Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by ggggtez » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

I'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.

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

#652

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

thelean12 wrote: post #258

jakelazaroff wrote: post #53

> 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!

This 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.

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

#653

Post by TeaDrunk » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #637

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that you say that. In English, we do use phrases like "X was destroyed by Z" ( I forget the exact idiom, but kids seem to be using it -- god I feel old ), where no actual destruction beyond verbal attack took place. I know you were referring to something else, but it got me thinking that we are already using the phrase. Our legal system just does not allow a lot of 'word damage' to be adjudicated.

There was also “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can’t hurt me” that now seems in practice to have gone by the wayside.

I'm not gonna lie when I was a child decades ago it was well known even amongst childrens books at the time that that line's a load of horse shit. There's tons of books where that exact phrase is used to show that ignoring verbal abuse is wrong and emotionally damaging.

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

#654

Post by failuser » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #297

viro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this. There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps. And while the "equal opportunity" people mostly have the "just let me grill" attitude, "equal outcomers" are pushing increasingly harder, while doing their best to silence any opposing voices. It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud o…

Soviet Union was never about equal outcome. It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. Jews were limited in access to education, ex-nobility was limited in rights, the party members were given all kinds of preferential treatment and nomenklatura living in relative luxury while the peasants were starving. Hey, even the city dwellers were privileged compared to peasants who were tied to the land and required visas for inner travel. And access to Moscow and its opportunities was tightly controlled.

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

#655

Post by ziddoap » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

benibela wrote: post #580

ziddoap wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on Googles side here, but... As nice as your sentiment is, there are plenty of real problems which have to be addressed. Who defines, and what are the definitions of "Large" and "General Purpose" in this context? Am I allowed to moderate content as fits with my ToS at X number of users, but at X+1 users I become forced to publish all content which is "not otherwise illegal"? In regards to what is "not otherwi…

The courts decide what is a large platform. And they decide what is "not illegal" In Germany, there were actually cases where courts have ruled that facebook is not allowed to delete non illegal posts: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Oberlandesgericht-Me... One big part of the argument of the judges was based on contracts. When a user makes a facebook account, it creates a contract between the user and facebo…

My post was meant to be more rhetorical in nature, to demonstrate that overzealous censorship is not an issue which can be solved by simply stating "force all non-illegal content to be/remain published".

It's easy to hand-wave it to the courts, but there are many issues with that approach as well (e.g. non-technically competent people making decisions about technology, government not immune to corruption nor censorship, courts are slow by nature).

Your answer also conveniently side-steps the nitty-gritty implementation issues. How does a platform deal with spam posts if they are unable to delete content that is legal? If you don't like a website, simply post a few thousand Viagra advertisements to their front page for a few weeks and they either have to advertise Viagra or shutdown.

Speaking of advertising, why bother pay for ad-space on a website like Reddit, when I can just spam my product on every subreddit over and over again and they have no choice but to keep it up?

Will these rules also be applicable to other forms of media which also have a viewership above the arbitrary "large" line? Newspaper, books, TV? If not, why not?

These are just a few off-the-cuff issues that come to mind. I'm sure people smarter than me who take some time to seriously consider this approach will be able to find hundreds of such examples of why "forced to publish all non-illegal content" sounds great but is simply not a feasible solution to the problem.

As an aside, I find it odd that the answer to censorship by private companies is to offload everything to the largest centralized system with the longest history of censorship: governments.

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

#656

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#657

Post by kube-system » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

LegitShady wrote: post #473

masukomi wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really. it's just saying "this is mine, it's not public property or a public service, and thus i get to manage it how i want." I think MOST people would agree that that's a reasonable approach. just because a lot of people rely on the google play store doesn't mean it's a public service in the legal sense. It's a very private piece of software that is NOT open source and is very obviously owned and managed by a s…

I agree with you, but the flip side is that they are not liable for the speech on their property due to an exception in section 230 of the communications decency act. If they have shown the ability to control speech on their platforms section 230 should be repealed and Google etc should be responsible for the content on their property like any other publisher.

Section 230 exists because it is operationally impractical for websites to affirmative approve of all, most, or even a significant portion or content before it is published by users.

If there's anything that is an indisputable fact, it's that no high-volume platform with user content can proactively police their platform 100%. I think that's a silly rationale to say that they should be prohibited from manually policing content that is brought to their attention afterwards.

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

#658

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #502

noworriesnate wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google is politically very very left. I'm guessing that someone at Google may have browsed these apps, decided they didn't like what they saw, and pressured to have the apps banned. Obviously they can't do that to large players like Facebook, but small apps, they can easily crush, and nobody's going to do anything about it. Image if Google decided to just block certain websites on Chrome, or if big tech got domain re…

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

#659

Post by frank2 » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

betterunix2 wrote: post #577

gruez wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your site has been overrun by ultra-far-right types for basically its entire existence and you do nothing to mitigate this then you're very clearly complicit. How do you mitigate without running counter to the original idea of "free speeech"?

By having more than a middle school understanding of what "free speech" is about. There is no "original idea" of free speech, there never has been, it is a concept that is used to refer to a wide variety of legal frameworks across different times and places. In Germany a person's free speech rights do not include holocaust denial. For most of the history of the United States free speech has been more limited than it…

>it was not all that long ago that we had the "equal time" rule that required media outlets to host both liberal and conservative commentary

That only ever applied to broadcast media (and maybe only to prime-time TV). Publishers of the written word have never been required by the US government to grant equal time.

>For most of the history of the United States free speech has been more limited than it is today

I don't know what you could mean by that unless you are referring to the fact that before the internet became mainstream, you had to own a printing press or something like that to reach a mass audience.

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

#660

Post by jwalgenbach » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #421

jwalgenbach wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not so much. The difference is in the legal definition of protected class. It is illegal to discriminate against someone based on their membership of a protected class -- ethnicity or disability for instance. Removing an opinion or banning a user based on violation of an agreed upon term of service is not the same thing. Having an opinion does not make you a member of a protected class, and a private corporatio…

I feel that the goalposts here have been shot out into space and are orbiting the barycenter where the point is. Let's maybe spell out separately whether or not these two situations are equivalent or not a) legally, b) ethically, c) in principle.

Fair enough.

a) As I stated in the argument about the difference between discrimination against protected classes versus hosting content on a private server, I'd say that legally, these are not equivalent.

b) Ethically is an interesting question. Since the ethics of denying someone service based on their sexual orientation is largely viewed as reprehensible, maybe a better question would be whether or not (freed from questions of protected class) the baker would decorate a Nazi themed cake versus allowing federated apps that are largely used for the dissemination of white supremacist ideology to be hosted?

c) In principle, I'd say they are not equivalent for the following reason: selling and decorating a cake is a business transaction between two entities. The cake (decorated or not) ownership moves from producer to consumer. The consumer is purchasing a physical cake. If the cake is ever made public, it is at the behest of the purchasers of the cake, and any consequences of that public display will be suffered by the purchaser. Essentially, the baker's name is not on the cake, and no one needs to know.

Hosting apps or other contents affects the reputation of the hosting company, and damages to their business reputation fall on it. Think about Facebook being recognized as a conduit for foreign interference in U.S. elections, or whether or not the New York Times will accept ad content from an adult video company. The name on the masthead is the entity that suffers the damage first.