Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 988 posts

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

#781

Post by simonh »

userbinator wrote: post #263
simonh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that's some historical revisionism I've not see before. The term sideloading was invented by an internet storage service company to refer to copying files between remote storage buckets without having to do an upload or download. The term then got adopted by the community for copying MP3 files to a player from your computer.

In the communities I participated in, that was just called copying, and generic MP3/MP4 player owners were often quick to point out that they could just simply plug in and copy files like a USB drive, whereas iPods needed iTunes and "syncing". I've never seen sideloading being used to describe anything other than to suggest "impropriety" or something that's not "officially unapproved", and only in the context of appl…

There are other terms many people use, for sure, but nevertheless, that’s where the term sideloading comes from.

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

#782

Post by Arathorn »

jsnell wrote: post #768
tabbott wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that connects to self-hosted servers!). I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams, are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune their tactics and so tend to never expla…

Legitimate app yes, but was it actually popular? The cached copy of the Element store page says 100k installs, <2k reviews. Compare to e.g. Signal at 50M installs and 1.2M reviews. Or WhatsApp with 5B installs and 130M reviews.

This is in part because we had to replace the app in 2019, and also because it's not the only client for Matrix - many deployments are actually forks of Element (e.g. France's 5.5M user deployment of Tchap).

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

#783

Post by feanaro »

absorber wrote: post #662
brettwilcox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also working on a Go version called Dendrite - https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite The Matrix team is doing a LOT of cool stuff. :)

Yes, but IMO the Matrix team should _really_ focus on Dendrite since Synapse is extremely resource hungry and prevents a lot of people (including me) from running their own servers.

It's not that resource hungry anymore. Hovering stably around 500M RSS and 8% CPU for me right now. That's with ~25 users and a lot of federated, public rooms, some of them quite large.

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

#784

Post by grishka »

anderspitman wrote: post #767
grishka wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to build self-update functionality into an app, just like many apps do on desktop. An app can open that installation prompt to update itself.

Not on the latest versions of Android, unless you're only updating interpreted code like Python. You can no longer execute files that weren't packaged with the original APK.

You can download an apk and launch the package installer activity to install it. In latest versions of Android, you'll need to serve the apk through a ContentProvider. I tested this myself, it works, even if the app is updating itself.

But I think you can actually still load arbitrary dex files using a ClassLoader? I thought that the update was only affecting JNI libraries. I remember reading how they wanted for any and all executable code to come from a signed package. Even then, if you're determined enough, you can load arbitrary native code by allocating some rwx memory pages and copying it in there ;)

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

#785

Post by panarky »

tabbott wrote: post #702
Arathorn wrote: post #3

So we got notified by the developer console at 21:45 UTC that the app had been suspended, but still haven’t had an email to explain why - it’s 02:24 now. Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame — although this is currently speculation. To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to v…

I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that connects to self-hosted servers!). I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams, are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune their tactics and so tend to never expla…

If you accept that (1) there is a substantial amount of mal-content that Google should censor, and (2) a key use case for federated messaging platforms is to evade censorship, and that (3) client applications can be functionally part of a federated messaging platform while legally separate from it, then those client applications are fair game to be censored when they deliver mal-content.

Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just because the client application is legally but not functionally separate from the federated network.

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

#786

Post by shadowofneptune »

Arathorn wrote: post #3

So we got notified by the developer console at 21:45 UTC that the app had been suspended, but still haven’t had an email to explain why - it’s 02:24 now. Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame — although this is currently speculation. To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to v…

That's good. I switched away from IRC to Discord back around 2016 because it was tedious to use with mobile networks. Discord has served the community I moderate pretty well, but I am always concerned that the company will go under some day. I've been eyeing Matrix for a while as an alternative and it'd be a blow to have one of its largest clients removed. Here's hoping it gets back soon.

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

#787

Post by anderspitman »

grishka wrote: post #784
anderspitman wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on the latest versions of Android, unless you're only updating interpreted code like Python. You can no longer execute files that weren't packaged with the original APK.

You can download an apk and launch the package installer activity to install it. In latest versions of Android, you'll need to serve the apk through a ContentProvider. I tested this myself, it works, even if the app is updating itself. But I think you can actually still load arbitrary dex files using a ClassLoader? I thought that the update was only affecting JNI libraries. I remember reading how they wanted for any…

Yeah I misinterpreted your original comment. I was thinking in terms of the app being in control of itself ie JNI type stuff.

Sounds like there are ways to do it within the Android ecosystem, but in cases where Google is suspending things wouldn't they just turn off all the self-update stuff?

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

#788

Post by soupbowl »

tomstockmail wrote: post #760
Arathorn wrote: post #3

So we got notified by the developer console at 21:45 UTC that the app had been suspended, but still haven’t had an email to explain why - it’s 02:24 now. Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame — although this is currently speculation. To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to v…

There are a LOT of channels unmoderated in the matrix directory that could have been reported, so this isn't surprising. I have abuse complaints emailed to your abuse address that have gone unanswered, so I don't believe that you're taking your terms of use seriously. You can find my complaints in your inbox. It's good to know Google is taking action - will send the same complaints to them in the future since that se…

Yeah, we better make sure every corner of the internet is moderated. /s

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

#789

Post by _huayra_ »

NullPrefix wrote: post #765
dominotw wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the app to chat with my mom. My mom is not going to install F-Droid or whatever. This comment reminds me of the famous dropbox comment on HN.

Care to share the famous comment for those not in the know?

iirc, the quote s/he's referring to is approximately "Dropbox won't ever take off because it's just glorified rsync and everyone can already do that", i.e. "everyone" can rsync

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

#790

Post by johnisgood »

0df8dkdf wrote: post #303
walrus01 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that can be the full rationale behind whatever got it removed, if that were the case, they'd absolutely have removed Signal quite some time ago.

the difference is Signal is NOT federated, and matrix is. Which make it more like email, harder to censor.

And for the love of God, people should stop calling Signal secure as long as it is tied to a phone number. You cannot get a SIM card in my country without not having it tied to your ID card number, address, and so forth. You are not anonymous on Signal.
Post reply on HN