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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

#871
post #223

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

yes. husky in particular is a fork of another app called tusky, that internally implemented a login blacklist of explicitly-nazi instances and instances with lolicon content, after the author decided they didn't want those users running their software. husky's explicit sole purpose is to be tusky without that blacklist. tusky has not been removed from the play store. i'm not familiar with the other apps on the list b…

> husky's explicit sole purpose is to be tusky without that blacklist

This is not true. It is just the personal fork of tusky by a1batross. It also contains improvements to the pleroma integration.

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

#872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

> Trump just negotiated a peace deal between Israel and UAE

There are lots of Christians who favor Israel but ultimately hold anti-Jewish opinions. This is weird, yes, but support of Israel should not be mistaken for support of Jews (the reverse is also, but only incidentally) true.

> Trump's son in law is Jewish.

So were Emil Maurice and Erhard Milch, at least according to German law. Didn't stop Hitler and Goering from making exceptions for them.

I have quite a few conservative friends. Most of them don't support Trump, because Trump isn't a conservative. He doesn't stand for God or individual freedom, nor does he stand for loyalty to the country. Don't conflate conservatives and Trump supporters. They're not the same thing, and trying to present a bait and switch between classical conservatism and Trumpism is a bad faith argument. This is why you see so many conservative politicians that are no longer in office supporting Biden over Trump. Because Trump doesn't extoll conservative values. Instead he represents a populist and proto-fascist wing with more than a couple white supremacist tendencies.

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

#873
post #650
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 also goes the other way. Section 230 was about child pornography and became used as a safe harbor for anything. I am not usually agreeing w the Trump admin but they do have a point there. In general our thinking about freedom of speech is itself idiosyncratic in the same way. Human FREEDOMS means doing what you want. It’s not the same as a right to a megaphone maintained by thousands of employees and infrastructur…

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was chosen for a reason in contrast to the term Locke used (estate): individual freedom was supposed to be balanced with the interests of the society that allowed them to exist and be pursued in the first place, which are what courts consider fundamental rights.

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

#874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Countries in Europe have some pretty huge restictions on speech that go far behind things like making death threats and fraud illegal. So does the US.

> So does the US Not in comparison to the EU. Most people can agree that restrictions on speech in the US are much less strict than those in the EU.

Who are these "most people"? I am not aware of any such person myself.

Most (if not all) EU countries protect the freedom of speech in their constitution. In addition ECHR protects the freedom of speech as well.

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

#875
post #650
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 also goes the other way. Section 230 was about child pornography and became used as a safe harbor for anything. I am not usually agreeing w the Trump admin but they do have a point there. In general our thinking about freedom of speech is itself idiosyncratic in the same way. Human FREEDOMS means doing what you want. It’s not the same as a right to a megaphone maintained by thousands of employees and infrastructur…

>Section 230 was about child pornography

What? It most certainly was not!

The CDA as a whole was an attempt to regulate indecency and obscenity on the internet. Think "pornography that might be seen by minors"[0]. (Remember, this was the 90s.) Most of it (with the exception of section 230) was struck down in court for obvious first-amendment reasons. Section 230 was added later during the process by the House, after the bill had passed through the Senate, and was more about defamation than anything else[1].

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/652... - search for "This title may be cited as the ``Communications Decency Act of 1996''."

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...

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

#876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding you right, the idea is that some harms, physical ones, are fair game for the law to cover, but other harms (mental ones) or a collection of boundary cases are less (if at all) within the purview of legislation. I think there's a good conversation to be had as to what in particular makes physical harms so special as compared to others, and how existing law in every country (including the US) can c…

You can prove physical harm beyond a reasonable doubt. Mental harm is frequently concocted as a bullying tactic, e.g. the recent NY Times editorial controversy where employees said running an editorial they disagreed with made them "feel unsafe." https://www.npr.org/2020/06/08/871817721/head-of-new-york-ti...

The article you link did not mention the employees saying running the editorial made them "feel unsafe". Neither the word safe nor unsafe appears in the article. It says the article "reportedly elicited strong objections" from the staff.

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

#877
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it the wrong way around. If a lot of people consume a type of content, there are going to be people wanting to produce it for . To push the analogy to the extreme, consuming illegal pornography doesn't actually harm anyone, the production does, however the consumption drivers production, therefore the consumption does harm.

Yeah but we're not talking about "the knockout challenge" or destroying milk jugs in the supermarket. Most people don't murder for the lulz and they also enjoy not being in prison for decades. Despite the FUD pushed by popular media there aren't going to be that many people producing it for money/fame/kicks. The vast majority of gore on the internet is a product of security cameras or otherwise hidden cameras.

>there aren't going to be that many people producing it for money/fame/kicks

I agree.

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

#878
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel there should be some laws for when someone calls themselves news or journalism. So no monopoly for news, but when does call themselves this, there should be some ethical and truth finding considerations attached.

>there should be some ethical and truth finding considerations attached. But who decides what's true? And why should we let them? Majority consensus is an easy answer, but we'd need something else if we were to regulate truth at a level we could enforce on journalists. I'm personally more worried about that question spiraling out of control than I am about offering equal air time.

Truth might not be the best word, but the intention is about factual and empirical observations. So news/journalism is X happened at Y, backed up with as much sources as the journalist can muster.

What it means is not news, thats opinion.

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

#879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they should be prohibited from policing content merely that if they are capable of policing content they should be held liable for content on their platform like every other publisher. There is no reason to give these censorious companies extra legal protections no other publisher has if they are censoring society. They have been protected by a regulation that is now causing intense centralizing of power…

> There is no reason to give these censorious companies extra legal protections no other publisher has if they are censoring society. Yes, there is a very good reason. Traditional publishers review 100% of content before they affirmatively publish it. User content on most websites are published by automation, and are not reviewed by humans, like this comment.

>User content on most websites are published by automation, and are not reviewed by humans, like this comment.

So what? They choose to publish it. They can choose not to. Their own internal business practices don't require society to give them loopholes with which they get out of all liability and abuse the rights of others.

It's a good reason to the publisher, its not a good reason for the rest of society.

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

#880
post #650
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 also goes the other way. Section 230 was about child pornography and became used as a safe harbor for anything. I am not usually agreeing w the Trump admin but they do have a point there. In general our thinking about freedom of speech is itself idiosyncratic in the same way. Human FREEDOMS means doing what you want. It’s not the same as a right to a megaphone maintained by thousands of employees and infrastructur…

Sadly, Wikipedia's been controlled by a whole number of wackos with megaphones for years. I wouldn't trust them to fact check my big toe.
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