Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

qoto.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 996 posts

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

#641

Post by ehsankia »

rektide wrote: post #524
avivo wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... ). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps , but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific…

This justification still implies Chrome & Firefox also ought be content aware & be censorship machines. This is grossly unacceptable. Apps need some safe harbor too. Apps can not be responsible for every possible use of the app.

This isn't quite safe harbor. It's not like the app was removed for one user posting one bad content. If what the poster above said is true, it's closer to if an app had a user who regularly broke the rules, and the app refused to ban said person.

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

#642

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

VLM wrote: post #620
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech industry is a place where people generally prefer to talk things out rather than yelling and shaming. I think that's worth protecting, even if we see short term gains that might be available from defection. After all, once Google realizes the norms have changed, won't they be able to leverage their resources to find people who yell louder and shame more frequently than you?

The old days are gone.

The old days were never as controversy-free as most people remember. There was a time not that long ago when common techie opinions like "Internet piracy isn't a big deal" or "shooter games are fun and kid-friendly" were seen as quite immoral in some circles, and calling your forum "Hacker News" was kinda subversive. If we're headed back to that kind of environment, just with a different set of moral issues enforced by a different set of people, that seems solidly OK.

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

#643

Post by avivo »

rektide wrote: post #524
avivo wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... ). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps , but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific…

This justification still implies Chrome & Firefox also ought be content aware & be censorship machines. This is grossly unacceptable. Apps need some safe harbor too. Apps can not be responsible for every possible use of the app.

I'm not sure what you mean by justification. I think I simply lay out some context and a set of conflicting perspectives.

That said, if you don't want Chrome and Firefox to be content aware, then you should argue that safe browsing should be eliminated from Firefox and Chrome. That is a self consistent position, but it may not be consistent with e.g. avoiding dramatic growth in botnets, ransomware, organized crime etc.

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

#644

Post by RonanTheGrey »

spenczar5 wrote: post #349
kanox wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definition of censorship is bad and must be changed. Large general-purpose platforms should be forced do distribute all content which is not otherwise illegal, and only perform removal based through the standard legal system.

Why should they be forced to distribute it? That's a pretty extreme stance, and you haven't provided a reason.

They're not forced to distribute it any more than they're forced to distribute content they do agree with.

In both cases, they're already providing the service to distribute it; they're simply leaving it alone and not acting at all.

Incidentally that's the best way for them to retain their Section 230 protection -- neutrality.

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

#645

Post by baddox »

josephcsible wrote: post #632
baddox wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of the examples I gave were illegal content.

So like I said, you're mixing them up.

No, I'm not mixing them up. I'm asking questions about them to try to understand people's viewpoints.

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

#646

Post by Miner49er »

oehpr wrote: post #212
newhotelowner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Big Tech censorship Pretty much all the subs like the the_donald, republicans, conservative, asktrumpsupporters that are against the big tech censorship will censor (ban) you for just showing their hypocrisy. I clicked on few links or r/RedditAlternatives, and they look like Facebook pages of rural Ohio.

They're not unique in this behavior. Basically every political subreddit that exists, and even some that arn't innately political but get taken over, do the same thing. I remember there were a bunch of posts in /r/zerowaste about someone explicitly advocating to be made a mod so that they can moderate the subreddit as an anti-capitalist. I really had to credit that person for the bravado of saying: "I'll ban people I…

/r/libertarian went through a brief period not too long ago where a mod (or mods) took over and started banning a ton of people for their beliefs (mostly socialists).

To be fair the creator of the sub came back and fixed it.

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

#647

Post by avivo »

retpirato wrote: post #518
avivo wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of decision by Google does make me rather uncomfortable (the entire situation is uncomfortable... https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... ). But it's worth understanding why the situation may be a bit more complicated than is described above. What seems to be happening is not an absolute ban on Fediverse apps , but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific…

So Google somehow knows which apps block certain instances, which generally get reputation among other instances & are quickly blocked? That's not believable.

I currently think this may be exactly what is happening. If I'm wrong, I'd love to know about that!

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

#648

Post by intpete »

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.

Hate speech is bad.

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

#649

Post by gerbal »

djsumdog wrote: post #617
gerbal wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want the truth. That's something all US media is failing to give us right now. What truth is this you are so deprived of? I presume you have some "real" source of truth that's more reliable than media that fact-checks itself and issues corrections?

> that's more reliable than media that fact-checks itself and issues corrections oh boy. I'm not even going to start in on this one. If you actually believe any of the "fact checks" done by your favourite news outlet, instead of going out and doing a lot of research from a bunch of different sources and viewing the full actual video of events in context, you're not getting the right picture; not even remotely the rig…

So what is reliable media? What can be trusted? Who do you trust?

> We've never had a media that's more blatantly bias and unreliable than the one we have right now.

Can you provide a citation or evidence of this claim?

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

#650

Post by EGreg »

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 also goes the other way.

Section 230 was about child pornography and became used as a safe harbor for anything.

I am not usually agreeing w the Trump admin but they do have a point there.

In general our thinking about freedom of speech is itself idiosyncratic in the same way. Human FREEDOMS means doing what you want. It’s not the same as a right to a megaphone maintained by thousands of employees and infrastructure of large corporations to give you a platform to say anything unfiltered to 5 million people at once. I would argue that such interpretations of the First Amendment have been detrimental to society. Speech on giant platforms should be vetted like on Wikipedia’s Talk Page, where mutually distrusting people engage in responsible fact checking BEFORE the crowd sees the main page with these claims.

But hey I also argue similarly that the supreme court’s Heller decision similarly obviated the Well Regulated Militia clause into irrelevancy, so now anyone can have a gun no matter whether they are part of any well regulated organization or not. No checks on individual action that can affect others.

Now we reap what we sow as a society. Yes FREEDOM of speech is important but what we call freedom today has greatly expanded even to unlimited political donations by super PACs and so on. Again a supreme court decision where expanding freedoms in Citizens United harms democracy. A win for ideologal purity I guess, but is socity better off?

PS: before someone objects with “who will be the factcheckers/watchers I will say it will be self selected and self policed like on Wikipedia, as long as there is a healthy mix of views, it’s better than one wacko with a megaphone. Who does this celebrity culture help? It further divides us. And that’s why we can’t have nice things!

Post reply on HN