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I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that

I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that connects to self-hosted servers!). I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams, are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune their tactics and so tend to never explain anything. But the details of how Google screwed up here also don't matter. A sudden Friday night suspension of a popular, legitimate app is insane! That possibility shouldn't be in the flowchart. I get that for malware/spam/etc., it's important to immediately suspend, but I don't understand why Google doesn't take more seriously the very negative harm caused by doing that to a legitimate app. Some notice and appeal opportunity should be required before suspending a popular app by a legitimate publisher. I'm upset, and a bit scared, but I can't say I'm surprised. This sort of random/erroneous/arbitrary punishment without explanation happens all the time with Google and other major tech companies. And every app developer I've met has experienced _significant_ disruption to their app publishing efforts due arbitrary/random rejections by an Apple app store reviewer, and this has been the case for years, so we can pretty confident that the vendors won't improve unless they are forced to do so. There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores and the negative consequences for everyone else of their error-prone and ruthless enforcement processes.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NoOneCaresAtAll 6y ago
> the bad guys With a mindset like that, you should stop paying taxes since the bad guys benefit from federal government as well.
jsnell 6y ago
Legitimate app yes, but was it actually popular? The cached copy of the Element store page says 100k installs, <2k reviews. Compare to e.g. Signal at 50M installs and 1.2M reviews. Or WhatsApp with 5B installs and 130M reviews.
- Arathorn 6y ago
  This is in part because we had to replace the app in 2019, and also because it's not the only client for Matrix - many deployments are actually forks of Element (e.g. France's 5.5M user deployment of Tchap).
panarky 6y ago
If you accept that (1) there is a substantial amount of mal-content that Google should censor, and (2) a key use case for federated messaging platforms is to evade censorship, and that (3) client applications can be functionally part of a federated messaging platform while legally separate from it, then those client applications are fair game to be censored when they deliver mal-content. Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just because the client application is legally but not functionally separate from the federated network.
- altano 6y ago
  By the way, “malcontent” (no hyphen) is an English word that doesn’t mean “bad content” or “malicious content” like you’re intending.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I guess my dictionary is wrong then sense it seems to be referring to a person in both definitions that they give.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  That would presumably include Chrome and https and enabling use through VPNs? The above are use daily for extremist content, CP, circumventing numerous national laws in numerous places... Hard to draw the line.
  - panarky 6y ago
    The line isn't that hard to draw. If you run a monolithic, centralized service specifically designed to avoid censorship, and you don't moderate what users do on your service, and some of those users hurt people with your service, then you should expect your service will be shut down as Parler was. And if you do the same thing, but separate the front end from the back end, and have different entities run them to provide legal separation, while practically and functionally the result is identical to that of the monolithic centralized service and your system is used to hurt people, then you should also expect that whatever components can be deplatformed will be deplatformed.
usr1106 6y ago
> There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores The regularity oversight needs to address a different aspect: google is world-wide de-facto monopoly for people not owning an iPhone. At least for the most part of the freer world, China is different story. Until Google is broken up or fair competition is not achieved, content regulation does not help. As a European I want to care about US regulation as much as about US tax laws: not at all. The US is not the world-regulator. We elect governments in Europe that have no power to do anything in this sector. I don't say Google should be forbidden in Europe, we are not China. But competition and more choice for users needs to be guaranteed by effective legislation, in practice that against Google and Apple.
- varispeed 6y ago
  This principle should be applied to all sectors. Basically capitalism is still young and we didn't have situations in the past were small companies could consolidate indefinitely so that they can at some point get so big they have more money than some countries. I think there should be a cap that beyond certain point company will have to be divided, so we never get companies too big to fail and being able to afford buying law to suit them.
  - codeisawesome 6y ago
    I’m somewhat certain that the east India company, the VOC etc., had wealth surpassing many countries by the time their consolidation activities reached their peak, though. This isn’t a new phenomenon I don’t think.
    - whakim 6y ago
      Yeah, but those companies were de facto monopolies created by their governments. When they no longer served their purposes, those governments stepped in, defanged them, and took over their operations. Those companies may have been larger in terms of net worth, but their relationship to government was fundamentally different.
    - varispeed 6y ago
einpoklum 6y ago
> But the details of how Google screwed up here They didn't "screw up". Or rather, that's not the main problem. The problem is that Google has the power to block the main channel of distribution of a piece of software. Now, it's true that you can "just" get Element elsewhere, but the effective user lock-in into a single-corporation-controlled download hub ("app store") - that's the problem. And Google has gotten that quite right... for itself.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NoOneCaresAtAll 6y ago

> the bad guys With a mindset like that, you should stop paying taxes since the bad guys benefit from federal government as well.

jsnell 6y ago

Legitimate app yes, but was it actually popular? The cached copy of the Element store page says 100k installs, <2k reviews. Compare to e.g. Signal at 50M installs and 1.2M reviews. Or WhatsApp with 5B installs and 130M reviews.

Arathorn 6y ago
This is in part because we had to replace the app in 2019, and also because it's not the only client for Matrix - many deployments are actually forks of Element (e.g. France's 5.5M user deployment of Tchap).

panarky 6y ago

If you accept that (1) there is a substantial amount of mal-content that Google should censor, and (2) a key use case for federated messaging platforms is to evade censorship, and that (3) client applications can be functionally part of a federated messaging platform while legally separate from it, then those client applications are fair game to be censored when they deliver mal-content. Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just because the client application is legally but not functionally separate from the federated network.

altano 6y ago
By the way, “malcontent” (no hyphen) is an English word that doesn’t mean “bad content” or “malicious content” like you’re intending.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I guess my dictionary is wrong then sense it seems to be referring to a person in both definitions that they give.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
That would presumably include Chrome and https and enabling use through VPNs? The above are use daily for extremist content, CP, circumventing numerous national laws in numerous places... Hard to draw the line.
- panarky 6y ago
  The line isn't that hard to draw. If you run a monolithic, centralized service specifically designed to avoid censorship, and you don't moderate what users do on your service, and some of those users hurt people with your service, then you should expect your service will be shut down as Parler was. And if you do the same thing, but separate the front end from the back end, and have different entities run them to provide legal separation, while practically and functionally the result is identical to that of the monolithic centralized service and your system is used to hurt people, then you should also expect that whatever components can be deplatformed will be deplatformed.

usr1106 6y ago

> There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores The regularity oversight needs to address a different aspect: google is world-wide de-facto monopoly for people not owning an iPhone. At least for the most part of the freer world, China is different story. Until Google is broken up or fair competition is not achieved, content regulation does not help. As a European I want to care about US regulation as much as about US tax laws: not at all. The US is not the world-regulator. We elect governments in Europe that have no power to do anything in this sector. I don't say Google should be forbidden in Europe, we are not China. But competition and more choice for users needs to be guaranteed by effective legislation, in practice that against Google and Apple.

varispeed 6y ago
This principle should be applied to all sectors. Basically capitalism is still young and we didn't have situations in the past were small companies could consolidate indefinitely so that they can at some point get so big they have more money than some countries. I think there should be a cap that beyond certain point company will have to be divided, so we never get companies too big to fail and being able to afford buying law to suit them.
- codeisawesome 6y ago
  I’m somewhat certain that the east India company, the VOC etc., had wealth surpassing many countries by the time their consolidation activities reached their peak, though. This isn’t a new phenomenon I don’t think.
  - whakim 6y ago
    Yeah, but those companies were de facto monopolies created by their governments. When they no longer served their purposes, those governments stepped in, defanged them, and took over their operations. Those companies may have been larger in terms of net worth, but their relationship to government was fundamentally different.
  - varispeed 6y ago

einpoklum 6y ago

> But the details of how Google screwed up here They didn't "screw up". Or rather, that's not the main problem. The problem is that Google has the power to block the main channel of distribution of a piece of software. Now, it's true that you can "just" get Element elsewhere, but the effective user lock-in into a single-corporation-controlled download hub ("app store") - that's the problem. And Google has gotten that quite right... for itself.