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Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

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Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#101

Post by tinyhouse »

On a related topic. I was trying to search videos from the Wisconsin shooting of the 17 year old who shot and killed two people and injured one. Every video I clicked on was already taken down due to offensive content. I found it strange given that Youtube is full of videos of shooting incidents.

Now, I do understand the families of the victims may want the videos taking down. But it seems to me the mob of people flagging these videos have a different motive. This shows that trusting the community to flag offensive content has its flaws. (although at Youtube's scale there's no alternative really)

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#102

Post by RL_Quine »

viro wrote: post #91
john_moscow wrote: post #64

For anyone else concerned with the recent Big Tech censorship, people are actively building alternative social medial platforms and they are taking off. The RedditAlternatives subreddit [0] provides a fairly good overview of them. Some are rather extreme, others are more reasonable, but there are alternatives, and it's up to us, the reasonable people, to choose where we want to spend our time and money. [0] https://w…

When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit.

Yes, if the only defense of your content is that it isn't literally illegal to produce and distribute, maybe choose something better to do with your time.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#104

Post by quotemstr »

robrtsql wrote: post #42
CodeArtisan wrote: post #31

There is probably more than what is being said here otherwise clients for reddit or 4chan would have been removed a long time ago.

I don't think there is. This happens all the time--recently, a podcast app was removed from the Play Store because it could be used to listen to content which didn't meet Play Store guidelines. The only way to fix it is to post about it and generate enough outrage that Google hears about it and can undo the ban.

A better fix is barring by law tech companies that control important platforms from using those platforms to censor legal speech. It simply should be illegal for Google to down an app because it contains legal words that blaspheme against Google's California values.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#105

Post by mmis1000 »

angio wrote: post #24

My favorite app is Tusky and is still available from F-Droid [0]. I think Tusky will be fine since they block Gab and so they won't be affected by this ban. [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/

The worst thing of censorship is they always can find some new targets after they have censored their old targets. They do it one by one Until you find out every word you said is illegal, it is too late.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#106

Post by brightball »

mc32 wrote: post #95

It always starts like that. People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government. Eventually the definition of hate or whatever it is that’s offensive is very removed from the original meaning, and now we all bear the brunt of the sensible people who with best intentions wanted to make things better.

The is what I believe is the goal of placing restrictions on people based on “mental health”. It’s so open ended and not easily verifiable that it becomes a sliding scale.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#108

Post by newacct583 »

matsemann wrote: post #74
humanistbot wrote: post #47

The rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these apps, because some of the microblogging sites that can be accessed via Fediverse have this kind of content. Based on this rationale, I look forward to Google Play removing Chrome, Firefox, and all other web browsers from the store as well.

Haven't podcasts apps recently been removed as well? Something about it being possible to listen to stuff about covid on them. Edit, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427 And well, they should probably remove the apps of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc as it's plenty of hate speech there too.

They didn't remove Podcast Addict, it's right here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...

That was a mistake, presumably. It's likely this is too. The deep desire on the part of posters here to assume malice and scream CENSORSHIP is really off-putting.

I actually don't know anything about fediverse, but if it's like other pseudoanonymous obscure communications media it's probably filled with awful stuff. It's not that hard to imagine a naive reviewer who doesn't understand the architecture to be confused if they get a report showing screenshots of the app with the content available in it.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#109

Post by vbezhenar »

mc32 wrote: post #95

It always starts like that. People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government. Eventually the definition of hate or whatever it is that’s offensive is very removed from the original meaning, and now we all bear the brunt of the sensible people who with best intentions wanted to make things better.

It might be Apple forcing them to do so. For example you can't publish app with porn content. Even if your app is some kind of forum, you're obliged at least to filter out explicit content in the app.

Browser seems to be an exception.

Re: Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store

#110

Post by drdeca »

quotemstr wrote: post #96
moneywoes wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those alternatives seem full of hate speech though

So? Any platform free of censorship is going to have some speech you dislike.

There’s a difference between “has some of it” and “is full of it”.

As SSC says, even if witch hunts are genuinely bad, if you found a town with the founding principle of having no witch hunts, you will end up with a town with 5 genuine civil libertarians, and 100 witches.

I think an interesting strategy would be to found a site with an initially high level of censorship, but a public commitment to reduce the amount/degree of censorship on the site over time with a particular timetable.

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