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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

#171

Post by Robotbeat »

skohan wrote: post #164
Robotbeat wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making my point. The government isn’t going to protect speech more than private companies. Be careful for what you wish for on asking the government to step in.

The government has legal limits with which it cannot infringe on speech. That's not to say it always works perfectly, but at least if the government prevents my speech, I have recourse to challenge it in the court system on constitutional grounds. If Google or Apple does it, I have zero recourse, and the limits of the speech on their platforms are decided entirely unilaterally.

Which is why sideloading should be protected. The government restricting the freedom of companies to moderate pretty terrible content is not great. What we should have is sideloading protected technically and legally. That also prevents Google and Apple from just collecting monopoly rents from their App Stores with no alternative. App stores and the ability of companies to pick and choose the apps that are allowed on them is a legitimate thing. What’s not legitimate is being stuck with ONLY being able to use the company’s App Store on the device you own.

Government sticking their nose in there is likely to have results that are not what you want. The freedom-maximizing option is not to have government-moderated app stores (shudder). It’s to have the freedom to shop at different stores.

The App Store model itself (where sideloading is prohibited and technically impossible) is a single point of failure, and having the government run it is not going to make things more free. I mean for goodness sake, you can’t even swear on FCC’s airwaves, and you’re telling me THAT’S the model you want in App Stores?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#172

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

indymike wrote: post #138
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This new era of censorship is a reaction to the now obvious long-term effects of lack of censorship. As with most reactions it will probably swing too far the other way for a while.

Obvious is not a word I'd use here. At least in the US, we're driving a lot of change. Personally, I think a lot of the change is for the better... but censorship... well, Censorship is a disease. Bad ideas are a disease. Trying to cure bad ideas with censorship is kind of like trading cancer for congestive heart failure. Historically, censorship really hasn't led to great outcomes. Bad ideas? Usually good ideas end…

I'd like to believe that completely open debate would lead to better understanding for everyone involved, but reality has demonstrated to me that it isn't the case. "A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on". Even in Twain's day they understood the power of unchecked misinformation, and recent events have shown the consequences of allowing misinformation to spread far and wide nearly instantaneously.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#173

Post by usa5ever »

judge2020 wrote: post #114
sschueller wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default instance is mine and I follow almost no one, trying to keep that "family safe". But it looks like I need to also make sure it's "politically safe". The instance list is the official list provided by Peertube. I believe the goal is to make that list decentralised and self-filling as it should be. The NSFW filter is on per default. BTW, Google blocked an update not long ago because of a typo in my descripti…

'family safe' and 'politically safe' aren't much different in the fact that they're arbitrary filters on what is shown in the app by default. Start out with just a url box for 'connect to a PeerTube instance' and you don't have to worry about either.

I disagree, trans ideology is politically safe but isn't family safe. It's politically fine to chemically castrate confused homosexual children but I'm not going along with it

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#174

Post by [deleted] »

robrtsql wrote: post #165
arsome wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't call it free software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)."

Which Mastodon client doesn't respect this freedom? Tusky is GPL v3 ( https://github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/blob/develop/LICENSE.txt ). If you disagree with Tusky's choice to prevent accessing gab, you're free to fork it.

[deleted]

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#175

Post by g_p »

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.

The EU's upcoming digital services act and digital marketplaces act look to try to actual regulate these platforms. That could get interesting.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#176

Post by 3np »

josephcsible wrote: post #134
3np wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right - but my argument is equally applicable to Mastodon apps as to instances or Google's app store - you can always choose a different app! If they start using their own proprietary protocol extensions, or closed their instance to other clients, I'd not be as dismissive.

> you can always choose a different app Not if the app stores have a rule that every such client has to ban the servers that the app store doesn't like.

See my comment on the relevant thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26489901

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#177

Post by edbob »

bitwize wrote: post #132
soundnote wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people operate on a caricature version of the paradox, as opposed to Popper's more measured original. Most go with something like "If we tolerate people who aren't 100% our version of kumbaya, we'll end up in tyranny", when Popper's original is restricted to people who have stopped listening, and would make their argument with pistols. Most of the time, the paradox citers are closer to the "not listening" camp t…

If Jan. 6 wasn't proof enough that the "election was stolen" crowd has stopped listening and is willing to make their point with arms, I don't know what would suffice for you.

Jan 6 is proof that 0.001% of the "election was stolen" crowd has stopped listening and would make their argument with pistols. We're talking about people expressing heterodox opinions on social media. They are not the same group. Particularly since the LARPers are in jail.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#178

Post by skohan »

Robotbeat wrote: post #163
tester34 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. Why should they unless the app violates the law? And please take into consideration the fact that we aren't talking about small / mid size businesses, but giant behemoths and we're trying to apply some rules to the biggest ones.

And why should those huge companies be able to collect rents from their App stores? Protecting side-loading (legally and technically) solves both problems. And limits the ability of the government to do the same kind of moderating as they’d first have to somehow disable sideloading. (Imagine the government trying to disable ability to run arbitrary code on all laptops or PCs. Possible with enough manpower, sure, but…

I think protecting side-loading would be a sensible regulation to fix the situation of app-store gatekeeping.

On the hosting side I think it's a bit different. For instance if AWS wants to kick an app off of their platform, there should be a legally mandated warning escalation process, and cloud providers should be required to give clients a reasonable amount of time to migrate their product to a different provider before kicking them off (maybe even 6 months to a couple years). I also think there should be some limits to which reason a hosting provider can use to evict a client from their platform, at least when they reach a certain size. It's very difficult to be competitive in the current market without access to cloud hosting, and there are only a few serious options available in this space, so it should be a very high standard required to remove someone from this type of service.

And then for services like DNS providers, I think they should have to act as unbiased infrastructure, and should not be allowed to deny service for any reason short of a court order.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#179

Post by nine_k »

soundnote wrote: post #141
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.

For the same reasons Khamenei can tweet that an entire country is a malign tumor and needs to be removed and eradicated and Twitter is still in the stores. For the same reasons silly places like Parler get nuked on Jan 6th pretenses when most of the planning happened on Facebook but Facebook's still there. Power's power, and Lenin's question of who/whom is always relevant.

Twitter can ban a US president but not an Iran president?

I think it's not about just formal power, but also about political affiliation.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#180

Post by soundnote »

skohan wrote: post #157
Forbo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even our criminal laws are consistently enforced in the US. I have no faith that this would be any different, and think it would just end up as another tool for systemic oppression.

Do you think 4-5 corporations making the decisions behind closed doors will reach a fairer result? If you categorically don't have faith in the laws and the justice system, you might as well emigrate or start planning a revolution.

4-5 ideologically homogenous corporations that increasingly buy into a fundamentalist religion-in-all-but-name.
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