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Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

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Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#391

Post by JeremyNT »

rjmunro wrote: post #349
JeremyNT wrote: post #345

If you are an end user who would like to avoid getting caught in this situation, you might want to switch to using F-Droid [0] as your primary source of Android software. The selection is more limited, but because everything is open source and distributed outside of Google's walled garden, you can be sure that it won't be arbitrarily removed because of the whims of corporate bureaucracy. I write this not as a dogmati…

How does f-droid police "shovelware and spyware"? Or just outright malware? Surely they will remove it? In which case your favourite app might be "arbitrarily removed"?

Any app distribution platform carries with it a risk of hosting user-hostile software, so it is certainly not immune. Fortunately there are fewer incentives for trying to sneak such software into F-Droid which results in fewer (if any) straight up lies intended to trick users into buying misleading software or exposing their data for the sake of ad revenue.

This is of course the same issue we all face when opting to pull in an OSS dependency for our own projects (from npm or docker or rubygems or rust crates or...): we need to decide on our own how far to trust the software maintainers.

The android permissions model offers some degree of protection in both stores from hostile software. However, unlike the Play Store which offers only a couple of tags (contains in-app purchases / contains ads), in F-Droid any known "antifeatures" (i.e. association with paid services) are listed explicitly in the catalogue.

As for abandonware (or other software that F-Droid drops for practical concerns), users could still acquire the code and build it themselves, which means that a developer stepping away from a piece of software does not mean a user needs to say goodbye.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#392

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #370
heinrichhartman wrote: post #211

This is the result of out-sourcing juristic work to private companies: If we treat Android, Window, Twitter, Facebook, as public spaces/goods, then private companies should not have a say in what is allowed/not-allowed on their platforms. This is work for the courts and police to decide and enforce. If we treat those platforms as private. Then we are playing in s/o's backyard. You are totally at their mercy. They hav…

>If we treat Android, Window, Twitter, Facebook, as public spaces/goods I feel like they're screaming at the top of their lungs asking you to not think of those things as public spaces. I am happy to try to oblige them.

While they work as hard as possible to have communication monopolies in their respective spaces.

I agree with you though, the inherent problem is that they are private spaces and should act like it. That means developing the ability to interoperate with other private spaces (some sort of federated protocol would be required), and not having monopolies on distribution (being able to acquire iOS apps from 3rd party channels, for instance).

By extension, if anyone is considering legislation to enforce freedom of expression on social networks, I'd propose a different track—break up the largest of the social networks (namely Facebook at this point) and force them to interoperate.

That seems a lot more practical than forcing private companies to hold up public standards of free speech.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#393

Post by type0 »

RIMR wrote: post #376

Good. When private companies see that something they are doing or enabling could lead to preventable human death, they have a responsibility to act on it. If an app in their marketplace is helping spread misinformation about a public health crisis, that app can and should be removed from Google's marketplace. America is a capitalist society. If you're going to do business in Google's ecosystem, you have to follow Goo…

> Human life is on the line here. Google is doing the right thing.

Right thing for their bottom line, you can continue to use Google Podcasts though

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#394

Post by microcolonel »

It's sad to see an American company stooping to basically tin-pot levels of disrespect for human rights.

Contact the FTC, because this is an example of Google leveraging a non-arms-length arrangement to interfere with and exclude competitors to their own products Google Podcasts and YouTube which directly violate the policy they are applying to Podcast Addict.

There is no legitimate business function served by this inconsistent conduct, and it looks like a textbook case of single-firm anticompetitive conduct.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#395

Post by katktv »

lbeltrame wrote: post #346
ripdog wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really disturbing that I had to scroll right to the bottom of the page to find someone questioning the source of this. While obviously Podcast Addict does not deserve a ban, the sheer number of people in this thread advocating unrestricted speech around COVID-19 is thoroughly disturbing. This despite the carnage that the disease is wreaking in the US and UK right now, and the fact that conspiracy theories spread on G…

> While obviously Podcast Addict does not deserve a ban, the sheer number of people in this thread advocating unrestricted speech around COVID-19 is thoroughly disturbing. Are you sure that advocating a "stamp down" won't throw away the baby with the bathwater? In my country, a lot of now very legitimate theories (thrombosis and treatment with heparin, convalescent plasma therapy) were slammed by certain very promine…

>Also, Twitter now is blocking an URL of a legitimate university promoting a trial with hydroxychloroquine.

What university? What sources do you have on that?

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#396

Post by lbeltrame »

katktv wrote: post #395
lbeltrame wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While obviously Podcast Addict does not deserve a ban, the sheer number of people in this thread advocating unrestricted speech around COVID-19 is thoroughly disturbing. Are you sure that advocating a "stamp down" won't throw away the baby with the bathwater? In my country, a lot of now very legitimate theories (thrombosis and treatment with heparin, convalescent plasma therapy) were slammed by certain very promine…

>Also, Twitter now is blocking an URL of a legitimate university promoting a trial with hydroxychloroquine. What university? What sources do you have on that?

McGill University in Canada.

Source: https://twitter.com/DrToddLee/status/1261442201369939968

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#397

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

Spivak wrote: post #362
imron wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the problem is solved a couple of days later. If the developer is lucky enough to hit the front page of HN.

This isn't as weird as it seems in this new weird world. The "most official" support channel for Spotify is their Twitter handle while their email form is the secondary option. Letting internet outrage drive the support queue is oddly pragmatic.

It's not pragmatic, its just the bare minimum. It turns out that if you want good support you have to scale your support to the number of users.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#398

Post by laumars »

jeltz wrote: post #387
laumars wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say their algorithm was flawless, just that they are removing content. Here's a few citations: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 https://fee.org/articles/youtube-to-ban-content-that-contrad... https://www.theblaze.com/news/youtube-will-remove-any-corona... https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/youtube-ramps-up-actio... These haven't been cherry picked, they're the top 4 results on a DDG search. Yo…

The one I linked is from a Swedish conspiracy theory channel with 16k subscribers and it has been up for 2 months, gotten 40k views (huge for Swedish language content) and does not try to hide itself at all ("WakeUpGlobe SE" and uses "corona" in the title). It would be trivial for a human to find this.

You can't blanket ban terms otherwise you'd end up accidentally banning far more false positives than a few podcast apps. For example "corona" is a pretty broad term -- it would be like banning Nazi content but using the word "German" from "National Socialist German Workers' Party" as your identifier then wondering why half the German language videos disappear.

> It would be trivial for a human to find this.

Someone literate in Swedish maybe (to gather the context of those key words) but it isn't humans which do this.

Google are big into automation to the extent that they have machines doing their review. You might consider that wrong but then you have to ask yourself how many humans would it take to moderate a platform as large as YouTube. I bet you that whatever number you come up wouldn't be enough and someone else would say "I found another video that was trivial to find, Google don't hire enough platform moderators!"

Plus it's a pretty horrible job being a professional moderator and spending your whole day reviewing the dregs of society. I've read reports where people who've done it had said it's had a very real negative impact on their mental health.

As I said earlier, fixing problems like this at scale is insanely hard. It's one of those things that might seem easy at a superficial level but it's fraught with errors and you can guarantee that whatever decision the moderator makes (be that human or algorithm) someone will be unhappy and claim it's not fair.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#399

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kyteland wrote: post #354
crottypeter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find it here and delete it, I think it will cease to influence your recommended videos. https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

I have YouTube history turned off along with other publicly visible tracking and this kind of nonsense still happens to me. Their algo is working on more data than just what they make visible to the user. "The only winning move is not to play."

You have to evict all Google tracking cookies. Just disabling a few features won't cut it.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#400

Post by Sevaris »

ngngngng wrote: post #350
fjcp wrote: post #266

I use Podcast Addict every day, I would even say that is my most used app on android. I work listening to podcasts and PA is the best app for those who like highly customizable software. You can change almost everything. Its sad that we are in a situation where a company can dictate what we can install on our computers/smartphones. I know we can sideload apps on android, but the majority of users doesn't care about t…

> dictate what we can install on our computers/smartphones Can they though? Android does not make it difficult at all to install apps through stores other than their own Play Store. A quick internet search reveals that there are at least a dozen other options for users to download apps to Android phones. I agree that a devices OS should allow alternative means to install apps, but Android has clearly done this.

The other side of this is that app developers are screwed when it comes to compensation. Providing the ability to sideload doesn't mean anything if developers can't be compensated and can't continue developing their app (as I don't expect them to if they aren't in any way rewarded for it financially).
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