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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

#761

Post by frank2 »

caseysoftware wrote: post #59
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.

The only way they can define and enforce "hate speech" policies is by torturing the language, the definitions, and hoping no one looks closely at the resulting policies. In the US, beyond explicit calls for illegal behavior (usually illegal) and kiddie porn (always illegal), we don't have many restrictions or even a legal definition of "hate speech." But even those laws aren't consistently applied. For the most part,…

>>The rationale [Google] gave is that hate speech appears on these apps

>The only way they can define and enforce "hate speech" policies is by torturing the language, the definitions, and hoping no one looks closely at the resulting policies

The rest of your comment is about the first amendment to the US constitution, which constrains governments (US Federal and state governments), not private parties such as Google.

Google would be well within its rights in the US to ban all hate speech from all the platforms it owns.

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

#762

Post by gruez »

betterunix2 wrote: post #725
frank2 wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

A century ago in the United States the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" was used in a Supreme Court ruling upholding the censorship of anti-draft activists during World War I, and within living memory the United States had various laws censoring pornographic photos and videos. There was even a time when it was illegal to have the Post Office carry written information about contraception: https://en.wikiped…

>In case anyone tries to claim that the founders intended for the most expansive possible understanding of freedom of speech, the fact is that one of the earliest laws passed in the United States was a law that censored criticisms of the Federal government (in an attempt to crack down on foreign misinformation campaigns):

I'm not sure whether that proves your point. The wikipedia article says that it was controversial, caused the federalist party to lose the following election, and ultimately expired after 4 years.

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

#763

Post by RonanTheGrey »

baddox wrote: post #618
djsumdog wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while deliberately hyperbolic It's not hyperbolic at all, or have you not seen the "Silence is Violence" rhetoric everywhere? It could literally come from Orwell's world of "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" The book, The Coddling of the American Mind, does a great job of showing how the goalposts for what is and isn't violent have been moved considerably in the past few years in academic cir…

> It's not hyperbolic at all, or have you not seen the "Silence is Violence" rhetoric everywhere? It could literally come from Orwell's world of "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" I’m aware of the “silence is violence” slogan. It means that inaction in the face of injustice is tacit support for the status quo. It doesn’t literally mean, for example, that all people are being violent while they…

That interpretation is entirely too generous. That expression "Silence is Violence" is explicitly intended to compel speech and its clear meaning is that if you don't, you are contributing to the violence against minorities.

https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/129834428507983872...

This is not an extreme example. The expression has always been used (at least in the current climate) to mean, you agree with us, verbally and visibly and loudly, or we attack you.

Edit: If you think the above example is not an example of what "silence is violence" means, by all means, explain why rather than just flyby downvoting.

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

#764

Post by devenblake »

Meanwhile multiple 4chan clients are still up: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=4chan

Maybe it's too soon to say but given the reputation of 4chan vs the small user-group of fediverse I'd say these rules are being enforced selectively.

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

#765

Post by RonanTheGrey »

baddox wrote: post #720
SkyBelow wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

No, there's a set of statutes that lay out what murder looks like, and ultimately it is up to a jury of your peers to determine if what you did satisfies the criterion. That's in fact exactly why the jury system was invented, because reasonable people can disagree, so the assumption becomes that "if a reasonable plurality of people DO agree, there's a good chance it is a good enough standard by which to act."

The subject of murder is not an appropriate analogy here, really.

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

#766

Post by a1369209993 »

fjdjsmsm wrote: post #405
brightball wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, I’m concerned about government placing restrictions on individuals based on their mental health history. What is the process to dispute it? You can’t just take a blood test to say this isn’t really a problem.

Some problems don’t have easy simple solutions. Any answer will have some outside cases. If a schizophrenic parent has in the past harmed someone, should a court ignore this when determining custody. It is unfair. If you err on being too lenient some people will be harmed. If you err on being stringent some people will be harmed. Complex problem cannot be solved with ideology and maxims. All solutions will fail some…

That example seems like a easy problem to solve actually?

> If a [] parent has in the past harmed someone, should a court ignore this when determining custody.

There you go, no need to place restrictions on people based on mental 'health', just their actual actions.

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

#767

Post by oehpr »

stusmall wrote: post #528
oehpr wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... But lets hypothetically say that Gab was not created for that purpose, but for precisely the purpose it claims it was created for: To be an open platform for free speech, no censorship. Wouldn't it have ended up in the exact same state it is now? Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from other major websites. Wh…

>I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... Maybe that's a sign you should pause. Sometimes it is okay to admit you don't know about a subject. It is okay to sit and listen instead of voicing an opinion.

Well... I mean really I was not trying to say Gab was innocent. I really didn't know until others provided some helpful context. I was speaking more to the original topic of this HN submission.

I never know how to handle topic shifts in the conversation trees in Reddit, Hacker News, and others.

Do you speak only to the comment you're responding to? Do you speak as if that comment is in the context of the submission? Do you keep the context as on topic as possible? Do you indicate which one of the three you're doing when you start your comment off? I feel like this is an internet rule I have not sussed out on my own. And I can see its caused some trouble for others. Sorry.

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

#768

Post by baryphonic »

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.

> People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government.

We have two things to unpack here. First, hate speech. What is it? Who gets to decide what the word means and what is their procedure for deciding? Is the definition stable or fluid (or even very fluid)? Is hate speech universally wrong, or only wrong when issuing forth from certain speakers? If we all agree that it's wrong, then why are people engaging in it, even unintentionally?

Second, censorship. Is self-censorship not censorship? Why must the state be involved in order to censor? We're TV networks that for decades voluntarily forbade their programming from portraying homosexuals being censored or not? What is unique about state authority versus corporate authority as it relates to censorship?

"Hate speech is bad" is a very abstract statement. The sentence conveys almost no actual concrete meaning. It seems like a rational or sensible statement, but it delegates almost all of the actual work to feelings and emotions, and highly subjective ones at that. I don't find "wanna grab a cup of coffee" terribly hateful, but apparently some people do.

I get the overall sentiment of your post, and I think I mostly agree. Nevertheless, the way we stop this nonsense is to say at the beginning that it is an abstraction over extremely subjective feelings and emotion, and thus has no basis other than eventual mob rule authoritarianism.

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

#769

Post by eanzenberg »

humanistbot wrote: post #47

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.

You joke about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years (or maybe 1 year?) open browsers are banned and only “allowed” browsers are used that allow access to “allowed” websites and content.

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

#770

Post by RonanTheGrey »

wonnage wrote: post #476
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.

This is like having a bulletin board in your store and not being able to take anything down from it. Yes, Google and Apple are big. You can say well, it’s different because in this world there’s only two boards for the entire country, that’s true! But it’s not a censorship problem, it’s an antitrust problem.

You hit the nail on the head, if they were just "more alphabets in the soup", people wouldn't have much leg to stand on; but because the internet has no analog to the actual PUBLIC square, when you have 1-3 companies that control access to what 95% of the internet sees, you have a problem - because there's no alternative and no public square on which to register your complaint.
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