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Google suspending Parler from the Google Play store
- guscost 6y agoHere is my suggestion for Parler’s new moderation plan, which is what at least Apple is demanding: 1. Illegal content is not allowed. That’s it.
- jimmy2020 6y agois it about legality though?
- guscost 6y agoIt bloody well should be.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoParler has terms of service that prohibit calls for violence. My guess is that the moderators (I'm one) simply can't keep up with the volume.
- andrewvc 6y agoIf you run a social network and can’t keep up with moderation for calls for violence you shouldn’t be allowed to be in business. This goes for the big tech companies as well. “It’s hard” is not an excuse.
- phendrenad2 6y ago"The law, in it's equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping on park benches"
- asddubs 6y agoin the case of illegal content, this usually isn't something that doesn't exist at all one day and then exists in volumes too big to moderate the next.
- JamisonM 6y agoYes, I am a big fan of the "it is hard is not an excuse" standard. I would like it applied to advertisers using tech platforms to evade all sorts of anti-discrimination regulations in housing and employment too!
- the_drunkard 6y ago> If you run a social network and can’t keep up with moderation for calls for violence you shouldn’t be allowed to be in business. This goes for the big tech companies as well. This is such a narrow minded view and doesn't hold up to historical precedent. Was Facebook banned from app stores when shooters live streamed on their platform? Was Twitter banned from app stores when calls for violence against Nick Sandmann were spreading? Was Youtube banned from app stores when it was discovered that child predators were lurking in the comments and exploiting underage children?
- bitstan 6y agoChrome allows access to calls to violence.. Google fiber allows access to calls to violence.. Do you really want Google to be the morality police of devices and services you pay for? Because that's sad. It's sad how people adopt authoritarian tendencies because they disagree with people they don't understand.
- ayush--s 6y agoowner of the content is held responsible
- kristofferR 6y agoSo you want AI censorship? Hundreds of hours of video is uploaded to Youtube every minute, you can't have people to watch it through all. Twitter has thousands of tweets a second. It's impossible to manually moderate social media platforms by your standard, it's the whole point of Section 230. You remove disallowed content when it's discovered. Parler deletes illegal parleys when are notified, they deleted parleys from Lin Wood a few days ago.
- andrewvc 6y agoReal creators could pay, what, a dollar or five to fund the moderation of their youtube videos. Same for facebook etc. The idea that every social network deserves to exist on terms that are economically preferable to their owners is not some golden rule. These networks didn't even exist 20 years ago.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoExactly. it’s hard for McDonald’s to manage food safety with thousands of locations, but they don’t just go “oh well I can’t be watching everything”. They spend the money making sure everything is fine.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoFalse equivalency. McDonald's can and does manage food safety over a vast area, because they've got it down to a fine art after 60 years. A brand new startup from last year can hardly be held to the same standard.
- plaidfuji 6y agoDo you think fast food startups aren’t required to comply with FDA, OSHA regs, etc to the same extent as McDonalds? It’s a higher barrier to entry, yes, but not impossible.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoThe brand new local pizza bar is held to the same standards as McDonald’s. If you can’t afford to do business safely and legally than you can’t afford to do business. Either scale down your plans or come up with a new idea.
- KillTrumpNow 6y agoTrump should be killed as soon as he leaves office! PATRIOTS UNITE! (let's see how long this stays up)
- bmarquez 6y agoThis is true. I've previously been downvoted for pointing out that Parler does moderate, but they're a small company so it's a slow process. Parler is not the "anything goes" website that people like to conflate with Gab.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoYes I think Parler's main problem is growing pains. They're growing literally by millions of users a month and basically they're overwhelmed.
- rodgerd 6y agoIt's so cute that you think the neo-Nazis are on Parler in spite of what Parler is.
- jedberg 6y agoWhat does illegal content look like? What jurisdiction? Does Parler need to hire a lawyer to make content decisions? When Trump says "we need to fight hard!", is that illegal? What if he says, "Go back to the Capitol and start shooting!"? Is that illegal? FWIW that was our policy at reddit for a long time too. There is a whole lot of nuance to it that is really hard to deal with.
- guscost 6y agoSo do we need a DMCA type thing for courts to file injunctions against illegal content? What is the solution? The fact is any moderation will be subjective and imperfect. How can making more complicated subjective rules help at all?
- matz1 6y agoIt is always subjective, the entity in power get to decide the rule, in this case google is the entity in power. Its not enough to have rule that says 'illegal content not allowed', in the case of play store it has to be 'illegal content (according to google) not allowed'
- guscost 6y agoSurely there must be a way to let the courts determine legality in every single controversial case. It’s just an optimization problem. We sent fourteen people to walk around on the moon, twelve of them made it, and all of them made it back.
- matz1 6y agoAs long as that way, whatever it is, still involve more than one human, you can't avoid the subjectivity problem. Its not technology problem. Its human problem.
- guscost 6y agoMy point is that there is an age-old institution to solve this problem, called a court. We all participate in a social contract where the court's decisions about subjective matters have the force of law. Where it gets weird is that Twitter also has an explicit user contract with the underlying USA social contract/courts as a dependency! If you could physically live in Twitter apartments, and somehow remain safe from war, why not only depend on the Twitter contract and its moderation system? And that's how we get to the future world of Snow Crash.
- marrone12 6y agoReddit seems to have just as much illegal content. All of this just seems like empty virtue signaling by tech companies way too late to actually change anything.
- dumbfounder 6y agoSo you are saying that they should be trying to change the political landscape to prevent things that might happen in the future? Gross.
- goldenkey 6y agoThought crime? Grotesque.
- marrone12 6y agoI'm saying that if it's about illegal content, why make these moves now when there's been illegal content on Parler before today, as well as illegal content that existed on other apps in the past.
- dumbfounder 6y agoThere is always a threshold. It isn’t one piece of illegal content that gets something banned outright. So we are just talking about where the line in the sand is drawn.
- newguy1234 6y agoMost of the big tech companies have been taken over by activist employees anyways. Look at coinbase. They had to do a purge just to get rid of the employees that weren't working and focusing on non-company issues instead. Palantir also had to completely leave because there was so much pressure being put on them in the valley.
- enkid 6y agoI don't know much about parler, but Reddit just removed r/donaldtrump and banned the most egregious mod of r/conspiracy. It's also a much bigger site, so there are going to be more people talking on it, but they are at least taking steps to prevent this kind of content.
- midasuni 6y agoOne consequence of the DMCA is that illegal things are no linger defined in court.
- conanbatt 6y agoIllegal content is allowed even in hacker news.
- mholt 6y ago> We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server. Is this link right? How about a link to an article instead? What is Parler? Why is it suspended? What is the story for those of us who are just tuning in now?
- unreal37 6y agoParler is an app many of the American Conservatives go to now that their speech is restricted on Facebook and Twitter. But Apple (and Google) don't like how Parler was used to organize the protests/riots at The Capitol.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoa conservative social media platform that Google and Apple suddenly noticed because of continuing outrage about the events of Jan. 6.
- auslegung 6y agoExcellent questions, completely unsure why the downvotes
- r721 6y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221648/google-suspends-bans-parler-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221648/google-suspends-b...
- im3w1l 6y agoParler is a twitter competitor. After Donald Trump and several other people were banned from Twitter and Facebook, people were thinking about moving over to Parler. After about a day Google and Apple banned Parler from their appstores. Four big tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they are cooperating and coordinating in destroying people they don't like. At this point this fourheaded beast is the most powerful force on this planet.
- enkid 6y agoBy people you don't like, you mean the people encouraging and coordinating an assault on the US capitol.
- post_break 6y agoWow, is this the great purge? I don’t support certain people, but man I don’t think this is going to end well. This censorship just seems crazy to me.
- valuearb 6y agoIt’s not censorship, private businesses have the right to decide what they sell in their stores. Parlour can still distribute itself as a web app, no problem.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoThen it's still censorship; private businesses simply have the right to censor.
- criddell 6y agoIf you’re going to call it censorship if Walmart refuses to sell a product I make, then you are really watering down what that word means.
- valuearb 6y agoNope. Censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. A private business not distributing a product because it doesn’t represent their or their customers values isn’t censorship, it’s a marketing decision. If Walmart decides to stop carrying Coke because of its sugar content, is that “censorship”? If a girl decides not to date you, is that censorship of your free speech rights to bore her? The advocates for Parlours right of distribution don’t actually believe in individual rights, or they would argue it has to be imposed on the App Stores.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago> Censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. And this was indeed done because it was considered politically unacceptable and a threat to security. > A private business not distributing a product because it doesn’t represent their or their customers values isn’t censorship, it’s a marketing decision. The problem is your thinking that those two are some exclusionary. The censorship that most company practice is of course for financial gain. > The advocates for Parlours right of distribution don’t actually believe in individual rights, or they would argue it has to be imposed on the App Stores. Nor does their believing in free speech or not have anything to do with whether this is censorship.
- blhack 6y agoI don't support Trump, and I don't support his supporters or what happened at the capitol. I voted for Joe Biden this year, am a big supporter of my Democrat senators in Arizona (and hope to vote for Krysten Sinema as president one day specifically). This is wrong, and this is a massive overreach. This is not the internet that we dreamed about and that many of us worked to build. Very sad day.
- vmception 6y agoCute disclaimers. As the government is not involved at all, the overreach argument doesn't apply. edit: okay. overreach/censorship in private sector doesn't bother me. thanks. make the antitrust case if it inconveniences you too much to make an alternative.
- blhack 6y ago>As the government is not involved at all, the overreach argument doesn't apply. Is it only the government which can overreach? I'm not sure I follow your argument. If apple hooked into my banking app and decided to lock my phone because they saw me buying marijuana, that would also be an overreach, and also has nothing to do with the government.
- kortilla 6y agoOverreach is not a government specific term.
- vmception 6y agookay. I think the nuance is you are missing is that I don't care about private sector using their first amendment right to freedom of association.
- kortilla 6y agoI think the nuance you are missing is that people don’t care if you aren’t upset, but they absolutely are. And you should be skeptical of companies that do these things because this is how we end up with segregation, people refusing to bake cakes for gay weddings, etc.
- raverbashing 6y agoI suppose this only affects new installations, correct? Edit: it's a question, not a statement or a judgement
- danlugo92 6y agoYou will mot receive automatic updates.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoBut they can't ban the website and they can't stop sideloading, can they?
- swalsh 6y agoDo you use the official build of Google Chrome?
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoI use Brave, but obviously most people just use "browser" (that icon of a globe or whatever) and have no idea.
- danlugo92 6y agoGive them some time.
- zamadatix 6y ago"Can" is probably the wrong question, Google has control of the Android project itself and many system level services found on nearly every Android phone so the "can" do a lot of things if they so decided to but unlike e.g. Apple they don't/haven't went past actions in the Play store ecosystem. This is only a suspension from Play though so the answer to "is it still possible to use the website or sideload the app" is "yes".
- ekianjo 6y ago> But they can't ban the website and they can't stop sideloading, can they? It's all about friction. The more you add friction, the more you slow down the uptake of competitive platforms. Right now you have to turn off play protect and let your phone install from unknown sources to install APKs. Most people probably don't even know how to do that, so it's an effective strategy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluescrn 6y agoDepends who provides hosting for the site, and whether they can be convinced to stop providing that service... (And with locked-down mobile platforms, the platform owners could theoretically start enforcing a site blacklist of some kind at an OS level if they really wanted to)
- midasuni 6y agoExcellent. Pissing off 30% of the vocal people in the country may damage the walled garden ecosystem.
- rcstank 6y ago30%? Where do you find that number?
- rootusrootus 6y agoI am guessing it refers to the number of people who are registered as Republican in the US [1]. I'd quibble about the 'vocal' part, however. People across the ideological spectrum are vocal, but it's probably more like 1% or less, not 30%. Our views are shaped by the few people who bother to say anything. I wonder if we'd be happier if everyone else could remember that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states#Current_party_strength https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U....
- kortilla 6y agoIt’s pretty coincidental that all of these tech companies are having epiphanies simultaneously now that Democrats will control the house/senate/and presidency. The interesting question is whether they are doing it out fear of anti trust action from Democrats or weren’t doing it for the last four years out of fear of Republicans.
- dleslie 6y agoIt's almost like there was some sort of catalyst event that occurred very recently that would provoke such a response. /s
- redflame8 6y agoLike the protesting/rioting for 115 straight days in Portland that wasnt condemned?
- rpz 6y ago> catalyst More like excuse :)
- tracer4201 6y agoHe incited an insurrection and he still seems to be egging those people on. But people who support the guy would defend him no matter what.
- guscost 6y agoNow this makes the “cops let them in” conspiracy super interesting. The timing is pretty convenient!
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoWhy did they do it? There's video footage showing cops literally pulling back the barricades and waving people in. I don't understand why they did that, and surely their not doing that would have prevented the subsequent violence?
- jpxw 6y agoWith this and Trump’s Twitter ban, it seems there’s a level of co-ordination at play here that should be worrying to people who care about freedom of speech. And before someone tells me that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, I’m not making a legal point here, I’m making a moral one. This is not healthy.
- auslegung 6y agoYou’re right, there absolutely is a level of coordination. Whenever people historically have stormed the capital building, everyone coordinates to ban them from their platforms. But I agree, this is not the way forward to a healthy, united country
- lambdaphagy 6y agoI don't think that's actually true. Weather Underground, for example, bombed the Capitol in 1971. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/a-look-at-the-history-of-attacks-in-the-u-s-capitol-44-years-after-the-weather-underground-bombing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/a-...) One of the group's leaders, Bill Ayers, lives unremorsefully in a tony neighborhood in Chicago where he went on to have an influential academic career, dedicating books to political assassins, and mentoring future presidents. This caused a minor kerfluffle when the details resurfaced to public light in 2008, but it was clearly, in the end, no obstacle to Obama's election. One might raise a similar point about a figure like Oscar Lopez Rivera who, while he never bombed the Capitol, definitely did bomb about 100 other locations around the country and was rewarded for his efforts by an NYC ticker tape parade once he was released from prison. Lin Manuel Miranda's admiration for Rivera has hardly proved a stumbling block for his wildly successful career. And that's just one end of the frequency-severity spectrum. Mobs break into the Capitol and interrupt proceedings with perhaps surprising regularity, as with the Kavanaugh hearings for example. In any case, it seems that bombing the Capitol or doing widespread domestic terrorism is only selectively an impediment to a later life of comfort in the US.
- auslegung 6y ago
- tonystubblebine 6y agoGood.
- awillen 6y agoGood for them for not bothering with the half-assed CYA nonsense Apple is doing. "Give us a moderation plan in 24 hours" is just such a ridiculously unmeetable demand (at least if they require that plan to be anything close to actually feasible) that it's just pointless. Just kick them off. And to the people complaining about censorship, this is an app that was literally used to plan a violent attack on the capitol. Some things should be censored.
- kortilla 6y ago> And to the people complaining about censorship, this is an app that was literally used to plan a violent attack on the capitol. Some things should be censored. Wait until you find out what the text messaging apps are used for. “This was used in an attack” is a bullshit excuse to banish something. WhatsApp and signal have enabled countless terrorist actions and they are still up.
- encom 6y ago>“This was used in an attack” is a bullshit excuse to banish something. Remember when the Christchurch shooter streamed his rampage on Facebook? Why hasn't Facebook been banned yet?
- f430 6y agoor remember when people were shouting ACAB and BLM while burning down and looting businesses? the double standard is really bizarre.
- 3adawi 6y agoTwitter, Facebook, Whatsapp etc. are all used to plan violent attacks, murders, burglaries and so on - all communication tools are used to do harmful acts, should we ban them all? Crazy that people are ok with what's been happening in the last few hours
- vecter 6y ago
- Anon1096 6y agoMaybe this is finally the push needed for a free and open alternate App Store on Android. At least it's actually possible, unlike on Apple. Unfortunately, Fdroid does have censorship policies (see Gab), but I believe you can add your own repos.
- zests 6y agoI wonder how the inevitable red moat will fare against the moat that is turning blue.
- vuciv1 6y agoAll this at the same time? Did they have a Godfather-esque technocrat meeting?
- Nbox9 6y agoMaybe, but it’s also possible that these are all responses to the events of Wednesday, and responses to other’s responses to Wednesday.
- ng12 6y agoMy theory is they tend to move in sync for fear of the Twitter checkmarks calling them out for falling behind on the current cause d'celebre.
- usrusr 6y agoTwitter got all the spotlights, others try to rush onto stage before the audience stops applauding. Corporate decisionmaking structures at Google are clearly slower than a Zuckerberg whim, but their lag is surprisingly low. Personally, I think it's a bit sad that Twitter with the hard tweet removal is effectively protecting Trump from being judged for his statements by the general public. The radicals got the messages anyways, but superficial observers are supported by the remove in any "bad but harmless" perception of Trump they might have.
- bpodgursky 6y agoHow long will Chrome hold out as a neutral pipe for websites? Does anyone here think it's unthinkable that Google would block parler.com on Chrome? It seemed unthinkable a couple years ago, but at this point I would put even money on Chrome having a "radical" website blacklist within a year.
- 0x53 6y agoInteresting thought. I have noticed that recently Chrome has started being more aggressive on blocking sites that it considers harmful/scams.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoBut that wouldn't affect forks such as Brave, would it? Or maybe they would engineer in some way to force the forks to use a Google blacklist or else....
- bpodgursky 6y agoIf a website isn't accessible on Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, it's effectively deplatformed. It's a tiny fraction of the population who even knows HOW to sideload an app.
- jimbob45 6y agoChrome is open source. It would just get forked.
- wvenable 6y agoGoogle one company but the different parts have different roles. With Google Play, they're the publisher. Google doesn't need to block websites because they have nothing to do with them.
- daenz 6y ago>Google doesn't need to block websites because they have nothing to do with them https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/imageapi/2014/03/espnmalware-100257479-orig.jpg https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/imageapi/20...
- midasuni 6y agoThe link is broken, but I just read similar about Apple. Eventually I hope people will realise why computer platforms need to be free (and why this election was both fair, transparent, embarrassing and pathetic)
- krona 6y agoBeing stupid shouldn't mean you don't get to participate in society.
- croon 6y agoBeing willfully stupid and spreading that stupidity until it turns to violence should though. (where "participate in society" means being allowed on some/most social media)
- bentcorner 6y ago"participate in society" == "install a specific app on a smartphone"?
- krona 6y agoIn a world where people legally can't congregate in private spaces with people outside their own household?
- ekianjo 6y agoSurely there's no coordination of censorship going on.
- anigbrowl 6y agoWhy would there be? People can see each other, it's very common for a first mover to set off a rush.
- ekianjo 6y agoOh yeah ? And all happens on the same day ? How peculiar.
- anigbrowl 6y agoIt's not peculiar at all. Different people have been asking them to do that for a long time, pointing out that social media platforms were being misused to spread propaganda, but their requests were refused. Then there's a historically unprecedented incident stemming from Trump's dispute of the lection results, organized by him on social media, and initiated by his speech on Wednesday morning. I see nothing peculiar about multiple companies independently arriving at similar conclusions and following Twitter's lead.
- malwarebytess 6y agoI feels so conflicted about this kind of deplatforming. I find the people ignorant and topics discussed there of little value. It's mostly just actual lies, misunderstandings, blatant propaganda, stupidity, circlejerking, echo chambers. It's shit, to be blunt. I find it endlessly annoying. But I sorta think they should be able to have their space? I don't like the way corporations and governments build these huge marketplaces, make them more and more restrictive such that no one can really get huge market-share without them and then they start curating (censoring). I understand why they do it: image, ethics (lol), they can, network effects, control over product quality, increased community cohesion, customer comfort, "safety" (lol), legal (i don't buy this one) and so on. But it wouldn't be a problem if the internet remained decentralized...these big companies should never be in the position to have this power. At a certain point you get so locked out that you can't even pay the bills anymore because even payment processors won't take your money!
- olivermarks 6y agoIs there any new way to circumvent the play and app stores so you can still download an app and use it? This throttling at OS level feels like checkmate versus free speech to me
- krastanov 6y agoYou have always been able to do that on most Androids. And you can always use the mobile website. I do not understand what is the point of this app when it is identical to a website.
- olivermarks 6y agoThanks the obvious answer. Parler is very slow for me on android, presumably the incredible scaling issues Twitter dealt with back in the fail whale days. Maybe just using website is better
- r721 6y agoThe Verge's story: https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221648/google-suspends-bans-parler-play-store https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221648/google-suspends-b...
- wnevets 6y agoHere are some of the screenshots [1] from Paler since Wednesday. Please let me know if you think Google is making a mistake or not. [1] https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1347374075455229953 https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/13473740754552299...
- setr 6y agoI'm basically seeing 4 posts about "kill <group/group-leader>" and otherwise standard speeches... and then someone later posts screenshots about Jan 20 re-org posted on twitter.. It seems like the basic political discourse you find on twitter, fb and every other social media system, both red and blue posters, at pretty much the same level of intelligence; I'm really not seeing anything there that doesn't equally merit the banning of, well, every other social media app.
- wnevets 6y agoHow about these [1], are they just basic political discourse find on twitter, fb and every other social media system? [1] https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347190280492089344 https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347190280492089344
- zests 6y agoSocial media is universally terrible, you might be the last one to notice.
- setr 6y ago...yes? What do you think gets posted during basically every political event? BLM, obama election, trump election, biden election, etc... Calls for riot and murder are like the standard go-to on social media, if only because extreme posts gather a lot more steam than anything diluted. I mean shit we just went through 4 years of liberals and conservatives fighting over this shit dramatically all over twitter -- I'm really struggling to find the new extremes you're finding in these; the only thing I can figure is you're giving it more weight because this topic translated into physical activity, where most such content just flames up digitally and dies out
- mlindner 6y agoI'm strongly against app platforms (App Store and Google Play store) deciding what content is allowed on apps sold on their stores.
- f430 6y agoisn't anybody else creeped out by this??
- 3adawi 6y agoit's disgusting and I'm no republican or Trump supporter - 4/5 companies now completely control what people should say online
- QuixoticQuibit 6y agoNo. We need to deplatform these fascist lunatics. They trust live in an alternate universe where killing politicians and cops is okay.
- maallooc 6y agoBLM?
- Thorentis 6y agoI seem to remember another group calling for the killing of politicians and cops recently. Huge protests, rioting, burning down police precincts. Some three letter acronym I can't remember...
- ceph_ 6y agoIts amazing you can take the message of "cops shouldn't kill people" and spin it to be about killing the cops. It's a view of the world detached from reality.
- f430 6y agoAmen. I mean Awomen.
- 4234 6y agoThe message was really "COPS ARE KILLING BLACK PEOPLE," yet most people killed by police are white (somehow none of these ever seem to merit national, 24/7 news coverage), and while a disproportionate number killed are black, they also commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime and have more violent encounters with police.
- cblconfederate 6y agoTits for tats won't end well. I bet there's going to be another storming of the capitol , probably from the other side this time
- mzs 6y agostatement* from google: "In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence. All developers agree to these terms and we have reminded Parler of this clear policy in recent months. We're aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S. We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content. In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app's listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues." Google Spokesperson edit: axios attributes the statement** to José Castañeda * https://twitter.com/viaCristiano/status/1347705178699558912 https://twitter.com/viaCristiano/status/1347705178699558912 ** https://www.axios.com/capitol-mob-parler-google-ban-826d808d-3e06-4468-a7c6-6157557818b3.html https://www.axios.com/capitol-mob-parler-google-ban-826d808d...
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoThe irony is that there companies are setting the conditions to incite violence far greater than anything they think they're helping to tamp down.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago“incite violence” is typically to be understood as “inciting violence towards a cause I don't agree with".
- ipsum2 6y ago> our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence. So they don't allow browser apps? You can access parler/gab/tdw from Chrome.
- TimJRobinson 6y agoWhat are decentralized social apps (such as manyverse) supposed to do about this? Are they just never allowed in the play store?
- kome 6y agoI don't like where this is going. I really don't. I am not an American, a Trump fan or an alt-right dude (quite the contrary). But this corporate censorship is intolerable. And the timing it's making it particularity odious.
- nikolay 6y agoBy Google Play blocking Parler, millions will learn how to install Android apps outside of the Play Store and many conservatives will leave iOS for Android for this ability alone!
- txsoftwaredev 6y agoTwitter has been used to organize riots. How is allowed to remain on the app store?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- neogodless 6y agoI'll provide my third result[0] from my google search "evidence twitter used to organize riots." Can you please provide some sources for this claim? Additionally, this may help clarify some things. [1] [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-antifa-twitter-fake/fact-check-antifa-twitter-account-that-called-for-violence-was-fake-idUSKBN23B2TY https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-antifa-twitter-... [1] https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/ https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoI think back to the people doing mental gymnastics to defend that crazy convoy in Texas that tried to intimidate the Biden campaign bus off the highway. Shameful. Just truly shameful. Sick and disgusting.
- Darmody 6y agoLet's ban Parler but we'll keep Twitter, even though the platform is full of messages like this [1] and worse. [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20210107225836/https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1347119992462970880 https://web.archive.org/web/20210107225836/https://twitter.c...
- jackson1442 6y agoParler made very few attempts to actually moderate their content, at least from what I've seen. That tweet, however, has already been removed. https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1347119992462970880 https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1347119992462970880
- CubsFan1060 6y agoThat tweet is unavailable now. Was it moderated by chance?
- Darmody 6y agoI don't know if it was removed by him or by twitter. But still. Get on twitter and you'll see many similar comments and accounts that encouraged violence and defended rioters this whole past year. If you're going to be tough on people like that, don't cherry pick.
- beirut_bootleg 6y agoThere is a moderation team that deals with these. It's on the users' to report them. You can't expect moderation to catch 100%. GP is the one who is cherry-picking.
- Darmody 6y agoLike this one https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1307107507131875330 https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1307107507131875330 ? Threatening with violence if Trump appointed a new SCOTUS. He has almost 300k followers. The tweet is not deleted and his account is untouched. There are several more like him, with hundreds of thousands of followers. Some deleted the tweet but their accounts are still there. But we could go even further. The VP-elect, Kamala Harris, asked for money to bail BLM/Antifa rioters. https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1267555018128965643 https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1267555018128965643
- senddownvotes 6y agoWhen do they roll out the hunter killer drones for political dissidents?
- the_drunkard 6y agoRemind me if Google ever threatened to suspend Twitter over the fake stories, threats, and "mob" incited violence against a teenager named Nick Sandmann?
- awak3ning 6y agoWell this is actually somewhat disturbing, but if you think of social media corporations as organisms that are trying to further their own self-interest it does make sense. In order to protect and preserve their monopolies and undue influence over others, it seems reasonable that they would suffocate and kill any competitors that would threaten their survival. This includes silencing their political rivals in addition to other corporate structures and platforms.
- raarts 6y agoAnyone remember: 'information wants to be free'?
- gerdesj 6y agoThe original link is now a 404. Calm down and stop typing.
- encom 6y ago"Just build your own social network", they said.
- lazyjones 6y agoThis is a coordinated escalation attempt. It's also groundwork for targeting individual conservatives who will no longer be able to easily reach out to others for help.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoSome of Parler's problems may actually be due to a few hundred trolls deliberately posting crap to get the site in trouble. Easily done, unprovable, and clearly effective. In the future, this will be how all websites work: ban certain keywords or risk being blocked, regardless of your TOS and good intentions.
- ashtonkem 6y agoGood riddance.
- gulag4nerds 6y agolmafo imagine thinking this is going to do anything but radicalize some nutjob that their "freedoms" are under attack. looking forward to the war on terror 2: electric boogaloo.
- elif 6y agoAnd now that traffic is being pushed where? I would guess 4chan, maybe some darker place i don't even know about. That is even scarier than a trump echo chamber. The ability to distinguish between troll and actual political ideology is being even further blurred. that is the problem with policy defacto being set by corporate convenience. The real blowback of this decision is not experienced by google.
- antoniuschan99 6y agoYou can still download the apk though?
- seebetter 6y agoI’d post on my main HN account but I was shadowbanned last week. I was blocked from sharing comments or posts in Facebook Groups for almost 2 months for sharing an article about Presidential clemency for Ross Ulbricht in the 2600 group. From my perspective, the Organic Law of the United States has constitutional force. And any system including government agencies and public platforms, are beholden to the natural rights that preexisted all governments and all religions. If you believe in John Locke, then defend principles. If you don’t, perhaps you should consider a country which wasn’t founded on natural rights as the lowest layer precept to our civilization. You can’t challenge first principles and replace them with relativism and a world full of neoliberal militaristic rackets.
- mepian 6y agoI wonder how soon Google is going to ban sideloading. I mean, who knows what terrorists can install on their phones, right?
- Noos 6y agoWell, so much for "you can always make your own alternative if private companies censor you!"
- twiceaday 6y agoMake your own alternative that private companies can decide to stop promoting.
- bsan3 6y agoTime to move past arm chair theories. We are facing a armed threat to the country. Any outlet promoting or allowing promotion of fictional narratives need to be muzzled .. at least temporarily until we have a transition of power. Then we can start sorting out the mess.
- kats 6y agoIt's a terrible decision. These used to be apolitical platforms. They're way too big to abruptly change and force a particular political view (far left) onto everyone else. Congress should break them up until there are 6 or 7 competing app stores the way we have multiple cable news stations.
- foofoo4u 6y agoThis is precisely what I expected was going to happen this year. The great purge.
- playtriot 6y agoI wouldn't worry folks, if conservatives actually had anything to contribute to society the invisible hand of the free market would simply correct the imbalance and bring those ideas and individuals to the forefront.
- sumpterboy 6y agoI wouldn't worry folks, if conservatives actually had anything to contribute to society the invisible hand of the free market would simply correct the imbalance and bring those ideas and individuals to the forefront.
- bitwize 6y agoI can't wait for Biden's restructured Supreme Court to overturn Brandenburg v. Ohio. I've always found it funny how SCOTUS, during the early 20th century, has upheld laws limiting the freedom of socialists to say things like "compulsory military service is bad", but then had a change of heart when the motherfucking KLAN argued that fomenting hate was free speech. It's time for change. Hate speech is not free speech. If you foment hate, spread antigovernment lies like the vote fraud narrative, or are complicit as a platform in doing the same, you should be punished.
- tcpip 6y agoWhat's the best alternative to iOS and Android?
- bigphishy 6y agoHTML5
- yawaemworht 6y agoFor those writing that "Google and Apple are private companies and should be free to do whatever they want": Would you feel the same if they randomly blocked an app from their Store with no way to appeal, and developers were forced to open a thread on HN in order to get some help? Would you feel the same if GitHub closed or suspended an account and wouldn't answer to support requests, and users were forced to come in here in order to get some attention? Or if Youtube locked creators out of their account, because of strikes coming from reports of brigading communities or bogus DMCA? Or if all those tech giants randomly closed your account without giving you any explanation, locking you out of basically years of data that you did not backup because you never thought it would happen? Or if Paypal locked your ecommerce account and stopped you from withdrawing your money on it, because of security checks they can't disclose to you, pratically locking you out of your money for months? Or if Coinbase did the same with your cryptocurrency? Or if Robinhood did the same with your investing funds? Or if Amazon locked you out of your account, and stopped you from being able to buying stuff after pushing all the other shops out of business? Or if they randomly delisted you from their sellers platform, after you invested in order to launch an item? Since they're private entities, would you feel ok with that? Shouldn't they be allowed? If your answer is affirmative...I guess I'll just have to accept that in a near future, maybe browsers will ship with a whitelist of the sites we're allowed to browse, since they're developed and published by private entities. Maybe open source forks without those list will start gaining market share....but just until the private ISPs will decide to implement a whitelist as well.
- dgudkov 6y agoThis will certainly give boost to the decentralization movement in general and to Mastodon in particular.
- mrtweetyhack 6y agoSo you push them underground making it harder to keep track of their activities
- tomerbd 6y agoSo long free speech and thanks for all the fish.
- throwaway54095 6y agoPrivate companies shouldn't be able to regulate content at their own discretion. That must be protected by free speech. There has to be law, and social consensus about what kind of content is not legal, and bringing down that should be done, not by private entities, nor even by the goverment, but by the judicial power. There's a reason for the separation of powers.
- unhappywithyou 6y agoThis is completely unacceptable.This is the USA not North Korea!!!!!
- unhappywithyou 6y agoThis is communist behavior. Very very upset that I know live in North Korea
- unhappywithyou 6y agoThis is way out of line. 5his type of control is scary.
- unhappywithyou 6y agoThose idiots that stormed the Capitol are bottom feeders. We all shouldn't be punished for the actions of a few nuts.
- Darling_007 6y agoLet me just say something.. President Donald Trump has never said or done anything to harm or throw shade at the LGBTQ+ community, yet, all the news media outlets are saying he has. He's never done anything to harm or throw shade at black people, yet you people call him a racist. I'm black and I support Trump 100%!! Yes, I'm aware this has nothing to do with the censorship but good Lord people! Call me a racist for saying something that needed to be said, go ahead. This country is the laughing stock of other countries. And it's going to stay that way unless we start to do something about it! Listen I'm all for the women's rights and BLM but this is way bigger than any of that BS. I am a black women and I have gone to every Trump rally that I can and he has never, not ONCE looked at me any different than the other white folks there. BECAUSE HE ISN'T RACIST! So pull your heads out of Ya'lls asses and pay attention to what's really going on here instead of what the media wants you to see.