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Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

chaos.social

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Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#71

Post by pampa »

nargek wrote: post #47
derpthebert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

f-droid banned Gab. So they cannot be trusted to run an impartial service.

Not tolerating xenophobia, racism and bigots in general is a big point for a lot of people. The paradox of tolerance is something that many people should consider.

One of my favorite zen koans is "Fire-poker Zen":

"Hakuin used to tell his pupils about an old woman who had a teashop, praising her understanding of Zen. The pupils refused to believe what he told them and would go to the teashop to find out for themselves.

Whenever the woman saw them coming she could tell at once whether they had come for tea or to look into her grasp of Zen. In the former case, she would serve them graciously. In the latter, she would beckon to the pupils to come behind her screen. The instant they obeyed, she would strike them with a fire-poker.

Nine out of ten of them could not escape her beating."

It is a great metaphor. Nine out of ten applications of the tolerance paradox do not pass the fire poker test. One needs a certain level of enlightenment and maturity of judgement to apply it, otherwise it can turn into metooism, mob behavior and plain hypocrisy.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#72

Post by numpad0 »

thefounder wrote: post #62
arnaudsm wrote: post #45

If they ban a client for the content it can access, why don't they ban web browsers entirely ? Google Chrome allows access to illegal and hateful content too.

It's just a matter of time

“Why oppress X but not Y, it’s a double standard”

And both goes. That’s only logical.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#73

Post by rvz »

derpthebert wrote: post #37
fwn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a relevant blog post f-droid published in 2019 on Tusky and Fedilab: https://f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html They do seem to ague in favor of free software. .. at least as long as app developers do not advertise shunned instances. Power-statements like "sometimes, staying neutral isn’t an option" suggest that they are probably not an ally of those wanting to leave it to the user to decide what hosts…

f-droid banned Gab. So they cannot be trusted to run an impartial service.

That is true. You cannot trust Google. They will point to their policies and even if you critique this they will lock and ignore your request. You can't use F-droid as an example of supporting 'Free software' or FLOSS if it is restricting distribution of its list of apps to certain people they don't like in the default repository, which goes against the point of branding yourself as 'free software' in the first place.

The only way to distribute your app without all these problems is by self-hosting it yourself like the old days of downloading a .exe, .dmg, from the website or have a app store like Cydia where you can freely add their list of apps with a click of a button that says something like 'Add to Cydia'.

Problem Solved.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#74

Post by mschuster91 »

chii wrote: post #52
matsemann wrote: post #32

Kinda ironic seeing Google Play's post today about " Boosting developer success on Google Play " [0] with quotes like " Helping developers build sustainable businesses ", except that your business can be gone at any moment based on the whim of some Google employee or automated algorithm. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737

The dangers of building on a platform that is unregulated. You wouldn't build your brick and mortar store on a contract that allowed the landlord to kick you out at a whim without compensation.

And yet people accept work in "at-will" states.

And the reason is the same as in developers build upon Google Play and Apple Store: they don't have another choice to make a living.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#75

Post by jakelazaroff »

syshum wrote: post #31
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta keep in mind the concept of "Federation" isn't the same as "Anti-censorship" or "Free Speech". It's less escaping the censored and restricted megacorp service to freedom or free speech anarchy and more you're able to build your own service that fulfills your own needs and own preferred blend of moderation vs free speech and that service can interact with others own instances with their own rules. Same goes for…

The problem with that argument is that the developers of the application are making the choices not the people that are "building their own service" This goes to the core of the debate, I am in favor of giving users the ability to block anyone they want, even the ability to subscribe to and distribute block lists However it is step to far to hardcode or build in unchangeable block lists into the very foundation of th…

When I build something, I alone get to decide what my labor enables and what it does not. If you disagree with my choices, you’re free to use a tool built by someone whose values better align with yours.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#76

Post by skohan »

chii wrote: post #52
matsemann wrote: post #32

Kinda ironic seeing Google Play's post today about " Boosting developer success on Google Play " [0] with quotes like " Helping developers build sustainable businesses ", except that your business can be gone at any moment based on the whim of some Google employee or automated algorithm. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737

The dangers of building on a platform that is unregulated. You wouldn't build your brick and mortar store on a contract that allowed the landlord to kick you out at a whim without compensation.

I think this is one of the great unsolved problems of our time. Apple, Google and Amazon (ok and Azure too I guess) are effectively gatekeepers in terms of what products are allowed to exist online. And during the pandemic this is especially relevant, because for a great many people online life is public life for all intents and purposes.

I think almost everyone would agree that a handful of unaccountable corporations should not hold this discretionary power, but we don't have a legal framework or social contract to dictate how this should be handled.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#77

Post by wffurr »

jorvi wrote: post #17
pseudo0 wrote: post #10

Amusing that Husky is still up, a fork of Tusky that has support for some additional Pleroma features and lacks Tusky's blacklist of certain "naughty" instances. https://github.com/fwgs/husky

It still blows my mind that Mastodon was explicitly made to escape the 'dictator companies' of closed social networks but that many of the apps made for Mastodon contain blacklists. I don't agree with the content of said blacklisted Mastodon instances and I agree that developers can do whatever they want with their app, but blacklists seem painfully obviously against the spirit of what Mastodon is supposed to represe…

There's a joke (can't find the comic or article, darn you Google search) that says when you make a forum with "free speech" you get one civil libertarian and 99 trolls, neo nazis, child pornographers, etc.

Moderation is essential for usable communities. These block lists are a form of moderation to make Mastodon useful. Otherwise it's pushed on to the user, many of whom will just nope out back to Reddit or Facebook, or to the Mastodon server administrators, who are largely unpaid volunteer labor.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#78

Post by donatj »

mschuster91 wrote: post #74
chii wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dangers of building on a platform that is unregulated. You wouldn't build your brick and mortar store on a contract that allowed the landlord to kick you out at a whim without compensation.

And yet people accept work in "at-will" states. And the reason is the same as in developers build upon Google Play and Apple Store: they don't have another choice to make a living.

Myself, working in an at-will state, it’s quite a different situation.

If I lose my job there are thousands of other companies that would be happy to have me. Many of whom are filled with great people who are sane and reasonable.

When it comes to selling mobile apps there are two storefronts with unforgiving chaotic management that will drop you at the turn of a hat.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#79

Post by jeroenhd »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #67

Tusky is still installed on my phone, though, so I guess Google hasn't decided to yank it off existing devices yet. Do they even have the capacity to do that? It would be quite irksome here, but I'd see it being useful in the case of apps that are found to contain malware.

They do have the capacity to uninstall apps remotely as far as I know, but I don't think they've ever used it. Perhaps the system triggers when Play Protect finds an obvious strain of malware, but in these cases the default is to remove the store listing and the available updates but leave the app on the device.

Google showed their capability years ago (https://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-And...) but I don't know if they have the same capabilities now with the new Android permissions system.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#80

Post by Kye »

pampa wrote: post #71
nargek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not tolerating xenophobia, racism and bigots in general is a big point for a lot of people. The paradox of tolerance is something that many people should consider.

One of my favorite zen koans is "Fire-poker Zen": "Hakuin used to tell his pupils about an old woman who had a teashop, praising her understanding of Zen. The pupils refused to believe what he told them and would go to the teashop to find out for themselves. Whenever the woman saw them coming she could tell at once whether they had come for tea or to look into her grasp of Zen. In the former case, she would serve the…

>> "It is a great metaphor. Nine out of ten applications of the tolerance paradox do not pass the fire poker test. One needs a certain level of enlightenment and maturity of judgement to apply it, otherwise it can turn into metooism, mob behavior and plain hypocrisy."

You used a lot of words to make a mundane, unsupported assertion sound profound. Do you have any real examples?

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