Tusky has been removed from the Play Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#11

Post by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:43 AM UTC

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 significant number of healthy alternatives for people to use (be it out of convenience and lack of skill, doesn't matter), then how about we take that into account?

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.

"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! In a perfectly 'libertarian' world, I would be more inclined to be on your side. But we don't live in such a world. We live in a world of politics, extreme lobbying, complicated tax codes, one million parties with various interests locked into a power struggle for political / social control and influence.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#12

Post by jhugo » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:44 AM UTC

DeadSuperHero wrote: post #9

londons_explore wrote: post #7

Seems pretty obvious what the problem is to me... The privacy policy should have a button saying "I accept and understand the privacy policy, now sign me up". Instead the actual button is just "Sign up". That language doesn't meet the store policy. Simple issue with a simple solution.

I mean, in practice that would probably work. But an interesting caveat is that apps for federated networks don't typically have one singular privacy policy. It varies server by server. Architecturally, this is a different beast than having a client for a specific service, like Twitter. I guess they could probably get around it by showing an instance's policies prior to user registration, but not every server actuall…

So, when signing up for the app, how do I know what's being done with any personal information that's being collected?

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#13

Post by fwn » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:45 AM UTC

commoner wrote: post #8

For free and open source Android apps, F-Droid is a more reliable app store than Google Play. The F-Droid link for Tusky is: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/

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 to access.

While I have mixed feelings about the article, it is well worth a read, no matter where readers stand on the issue.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#14

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:46 AM UTC

DeadSuperHero wrote: post #9

londons_explore wrote: post #7

Seems pretty obvious what the problem is to me... The privacy policy should have a button saying "I accept and understand the privacy policy, now sign me up". Instead the actual button is just "Sign up". That language doesn't meet the store policy. Simple issue with a simple solution.

I mean, in practice that would probably work. But an interesting caveat is that apps for federated networks don't typically have one singular privacy policy. It varies server by server. Architecturally, this is a different beast than having a client for a specific service, like Twitter. I guess they could probably get around it by showing an instance's policies prior to user registration, but not every server actuall…

I think they could meet the store policy by having a message in-app that says "I agree to abide by the terms of whichever server I connect to"

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#15

Post by adamcstephens » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:48 AM UTC

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.

That’s what they said about AT&T and the railroad monopolies. By breaking them up and restoring competition, our economy thrived.

There is no creative destruction under monopoly capitalism. It is only suffocating and dominance.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#16

Post by AndyMcConachie » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:48 AM UTC

curtainsforus wrote: post #5

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.

So break up google, easy

Don't know why you're being downvoted. This is an obvious solution.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#17

Post by jorvi » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

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 represent.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#18

Post by 3np » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 11:58 AM UTC

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…

On the contrary, the idea in the fediverse is that you choose a server that aligns with your needs and preferences. You can always run your own promiscuous instance if you want.

This is in contrary to the status quo, where the vertical integration makes it practically impossible to choose a differently filtered view.

Over time I'm sure we'll see curation markets for filter lists, think adblock lists but tied to some collaboration, voting, incentive mechanisms and reputation system.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#19

Post by 3np » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 12:06 PM UTC

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…

I'd argue that any other stance would acknowledge and justify their position as a utility provider and the Play Store as a public space.

I don't want that.

Instead, Google should be required to provide equal capabilities to third-party app stores as the Play Store now enjoys on Android. Like Microsoft was forced to accommodate for other browser vendors in Windows way back when.

This is in contrast to ISPs, which I whole-heartedly believe should be subject to net neutrality.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#20

Post by ForHackernews » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 12:07 PM UTC

jhugo wrote: post #12

DeadSuperHero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, in practice that would probably work. But an interesting caveat is that apps for federated networks don't typically have one singular privacy policy. It varies server by server. Architecturally, this is a different beast than having a client for a specific service, like Twitter. I guess they could probably get around it by showing an instance's policies prior to user registration, but not every server actuall…

So, when signing up for the app, how do I know what's being done with any personal information that's being collected?

You don't. But you never do.

Just because some company has a thousand pages of legal boilerplate policies doesn't mean you have any meaningful information about what they're doing with your data.

The only thing you can do is try to give them a minimum of data to play with.