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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

#861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> people should stop calling Signal secure as long as it is tied to a phone number.

Like nearly everything, "secure" is a spectrum and not binary. On that spectrum, Signal is overwhelmingly more secure than most messenger apps people actually use.

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

#862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, should we ban email apps as well? And probably the Internet itself and go back to "safe" walled gardens like AOL, since there are almost certainly bad people on the net?

That's a textbook example of the logical fallacy commonly known as the slippery slope.

This event is a textbook example of the slope already being slippery.

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

#863
post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a textbook example of the logical fallacy commonly known as the slippery slope.

No it’s not — it’s pointing out that those arguments fail when looking at existing systems, and would trivially deny things that we know we want. A slippery slope would be that the reasoning lends itself to more extreme reasoning down the line. You don’t need to bother with that here, we’re already arguing from the bottom of the slope. This simply argues that they’re special-casing against non-established systems — i…

My assertion was a narrow one: the client application of a network designed to avoid censorship of bad actors is not exactly as legitimate as a web browser that is not designed to avoid censorship of bad actors.

To go from that narrow assertion to "ban email apps and probably the Internet itself" is fallacious reasoning at its finest.

There's no rebuttal by refuting any of the premises or finding logical flaws, just straight to the end of the world as we know it.

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

#864
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…

UPDATE: I just got a call from a VP at Google who apologised for the bad communication around this and explained the situation, which related to some extremely abusive content which was accessible on the default matrix.org homeserver. We don't want to go into specifics, but suffice it to say that it's not related to WallStreet Bets or anything like that, but instead is the sort of thing that causes you to get locked…

But I can visit sites and do things in chrome that will get me locked up for life as well yet it's still on my phone.

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

#865
post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By the way, “malcontent” (no hyphen) is an English word that doesn’t mean “bad content” or “malicious content” like you’re intending.

I guess my dictionary is wrong then sense it seems to be referring to a person in both definitions that they give.

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

#866
post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you throw in "hate speech" you are just saying that censorship of things you don't like is ok.

Censorship of things I don't like is okay when performed at the level of an actual community that nobody is forced to be a member of.

I realized this comment carries more pith than meaning, as it were, and thought I'd expound.

Communities censor in benign ways all the time. Most successful online forums regularly remove posts that are spam, self-promoting, or flamebait. They also remove contributions that are off-topic: completely harmless posts that just don't happen to be what the community wants to focus on. Celebrity gossip on a tech site, say.

Some places are more wild-west than others and that's fine. The point is that while the word "censorship" has a negative ring to it, most censorship is mundane and unobjectionable.

It's not okay (in USA culture) for the government to set community standards, not because standards are bad, but because the organization that controls guns and prisons is already terrifying enough without it being able to control speech too.

Google and Apple (and Facebook and Twitter) are in an in-between space. Their platforms are much too large to be a "community" in the traditional sense, but as private organizations they're still obligated to moderate. And when they get it wrong, the results can be devastating to the individuals affected, both in false-positive cases like this one, and false-negative cases where their cold machinery fails to protect victims of real harassment.

With more, smaller networks, there's no such tension. You can visit a network that lets you post all the hate speech you want. I can visit one that blacklists yours and every one like yours. And neither of us has to give two bits how odious we find each other's spaces.

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

#867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a classic case of Hanlon’s razor and I don’t see any evidence to the contrary (yet). An NSL would be handled a lot differently than removing an app from a single app store for sexual content. Every indication so far points to it being a mistake by Google. From less than a week ago: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/googles-bots-decide-...

Maybe. But if you always discount such events as coincidences, you risk remaining blind to emerging patterns.

The app is back up and the Element folks agreed that there was what sounds like child pornography reachable from their domain. Overzealous automation perhaps, but obviously not a conspiracy.

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

#868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use FDroid though.

How are you going to explain that to your manager?

You’re lucky if you work a place that even sends you an email when they make unilateral changes to the software that’s running on employer-owned hardware. Everywhere I’ve been has a management engine running with highest privileges that does whatever it wants, this used to be true only in industries like finance and healthcare but now it’s standard.

Maybe places like google are different, I would not know but I’d be surprised to learn that there’s any publicly traded company that does not exercise total control of their machines.

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

#869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would presumably include Chrome and https and enabling use through VPNs? The above are use daily for extremist content, CP, circumventing numerous national laws in numerous places... Hard to draw the line.

The line isn't that hard to draw. If you run a monolithic, centralized service specifically designed to avoid censorship, and you don't moderate what users do on your service, and some of those users hurt people with your service, then you should expect your service will be shut down as Parler was. And if you do the same thing, but separate the front end from the back end, and have different entities run them to prov…

How do you logically reconcile that what you say applies to Web Browsers as well?

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

#870
Google Play Store takedown and appeals process is so embarrisingly bad and so easy to fix. 1) give people notice and the chance to respond in most cases before the takedown or put the app back up if an appeal is filed until the appeal is reviewed. 2) allow attachments on the appeals form. They only allow 1,000 characters, which is just not enough for most cases. 3) staff the team so you can reply within 48 hours. Currently, the average seems to be about 10 days. 4) Have a way to see the takedown reason I'm the developer portal. If you appeal, see the appeal was received and is in process.

None of these things take materially more resources from google. Some junior PM should be able to make this better, and it would save google a lot of antitrust concerns. Something like 1M a year would probably do it.

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