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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

#691

Post by young_unixer »

throwaway189262 wrote: post #176

There's racist stuff all over Google's biggest properties. Racist results on Google, videos on youtube, sites hosted on GCP. Give me a break with your fake trashy virtue signalling Google. This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn't like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google's position as the central hub of the internet.

> This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn't like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google's position as the central hub of the internet.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The real reason is that Google employees live in an ideological echo chamber where censoring anything that doesn't align with their ideologies is a completely normal thing to do. They think they're protecting the world from bad ideas, without noticing how they themselves promote other bad ideas.

Basically: the moralistic version of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

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

#692

Post by stale2002 »

dependenttypes wrote: post #666
stale2002 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries in Europe have some pretty huge restictions on speech that go far behind things like making death threats and fraud illegal. Even the line that you quoted demonstrates this when it says things like "for the protection of morals". I really do not want the government infringing on speech rights, due to something as overly broad as "morals".

> Countries in Europe have some pretty huge restictions on speech that go far behind things like making death threats and fraud illegal. So does the US.

> So does the US

Not in comparison to the EU.

Most people can agree that restrictions on speech in the US are much less strict than those in the EU.

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

#693

Post by heavyset_go »

VLM wrote: post #610
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fascinating part of this is that Google has officially claimed the mantle of arbiter of what is allowed on the internet ( they are not exactly a gate keeper yet, but given how people have trouble accessing information outside FB, Apple, Google gardens, they are well on their way ). edit: Trouble in a sense that it is inconvenient for them.

As the editor of the internet, are they not taking on full legal liability for anything they haven't blocked yet?

No, and there are laws and tomes of case law that reinforce that no matter how much curation they do, an interactive computer service will not be held liable for user generated content.

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

#694

Post by m0zg »

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.

Twitter is literally a platform for hate speech right now, and people have been killed because of it. Will they be taking down Twitter?

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

#695

Post by _jal »

selestify wrote: post #595
skissane wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem with the drafting – the original authors always meant for there to be exceptions, but decided not to specify explicitly in the text what those exceptions were going to be – thus leaving it up to the courts to decide in practice what exceptions are allowed and what are not. The obscenity exception was largely non-controversial until the 20th century, because there was a broad societal consensus, among b…

How did that shift in attitudes about obscenity happen?

A super-interesting question that is also an invite for people to flog their own personal theories. People will tell you lots of reasons: increasing incomes, the development of ubiquitous media, increasing diversity, weakened religious control mechanisms, etc.

There is probably at least a little truth to each of those, although I think many of them are also effects of central causes (e.g., religious control over common people's lives declined because of increasing incomes, which increased due in part to advances in communications tech).

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

#696

Post by Bud »

selestify wrote: post #595
skissane wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem with the drafting – the original authors always meant for there to be exceptions, but decided not to specify explicitly in the text what those exceptions were going to be – thus leaving it up to the courts to decide in practice what exceptions are allowed and what are not. The obscenity exception was largely non-controversial until the 20th century, because there was a broad societal consensus, among b…

How did that shift in attitudes about obscenity happen?

Potter Stewart knew it when he saw it.

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

#697

Post by robertlagrant »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #410
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the feds mandate the censoring on a private medium, I don't think it makes it legal FCC regulation of TV broadcast comes close, but apparently obscenity isn't protected under the First Amendment (perhaps you can tell I'm not a lawyer, or for that matter an American). https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...

Yeah, there is this vague idea that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to certain categories of speech (yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater is the classic example) that get stretched to fit this sort of thing.

Of course, being in a crowded theater violates social distancing guidelines, so now you don't need to shout anything :-)

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

#698

Post by jakelazaroff »

electrograv wrote: post #681
huntertwo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a question of the medium but a question of the actor doing the censoring. If the feds mandate the censoring on a private medium, I don't think it makes it legal. I think one difference is the enforcement, Google can't censor an individual universally, just on their platform, whereas the government can enforce it universally with force/jail/etc.

Unfortunately, it becomes virtually universal when a small set of massive companies (with similar censorship ideas) control 99% of all our communications and social media. I think this evades the spirit of the legal protections here, at least. Note: I'm not disagreeing with you, and don't really have a solution here. Just pointing out how the current situation feels like dangerous territory.

Ironically, I think one promising solution is the Fediverse.

Or, more generally: given how subjective ideas about acceptable speech are, the only real solution is to break up giant gatekeepers like Google.

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

#699

Post by input_sh »

oehpr wrote: post #425
KirinDave wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gab bans people openly and credulously discussing marxism. I have experimented with and experienced this directly. So, it fails my litmus test for "an uncensored platform." And it's a bit comical, because Gab as a community experience is much smaller (in my perspective) from even weird sites like minds or funky social blockchain plays. Why they felt the need to ban discusions of marxism or a general strike is beyond…

Fair. By my own admission, I don't know much about gab. I think the first time I ever heard about it was when Firefox banned Dissenter from their addons. Dissenter to me was a genius idea that has an ugly userbase. I'd love to have a version of Dissenter that isn't populated entirely by bigots. I think the idea of Dissenter really has some value, you walk along the web for all sorts of reasons, and then up in the cor…

That by itself implies that every URL you visit has to be looked up to see if there's a related discussion.

No way I'd trust any add-on/startup/mega corp to do that. I barely trust Mozilla to keep my history on their servers, and that's only because they only keep the last few months and purge older data.

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