification to get rid of apps they don't like.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Not allowing a parties political ads would be clear favoritism in a political situation. You might not like Trump, but it's quite the jump to say republican ads are "hate speech." .. in fact that's quite literally weaponizing the word "hate speech" to censor political opinions you don't like.
    - VLM 6y ago
      Which is the whole point of hate speech laws. Can't market censorship of one party, but who could ever oppose censoring hate... then redefine hate to be anything you'd like censored, and ... that's what we have now. Any time anyone complains about censorship, roll out the excuse of holocaust denial, regardless whats actually being censored.

Hamuko 6y ago

You don't even have to go that far because you can just find plenty on Twitter.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

one of the problems we have in Tech (as an industry and on social media) is to allow individuals who make poor and bad decisions to hide behind the collective of a company/organization. And we continue applauding them for their great work they do in areas that are removed from the political. But these days innovation acts as a shield where we let the innovators get away and reap praise as individuals (the inventors of golang, the teams who standardized QUIC, the guys doing netflix propaganda about their simian-devops-army, facebooks React, Amazon's DSSTNE...) all of them have engineers who wear these things like a badge and are proud to give talks. Yet when they are responsible for projects that violate human rights, remove the Taiwanese flags from their app, or censor speech as in this case then we're never talking about people but it's always the opaqueness of the firm that hides these abuses. We need a list of these lizards so we know when to throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at them whenever they give a talk or share feel-good posts on LinkedIn. people should be ashamed instead of proud when they write "disclaimer I work at X"

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The tech industry is a place where people generally prefer to talk things out rather than yelling and shaming. I think that's worth protecting, even if we see short term gains that might be available from defection. After all, once Google realizes the norms have changed, won't they be able to leverage their resources to find people who yell louder and shame more frequently than you?
- VLM 6y ago
  The old days are gone.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The old days were never as controversy-free as most people remember. There was a time not that long ago when common techie opinions like "Internet piracy isn't a big deal" or "shooter games are fun and kid-friendly" were seen as quite immoral in some circles, and calling your forum "Hacker News" was kinda subversive. If we're headed back to that kind of environment, just with a different set of moral issues enforced by a different set of people, that seems solidly OK.

mfer 6y ago

Or, might Chrome start censoring... If this is the Google policy they may want to bake that policy into the way Chrome operates.

coldacid 6y ago
What do you think AMP is a prelude to?

ulucs 6y ago

Not even web browsers, Twitter should go first

tus88 6y ago

Why not just get rid of that troublesome feature called the internet?

Legion 6y ago

> Firefox Don't give Google ideas.

retpirato 6y ago

Don't forget twitter & facebook, but they won't because that's not really the reason.

api 6y ago

Guess they should ban Chrome, since hate speech appears on the web. All these Fediverse things can be accessed via web apps and progressive web apps (PWAs) too.

avivo 6y ago

This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr...). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps, but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific communities which encourage hatred and real-world violence. Other implementations block these instances, and I believe are not banned. Whether or not this is a good thing is a complex question. If you happen to be the target of this hatred and violence, and feel it is an existential threat to your livelihood, you might believe that it is a good thing to make it more difficult for those who are engaging in this behavior to enlarge their communities. On the other hand, if you believe eliminating communities by platform fiat is an existential threat to your livelihood, this may seem like a very bad thing. (You might also think it's hypocritical, since you can access most of these communities via a browser. Google also controls the browser, and does make it difficult already to access some sites https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 . However, it does seem to have a higher bar for browsers than for social apps (e.g. malware, csam, iirc); some have suggested that there are legal reasons for this, I'm curious to learn more on this, but I have not seen any substantiation yet.)

retpirato 6y ago
So Google somehow knows which apps block certain instances, which generally get reputation among other instances & are quickly blocked? That's not believable.
- jfarina 6y ago
  Why isn't that believable?
  - retpirato 6y ago
    How does Google know this unless they have some access to the databases of each of those sites/instances? Why would google have that kind of access?

throwaway082920 6y ago

It's pretty rich that Google claims to be removing these apps for hate speech when their own search engine returns results from sites like Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica on their victims so prominently. (throwaway since the former name searches themselves to find new targets.)

laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago

I got a bunch of hate mail via GMail. When can I expect gmail to be removed too?

dkersten 6y ago

Following that logic, they should also remove Google search.

intpete 6y ago

Hate speech is bad.

nichos 6y ago
Censorship is much worse.

znpy 6y ago

Don't forget Twitter and Facebook. Twitter/Facebook basically created hate speech, by the way.

m0zg 6y ago

Twitter is literally a platform for hate speech right now, and people have been killed because of it. Will they be taking down Twitter?

nomdep 6y ago
I really hope they do.

eanzenberg 6y ago

You joke about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years (or maybe 1 year?) open browsers are banned and only “allowed” browsers are used that allow access to “allowed” websites and content.

headbansown 6y ago
Finally, the killer app for mesh networks.

Stubb 6y ago

I prefer the term "hated speech" since it's in the eye of the beholder.

Dylan16807 6y ago
That's needlessly confusing. Half the posts on https://www.reddit.com/r/TIHI/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TIHI/ are "hated speech" while being miles away from anything that would get called hate speech.

RedComet 6y ago

That's coming soon enough.

euske 6y ago

And they'd replace it with a special browser that limits to the amp-enabled sites only. This is so obvious.

coronadisaster 6y ago

Why not go all the way and just ban all ISPs?

quotemstr 6y ago
That actually might be an improvement over the current situation.

ekianjo 6y ago

They should also ban chat apps because you never know, someone may one day say something that Google does not agree with. lets be on the safe side.

Zamicol 6y ago

They wouldn't be doing this unless they had serious reason to do so. They aren't dumb, they know everyone is looking. The far more likely reason is that they know we have an issue. They've been monitoring and they don't like what they've been hearing.