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Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

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Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#181

Post by de6u99er »

It 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.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#182

Post by tristor »

Barrin92 wrote: post #122
mc32 wrote: post #95

It 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.

>It always starts like that. many places have cultures and also law that for decades has worked perfectly fine reigning in the very worst forms of hate speeech (say holocaust denial in my country) while not descending into a sort of activism that starts to get silly. There's no automatic mechanism that turns sensible rules into insensible ones, and it's also need not be the case with sensible hate speech rules. With…

Your suggestion sounds nice in principle, but how would you propose to create mandated democratic control of a corporate entity?

The only mechanism which exists I can think of would be to nationalize the corporate entity and have the folks controlling it be elected positions. That seems pretty extreme though as a response to a corporate entity becoming successful and growing enough that it influences the zeitgeist.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#183

Post by cortesoft »

quotemstr wrote: post #150
HelloMcFly wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, because I don't want to join communities where hate speech is common, much less the prevailing type of content. I don't think that speech should be outlawed, but that doesn't mean I want to be where it is. So if reddit helps remove hate speech and it funnels to these alternatives, that only makes reddit more attractive to me. Plainly: I want reddit to censor hate speech on their site, but I don't want hosting c…

Ok. But when you start denying basic infrastructure to those with viewpoints you dislike --- domain names, DDOS protection, app store distribution --- you're no longer trying to just maintain some particular community's culture, but instead eradicate certain speech from public life. It should be illegal to deny fundamental infrastructure to someone on the basis of his philosophy or point of view. That's what a free s…

They are welcome to buy their own servers or even rent them. We don't have to subsidize their free use of internet resources.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#184

Post by core-questions »

viro wrote: post #91
john_moscow wrote: post #64

For 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://w…

When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit.

Reddit is plenty cancerous, depending on how you define that. Certainly in the sense that people aren't arguing in good faith, aren't actively engaging, but are just firing talking points or insults at one another... the sort of thing good moderation used to help limit so that the quality of discussion remained high.

I'd way rather read a good-faith, well written exploration into a controversial topic, than someone who toes the mainstream line of acceptable opinions entirely while being rude and belligerent.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#185

Post by ziddoap »

quotemstr wrote: post #150
HelloMcFly wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, because I don't want to join communities where hate speech is common, much less the prevailing type of content. I don't think that speech should be outlawed, but that doesn't mean I want to be where it is. So if reddit helps remove hate speech and it funnels to these alternatives, that only makes reddit more attractive to me. Plainly: I want reddit to censor hate speech on their site, but I don't want hosting c…

Ok. But when you start denying basic infrastructure to those with viewpoints you dislike --- domain names, DDOS protection, app store distribution --- you're no longer trying to just maintain some particular community's culture, but instead eradicate certain speech from public life. It should be illegal to deny fundamental infrastructure to someone on the basis of his philosophy or point of view. That's what a free s…

You're arguing a point that the parent poster never made.

The parent poster simply said that they want to join communities free of (or, mostly free of) hate speech and that being free/mostly free of hate speech is an attractive quality for them.

Not once did they advocate for denying infrastructure or any of the other things your entire comment is based on. In fact, they stated the opposite.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#186

Post by GuB-42 »

thrownblown wrote: post #136
komali2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked 4chan bans CP and literally nothing else except that weird picture of two miscellaneous mascots riding a scooter.

They also banned all images from the Netflix film "Cuties" https://www.newsweek.com/4chan-bans-images-netflix-film-cuti...

It has been a while since I went to 4chan, but for /b/, besides very few exceptions like child porn, the rule was "no rules, it also applies to mods".

So they can allow the worst kind of hate speech, porn and gore, but ban a harmless meme because mods find it annoying. So the only rationale from banning images from "Cuties" may be "because mods don't like it".

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#187

Post by gerbal »

Medicalidiot wrote: post #94
john_moscow wrote: post #64

For 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://w…

I was an early adopter of Voat during the first Reddit purge but it turned into a racist cesspool. I'm wondering how many of these alternatives will follow that trend.

unmoderated forums tend to drive off anyone but those holding the most extreme and toxic views.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#188

Post by newhotelowner »

john_moscow wrote: post #64

For 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://w…

> Big Tech censorship

Pretty much all the subs like the the_donald, republicans, conservative, asktrumpsupporters that are against the big tech censorship will censor (ban) you for just showing their hypocrisy.

I clicked on few links or r/RedditAlternatives, and they look like Facebook pages of rural Ohio.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#189

Post by rchaud »

Taking 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.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#190

Post by fluidcruft »

CodeArtisan wrote: post #31

There is probably more than what is being said here otherwise clients for reddit or 4chan would have been removed a long time ago.

8 years ago "Reddit Is Fun" was removed from the Play Store because it included "sexually explicit" material and it was related to the inclusion of NSFW and hate subreddits in the app's default subreddit list. Google was fine with people adding that stuff on their own, they just didn't want the app to be promoting or pushing it. The app was adjusted and updated and it was reinstated.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r3dhg/reddit_is_fu...

So the issue isn't so much that content is accessible, it's when the content is more integrated with the app.

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