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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

#181

Post by zepto »

cbradford wrote: post #108
skohan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corporation…

There is a framework for this that was created over 100 years ago when the same problem happened with railroads. They did they same thing and used their monopoly power to discriminate on who could ship goods by rail. Society said that was wrong and we have the idea of a common carrier that must treat all customers the same. We should declare all app stores to be the same, common carries that may not discriminate. Bot…

I don’t think government regulation of software distribution will prevent censorship.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#182

Post by scotty79 »

fmoralesc wrote: post #169
scotty79 wrote: post #151

How do you discover content on Mastodon? I just intalled Tusky. Didn't have an account and te process of creating one was through some detour and I ended up creating one on qoto.org that I chose randomly. Now I have a feed with pretty random posts and another with even more random posts some in the language I don't know. How can I find anything worth reading there?

First, you check if the instance that you are subscribing to caters to your interests - signing up to a random instance is bound to be useless. Then you can just follow people from the local feed, or something that catches your fancy from the global feed. And if you find a mastodon user from a different instance that you are interested in (maybe in a google search), you can follow them and the system will redirect yo…

Aren't there some aggregators that group posts from various instances, rate them and match their contents with user preferences?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#183

Post by edbob »

_ea1k wrote: post #94
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.

I'm not familiar with Gab, but was the app itself promoting that or just some content from users? If it is just users, why ban them and not browsers or anything that can access Facebook?

> If it is just users, why ban them and not browsers or anything that can access Facebook?

Because Facebook is controlled by the right people, and Gab is not.

Consider the unbelievably offensive and sometimes illegal content (including child porn) that's been hosted on Reddit. They've cleaned up significantly recently to be more advertiser-friendly, but they were able to host all that content for years without getting deplatformed or facing any real consequences. Because Reddit is controlled by the right people. It's all about power.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#184

Post by skohan »

Robotbeat wrote: post #171
skohan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody is talking about having the government run app stores. The argument is about regulating app stores to limit the power of the duopoly from having sole discretion over what is and isn't allowed on their store. Mandating side-loading would be an example of one such regulation.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#185

Post by zepto »

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.

Google or Apple have no power whatsoever to prevent your speech.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#186

Post by nine_k »

Forbo wrote: post #145
rvz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They can just as easily stand up their own repository for F-Droid. It's not like they've blacklisted the app from ever being installed. Edit: https://www.f-droid.org/en/tutorials/create-repo/

One of the important points of an "app store" is discovery.

Another, lack of hassle.

Both are gone if you have to add a separate repo / PPA / whatever, after finding it first. Still much better than not being able to install it at all.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#187

Post by skohan »

zepto wrote: post #181
cbradford wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a framework for this that was created over 100 years ago when the same problem happened with railroads. They did they same thing and used their monopoly power to discriminate on who could ship goods by rail. Society said that was wrong and we have the idea of a common carrier that must treat all customers the same. We should declare all app stores to be the same, common carries that may not discriminate. Bot…

I don’t think government regulation of software distribution will prevent censorship.

I don't understand, are you arguing that mandating equitable access to railroads was bad for free enterprise and commerce?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#188

Post by zepto »

skohan wrote: post #184
Robotbeat wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody is talking about having the government run app stores. The argument is about regulating app stores to limit the power of the duopoly from having sole discretion over what is and isn't allowed on their store. Mandating side-loading would be an example of one such regulation.

I would rather see the government stay out of regulating software distribution.

Once it gets involved, those regulations will be written by lobbyists and will make it harder for new platforms to arise.

What I’d prefer is mandating that hardware be able to run alternative OSs. If iPhones and Android devices could have a free OS installed, all of these problems would be taken care of.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#189

Post by rvz »

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote: post #11
rvz wrote: post #2

You know what I am going to say... Google Play is owned by Google and is a private platform. They can remove, ban, suspend any app or app update they want when it breaks their policies. That is tough.

I don't have strong feelings about mastodon or this specific app, but the credo of "It's a private company" is just lazy reasoning and thrown around blindly far too often. Being banned by big tech (whether apps, social media accounts, major payment processors for receiving donations) is in some cases almost equivalent to being shut down ; "it's a private company" : if the company has a monopoly and there's not a sign…

> It's sad and frustrating we wanted an open internet and companies took over a huge share of it and are not stopping amassing influence and control. I wish this wasn't so, but it is, and we have to open our eyes to it when we're debating such topics.

They took advantage of this 'open internet' and now they have made it partially closed for everyone since they have control of the platforms that most people do for everyday life. Web Browsing, Email, Chat, Calendars, Maps and now Meetings. The startups that have been acquired by them have just made the tech giants even bigger.

Developers recommending libraries, frameworks and services created by (you guessed it) the tech giants further locks in their app to depend solely on their servers and it makes the migration out of the app store very difficult.

We let them do this for decades and now we complain about it. The only way to fight back is to create free and open source alternatives.

> "You can still distribute your app when not being on the Play Store or Apple Store right?" "In theory yes" "Case closed" ; things aren't so simple!

Practically yes and it is that simple.

Take a look at how Cydia and F-Droid does it. Host a repository on your website, Put a 'Add to Cydia' or 'Add to F-Droid' deep link on your website and the users will freely see all the apps made by you. We need something like this but for the desktop.

It may not even be 'Cydia' or called 'F-Droid' that succeeds in being mainstream on this very old idea, but there will be an accessible alternative that will use this idea and it is free and open source and cross-platform.

Discord desktop is not on any App Store and you can download it freely without a Google/Apple account. Telegram is on Google Play and also self-hosts the APK and is also on F-Droid.

The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup so that the users always have an accessible way of downloading your app and not just being ONLY available through any centralised App Store.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#190

Post by zepto »

skohan wrote: post #187
zepto wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think government regulation of software distribution will prevent censorship.

I don't understand, are you arguing that mandating equitable access to railroads was bad for free enterprise and commerce?

How do I run my own train on the open train lines? Where are the open source train designs? Why are new railway projects mired in government bureaucracy?
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