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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

#881

Post by kbenson »

joshuamorton wrote: post #863
kbenson wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this gets very tricky legally, but on the broader point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship based on concept is okay, but based on speaker is not. I don't know. I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion, or the idea of homosexuality, even if you think censoring Muslims and homosexuality is not. At what point does censoring discussing about homosexual…

> I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion Let me give you an example: It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam. It is not acceptable to enforce that Muslim individuals cannot hold positions in government. The first is discrimination based on content, the second is discrimination based on, let's call it character.

That's not really answering the question, which I think gets to the point of the distinction you made. Is it okay to censor discussion of the Islamic religion? That's a concept. We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an individual, but you distinguished the types of censorship based on concepts and individuals. Why is it okay to censor Islam but not Muslims (or is it not okay, in which case your prior delineation of circumstances doesn't hold)?

> It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam.

That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it applies.

Again, this is why I think it's important to have a well thought out argument, otherwise it may be hypocritical. I'm not even pushing a different side, I'm just trying to get you to articulate specifically why these two things are different, and pointing to examples doesn't do that at all. It's just a list of value judgements that you assume someone else will agree with without providing the rational behind those judgements (presumably believing it's self evident).

If someone cannot distinguish why two separate situations are different but states as fact that they are, then they are being hypocritical, whether those situation are different or not. Nobody should be stating things as fact that they can't explain. Being hypocritical has nothing to do with the truth, it has to do with knowledge, actions and beliefs.

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

#882

Post by ryukafalz »

aftergibson wrote: post #781

I use an Apple device and it’s decisions like this that make me glad of that, however, it’s just the lesser of two evils right now. Both mobile platforms are making scary decisions lately and my faith in them decreases daily. I’m going to start supporting pine and any other open alternatives more. Pine is the only mobile platform I’m even vaguely optimistic about.

>I use an Apple device and it’s decisions like this that make me glad of that, however, it’s just the lesser of two evils right now.

Be aware that while it's possible for Android users to download Fediverse apps from an alternative app store like F-Droid instead, the same would not be possible on an Apple device if Apple were to do the same.

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

#883

Post by pfraze »

querez wrote: post #821
pfraze wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing consent online is dependent on the rules of the game. Russian-bot-syndrome is a fraud issue, in this case a state actor manipulating the 1-person-1-voice assumption of the game. If we're making a marketplace metaphor, then this market is being tilted toward actors with the resources to pay for bots, workers, or influencers. It's not like it's limited to Russia; Bloomberg was somewhat showy during the pr…

> Bloomberg was somewhat showy during the primary about paying people to tweet for him I'm genuinely curious, do you have any more details or sources on this?

This is what my googling pulled up, which matches my memory of it: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-23...

It was an interesting situation because in some ways, I prefer the transparency involved? But it's sort of like any sale of an account, even if temporary - it seems disingenuous by nature. Almost like how an MLM makes you sell to your friends.

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

#884

Post by joshuamorton »

kbenson wrote: post #881
joshuamorton wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion Let me give you an example: It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam. It is not acceptable to enforce that Muslim individuals cannot hold positions in government. The first is discrimination based on content, the second is discrimination based on, let's call it character.

That's not really answering the question, which I think gets to the point of the distinction you made. Is it okay to censor discussion of the Islamic religion? That's a concept. We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an individual, but you distinguished the types of censorship based on concepts and individuals. Why is it okay to censor Islam but not Muslims (or is it not okay, in which case your prior delineat…

> That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it applies.

I'd argue that political action is a form of speech, so laws that prevent certain kinds of political action are speech. How do you draw the distinction between a law, which you're arguing isn't speech, and political donations which are, at least under the law today, a form of speech. I'm claiming these are all the same thing, because you can't draw a non-arbitrary line between a congressperson addressing congress and a congressperson drafting a bill and me asking a congressperson to draft a bill. They're all speech. You're free to disagree with that framing, but that is how I view speech. It's for this reason that I also don't agree with the common-in-the US excuse of "it's just speech so it can't hurt anyone", or similar. The only difference between your "just speech" and a law is who is willing to listen to the speaker.

Now, you can claim that we're talking about government representatives, so things are different, which may or may not be true, but I'll accept that. Perhaps people who have more authority should be given less freedom, an interesting tradeoff. But let's ignore the government entirely and just discuss what makes the two situations distinct.

So, it clearly isn't okay to censor Muslims, because that rule cannot be fair/equally applied. It will, by definition, be discriminatory against individuals, which seems to be the bad thing we want to avoid (or maybe I'm wrong and you're okay with discriminating against individuals?). However, censoring certain topics may be done without discriminating against individuals. It applies equally, for example, to a Muslim person wanting to extoll Islam and to a Christian wanting to demonize it.

If we bring this full circle: preventing Muslims from speaking ensures that they will not be represented [in the discourse, in the government, whatever]. This can, realistically, only be harmful to them. Banning discussion of Islam certainly has the capacity to be harmful to them, but also has the capacity to not be harmful to them (for example if the discourse is full of demonization of Islam, perhaps banning discussion of Islam is a net-gain for individual Muslim people).

Obviously this requires, like, an actual fair moderator, and it raises a bunch of tricky questions (like is the meta-discussion of whether it should be acceptable to discuss Islam, itself an acceptable discussion?), but it isn't, call it, implicitly harmful.

tl;dr: Removing people from discourse cannot be beneficial to those people. Removing concepts from discourse depends.

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

#885

Post by gerbal »

djsumdog wrote: post #811
gerbal wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is reliable media? What can be trusted? Who do you trust? > We've never had a media that's more blatantly bias and unreliable than the one we have right now. Can you provide a citation or evidence of this claim?

I would highly recommend you watch the 2019 documentary Hoaxed. You're immediately going to dismiss it when you look it up because of the people in it; which goes to show how bad current media bias is. I don't think everything from the documentary should be taken at face value, but it's still incredibly valuable in learning how the narrative has been so insanely skewed today.

I took a watch. Honestly, it's lazy and dumb. The siloing of modern social-media justifies the behavior of Cernovic and his ilk? There is genuine propaganda being actively promoted by malign actors in our media ecosystem, but Cernovic tries to use this as an excuse for his malign promotion of propaganda and misinformation.

That movie is by and for Mike Cernovic's existing audience. It was crowd funded by his audience, produced by his production company, and promoted on far-right websites where he contributes. The producers and directors appear to be mostly info-wars style far-right propagandists. Event the glowing IMDB reviews describe it as "preaching to the choir".

The project of Hoaxed is to create false equivalency between the misdeeds of the larger media industry, and the specific business model of promoting far-right misinformation that people like Cernovic engage in.

edit: I broadly agree with this guys take on the movie [1], which he expresses at greater length and clarity than I am presently able.

[1] https://lawrenceserewicz.wordpress.com/2020/04/16/initial-re...

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

#886

Post by rightbyte »

bluthru wrote: post #865
rightbyte wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historic revisionism as an subgroup of hate speech is a prime example of slippery slope and moving of definition. I would add "fake news" to hate speech.

>I would add "fake news" to hate speech. What are you doing? Are you trying to ban speech you don't like? What body determines what is "fake news" and "hate speech"? It can't be done, which is why the only sane policy is free speech. We have laws against violence, and it's a very clear line.

Sorry, it was meant as rhetorical stupidity.

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

#887

Post by stale2002 »

dependenttypes wrote: post #874
stale2002 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Most (if not all) EU countries protect the freedom of speech in their constitution.

Not particularly well, as it seems when compared to the US.

You can just look at some of the laws that they have regarding speech, on their books, to see how there are definitely more things that are restricted that you can say, in comparison to what it restricted in the US.

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

#888

Post by bsder »

avivo wrote: post #506
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.

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…

The problem I have isn't that Google bans these apps.

The problem is the fact that Google banning these apps borders on state censorship because of the monopolistic position Google has.

Busting up Google solves the correct problem.

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

#889

Post by strken »

avivo wrote: post #506
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.

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…

It concerns me that the company taking down the apps also owns my entire mobile OS from browser to network stack, as well as the DNS resolver, the search engine, and the email client I use.

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

#890

Post by gruez »

munificent wrote: post #799
gruez wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but does gab use "algorithms and ML" to determine what gets shown? Doesn't it use a upvote/downvote model like hn or reddit? Is a site that uses a "order by upvotes" ranking system closer to the first print shop or the second? What about bulletin boards that ranks by last post?

> Doesn't it use a upvote/downvote model like hn or reddit? Is that really any different? If your print shop counts the user-submitted tallies on a chalkboard to decide which pamphlets to print, the print shop is still choosing to use that rule to decide what to print.

Because then you can't make any sort of public facing site with UGC without being burdened with the responsibility of what's being posted. Come to think of it, the distinction is entirely arbitrary. Run a bulletin board that sorts by last reply? You are responsible for the user content. Run a mailing list that forwards every message to the end user, and the end-user implements the same sort by default? You're off the hook, even though the end result is the same.
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