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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

#481

Post by Sevaris »

ripdog wrote: post #221
katktv wrote: post #130

I just noticed that this is the same shit right wing organization that conveniently protects alt-right stuff when it gets banned from somewhere. Can we please not promote this kind of stuff here? Edit: to back myself up. Here is this website standing behind authoritarian right-wing government doing antisemitic dogwhistles: https://reclaimthenet.org/hungarian-government-facebook-over... Here it is protecting conspirac…

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. This despite the carnage that the disease is wreaking in the US and UK right now, and the fact that conspiracy theories spread on Google and Facebook platforms have certainly added significant fuel to the fire of COVID-19.

There's no other solution to this problem. If they suspend Podcast Addict, realistically, they need to suspend every other podcast app on the store. Then they need to start filtering out all podcasts with episodes about coronavirus on their own podcast app, or their need to suspend that too.

And that's before considering that there's a lot of valuable discussion about the virus happening that isn't coming out of the CDC or whatever other official source you're adamant about following. I'm not talking Joe Rogan. I'm talking PBS, NPR, 538, JAMA, etc. At some point all you're doing is suppressing legitimate journalism (and yes, there's a fuckload of legitimate journalism on podcasts) or even academic sources (yes, they exist as podcasts too).

I don't see what benefit you're getting from suppressing freedom of speech in such a draconian way when there's so much unnecessary collateral damage. All you're doing is making it harder for legitimate coverage to reach people ... which seems like shooting yourself in the foot.

Even beyond journalism, there's a lot of "slice of life" episodes talking about how people are affected by the virus day-to-day. How people's lives have changed. How they're coping. Why would you be in favour of suppressing that?

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

#482

Post by dvtrn »

codeddesign wrote: post #203
101404 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can just not drop an app that just became the victim of corporate censorship.

Why is this topic not coming up more often? There is heavy censorship in play here at the same levels as China and Russia.

Because many times the conversation frustratingly becomes a turtles all the way down slugfest between the loud “it’s their platform and they can do what they want” crowd vs. the equally loud “free speech is an absolute” officiated by the “censorship only matters if the government does it” crowd.

Call this an oversimplification of a nuanced issue if you want. Because it is. I’m not shying from it. Just doesn’t seem all that much different from the amount of nuance that goes into and subsequently comes out of the kinds of flame wars commonly immolating this topic anyway.

This is just opinion though, I wouldn’t encourage anyone try to unearth anything objective out of it beyond what pleasantry is warranted for such idle (and wholly inane) thought.

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

#483

Post by brownbat »

plorg wrote: post #401
blhack wrote: post #286

At this point: I wish they’d just take a stronger stance and ban everything they don’t like. Just ban the political party they don’t like, ban anything that speaks out against China, just ban it all. We need to go back to the web, where anybody could install Apache and off they went. Bandwidth is cheap now. BitTorrent exists. I hope google and twitter and Facebook and all the rest just hurry up with all this. Some ot…

There is indeed a problem here, and FAANG are being hamhanded and overaggressive in their response, but it's hard to find an overt bias that maps neatly onto the dominant (American?) political cleavage. Much more often (as here), these companies are 1) making decisions in a way that allows them to abstract away and thus ignore the nuances of individual cases 2) putting the burden of implementation on underpaid worker…

Yeah, if you relay content at scale, your first preference is to do nothing for moderation. After a little taste of that, people get upset and complain, which is just a little inconvenient at first.

It becomes progressively more inconvenient once some of those people with complaints can subpoena you or fine you millions of dollars or exclude you from large markets.

So your next best option is hamfisted moderation.

Tuning things costs money and time,[0] it's generally easier to just shoot the moon on either false negatives or false positives.

[0] and given conflicting preferences from different powerful groups, is arguably impossible anyway

Or, "I tend to go with philosophers from Voltaire to Mill to Popper who say the only solution is to let everybody have their say and then try to figure it out in the marketplace of ideas. But none of those luminaries had to deal with online comment sections."

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

EDIT: I should add, Podcast Addict is my go-to. I get how this can happen, but this is all really annoying and I feel for Xavier Guillemane and all the other users. Here's hoping the massive press blitz on this gets a quick reversal in this case, and Google finds a way to prevent it for apps with less visibility. Maybe we can enforce tuning by getting as upset as possible at the false positives.

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

#484

Post by whatamidoingyo »

blhack wrote: post #286

At this point: I wish they’d just take a stronger stance and ban everything they don’t like. Just ban the political party they don’t like, ban anything that speaks out against China, just ban it all. We need to go back to the web, where anybody could install Apache and off they went. Bandwidth is cheap now. BitTorrent exists. I hope google and twitter and Facebook and all the rest just hurry up with all this. Some ot…

It won't work that way, and they know it. It's a slow game, requiring patience on their end. They'll get to it eventually.

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

#485

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nyolfen wrote: post #472
emteycz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think so? How do you know it's not the response to multiple attempts to put liability for content on platform owners like Google and Facebook? How do you know they did not respond strongly because most governments have declared state of crisis, which means more severe punishment, and punishment of things that would be OK otherwise (and of course nobody knows what that actually means, let alone all around t…

there can be more than one reason, but the censorship began in earnest after trump's election and before covid.[1] this isn't even a controversial position and i'm nowhere near the only person to have remarked upon it. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/06/636030043/youtube-apple-and-f...

It didn't start after Trump's election. It started with the "cancel culture" thing a couple of years before that and pressure on companies to participate in the war on crimethink.

I tend to think that it contributed to Trump's election, because it has the effect of creating massive polarization.

You can't segregate sites by viewpoint and thought filter everything in favor of one side or the other and expect it not to devolve into extremist conflict.

But the people doing this didn't want to admit that they caused the problem to begin with, so instead they double down.

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

#487

Post by jagannathtech »

thepangolino wrote: post #300
bakedbeanz wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Same argument, pushed a little further: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w33mawVRXdE/VL6Wd6Bc3rI/AAAAAAAAB...

perfect... govt unable to enforce rule of law over violence is just an indirect way of disincentivising free speech.

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

#488

Post by dane-pgp »

blhack wrote: post #286

At this point: I wish they’d just take a stronger stance and ban everything they don’t like. Just ban the political party they don’t like, ban anything that speaks out against China, just ban it all. We need to go back to the web, where anybody could install Apache and off they went. Bandwidth is cheap now. BitTorrent exists. I hope google and twitter and Facebook and all the rest just hurry up with all this. Some ot…

Perhaps a better strategy would be for Google to create an account for the head of government of each country, and give that account the ability to ban any app or video or search result in the respective country. (Such accounts would also have the ability to delegate their powers to other users as required).

Google could write a public blog post saying "We've sacked all our internal moderators and censors, so if you have any complaints about something being unfairly deleted, or not deleted, then vote for a better government next time."

We could then watch the rhetorical gymnastics of some governments saying that of course it would be a terrible infringement of human rights to have a government decide what people can watch and say online, without any sort of due process, not to mention the terrible mental health effects on government workers having to review all the potentially harmful content.

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

#489

Post by ashtonkem »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #473
thaumasiotes wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Section 230 provides immunity to Google and similar for content posted by other users and services. To be more clear, Google and other web publishers already enjoy immunity for content posted by other users and services. That is the default state of things under American law. What section 230 does is preserve their immunity even if they exercise editorial discretion over some of the content that other users/service…

This is not true. The default state of US law was that those who published without moderation were protected, and those that did moderate were not. Section 230 was created specifically because publishers who moderated user generated comments had been successfully sued for defamation [0]. Section 230 did not preserve any rights at all, it created entirely new ones. Companies were previously able to enjoy common carrie…

Congress couldn’t possibly imagine that Google would exist when they passed Section 230, because Google probably wouldn’t exist without Section 230. Section 230 is generally credited with helping birth the modern Internet, without Section 230 the Internet would still look like it did in the 1980s; small and non-commercial.

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

#490

Post by Dylan16807 »

laumars wrote: post #428
Dylan16807 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's splitting hairs. Banning video channels and banning apps are very different things. Consistency would ban both apps and any normal web browser, or would have never gone near banning this one. The equivalent to the youtube bans is when they ban apps that are actually about covid-19 . Not apps with internet search. > I’m not talking about disagreement of these posts (there’s nothing to disagree, the…

I don’t think there is a legitimate reason and I’ve cited how those comments were factually accurate. You might disagree with the comparison but I don’t think we are likely to see eye to on that, which is fine. :) However I still object to you twisting my words to something far more sinister then they’re clearly intended. That’s simply not good debating.

There were comments with facts, but whether they supported the point being made was arguable. If the facts are irrelevant, it's not a great pity to see a downvote.

And yeah, that disagreement is fine.

But you need to understand that I am not trying to twist your words at all. I see those two things as synonyms. No twisting is intended. And for you to say "far more sinister then they’re clearly intended" sounds like an accusation of deliberate malicious behavior, not even me making a mistake, and I don't appreciate that.

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