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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

#711

Post by SyneRyder »

mynameismonkey wrote: post #550
avivo wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... ). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps , but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific…

>but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific communities which encourage hatred and real-world violence. As you state, one can access these specific communities in a number of ways, including Google Chrome. If the community is the issue, go after the community, not an ActivityPub app that can access content from these and other communities. Should Google also ban RSS reader apps that don'…

Oh, please don't suggest banning RSS apps - Apple is already doing that, they removed Pocket Casts and Castro because they allow access to Podcasts that offend Chinese censorship, while Apple's own podcast app remains because it blocks those particular podcasts:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/apple-rem...

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

#712

Post by WWLink »

IntelMiner wrote: post #256
croes wrote: post #206

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?

Oh I agree here. I think if you go into business to make cakes, you should vow to fulfill all your cake orders.

Likewise, if you say you're a webhost, you host websites.

If there's a legal issue, you report it. That's it.

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

#713

Post by tjs8rj »

young_unixer wrote: post #691
throwaway189262 wrote: post #176

There's racist stuff all over Google's biggest properties. Racist results on Google, videos on youtube, sites hosted on GCP. Give me a break with your fake trashy virtue signalling Google. This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn't like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google's position as the central hub of the internet.

> This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn't like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google's position as the central hub of the internet. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The real reason is that Google employees live in an ideological echo chamber where censoring anything that doesn't align with their ideologies is a completely normal th…

That's fine and reasonable on an individual level, but not only does it seem like a clear case of violation of duty to shareholders to make otherwise unsound biz decisions on the basis of "it's moral", it's also just not an accurate depiction of the business process.

Google is a business, and at the level these decisions are made, the decision is made overwhelmingly through the lens of business. A more fitting phrase in the context of a business would more accurately be "never attribute to goodwill that which is adequately explained by sound business thinking".

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

#714

Post by intended »

Animats wrote: post #701
dalbasal wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constitutions are squishy things, ultimately. They evolve over the years. I take your point about legality. But, I'd make the point that we don't have a clear moral or legal concept of free speech that relates to the current world. "We can argue about whether or not Google should ban certain opinions on their platform, or where the line should be drawn, but it is arguable that hey have the legal right to do so." At s…

It also wouldn't stand. Something like this would be too contradictory to the moral concept of free speech. I don't know. If Google decided to censor "hate speech" in GMail, could anyone stop them? Some people would applaud. Machine learning is good enough now that misspellings and euphemisms can be caught. So topic-based censorship could really work. Especially for Google, which has so much history on each sender, a…

Hey! I'm fiddling around with this right now for a submission. What I've found so far makes it look like hate speech is not easy to catch:

1) Slang evolves.

2) Combining two languages, especially under-resourced languages, mean that a chunk of words fall outside the range of a hate-speech lexicon.

So maybe in languages which have huge resources devoted to it (English), its easy to figure out, but I don't know how well covered the evolving edge, and the code-mixed (language mixed) edges are.

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

#715

Post by FascistsAreLame »

bovermyer wrote: post #19
nottorp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. It's always funny when some acronym no one's heard of shows up unexplained on HN.

Two things: First, don't assume that just because you've never heard a word, that means no one has heard of it. There are quite a lot of us who know what the fediverse is. Second, and this is a little pedantic, fediverse is a portmanteau, not an acronym.

I feel you’re being overly literal to the point where I’m not entire sure you understand English as well as you think. Hyperbole is an acceptable literary device. To say “No one has heard of this band” is colloquial to English, but obviously other people have heard of the band, the hyperbole is used to emphasize how few people have heard, not that no people have. To correct someone here isn’t correct, it’s suggests a sheltered existence.

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

#716

Post by trentnix »

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.

And that's why I'm incredibly cynical about politicians and activists who use amorphous political terms like "hate speech". It eventually becomes a club wielded by whoever is making the rules of today's Calvinball game.

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

#717

Post by andybak »

felipeko wrote: post #627
SkyBelow wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to claim any one group is authoritative. I'm saying that I'm not aware of any group, regardless of their level of authority, who uses an interpretation that includes the worst material. Everyone (that I'm aware of) makes an exception for at least one form of material, even the ACLU or similar organizations. Even the Libertarian party, one of the groups most in favor of limiting government, is not again…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I am anarcho-capitalist, and I have no trouble being absolutist about freedom of speech inside one's own property. So there's that.

> absolutist

Fine.

> inside one's own property.

Ah. That's quite specific. i.e. it excludes much of what's being discussed here.

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

#718

Post by rdiddly »

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.

Any issue about which there's a cultural movement going on can serve as a handy pretext for measures that consolidate one's own power. It kind of seems obvious to point out, but nonetheless let's continue to be open to the possibility that such consolidation is not mere coincidence, or more to the point, that the measure is not even well-intentioned and in fact has nothing do to with the ostensible issue/reason (in this case, hate speech). The most cynical of power grabs are usually cloaked in the most noble of pretenses. That's how you make the unpalatable, palatable.

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

#719

Post by monadic2 »

frank2 wrote: post #616
colordrops wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hanlon's razor has hobbled everyone's ability to see what the establishment is doing. This isn't about good intentions gone wrong. The loss of control of the narrative due to the internet has been a severe setback for the powerful, and they have been slowly clawing it back by limiting access to alternative media. Various think tanks, NGOs, board members with multiple irons in the fire, foreign interests, and the gove…

>The loss of control of the narrative due to the internet has been a severe setback for the powerful How was the narrative controlled by the powerful before the internet became a part of everyday life? Specifically, how was the narrative controlled in the US in the decades before 1993? I'm asking for recommendations of books written by historians, journalists and other serious people. (Understanding the situation dec…

The go-to text is Manufacturing Consent.

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

#720

Post by baddox »

SkyBelow wrote: post #662
tshaddox wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you aren't concluding, because people disagree on precisely what qualifies as "murder," that there should be no laws against murder. That is the argument proposed in the earlier comment about why there should not be laws against hate speech.
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