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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

#241

Post by thayne »

zepto wrote: post #209
skohan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You have the right to install an alternate OS on your phone now. It's just difficult to do, may result in bricking your device or at least crippling functionality, and even if all goes well, the software ecosystems for the existing alternate OSes is pretty small. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a viable phone OS, but as far as I can tell none of the existing options are ready to be used as a daily driver yet.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#243

Post by dragonwriter »

brigandish wrote: post #237
dragonwriter wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Censorship (of which deplatforming is one form) is not the same as choosing not to listen and hence, is not part of freedom of speech. Deplatforming is choosing not to actively relay speech. While, yes, such does (as “self-censorship”) fit in some of the broader conceptions of censorship, it's absolutely part of the freedom of speech (and central to the idea of the “marketplace of ideas”, the same as people being f…

Freedom of speech is called freedom of speech and not the “freedom to choose not to listen” because the freedom not to listen is implied by freedom of speech, for anyone that's thought about it. And it's easier to say free speech than recite On Liberty. Shorthand is usually enough. Deplatforming is censorship because, if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine) then it…

> Deplatforming is censorship because, if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine) then it is the attempt to prevent the speaker from speaking and anyone wishing to listeners being able to listen.

No, it's not. It's refusing to actively participate in the speakers speech. It is distinct from either preventing them from speaking, or preventing interested parties from listening. The freedom of speech is, as conservatives are fond of pointing out, a negative right, not a positive one.

(The use of “discriminatorially” here is pure noise; all choices are, by definition, discrimination.)

> If you are going to conflate them then distributors refusing to distribute the goods of gays or blacks based on them being gay or black, given that they usually distribute goods from non-gays and non-blacks, that is not prejudicial discrimination?

It's certainly race and sexual orientation discrimination, but that's not what we're discussing, and it's an orthogonal issue to freedom of speech. If you want to argue a violation of existing or ideal public accommodation laws protecting against political viewpoint discrimination, that's a very different argument than the free speech argument. In fact, it's an opposed argument, as public accommodation laws (and the concept of freedom from private discrimination on various axes more generally) is in tension with free speech and free association rights, a tension which is at its maximum when the service involved is relaying speech and the basis for denial is the political content of the speech at issue.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#244

Post by pmichaud »

Robotbeat wrote: post #139
vincnetas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Court order. You cant remove app just because you dont like it. App should violate laws to be removed.

I disagree with that. Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. However, we should make it more possible for alternative stores to be available. Side-loading (including on iPhones) should be a protected ability, not government officials deciding that Apple can’t ban white supremacists from publishing hate speech apps on Apple’s App Store.

> Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store.

I don't know about that. It feels a little too close to Verizon cutting off a phone call to my friend because an employment or sentiment detection algo didn't appreciate my tone.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#245

Post by scotty79 »

messo wrote: post #200
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?

We are generally so habituated to services that plunder our contact lists and auto-populate our social graph that we end up all dazed and confused when checking out privacy-respecting social networks. Like … where are my friends at? In the fediverse, you can choose your community, you have choices. Most servers (instances) gather around a topic, common interest or subculture and have their own rules and etiquette. An…

Thank you for the links. I follow all of them now.

But I think I know what my problem is and it's not what you think.

Mastodon seems to be user centered, but I don't want to follow specific users. I want to be fed with interesting content. So I'd prefer content centered fediverse.

The fediverse I'm looking for should be able to infer my interests and feed me content that is interesting to me as quickly as possible when I don't have any social graph. Because I don't have any relevant social graph. Not on any fediverse, not on twitter, not on Facebook, not on youtube. I just have some interests.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#246

Post by UncleMeat »

vincnetas wrote: post #240
UncleMeat wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most adware and other data abusing apps aren't breaking the law.

They are. At least in EU. And we need to remember, that we live in free sociaty in a sense that you can do everything what is not forbiden, in contrast to doing only what is allowed. So if in US these apps are not forbiden then US should change that.

I don't believe anything about GDPR makes adware illegal.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#247

Post by justinclift »

nine_k wrote: post #228
justinclift wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It should not, if users are banned for violating written rules.

The world isn't always black and white though, thus things like this. ;)

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#248

Post by brigandish »

dragonwriter wrote: post #243
brigandish wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is called freedom of speech and not the “freedom to choose not to listen” because the freedom not to listen is implied by freedom of speech, for anyone that's thought about it. And it's easier to say free speech than recite On Liberty. Shorthand is usually enough. Deplatforming is censorship because, if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine) then it…

> Deplatforming is censorship because, if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine) then it is the attempt to prevent the speaker from speaking and anyone wishing to listeners being able to listen. No, it's not. It's refusing to actively participate in the speakers speech. It is distinct from either preventing them from speaking, or preventing interested parties from li…

Firstly, there are three ways to "actively participate in the speakers speech" (in terms of freedom of speech):

- speak back

- listen

- transmit

Additionally, repeating what someone else has said (speech) is not transmission of their speech, it's transmission of their ideas.

A television broadcaster or a book publisher, however, transmits. That is their function.

> The freedom of speech is, as conservatives are fond of pointing out, a negative right, not a positive one.

Which is why there was a qualifier of "if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine)".

If a broadcaster like Sky Sports refuses to have on Noam Chomsky for a discussion about, well, anything, that's not censorship because he doesn't talk about sport nor does he have anything to do with sport. They passively and normally do not transmit his speech, hence it is not censorship. If Chomsky asks to go on then they may still refuse and it not be censorship because even though their refusal is active it is *not* exceptional.

If, however, the BBC political flagship programme refuses to have Chomsky on because he's Chomsky or Chomsky once wrote in support of a Holocaust denier [note 1] then *that is censorship* because it is active and exceptional.

None of that requires positive liberty, nor is it in variance with conceptions of free speech as a negative liberty.

> If you want to argue a violation of existing or ideal public accommodation laws protecting against political viewpoint discrimination, that's a very different argument than the free speech argument.

Given what you've written I can see how you'd think this. As I'm not:

> It's certainly race and sexual orientation discrimination, but that's not what we're discussing, and it's an orthogonal issue to freedom of speech.

If we take your analogy about distributors to its logical conclusion then it is what we're talking about - enabling discrimination that violates negative liberties.

[note 1] He wrote in support of an academic's right to freedom of speech, not in support of his book denying the death camps, but that's the way things get framed.

Edit: formatting. I will forever rage against HN's half hearted markdown flavour.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#249

Post by lelanthran »

3np wrote: post #19
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…

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 wh…

> 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.

That's a false dichotomy. The options are not:

1. Any company, anywhere and at any time can refuse to do business with anyone, anywhere and for any reason.

2. All companies, everywhere and all the time must allow voices from everyone, everywhere and all the time.

There's a good middle ground - antitrust regulations could be modified so that, if the company has a large enough piece of the market they shouldn't have the /choice/ of denying access for any reason.

Re: Tusky has been removed from the Play Store

#250

Post by orestarod »

justinclift wrote: post #247
nine_k wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should not, if users are banned for violating written rules.

The world isn't always black and white though, thus things like this. ;)

It is not, but hypocrisy and double standards are things you can't go wrong pointing out when you see them.
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