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Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

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Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

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I wonder why this hasn't been escalated to an anti-trust case yet.

[flagged]

It used to be that if you even uttered the words "freedom of speech" here you'd be instantly downvoted and jumped on by five people saying that censorship is only when it's done by the government. Some people still double down on supporting the censorship, but at least no one even mentions that free market argument anymore.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck! I hope you get this resolved soon. In the meantime, what is the explanation for the F-Droid version lagging behind?

F-Droid publish their own builds; part of their mission is to independently build and package the upstream from source to avoid risk of the upstream doing anything unpleasant.

Can they not automate that? That would probably put them _ahead_ of the Play Store

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#583
post #500

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This is insane. This jeopardizes every email, xmpp, matrix, etc; basically any 3rd party application.

> This jeopardizes every email, xmpp, matrix, etc; basically any 3rd party application. Except of course Google's own applications. Gmail, Hangouts/Meet/whatever-it-currently-is, Chrome. Luckily it's not possible to display illegal content with Google's own apps /s I remember when my nephew got groomed on Google Plus, I was way to naive to think that this would not be occurring in Google's walled gardens. But in ther…

> my nephew got groomed on Google Plus

That is genuinely horrifying and I'm so sorry for him and your family.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm doing a custom react client integration. AA has to prepare for black swan events from every angle and this is a perfect example of one. When you have 100,000+ employees, it's not trivial to just switch up communication platforms.

If you need to prepare for Black Swan events, doesn't it make sense to have your own channel to distribute APKs to all devices? Why would you rely on the Play Store at all?

It's easier to simply ensure that the apps you need are present in multiple stores.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#585
This notion that your business can evaporate without notice overnight has to stop.

We absolutely need clear legislation on this, this is causing harm and the power asymmetry is monumental.

Also - consider the conflicts of interests: Google Apps would never, ever get treated the same way.

I think it's time to separate app distribution from the devices themselves.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#586

Does someone know why f-droid versions tend to be 'few versions behind'?

Push vs pull perhaps. F-droid packagers need to a) notice there's a newer version and b) implement the change of packaging a newer version. Plus whatever additional process they might have to keep things from breaking.

Element's developers just upload a newer version to Play themselves as part of the release.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#587
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I have no idea whether this is correlated with the other recent de-platforming events, but the rapidly growing list of examples is now getting ridiculous. It’s crazy to imagine that the rug could get pulled out from beneath any of us, any time, under any pretext (or no pretext at all!). I don’t know whether a more apt metaphor alludes to serfs on feudal land, or The Trial by Kafka. If it turns out this is because of…

This is the upside down crazy we are faced with when a tiny number of giant companies make decisions on whims of ever changing policy. We need to fight back with things like PWAs to bypass the app stores, web socket chats, distributed social platforms, and plain old web pages to publicly document these attacks on free speech. Call/email Congress too. Get friends and neighbors to do the same. They are already alerted…

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Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#588
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post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Let me get this straight - you're saying "true libertarians" are people who decide to stop caring about advancing libertarian causes because someone else exercised their right of free speech, and now cheer for the loss of liberty of people they don't like?

No, I'm saying true libertarians have been getting ostracised by polite society for years now.

I'm a massively left leaning libertarian, if it weren't for its consistently proven failures in practice I would be a commy.

But here I am, over the years of commenting online I've been labeled a trump supporter, a Republican, alt right, white, male privileged, white privileged, racist, pseudo intellectual, biggoted, transphobic, and a Nazi.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#589

Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like? (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.) I might of course be exaggerating a bit here, keep that in mind. - Element and Matrix are growing but still not equipped to fight back at large against this, so it is unlikely to create too much negative press - If Google starts to catch too much…

Yes, I'm convinced the YouTube algos did this to my channel during summer 2020. Their algos wait in silence until triggered.

Big tech platform who participate in anti-competitive practices (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) know the optimal time to pull the plug to flatten the curve and prevent competition from going exponential.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#590

Ironically this move finally made me to consider Matrix. I'm thinking about spinning a server on a non FAANG provider like Vultr or Linode and setting IM services bridges from there. Nowadays I use lots of different communicators to talk to different people and most of these apps track me. If I setup a Matrix server somewhere that allows me to use those networks without having their software installed on my devices t…

I'm in the process of setting up a Matrix homeserver myself. It seems like there are some missing features.

From their github:

> Is Dendrite stable?

Mostly, although there are still bugs and missing features. If you are a confident power user and you are happy to spend some time debugging things when they go wrong, then please try out Dendrite. If you are a community, organisation or business that demands stability and uptime, then Dendrite is not for you yet - please install Synapse instead.

> Does Dendrite support push notifications?

No, not yet. This is a planned feature.

> Does Dendrite support application services/bridges?

Possibly - Dendrite does have some application service support but it is not well tested. Please let us know by raising a GitHub issue if you try it and run into problems.

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