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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

#601

Post by failuser »

john_moscow wrote: post #292
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

#602

Post by ziddoap »

benibela wrote: post #543
ziddoap wrote: post #308

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

#604

Post by kube-system »

LegitShady wrote: post #455
masukomi wrote: post #358

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

#605

Post by [deleted] »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #479
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…

[deleted]

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

#606

Post by eitland »

crazygringo wrote: post #526

The is the first I (as well as others here, apparently) had ever heard of the "fediverse". Wikipedia [1] helps me out with what it is technically... but can anyone who knows describe what its content is actually like? In terms of hate speech or illegal content... does that make up the vast majority of fediverse content, in the way that pirated media makes up the vast majority of torrents? (Even though torrents can al…

If anything the instances I have visited have been cleaner than twitter and Facebook. On Twitter and in Facebook comments I've seen some serious hate speech.

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

#607

Post by SkyBelow »

tshaddox wrote: post #338
djsumdog wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone agrees that hate speech is bad but does everyone agree on what hate speech is? That's the danger. You can just claim any opinion you don't like is hate speech. You can say endorsing a particular candidate is hate speech and those people can justifiably be censored; their views invalid (and in some places; justifiably killed). It was once considered offensive, in many places a crime, to say homosexuality is…

Does everyone agree on what murder is? Of course not. Does that mean murder should be legal?

>Does that mean murder should be legal?

The forms which have little agreement? Probably.

For example, some say that meat is murder. I don't think we should be outlawing meat, and thus in the eyes of the ones making such a statement, I'm supporting some forms of murder remaining legal.

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

#608

Post by verylittlemeat »

gerbal wrote: post #234
djsumdog wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually very disturbing considering the amount of misinformation over this incident, and that they're charging that kid for murder! Were you able to find the videos? They tell a pretty different story than the media narrative. Every person he shoots attacked him or had a gun. He doesn't shoot the kid behind them who had his hands up, or any other bystanders. He then walks with his hands up and turns himself i…

It sounds a lot like you are deliberately seeking bias-confirming right wing propaganda!

The guy in this thread being downvoted clearly has a political bias but the part of his argument advocating for access to the raw original length video is reasonable.

If youtube wants to disable comments, throw up warnings or blur out gore then fine but suppressing media from a highly politically charged situation is a mistake.

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

#609

Post by kube-system »

IntelMiner wrote: post #253
croes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a clever trick. Make the medium you want to censor a private property than it's legal.

And yet. There's a certain "side" that wants to have that both ways Private companies can't censor "bad opinions" But private companies can also arbitrarily refuse service for say, making a "gay wedding cake" How is this disconnect rationalized?

Because it is illegal (and morally wrong) to treat people differently because of who they are, not what they say or do.

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

#610

Post by zucker42 »

ng12 wrote: post #43
humanistbot wrote: post #21

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.

Well, we asked for this. We demanded Twitter and FB censor their content, we applauded Cloudflare* for deplatforming websites. Now those monopolies can use the precedent to control more of the web.

Who is "we"?
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