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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

#201

Post by dragonwriter »

swayvil wrote: post #199
brigandish wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paradox of tolerance is something that many people should consider. Or even read, it’s barely longer than a page and yet I see it mischaracterised on these threads repeatedly by people who have clearly not read it. For those with too short an attention span to even search for the text, let alone read it, and to save them from the mendacious cartoon that purports to boil it down, here’s what it says in two lines…

Deplatforming isn't speech tho. It's something quite different.

> Deplatforming isn't speech tho.

Criticizing speech is speech.

Criticizing speech and advocating, on the basis of that criticism, that people should choose not to relay the criticized speech is speech.

Choosing what speech to relay or not is speech (except when it is “press”, but those are effectively aspects of the same thing called out separately to prevent an artificial distinction from being used to regulate speech.)

Deplatforming is speech, from advocacy to execution.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#202

Post by oblio »

soundnote wrote: post #180
skohan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's the religion? I'm a bit confused.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#203

Post by skohan »

zepto wrote: post #188
skohan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do realize that mandating side-loading, and alternate OS support would come in the form of government regulation right?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#204

Post by mannerheim »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #75
syshum wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guess Tusky is free to use an app store whose values align with theirs.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#205

Post by justinclift »

garritfra wrote: post #4
gargron wrote: post #3

See also when the Matrix client Element was removed in a similar fashion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25964226 I think it would be best to rename this submission to "Tusky (Mastodon app) suspended from Google Play Store" because people who do not use Mastodon have no context for what Tusky is.

Right, thanks for the hint. Title has been changed.

Doesn't seem to be?

Looking at the title just now, it just says "Tusky has been removed from the Play Store". There's literally no context as to WTF a "Tusky" is. ;)

That being said, people who care could probably do a general online search and find out... :)

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#206

Post by justinclift »

nine_k wrote: post #179
soundnote wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And/or maybe the context of each banning matters? :)

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#207

Post by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL »

rvz wrote: post #189
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

I agree with you on some parts. Don't rely on Google, be available via other methods as well. But that does not take away from the fact, that if you lose access to Play Store and Apple Store as a means of distributing your application, at that moment you will have permanently lost access to 98% of potential users. The few that bother to install a .apk manually or use F-Droid aren't significant. How many people do _ever_ even search for an app outside of these stores? I'm guilty most of the time myself. One more factor: Especially with social apps the network effect is everything. Even the few hardcore lovers of your app stop using it, if not enough 'non-technical' users do. Having 100 contacts, 98 of them on WhatsApp, 4 of them on some social media app you have to tell your contacts to download the .apk from somewhere in order to use it? More often than not you can't even get people to install Signal, and it's one click.

You don't survive something like this and you won't regain your user count outside of these curated app stores.

It's pretty much as simple as that. The dream of "if it happens enough times F-Droid and alternatives will become more prominent" is just naive, it doesn't work like that. There is no level playing field to compete.

"The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup [...]" - the solution to what? The solution to compete from outside of these curated stores where companies dictate course? No, it's not a solution for that, because it won't do much for you.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#208

Post by cbradford »

sweetheart wrote: post #130
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…

Uh, it’s alarming to see someone refer to hate speech as a made up term. Do you think hate speech doesn’t exist?

Correct. Hate speech means speech you do not like because it disagrees with your biases and viewpoints. For some the use of speech to coordinate a summer of violent riots is hate speech, for others it is a rally cry of the oppressed.

Using the violence of the state to restrict freedom of speech and thought is never done by people on the right side of history.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#209

Post by zepto »

skohan wrote: post #203
zepto wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do realize that mandating side-loading, and alternate OS support would come in the form of government regulation right?

For the record, I do not support mandating sideloading.

I support the right to install an alternate OS on hardware you own.

Just to clarify your point, since you have written it in an ambiguous way:

Are you asking me whether I realize that the things I support would also require government regulation?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#210

Post by swayvil »

dragonwriter wrote: post #201
swayvil wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deplatforming isn't speech tho. It's something quite different.

> Deplatforming isn't speech tho. Criticizing speech is speech. Criticizing speech and advocating, on the basis of that criticism, that people should choose not to relay the criticized speech is speech. Choosing what speech to relay or not is speech (except when it is “press”, but those are effectively aspects of the same thing called out separately to prevent an artificial distinction from being used to regulate spe…

Ha ha. No.

That our forums allow for free speech is clearly implied by the form.

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