[HN Gopher] Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse ...
___________________________________________________________________
Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the
Play Store
Author : mynameismonkey
Score : 1106 points
Date : 2020-08-28 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (qoto.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (qoto.org)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| If we're going to play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with "hate
| speech" (a term that's loosely defined, of course) then there
| simply isn't going to be any internet left.
| obenn wrote:
| This does highlight how important the relative freedom of Android
| is. This is unfortunate but it does not stop the ability for
| people to load the APKs or get them off of F-Droid.
|
| That being said, imagine if this happened on the Apple App
| Store...
| Sargos wrote:
| It didn't happen on the App Store because Apple wouldn't have
| allowed it on in the first place
| obenn wrote:
| There are currently several mastodon clients available on the
| App Store, like Tootle and Amaroq. Hopeful that they stay up,
| we'll see.
| daniel-s wrote:
| A reminder that F-Droid [1] is a free software app store that can
| be used to download free/open source software, including Mastodon
| clients.
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/
| mqus wrote:
| I hope that this teaches more people that there are other,
| sometimes better app stores in android.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Hopefully it will. Although, Google engages in
| anticompetitive behavior by hindering 3rd party apps'
| abilities to autoupgrade, install in the background or batch
| install apps.
|
| Those intentional limitations mean that F-Droid will never
| have feature parity with the Play Store.
| novaRom wrote:
| Hopefully Epic Games with their antitrust lawsuits against
| Google and Apple will succeed and we'll see some positive
| changes.
|
| For now, the best everyone can do is to promote F-Droid.
| Many users never heard about YouTube without ads, so
| getting NewPipe might be a good motivation to try F-Droid.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| There were some people who were pushing for the mentioned apps
| to be removed from fdroid but at the end the fdroid maintainers
| decided to not remove them.
| lucb1e wrote:
| This will work for the people reading this here or who would
| otherwise already do this. I think decentralization is
| something we should aspire to promote more broadly than within
| the community using alternative app repositories.
| grahoho wrote:
| A reminder that F-Droid banned Gab from their store.
|
| https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app/
| gilrain wrote:
| A reminder that Gab is not a gray area edgecase, but a
| purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate speech.
| csomar wrote:
| Isn't that why F-Droid was created for in the first place?
| oehpr wrote:
| I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... But lets
| hypothetically say that Gab was not created for that
| purpose, but for precisely the purpose it claims it was
| created for:
|
| To be an open platform for free speech, no censorship.
|
| Wouldn't it have ended up in the exact same state it is
| now? Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to
| have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from other
| major websites. When voat was created, I 100% believed that
| they were not attempting to create extremist havens, but
| their userbase was all the people expelled from reddit for
| targeted harassment campaigns.
|
| I hate this dynamic. We need a way to break this cycle,
| because right now it's actively killing competitors to
| existing social networks.
| damnyou wrote:
| Yes, any large no-censorship platform for humans will be
| swamped by Nazis.
|
| You could avoid being large -- small, high-trust groups
| work perfectly fine without censorship.
|
| You could add more moderation (aka censorship), both
| platform-wide and within communities. Reddit seems to be
| heading in that direction.
|
| You could avoid being a platform. Some sites are
| inherently platforms, but does every site need comments?
|
| Or you could genetically engineer humanity into a kinder,
| better species. This would also be the way to make
| anarcho-communism work -- the economic system with the
| greatest freedoms, but also the most susceptible to bad
| actors. The Culture series shows you a glimpse of what
| this future could be.
| oehpr wrote:
| I've got to finish going through The Culture series. I
| thought it was bold stroke to write a book series about a
| future where humans are domesticated by their own AI.
| damnyou wrote:
| I think the "fully automated gay space luxury communism"
| depicted in the Culture series is the best future we can
| hope for. I wouldn't mind welcoming new robot overlords
| if it makes that possible.
| sipos wrote:
| Wikipedia cites a articles that show a number of examples
| of the company Twitter acocunt saying anti-semetic
| things, for example https://web.archive.org/web/201810311
| 62843/https://www.cnn.c....
|
| I agree with your point - it is hard to tell the
| difference generally, and it is an important point to
| remember, but the behaviour of the company itself shows
| that it is not an issue this time.
| stusmall wrote:
| >I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history...
|
| Maybe that's a sign you should pause. Sometimes it is
| okay to admit you don't know about a subject. It is okay
| to sit and listen instead of voicing an opinion.
| oehpr wrote:
| Well... I mean really I was not trying to say Gab was
| innocent. I really didn't know until others provided some
| helpful context. I was speaking more to the original
| topic of this HN submission.
|
| I never know how to handle topic shifts in the
| conversation trees in Reddit, Hacker News, and others.
|
| Do you speak only to the comment you're responding to? Do
| you speak as if that comment is in the context of the
| submission? Do you keep the context as on topic as
| possible? Do you indicate which one of the three you're
| doing when you start your comment off? I feel like this
| is an internet rule I have not sussed out on my own. And
| I can see its caused some trouble for others. Sorry.
| hajimemash wrote:
| I found interesting your comment and subsequent replies
| to your comment.
| outoftheabyss wrote:
| His point stands... and actually contributes to the
| conversation
| kevingadd wrote:
| This is a useless hypothetical. We know what Gab was and
| why it was taken down.
|
| If you want to know how a healthy alternative would have
| turned out, go looking for one. It almost certainly
| exists, there have been at least a dozen twitter
| competitors in the past and I know a few people who tried
| them out. (I can't remember their names, though.)
| KirinDave wrote:
| 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 me.
| oehpr wrote:
| 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 corner in your toolbar you see "oh, someone from
| my community has said something about this". Rather than
| the social network taking you to a site, the site takes
| you to the network.
| input_sh wrote:
| 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.
| oehpr wrote:
| nope, you'd simply distribute a bloom filter to everyone,
| and then you could transmit hashed urls.
|
| you could easily make this privacy safe.
| KirinDave wrote:
| This wouldn't address a lot of metadata-related privacy
| concerns.
| musingsole wrote:
| How would it not?
| gre wrote:
| You can discuss marxism and general strikes on the lemmy
| instance https://chapo.chat
| KirinDave wrote:
| Haha, as a certified fan of the Wrecker call-out of Chapo
| I doubt I'll last long there.
| bjl wrote:
| > Why they felt the need to ban discusions of marxism or
| a general strike is beyond me.
|
| Because it was built to be a fascist recruitment channel,
| and the talk of 'free speech' is just a smoke screen that
| they don't care about at all.
| KirinDave wrote:
| Sure, but anyone who talks about that there is a punching
| bag. It's all awful people. They don't need to do that
| work, the users do it for them.
| Proven wrote:
| > Gab bans people openly and credulously discussing
| marxism. I have experimented with and experienced this
| directly.
|
| I find that extremely hard to believe.
|
| It is also inaccurate, because Gab lets you connect to
| any community. What you're saying they banned you from
| theirs.
|
| As for being in favor of a ban on Gab's own app (other
| comments): any app can acess Gab's instance, and Gab's
| own app lets users access any instance including Gab's
| own so a ban on Gab's app doesn't work, you annoying
| busybodies.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to
| have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from
| other major websites"
|
| Exactly, which is why you are wrong here:
|
| "When voat was created, I 100% believed that they were
| not attempting to create extremist havens"
|
| It is not as if the major websites are quick to censor
| their users. If anything they are too cautious and have
| only banned terrorists after widespread pressure and
| threats of advertiser boycotts. If you set up a platform
| that is open to the few people who were so extreme that
| even Reddit or Twitter banned them, then you are creating
| an extremist haven, no matter what language you use to
| describe your intentions.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > If anything they are too cautious and have only banned
| terrorists after widespread pressure and threats of
| advertiser boycotts
|
| This is nowhere close to what reddit/twitter have been
| doing however.
|
| > then you are creating an extremist haven
|
| ...of people interested in anime porn after reddit banned
| them.
| ryandrake wrote:
| One could argue that intentions don't really matter,
| ether. "The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does" [1]. If
| your system ends up being a forum for a certain type of
| posts, then that's kind of what it is, regardless of what
| you originally wanted it to be.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_
| is_wha...
| ascorbic wrote:
| If they didn't intend it, they were being incredibly
| naive. If your defining characteristic is that you don't
| censor things that are banned on Reddit, then your site
| is only attractive to people who want to do things banned
| on Reddit.
| sipos wrote:
| It wasn't just Reddit they were fleeing. I think it was
| Twitter too...
| FalconSensei wrote:
| yes.
|
| So again... Reddit and Twitter are already a cesspool of
| hate. If you are bad enough to be banned there...
| gruez wrote:
| >but a purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate
| speech
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
| simias wrote:
| https://gab.com/
|
| Just decide for yourself. Literally the first post I get
| at the moment comes from "QAnon and the Great Awakening"
| and is in support of that right-wing vigilante shooter in
| Kenosha, calling the district attorney who's prosecuting
| him "evil".
|
| The next few posts I see mention either "arresting the
| dems", some anti-vax stuff and so many crypto-fascist
| dogwhistles that I'm getting tinnitus.
|
| If you need more proof I'll let you ding into this.
| snypher wrote:
| A good start is the Wikipedia page;
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
| gruez wrote:
| The line of thinking seems to be: "Gab's target
| demographic is users that have been banned from the
| mainstream platforms for hate speech and conspiracies.
| Therefore by targeting those users, it's 'purpose built'
| for hate speech and conspiracies.". My question is, can't
| you apply this to basically anything that's "free
| speech"? The mechanism seems to be that most people are
| content with the mainstream platforms, and therefore the
| only people who go for the "free speech" platforms end up
| being the people who were banned from the mainstream
| platforms. By that logic, is tor "purpose built" for
| criminals, since basically only people with stuff to hide
| use it? How is it different than gab?
| simias wrote:
| If your site has been overrun by ultra-far-right types
| for basically its entire existence and you do nothing to
| mitigate this then you're very clearly complicit.
|
| But you're right, most of the "no moderation, anything
| goes" online communities tend to be overrun by extremists
| but it's easy to see why: you only need a minority of
| very dedicated trolls posting outrageous content 24/7 to
| ruin a community. It takes time and effort to post
| insightful content and analysis, meanwhile you can throw
| shit at the walls at a large scale very easily.
|
| That's why it's pretty obvious to me that if you want to
| actually have interesting discussions online and a
| plurality of opinions you _need_ moderation, otherwise
| the low effort bullies take over.
| gruez wrote:
| >If your site has been overrun by ultra-far-right types
| for basically its entire existence and you do nothing to
| mitigate this then you're very clearly complicit.
|
| How do you mitigate without running counter to the
| original idea of "free speeech"?
| munificent wrote:
| It's not at all clear what "the original idea of 'free
| speech'" even _was_. In the US, the wording of the First
| Amendment is quite vague.
|
| I think people have a mental model that social media
| sites and apps are like a communication medium. They are
| a neutral carrier that transmits an idea X from person A
| to B. The site itself is not "tainted" by the content of
| X or get involved in the choices of A and B.
|
| But a more accurate model is that they are _amplifiers_
| and _selectors_. The algorithms and ML models at the
| heart of every social media app often _determine who B
| is_. A is casting X out into the aether and the site
| itself uses its own code to select the set of Bs that
| will receive it--both who they are and how large that set
| is. From that perspective, I think it is fair that apps
| take greater responsibility for the content they host.
|
| Here's an analogy that might help:
|
| Consider a typical print shop. You show up with your
| pamphlet, pay them some money, and they hand you back a
| stack of copies. Then you go out and distribute them. The
| print shop doesn't care what your pamphlet says and I
| think is free from much moral obligation to care.
|
| Now consider a different print shop. You drop off your
| pamphlet and give them some money. Lots of other people
| do. Then the print shop itself decides how many copies to
| make for each pamphlet. Then it also decides itself which
| street corners to leave which pamphlets on. That sounds
| an _awful lot_ to me like they have a lot of
| responsibility over the content of those pamphlets.
|
| The latter is much closer to how most social media apps
| behave today.
| gruez wrote:
| but does gab use "algorithms and ML" to determine what
| gets shown? Doesn't it use a upvote/downvote model like
| hn or reddit? Is a site that uses a "order by upvotes"
| ranking system closer to the first print shop or the
| second? What about bulletin boards that ranks by last
| post?
| munificent wrote:
| _> Doesn 't it use a upvote/downvote model like hn or
| reddit?_
|
| Is that really any different? If your print shop counts
| the user-submitted tallies on a chalkboard to decide
| which pamphlets to print, the print shop is still
| _choosing_ to use that rule to decide what to print.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| By having more than a middle school understanding of what
| "free speech" is about. There is no "original idea" of
| free speech, there never has been, it is a concept that
| is used to refer to a wide variety of legal frameworks
| across different times and places. In Germany a person's
| free speech rights do not include holocaust denial. For
| most of the history of the United States free speech has
| been more limited than it is today; it was not all that
| long ago that we had the "equal time" rule that required
| media outlets to host both liberal and conservative
| commentary. You generally do not have a right to organize
| an insurrection against any government and whining about
| free speech will not convince anyone otherwise.
| frank2 wrote:
| >it was not all that long ago that we had the "equal
| time" rule that required media outlets to host both
| liberal and conservative commentary
|
| That only ever applied to broadcast media (and maybe only
| to prime-time TV). Publishers of the written word have
| never been required by the US government to grant equal
| time.
|
| >For most of the history of the United States free speech
| has been more limited than it is today
|
| I don't know what you could mean by that unless you are
| referring to the fact that before the internet became
| mainstream, you had to own a printing press or something
| like that to reach a mass audience.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| A century ago in the United States the phrase "shouting
| fire in a crowded theater" was used in a Supreme Court
| ruling upholding the censorship of anti-draft activists
| during World War I, and within living memory the United
| States had various laws censoring pornographic photos and
| videos. There was even a time when it was illegal to have
| the Post Office carry written information about
| contraception:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
|
| Just a decade ago free speech rights were expanded to
| include corporations:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_
| Ele...
|
| In case anyone tries to claim that the founders intended
| for the most expansive possible understanding of freedom
| of speech, the fact is that one of the earliest laws
| passed in the United States was a law that censored
| criticisms of the Federal government (in an attempt to
| crack down on foreign misinformation campaigns):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
| gruez wrote:
| >In case anyone tries to claim that the founders intended
| for the most expansive possible understanding of freedom
| of speech, the fact is that one of the earliest laws
| passed in the United States was a law that censored
| criticisms of the Federal government (in an attempt to
| crack down on foreign misinformation campaigns):
|
| I'm not sure whether that proves your point. The
| wikipedia article says that it was controversial, caused
| the federalist party to lose the following election, and
| ultimately expired after 4 years.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The fact that the law was passed by the same men who
| ratified the constitution says a lot about their concept
| of freedom of speech, even if it was controversial and
| short lived. If the founders really meant for free speech
| to be as expansive as it is today it is hard to see how
| such a law could have been passed in the first place.
| gruez wrote:
| >The fact that the law was passed by the same men who
| ratified the constitution says a lot about their concept
| of freedom of speech
|
| You can also argue that it was defeated by the same men
| who ratified the constitution, and that the "free speech"
| side ultimately prevailed, therefore they really did mean
| free speech to be that expansive.
| frank2 wrote:
| OK, but the topic is hate speech in particular, and there
| has never been a time when hate speech modulo calls to
| violent action (and possibly calls on landlords or
| employers to discriminate) has been unlawful in the US.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| One thing is free speech, another thing is hate speech.
|
| You can't have anti-semitic, racist, homophobic speech
| without breaking some laws
| frank2 wrote:
| You can in the US. Look it up:
|
| >Hate speech in the United States is not regulated due to
| the robust right to free speech found in the American
| Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled
| that hate speech is legally protected free speech under
| the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case
| on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously
| reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech"
| exception to the free speech rights protected by the
| First Amendment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_S
| tat...
|
| Hate speech in the United States is not regulated _by any
| government_. Google is considered by the courts to be
| non-governmental, so the courts will not prevent Google
| from regulating hate speech on the platforms it owns as
| Google sees fit.
| gruez wrote:
| >You can't have anti-semitic, racist, homophobic speech
| without breaking some laws
|
| In what jurisdiction? In the US,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action is
| a very high bar to clear, compared to other countries.
| centimeter wrote:
| I follow comedians on there that got banned from twitter
| because they said a bad word.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > but a purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate
| speech.
|
| That's just false.
| G4E wrote:
| A reminder that Fdroid allows you to run your own repo and
| host there whatever you choose, controversial or not.
|
| Fdroid banned this particuliar app (and maybe others,
| that's not the point) from their own official repo.
| blahblahblogger wrote:
| From my perspective we still need other information, do
| they also ban other apps that are purpose-built for hate
| speech? Was it just this app because of the controversy
| over banned Twitter users going to it?
|
| I'm not taking a side either way but am curious.
| djsumdog wrote:
| and why does that matter? They later switched to
| ActivityPub/Mastodon for a bit. They still run a Mastodon
| fork, but defederated back in May.
|
| Gab was also banned explicitly by URL by any app makers and
| in many ActivityPub libraries (you can find checks where it
| hashes the URL and compares it to known Gab URLs).
|
| > a purpose-built platform for conspiracies and hate speech
|
| We're in a bizarre world right now where you can label any
| opinion you don't agree with as hate speech, dehumanize
| police and call every conservative a literal Nazi and
| that's all okay now for some reason.
|
| At some point we have to remember that historically, a lot
| of people who thought they were right, about slavery,
| homosexuality, war, abortion, polygamy, and other
| controversial topics, eventually came down on the wrong
| side of history.
|
| The attack on speech and ideas has never been more
| profound. If you don't like an idea, you don't have to
| listen, but people are going to continue to go to fringes
| whenever their voices are silences. That will create more
| extreme platforms and more extremism, not less.
| dTal wrote:
| Ah, the delicious irony of attacking certain types of
| speech and ideas as "attacks on speech and ideas". What
| they are doing and what you are doing are no different;
| it's all just politics. There's not even anything new
| about what's happening today. How do you think people's
| minds were changed on all those "controversial" topics
| you cite? A whole lot of social pressure. You don't get
| to make lofty statements about free speech, and then turn
| around and grumble that other people's speech somehow
| isn't "playing fair".
| cecja wrote:
| There is holocaust denying, calls to kill blacks and rape
| fantasies about female politicians and movie stars. There
| are literal calls for the rise of the white race to
| eradicate everyone else on the front page of gab daily.
| If you want to defend shit like this on the merit of free
| speech the probability that you are in fact a white
| nationalist are not to far.
|
| And the history is plastered with censorship the world
| was never more free than it is now you are just repeating
| non facts without even doing a hint of research.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Okay come on. This sequence of comments is funny, you have
| to admit.
|
| "Google is censoring apps"
|
| "It's because those apps can access hate speech"
|
| "You can use this other app store"
|
| "They ban this app, though"
|
| "But that's because it's for hate speech"
|
| Come on, this is peak comedy.
| Carioca wrote:
| > those apps _can access_ hate speech
|
| > it's _for_ hate speech
|
| There's a big difference here and you seem to know it
| mav3rick wrote:
| Yes, as soon as the narrative went against HNs own point
| the discussion stopped.
| komali2 wrote:
| That article was written with such blatantly bad faith
| language it had the opposite of the intended effect and made
| me start distrusting whatever Gab is (I had no idea before
| this thread)
|
| > F-Droid won't tolerate oppression or harassment against
| marginalized groups. Because of this, it won't package nor
| distribute apps that promote any of these things
|
| If this accurately describes Gab, I don't have sympathy for
| Yet Another Racist Community pretending that they're
| defending freeze peach.
| luckylion wrote:
| Gab is a platform, ergo the judgement is about what the
| users publish on that platform. It's the exact same point
| Google seems to be making: that platform hosts content we
| wouldn't host, ergo the app must not be on our app store.
| SamBam wrote:
| Gab was created as a safe-haven for all the alt-right
| groups that get banned from Reddit.
|
| It's entirely populated by people who were banned from
| Reddit, Twitter or Facebook for harassment or spreading
| hate.
| thu2111 wrote:
| I'd be more worried that they apparently do tolerate
| harassment and oppression against non-marginalized groups.
| That's a pretty whopping double standard!
| young_unixer wrote:
| I didn't know about this. I'll stop recommending F-droid.
| wtfishackernews wrote:
| good
| MYEUHD wrote:
| Even if an app is banned from the F-droid main repository,
| its developers can distribute it through their own F-droid
| repository
| ffpip wrote:
| Even if an app is banned from the play store, the developer
| can distribute it through f-droid. Even if an app is banned
| from the F-droid main repository, its developers can
| distribute it through their own F-droid repository Even if
| the app is banned from their own f-droid repository, the
| dev can distribute his source code and users can build the
| app with Android Studio. Even if Google bans your Android
| Studio account, you can use another compiler. Even if the
| internet bans you, you can mail the code via a handwritten
| letter to your users, who will copy the code line by line
| and build it using their own compiler.
| BubuIIC wrote:
| Alternative repositories are a first-class feature of
| F-Droid. Alternative app stores aren't really a first
| class feature of Android (though they are obviously
| possible, in contrast to iOS)
|
| > bans your Android Studio account
|
| Don't give them ideas. (there's thankfully no such thing
| as an Android Studio account)
| ffpip wrote:
| > there's thankfully no such thing as an Android Studio
| account
|
| I meant Google Account. Isn't a google account necessary
| for anything on developer.android.com? Sorry if I am
| wrong. Any url on that domain used to redirect me to a
| Google Login page.
|
| Well, atleast you have to accept a Google TOS.
| BubuIIC wrote:
| A google account is not required for using the android
| SDK.
|
| You have to agree with the TOS if you download the
| prebuilt SDK from google, yes. Building the SDK from
| source is unfortunately quite hard but Debian has made
| some progress with this.
| orblivion wrote:
| They banned the Gab _application_. They didn't ban all
| microblogging applications that can access Gab. Though, Tusky
| in particular does. Not all do.
| orblivion wrote:
| Sorry, I phrased it incorrectly: Tusky in particular blocks
| Gab. At least some others do not.
| davexunit wrote:
| Yeah that ruled. Love F-Droid.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Agreed. Good decision on their part.
| rvz wrote:
| Here's a simple riddle: First they came for Alex.
| Then they came for the frog... then they came for the
| corona and now they come for all the elephants in the room.
|
| This isn't 'doing the right thing' and Google is not your friend.
| djsumdog wrote:
| I hate how terribly locked down all modern operating systems
| are. I recently started using a PinePhone. It's up to people in
| tech to show that regular/ordinary people can get away from
| these mega corps that seek to control everything about the tech
| we use.
|
| Most people won't put in the effort though.
| DenisM wrote:
| So did anyone build a twitter-over-bitcoin microblogging platform
| yet? That would be pretty hard to censor.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I could see that backfiring pretty badly. Just think of all the
| politicians who want to regulate (or even try to ban citizens
| from using Bitcoin) being able to say it's chock full of 'Hate
| Speech'.
| DenisM wrote:
| It's hard to ban at this point - they could limit cashing out
| options, but the blockchain itself will live on as long as
| there are _some_ places in the world where you can cash out.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I take the stance that the government can't actually ban or
| regulate Bitcoin - In the sense of changing the protocol or
| shutting it down. However the government can absolutely
| regulate my use of it as a citizen.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think this is a good example of "you can't solve human problems
| with cute tech workarounds" because I think Google is actually in
| the right here (given you think their ban on hate speech is
| general is legitimate). It shouldn't matter at all the technical
| details of how an app works or the fact that it's federated or
| distributed. All that really matters to the policy is what a user
| sees when they download and open the app.
|
| And on that front I completely understand where Google is coming
| from. Because the fediverse has a laissez faire attitude towards
| moderation (i.e. instance owners don't really block much) much of
| what you see on the fediverse is stuff that would get you banned
| on mainstream social networks [1]. And that content is the
| default experience unlike a web browser/chat programs/communities
| where you have to seek out that kind of content.
|
| I expect that an app tied to a specific instance that put effort
| into moderating their content and put up some safeguards against
| seeing content on other instances by default with some popup like
| "content on other servers is not vetted, are you sure?" would be
| allowed to stay.
|
| [1] Which makes sense since these are some of the only havens for
| people who can't make it on Twitter/FB/Reddit.
| bccdee wrote:
| The technical details do matter quite a bit though, because the
| same logic could be used to ban (for instance) web browsers.
| Because the web is an open protocol that can be used to
| communicate with any website, even objectionable ones, every
| browser is an app that gives access to hatespeech content.
| Google may ban the 8chan app, but they don't ban browsers
| despite browsers being able to access the 8chan website.
|
| Of course, Google won't ban the web, but only because it
| doesn't suit them to. What we wind up with is Google having
| arbitrary control over which types of communication protocols
| are allowed on Android with no need to justify their decisions,
| because any protocol _could_ carry hatespeech, and that 's
| pretty concerning.
| lawwantsin17 wrote:
| I guess they'll have to remove Youtube and Facebook apps next. F
| the App Stores anyway.
| mindfulhack wrote:
| Disgusting censorship in such a position of power. Corporations
| like Facebook and Google and Apple shape society. There is no
| getting around it. It should no longer be acceptable to use the
| concepts of 'capitalism' and 'privateness' as an excuse for
| censorship on platforms that have become as good as public
| utilities.
|
| The open web has never been more important. What next, will
| Google's Chrome browser start blocking fediverse web domains?
| That's their 'platform', too.
| monadic2 wrote:
| "Don't be evil" my ass.
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| Not only are these apps web browsers of a subset of sites, other
| web browsers on the Play Store already allow access to these
| sites in exactly the same manner as the app, using the SAME
| PROTOCOL.
|
| In respect to this move by Google, there are no differences
| between web browsers and Mastodon browsers. The only difference
| is that if Google applies their ban equally and fairly, they lose
| tremendous amounts of money by banning all web browsers.
|
| We shall see if Google follows it's own policy on this manner or
| if they are descriminating based on what lines their pockets.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Do Mastodon apps report your browsing preferences to google? If
| you browse with chrome, google knows what you browse.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| There are plenty of web browsers on the Play Store that are
| not Chrome.
| humanistbot wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ardy42 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Do the apps connect by default to a server that allows hate
| speech? If that's the case, is this an instance of bad
| defaults? Maybe the apps could work around this by just
| connecting to a server that's moderated to be acceptable to
| Google, but leave it configurable.
| arianvanp wrote:
| No. You need to explicitly connect in most fediverse apps.
| They're like browsers
| ardy42 wrote:
| > No. You need to explicitly connect in most fediverse
| apps. They're like browsers
|
| It's pretty egregious to ban an app like that.
|
| Still, I wonder if an innocuous default server (or set of
| them) might smooth things over with Google. That would
| increase the friction of accessing the content they don't
| like.
|
| Android's also relatively open, so if they only have issues
| with specific servers, maybe the app could just drop a
| text-file blocklist on the filesystem that a user could
| tecnically edit to change it (but just not via the app).
| monadic2 wrote:
| Appeasement isn't a good option here either when the ban
| is irrational at face value to begin with.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Appeasement isn't a good option here either when the
| ban is irrational at face value to begin with.
|
| These apps might not have any good options.
| ng12 wrote:
| Well, we asked for this. We demanded Twitter and FB censor
| their content, we applauded Cloudflare* for deplatforming
| websites. Now those monopolies can use the precedent to control
| more of the web.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Who is "we"?
| bccdee wrote:
| Asking a platform to moderate the content on its website
| isn't the same as asking an app distributor to ban apps which
| could conceivably be used to communicate objectionable ideas.
| Those are completely different.
| sp332 wrote:
| *Cloudflare
| [deleted]
| Avamander wrote:
| Well, we didn't. Did we say that apps that give ubiquitous
| access to generally positive content should be removed? No,
| not really. Did we say that apps that contain user content
| should consider a bit what behaviour they enable and promote?
| Yes, and they have done so for a long while, remember,
| there's illegal content other than what people would call
| "hate speech".
| boring_twenties wrote:
| We can start small and demand removal of the gmail app, first.
| Baby steps.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| The only way they can define and enforce "hate speech" policies
| is by torturing the language, the definitions, and hoping no
| one looks closely at the resulting policies.
|
| In the US, beyond explicit calls for illegal behavior (usually
| illegal) and kiddie porn (always illegal), we don't have many
| restrictions or even a legal definition of "hate speech." But
| even those laws aren't consistently applied. For the most part,
| it's up to the judgement of the viewer or based on the
| "reasonable person" rule and "reasonable people" seem to be
| getting rarer and rarer..
|
| Ref: https://www.thoughtco.com/hate-speech-cases-721215
| frank2 wrote:
| >>The rationale [Google] gave is that hate speech appears on
| these apps
|
| >The only way they can define and enforce "hate speech"
| policies is by torturing the language, the definitions, and
| hoping no one looks closely at the resulting policies
|
| The rest of your comment is about the first amendment to the
| US constitution, which constrains _governments_ (US Federal
| and state governments), not private parties such as Google.
|
| Google would be well within its rights in the US to ban all
| hate speech from all the platforms it owns.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Similar things happened to some android reddit clients a few
| years ago and it was resolved by removing certain subreddits
| from menu of pre-filled subreddits. So maybe these apps just
| need to remove any problematic pre-filled servers.
| gargron wrote:
| Subway Tooter does not come with any pre-filled servers, let
| alone problematic ones.
| baybal2 wrote:
| This is not the case. Don't assume goodwill from Google.
|
| > The rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these
| apps,
|
| So does in countless app on the store, and not in the third
| party content, but app themselves pretty much, and Google don't
| touch it.
|
| A much more rational assumption is that Google sees the
| Fediverse as something that can come to steal their cattle
| (eyeballs,) and they have a plan to subplant it.
|
| You will very soon see them turning even more picky, and
| eventually remove even censored fediverse apps.
|
| They are repeating the trick they did with uBlock. First, they
| say do a purge, with an option for the most resistant to "play
| along," and a few month later, they pull the rug again. This
| way, they evade an immediate backlash.
| rootsudo wrote:
| I had no idea of Fediverse, and now I do. Thanks, Google
| censorship!
| franga2000 wrote:
| Time to start mass-reporting Google Chrome on the store because I
| can use it allows access to child porn and Nazi forums I guess?
|
| And also maybe revise all those antitrust laws into something
| actually useful - they're using their (kinda, mostly) monopoly to
| hinder competition by selectively applying their rules to whever
| they want and never themselves.
| devenblake wrote:
| Meanwhile multiple 4chan clients are still up:
| https://play.google.com/store/search?q=4chan
|
| Maybe it's too soon to say but given the reputation of 4chan vs
| the small user-group of fediverse I'd say these rules are being
| enforced selectively.
| the_other wrote:
| As if their assault on the open web wasn't already painfully
| obvious.
| sriram_sun wrote:
| Pretty soon Google is going to yank YouTube out of their App
| Store as well.
| notananthem wrote:
| Top comments in that article are one of the most well known hate
| speech sites is hosted therein.
| ggggtez wrote:
| I've never used this service, but let's play along for a moment.
|
| Let's say that 100% of the servers were bastions of hatespeech.
| It seems like the folks in this thread would be _against_ banning
| it in that case. But I think that 's wrong. If the app was 100%
| just hatespeech sites, then it should probably be banned.
|
| Now, then we get to reality: What is the real mixture? 80%? 50%?
| 20%? I don't have any background knowledge to make a guess. But I
| think it would not be difficult to show that whatever percentage
| it is, it would be far greater than say, what you can find on the
| average internet site.
|
| Why do I say that? Because instead of going on Facebook, which is
| so easy that over a billion people use it... you have to pick up
| an obscure piece of software and run a server, or something. So
| the only people who are going to pick this up are likely
| technophiles, and people who have been banned from mainstream
| sites.
| eska wrote:
| I'm sure all the people who were for taking down certain
| Fediverse apps for hate speech from the F-droid app store won't
| have a problem with being taken down from the Play Store on the
| same grounds, right? After all, one can still download their apps
| somewhere else..
|
| Serves you right.
| webjpa wrote:
| Is reddit over
| mgn01 wrote:
| How is anyone surprised? It is the grave you, the liberal tech
| people, have made. You can dig up threads here about Confederate
| Flags and how the people waving them (or not-burning the flags)
| need to be pushed into wood chipper.
|
| Suspect the outrage of this thread is largely performative too.
| robotron wrote:
| No you are. (See how that works)
| angio wrote:
| My favorite app is Tusky and is still available from F-Droid [0].
| I think Tusky will be fine since they block Gab and so they won't
| be affected by this ban.
|
| [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/
| Avamander wrote:
| As much as I hate Gab, I hate the possible extension of
| "unwanted content" especially considering Google's possible
| interests in China. I would not be surprised if next up to be
| removed are apps that allow access to instances that discuss
| the Uighurs or Tian An Men Da Tu Sha freely.
| tadzik_ wrote:
| Fedilab is also available on f-droid and it doesn't do any
| silly blocking.
| dleslie wrote:
| Gab isn't the only source of hate on the fediverse; there's
| plenty of diversity in the hate speech to be found on the
| 'verse.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| The worst thing of censorship is they always can find some new
| targets after they have censored their old targets. They do it
| one by one Until you find out every word you said is illegal,
| it is too late.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Been looking for a good client. Can you disable the block on
| Gab? I know the place is a cesspool, but I don't like the idea
| of missing content because an app developer doesn't like an
| instance.
| angio wrote:
| There's Husky, a fork of Tusky that allows users connect to
| Gab.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Thanks, that's good to know.
| pera wrote:
| AFAIK Gab is not federated anymore: they decided to disable
| communication between other instances some time ago.
| dman wrote:
| How long before platforms start blocking websites using this
| logic? Or get rid of the web browser which suffers from this
| exact flaw?
|
| Disclaimer: Views expressed are my own and do not reflect my
| Employers position
| raxxorrax wrote:
| When I was young I always asked myself for whom such a
| disclaimer is a necessity until I was confronted with a very
| real case of infinity.
| dman wrote:
| :)
| MivLives wrote:
| Tusky appears to still be up.
|
| Wonder if this has to do with the recent Husky/Tusky drama.
| zelly wrote:
| Richard Stallman was right. The computer (smartphone) for
| millions of people has become a prison. The smartphone has been a
| tragedy for the human species.
|
| "Oh it doesn't matter they went after people I disagree with"
|
| Okay wise guy, what happens if the other side takes power? Think
| that's never happened historically? Then they'll come after you
| and I. How about we just not give this kind of power to anyone
| and let people make their own choices.
| ehsankia wrote:
| It has been shown time and time again that giving unrestricted
| uncensored access to billions will lead to the worst ideas
| proliferating. Look at QAnon and conspiracy theories running
| wild. Look anti-vaxxers and how America, one of the most
| advanced countries in the world, is now having Measles
| outbreaks after decades of having nearly 0 cases. Look at how
| simple things such as wearing a mask has become a controversial
| topic.
|
| Yes, everyone would obviously prefer a fully open and
| uncensored platform, but the reality is that those are very
| easy for bad actors to take advantage of. So many things on the
| web is disappearing thanks to these bad actors. Public APIs are
| getting locked down, Catpchas everywhere, passwords and 2fa are
| getting increasingly more complicated, and so on.
|
| If you really think every platform should be 100% open, you
| live in an idealistic universe that is not this one. The whole
| idea of "the solution to bad speech is more speech" simply does
| not work. It just doesn't.
| zelly wrote:
| It's easy to blame all the flaws of human character on its
| most highly available and proximate expression which is
| speech. There is violence, anger, hatred, envy, all kinds of
| evils in the world, the world isn't perfect, man isn't
| perfect, and trying to control others' thoughts isn't going
| to change that. That would actually be regressing several
| hundreds years back to the Dark Ages. If your assumption is
| that banning free speech would improve things, I would say
| that is the idealistic fantasy. There's no proof that it
| would work or wouldn't have the same unintended consequences
| as before. The more these platforms push back against their
| users, the more they turn the public against them, the more
| opportunities they create to be disrupted. In a recent poll 3
| out of 4 Americans said they were willing to die for free
| speech.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > trying to control others' thoughts isn't going to change
| that
|
| Controlling the spread of misinformation is not
| "controlling others thoughts".
|
| > your assumption is that banning free speech would improve
| things
|
| Banning specific content such as anti-vaxx is not "banning
| free speech". If anything, let it go rampant on your
| platform is actually helping promote it. Private platforms
| have no such obligation. It's like if I came to your house
| and forced lies about you to your family, and when you
| threw me out, I claimed that you were trying to ban my free
| speech.
| webjpa wrote:
| Reddit, Twitter, should I keep going
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad
| and it's not censorship if it's not mandated by the government.
|
| This doesn't seem very sensible to me, I would even say it
| seems to be the opposite of sensible, probably because I am not
| American.
| riffraff wrote:
| hate speech is a crime in many european countries too[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| That's a non sequitur. What do you mean "too?" What does
| this have to do with the claim that "it's not censorship if
| it's not mandated by the government"?
| MiroF wrote:
| I suspect they thought you were saying "hate speech is
| bad" sounds the opposite of sensible, when really you
| were referring to the part following the 'and'.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| > It always starts like that.
|
| That's the "slippery slope" fallacy. There's a knee-jerk
| reaction in America that any censorship is bad and will somehow
| always lead to more censorship. But there area places where
| censorship has been implemented in small ways and it hasn't led
| to some sort of free speech apocalypse. In Germany or Israel,
| for instance, it's illegal to deny the holocaust. That's a
| pretty sensible limit considering their history. All these
| years later, they're still free an functioning democracies.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I believe you will find that's the fallacy fallacy.
| wonnage wrote:
| This is like having a bulletin board in your store and not
| being able to take anything down from it.
|
| Yes, Google and Apple are big. You can say well, it's different
| because in this world there's only two boards for the entire
| country, that's true! But it's not a censorship problem, it's
| an antitrust problem.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head, if they were just "more
| alphabets in the soup", people wouldn't have much leg to
| stand on; but because the internet has no analog to the
| actual PUBLIC square, when you have 1-3 companies that
| control access to what 95% of the internet sees, you have a
| problem - because there's no alternative and no public square
| on which to register your complaint.
| EGreg wrote:
| 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!
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Life, liberty and the _pursuit of happiness_ was chosen for a
| reason in contrast to the term Locke used (estate):
| individual freedom was supposed to be balanced with the
| interests of the society that allowed them to exist and be
| pursued in the first place, which are what courts consider
| fundamental rights.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| >Section 230 was about child pornography
|
| What? It most certainly was not!
|
| The CDA as a whole was an attempt to regulate indecency and
| obscenity on the internet. Think "pornography that might be
| seen by minors"[0]. (Remember, this was the 90s.) Most of it
| (with the exception of section 230) was struck down in court
| for obvious first-amendment reasons. Section 230 was added
| later during the process by the House, after the bill had
| passed through the Senate, and was more about defamation than
| anything else[1].
|
| [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-
| bill/652... - search for "This title may be cited as the
| ``Communications Decency Act of 1996''."
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-i
| nte...
| coldacid wrote:
| Sadly, Wikipedia's been controlled by a whole number of
| wackos with megaphones for years. I wouldn't trust them to
| fact check my big toe.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad
| and it's not censorship if it's not mandated by the government.
|
| We have two things to unpack here. First, hate speech. What is
| it? Who gets to decide what the word means and what is their
| procedure for deciding? Is the definition stable or fluid (or
| even _very_ fluid)? Is hate speech universally wrong, or only
| wrong when issuing forth from certain speakers? If we all agree
| that it 's wrong, then why are people engaging in it, even
| unintentionally?
|
| Second, censorship. Is self-censorship not censorship? Why must
| the state be involved in order to censor? We're TV networks
| that for decades voluntarily forbade their programming from
| portraying homosexuals being censored or not? What is unique
| about state authority versus corporate authority as it relates
| to censorship?
|
| "Hate speech is bad" is a very abstract statement. The sentence
| conveys almost no actual concrete meaning. It seems like a
| rational or sensible statement, but it delegates almost all of
| the actual work to feelings and emotions, and _highly_
| subjective ones at that. I don 't find "wanna grab a cup of
| coffee" terribly hateful, but apparently some people do.
|
| I get the overall sentiment of your post, and I think I mostly
| agree. Nevertheless, the way we stop this nonsense is to say at
| the beginning that it is an abstraction over extremely
| subjective feelings and emotion, and thus has no basis other
| than eventual mob rule authoritarianism.
| mgleason_3 wrote:
| >it's not censorship if it's not mandated by the government
|
| Censorship can be conducted by private institutions,
| governments and other controlling bodies.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
| colordrops wrote:
| Hanlon's razor has hobbled everyone's ability to see what the
| establishment is doing. This isn't about good intentions gone
| wrong. The loss of control of the narrative due to the internet
| has been a severe setback for the powerful, and they have been
| slowly clawing it back by limiting access to alternative media.
|
| Various think tanks, NGOs, board members with multiple irons in
| the fire, foreign interests, and the government itself exert a
| lot of influence on large players to shut down harmful
| narratives. Most visible was when the deplatforming activity
| started with threats from lawmakers against outlets if they
| didn't remove certain content. You've also got various orgs
| with CIA connections acting as "fact checkers" on Facebook. The
| influence happens in subtle and many ways.
| frank2 wrote:
| >The loss of control of the narrative due to the internet has
| been a severe setback for the powerful
|
| How was the narrative controlled by the powerful before the
| internet became a part of everyday life? Specifically, how
| was the narrative controlled in the US in the decades before
| 1993?
|
| I'm asking for recommendations of books written by
| historians, journalists and other serious people.
| (Understanding the situation decades ago is probably a lot
| easier than understanding the current situation -- partly
| because the powerful will take pains to hide their
| controlling actions from the public.)
|
| In the US I get the general sense that politicians and
| holders of government offices have never been able to exert a
| lot of control of the narrative with the result that
| journalists and the prestigious universities have so much
| influence that they are best thought of as essentially part
| of the government.
|
| That suggests that the efforts of the establishment to rein
| in the big social media companies will prove largely
| ineffective with the result that Facebook and Google will
| probably join the New York Times and Harvard as parts of the
| _de facto_ governing structure of the US.
|
| EDITED: changed "rein" to "rein in".
| monadic2 wrote:
| The go-to text is Manufacturing Consent.
| quanticle wrote:
| _If that is true then that suggests that the efforts of the
| establishment to rein the big social media companies will
| prove largely ineffective with the result that Facebook,
| Google, etc, will probably join the New York Times,
| Harvard, etc, as part of the governing structure of the
| US._
|
| That's exactly what "reining in" looks like. Instead of
| being an alternative to, e.g. the New York Times and
| opposing the next Iraq war, social media just becomes yet
| another rah-rah cheerleading mouthpiece of whatever opinion
| the "serious people" hold.
|
| I don't know if you consider Chomsky to be a "serious
| person", but _Manufacturing Consent_ does go into how the
| people actually in charge of the government (professional
| civil servants, corporate lobbyists, etc) manage to make it
| seem as if their opinions are infallibly correct and
| countervailing opinions are thinly veiled crankery. What
| social media did (at least in its early days) was give
| everyone the ability to manufacture consent at a scale that
| previously was only the domain of the large media
| corporations. The establishment media is obviously
| threatened by this and are working to ensure that the new
| media follows the same guidelines as the old, even if that
| means censorship.
|
| Of course, that's not how the establishment media phrases
| it (and probably not even how they believe it). They see it
| as "protecting" the people from unsavory "Russian fake
| news". In reality, though, that's just a lie they tell
| themselves and tell us to justify their continued hold on
| the ability to decide which opinions can be held by "right-
| thinking people". If they were truly interested in "the
| marketplace of ideas", they wouldn't be pushing so hard to
| make platforms as centralized, controllable and censorship
| friendly as they are.
| pfraze wrote:
| Manufacturing consent online is dependent on the rules of
| the game. Russian-bot-syndrome is a fraud issue, in this
| case a state actor manipulating the 1-person-1-voice
| assumption of the game. If we're making a marketplace
| metaphor, then this market is being tilted toward actors
| with the resources to pay for bots, workers, or
| influencers. It's not like it's limited to Russia;
| Bloomberg was somewhat showy during the primary about
| paying people to tweet for him, and it's safe to assume
| any other well-resourced actor with an interest in
| manufacturing consent is doing the same thing.
|
| The censorship debate is an indicator of game-rule
| collapse in social media. The platforms are reaching for
| top down control because they can't cook up a better way
| to reduce fraud and (let's call it) low-quality behavior.
| Ironically this method reduces the overall authenticity
| of the platforms and counteracts the intent of the
| censorship, and thus you get game-rule collapse.
| querez wrote:
| > Bloomberg was somewhat showy during the primary about
| paying people to tweet for him
|
| I'm genuinely curious, do you have any more details or
| sources on this?
| andi999 wrote:
| "threats from lawmakers against outlets if they didn't remove
| certain content." Could you be more specific what that
| certain content was?
| colordrops wrote:
| Suspected Russian bots, Alex Jones, Covid misinfo, then
| there's this sort of thing:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-
| ti...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-
| cia-m...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2014/09/04/former-l-times-
| reporter-...
|
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1097834759181553664?s
| =...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/apu3oz/with_th
| e...
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24305296)
| brightball wrote:
| The is what I believe is the goal of placing restrictions on
| people based on "mental health". It's so open ended and not
| easily verifiable that it becomes a sliding scale.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| If I'm understanding you right, the idea is that some harms,
| physical ones, are fair game for the law to cover, but other
| harms (mental ones) or a collection of boundary cases are
| less (if at all) within the purview of legislation.
|
| I think there's a good conversation to be had as to what in
| particular makes physical harms so special as compared to
| others, and how existing law in every country (including the
| US) can constitutionally include some non-physical harms
| within its legislation (such as laws against sending
| threatening letters, or child pornography law, or fraud).
| brightball wrote:
| Specifically, I'm concerned about government placing
| restrictions on individuals based on their mental health
| history.
|
| What is the process to dispute it? You can't just take a
| blood test to say this isn't really a problem.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| Oh right, I don't think I understood what you were
| saying, then. That's also a good question.
| fjdjsmsm wrote:
| Some problems don't have easy simple solutions. Any
| answer will have some outside cases.
|
| If a schizophrenic parent has in the past harmed someone,
| should a court ignore this when determining custody. It
| is unfair. If you err on being too lenient some people
| will be harmed. If you err on being stringent some people
| will be harmed.
|
| Complex problem cannot be solved with ideology and
| maxims. All solutions will fail some people sometimes.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| That example seems like a easy problem to solve actually?
|
| > If a [] parent has in the past harmed someone, should a
| court ignore this when determining custody.
|
| There you go, no need to place restrictions on people
| based on mental 'health', just their actual actions.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _what in particular makes physical harms so special_
|
| Such harms can be reliably detected, with stringent enough
| criteria.
|
| Mental harms, and the very notion of "normality", are much
| more nebulous.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >Such harms can be reliably detected, with stringent
| enough criteria.
|
| Mental harms, in many cases, can also be detected by
| competent professionals; besides that, it is entirely
| possible for physical harms to heal and for supporting
| evidence of their infliction be used to convict. Further,
| many physical harms depend at least partially on the
| victim's characteristics or situation; a concert pianist
| is arguably harmed more by someone cutting off his finger
| than a schoolteacher would be, for instance. Many
| physical harms that are rightfully legislated against
| often require the testimony of the victim for the case to
| succeed. For a wide class of 'mental harms' it is
| accurate to say that they are indeed physiological
| responses - from PTSD to lethargy and insomnia. This is
| in contrast to the caricature that mental harms are
| necessarily merely 'hurt feelings'.
|
| I also have concerns that the difficulty or the fact of
| sometimes being nebulous features of mental harms should
| necessarily _rule out_ such lawmaking. At best, the
| minimum for proving such harm should at least be set out
| by the legislators or judiciary, if the _standard_ of
| evidence is the roadblock to legislation.
|
| It's also worth remembering that we're talking about
| harms here, not mere hurts. Harms are much harder to
| fabricate than hurts are.
| samatman wrote:
| Here's where mental harms "detected by competent
| professionals" leads:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiat
| ry_...
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| You can prove physical harm beyond a reasonable doubt.
| Mental harm is frequently concocted as a bullying tactic,
| e.g. the recent NY Times editorial controversy where
| employees said running an editorial they disagreed with
| made them "feel unsafe."
| https://www.npr.org/2020/06/08/871817721/head-of-new-york-
| ti...
| claudiawerner wrote:
| I don't see this as an argument against such legislation;
| consider that many physical crimes are also hard (or even
| impossible) to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,
| considered case-by-case. Rape very often qualifies here,
| as does the mens rea of various other crimes, which may
| rely upon testimony. Both actus reus and mens rea are
| required for a conviction, and while the actus reus may
| be easier to prove (but again, in many cases not beyond a
| reasonable doubt), we do not abolish the role of
| intention in the justice system simply because it's hard
| to prove.
|
| Accusations of physical harms can also be concocted as
| bullying tactics too, in which the harm was suffered as a
| result of either a self-inflicted injury, or inflicted by
| somebody else. Such cases can be thrown out due to
| insufficient evidence. I see no reason why the same
| cannot be said for a subset of mental harms, in which
| there are equivalent doctors available to use their
| expertise to judge the harm.
| mountainboot wrote:
| The article you link did not mention the employees saying
| running the editorial made them "feel unsafe". Neither
| the word safe nor unsafe appears in the article. It says
| the article "reportedly elicited strong objections" from
| the staff.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Would lacking spirituality or belief in a higher existence
| make you mentally healthy or unhealthy?
|
| I agree, the sliding scale only strengthens whomever is in
| power. In Florida, the baker act is used like this.
| sixothree wrote:
| The persecution faced by doubters and non-believers is
| always surprising to me. I guess nothing should surprise me
| in the deep south though.
| valvar wrote:
| I really don't get that logic. Of course, everyone agrees that
| hate speech is bad (and so are a lot of things, but I digress).
| But how is it not censorship when one of the world's most
| powerful companies does it? Do they get a free pass because
| they are governed by shareholders and make a lot of money? I
| can see how it's not censorship if Bob does not want people to
| post things he disagrees with on his cat picture forum with 200
| users. When a few massive companies effectively control the
| possibility of reaching 95ish% of the audience on the Internet,
| it's censorship in the very worst sense of the word, and I
| don't see how it's possible to support it without being an
| unequivocal opponent of free speech.
| thu2111 wrote:
| _everyone agrees that hate speech is bad_
|
| The first amendment would like to differ!
|
| Anyway it's meaningless to believe hate speech is bad,
| because hate speech is an undefined term. It just means
| something someone somewhere would like to punish someone else
| for saying.
| reificator wrote:
| > _Of course, everyone agrees that hate speech is bad_
|
| As an extreme example: Do you really think the KKK believe
| hate speech is bad? Even if they do agree, do you think their
| definition looks anything like your own?
|
| I find it hard to believe that someone who has lived through
| the last four years can say with a straight face that
| everyone agrees hate speech is bad. One would think the last
| US election cycle would have gone differently if that premise
| were true.
| orclev wrote:
| It's a question of what is meant by the term censorship. In
| the strictest sense, moderation and censorship are very often
| the same thing. If for instance, I post something terrible in
| a comment on here, and the administration of HN deletes that
| comment, then that's censorship.
|
| However, when most people talk about censorship they're using
| it not in the strict sense, but rather as a shorthand for
| someone violating their first amendment right. In this case
| this is really only a crime when it's a government entity
| doing it, although people don't typically differentiate
| between the government and any large organization, which
| technically are legally allowed to censor you on their
| platform or property.
|
| There's a larger discussion that needs to happen with regards
| to censorship. There are two extremes at play here, on the
| one hand there's the absolute freedom stance of literally
| nothing censored (only example I can think of for this is
| maybe the dark web, but really everyone censors if only a
| little), even shouting fire in a crowded theater or posting
| child pornography. On the other extreme is the absolute
| censorship of someplace like China, where only permitted
| thoughts and expressions can be posted. The US and most of
| the rest of the world tends to fall somewhere in the middle.
|
| The big struggle right now is that everyone has recognized
| that there's clearly some kind of problem. We're seeing
| unprecedented levels of misinformation, and a frankly
| weaponization of social media both for profit, and for
| international politics. I don't know that anyone has a good
| solution for how to address that problem, but the pendulum
| seems to be swinging towards a more censorship focused
| response.
| [deleted]
| knolax wrote:
| > other extreme is the absolute censorship of someplace
| like China, where only permitted thoughts and expressions
| can be posted. The US and most of the rest of the world
| tends to fall somewhere in the middle.
|
| It's like other countries only exist as rhetorical devices
| for most of HN. If you actually used the fediverse you'll
| see that there are plenty of Chinese users on it
| criticizing the state. It's the Western fediverse users
| being censored for wrongthink this time. Even the creator
| of Mastodon straight up doesn't believe in free speech wrt.
| to certain far right beliefs.
| djsumdog wrote:
| > everyone agrees that hate speech is bad
|
| but does everyone agree on what hate speech is? That's the
| danger. You can just claim any opinion you don't like is hate
| speech. You can say endorsing a particular candidate is hate
| speech and those people can justifiably be censored; their
| views invalid (and in some places; justifiably killed).
|
| It was once considered offensive, in many places a crime, to
| say homosexuality is morally okay or that the Bible should be
| translated into German and English or to say God doesn't
| exist.
|
| There is no distinction between "Free speech" and "hate
| speech," because it requires you to qualify the former. There
| are exceptions in many countries, but they are for very
| specific things: child abuse and advocating specific violence
| against individuals.
| baddox wrote:
| Does everyone agree on what murder is? Of course not. Does
| that mean murder should be legal?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Yes of course. That is, there are some things that some
| people call murder that should be legal.
|
| Such as steak.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Does that mean murder should be legal?
|
| The forms which have little agreement? Probably.
|
| For example, some say that meat is murder. I don't think
| we should be outlawing meat, and thus in the eyes of the
| ones making such a statement, I'm supporting some forms
| of murder remaining legal.
| baddox wrote:
| But you aren't concluding, because people disagree on
| precisely what qualifies as "murder," that there should
| be no laws against murder. That is the argument proposed
| in the earlier comment about why there should not be laws
| against hate speech.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| No, there's a set of statutes that lay out what murder
| looks like, and ultimately it is up to a jury of your
| peers to determine if what you did satisfies the
| criterion. That's in fact _exactly why_ the jury system
| was invented, because reasonable people can disagree, so
| the assumption becomes that "if a reasonable plurality
| of people DO agree, there's a good chance it is a good
| enough standard by which to act."
|
| The subject of murder is not an appropriate analogy here,
| really.
| baddox wrote:
| Why is that not perfectly analogous? The law can describe
| what is and isn't hate speech, and courts and juries can
| decide individual cases when necessary. This is the same
| for all criminal laws. The fact that not all people will
| agree what is and isn't a violation of a given law at a
| given time is simply not a valid argument for why a given
| law shouldn't exist.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Well a bunch of people are running around now saying
| speech is violence...so in the not too distant future we
| might be saying someone was murdered by words.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is interesting that you say that. In English, we do
| use phrases like "X was destroyed by Z" ( I forget the
| exact idiom, but kids seem to be using it -- god I feel
| old ), where no actual destruction beyond verbal attack
| took place.
|
| I know you were referring to something else, but it got
| me thinking that we are already using the phrase. Our
| legal system just does not allow a lot of 'word damage'
| to be adjudicated.
| mc32 wrote:
| There was also "sticks and stones may break my bones but
| words can't hurt me" that now seems in practice to have
| gone by the wayside.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| I'm not gonna lie when I was a child decades ago it was
| well known even amongst childrens books at the time that
| that line's a load of horse shit. There's tons of books
| where that exact phrase is used to show that ignoring
| verbal abuse is wrong and emotionally damaging.
| [deleted]
| baddox wrote:
| There have always been limitations on freedom of speech,
| including speech that incites violence. So your example,
| while deliberately hyperbolic (I don't think anyone would
| say that words literally murder people), has always been
| a normal thing.
| djsumdog wrote:
| > while deliberately hyperbolic
|
| It's not hyperbolic at all, or have you not seen the
| "Silence is Violence" rhetoric everywhere? It could
| literally come from Orwell's world of "War is Peace,
| Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength"
|
| The book, The Coddling of the American Mind, does a great
| job of showing how the goalposts for what is and isn't
| violent have been moved considerably in the past few
| years in academic circles.
|
| Finally, violence is okay, so long as it's against the
| "wrong people," like the professor who was put on
| probation for assaulting an opposing party member with a
| bicycle lock, or the guy in Charlottesville who was fined
| $1 for assault:
|
| https://battlepenguin.com/politics/war-is-hell/#the-
| normaliz...
|
| > I don't think anyone would say that words literally
| murder people
|
| There are people who are literally saying that now.
| baddox wrote:
| > It's not hyperbolic at all, or have you not seen the
| "Silence is Violence" rhetoric everywhere? It could
| literally come from Orwell's world of "War is Peace,
| Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength"
|
| I'm aware of the "silence is violence" slogan. It means
| that inaction in the face of injustice is tacit support
| for the status quo. It doesn't literally mean, for
| example, that all people are being violent while they are
| sleeping, or that people who are unable to speak are
| being violent. I'm sure there are some people who use the
| slogan in preposterous ways, but that's true of all
| slogans. You're looking into this way more than
| necessary. There's a pretty clear reasonable
| interpretation of the slogan if you're willing to look
| for that interpretation in good faith.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| That interpretation is entirely too generous. That
| expression "Silence is Violence" is explicitly intended
| to compel speech and its clear meaning is that if you
| don't, you are contributing to the violence against
| minorities.
|
| https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/129834428507983
| 872...
|
| This is not an extreme example. The expression has
| _always_ been used (at least in the current climate) to
| mean, you agree with us, verbally and visibly and loudly,
| or we attack you.
|
| Edit: If you think the above example is not an example of
| what "silence is violence" means, by all means, explain
| why rather than just flyby downvoting.
| baddox wrote:
| That example is a crowd intimidating people with the
| intent to compel speech, of course, and they're using the
| slogan "silence is violence." But those are two different
| things. You could pick any slogan you want and have a mob
| recite it while intimidating people into agreeing. That's
| not an indictment of the slogan.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| That would start the discussion of "when does an example
| become the standard" which I don't really want to go
| into. Suffice it to say I do not watch the news, I very
| rarely visit Twitter and do not follow anyone, and that
| is the _only_ way I have ever seen that expression used -
| in the news, on Medium, on FB, on anywhere, when I 've
| come across it. "Agree with us or you are violent."
|
| I don't think there's a generous way to interpret that
| expression. Silence is de facto not violence. Violence
| requires physical action.
| baddox wrote:
| > Suffice it to say I do not watch the news, I very
| rarely visit Twitter and do not follow anyone, and that
| is the only way I have ever seen that expression used -
| in the news, on Medium, on FB, on anywhere, when I've
| come across it. "Agree with us or you are violent."
|
| Have you Googled the term? Apart from the first page or
| so being dominated by that very recent event of the crowd
| intimidating people and many other people conflating that
| event with that slogan, you'll find plenty of articles
| about what it means: that choosing to not speak out about
| an issue helps support the status quo. In fact, I've
| generally seen it used to try to persuade people who _don
| 't want to support the status quo_ that staying quiet or
| trying to "not be political" is in fact supporting the
| status quo.
| djsumdog wrote:
| That slogan specifically promotes this:
|
| https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/129834428507983
| 872...
|
| and this
|
| https://twitter.com/rawsmedia/status/1298055028213678082
|
| It's not just a slogan. That is the actual end result of
| such an ideology.
|
| Silence is not Violence. Silence is the opposite of
| violence. Silences is stopping, thinking, looking at all
| the evidence, carefully evaluating and coming up with a
| sound decision.
|
| This slogan says: "Be outraged immediately without
| knowing any real facts about the situation"
|
| It's literally DoubleSpeak. You are literally, right now,
| using DoubleThink.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > This slogan says: "Be outraged immediately without
| knowing any real facts about the situation"
|
| That doesn't follow.
|
| But even if it did, it takes a special type of willful
| ignorance to be unaware of police violence at this point.
| And yes, willful ignorance is intentional support of the
| status quo.
| mountainboot wrote:
| Silence is not the opposite of violence. Peace is the
| opposite of violence.
|
| I interpret the quote "silence is violence" to mean by
| not speaking out against violence, you implicitly support
| or contribute to it. People may disagree if this is true,
| but it certainly doesn't feel Orwellian.
| baddox wrote:
| Do you consider is censorship if a huge Internet/media
| company removes illegal content like child pornography,
| explicit calls to "imminent lawless action," phishing/fraud
| attempts, explicit misinformation (like false claims that an
| election date has been moved), or content that goes against
| their own community guidelines (pornography, violence, etc.)?
| Do you consider those things censorship or opposition to free
| speech?
| josephcsible wrote:
| You're mixing up two different things: sites removing
| illegal content because they're mandated to do so, and
| sites removing legal content because they choose to do so.
| baddox wrote:
| Not all of the examples I gave were illegal content.
| josephcsible wrote:
| So like I said, you're mixing them up.
| baddox wrote:
| No, I'm not mixing them up. I'm asking questions about
| them to try to understand people's viewpoints.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| Google regardless of it's size is still private, and should
| be allowed to host who it wants or doesn't, same as you
| should be forced to host visitors you dont want.
|
| Free speech is that they shouldn't be a law by a government
| to punish expression of ideas or opinions.
|
| citizens or companies should be allowed to host and not host
| whoever they want.
| MiroF wrote:
| > citizens or companies should be allowed to host and not
| host whoever they want.
|
| So should ISPs be allowed to not deliver a website (say
| Netflix's) content to you unless you pay extra?
| yellowbanana wrote:
| In my opinion yes,
|
| I wouldn't like it but it's their network, i would hope
| that that wouldn't be a good business decision and their
| competitors would not do that.
| chromatin wrote:
| > Of course, everyone agrees that hate speech is bad
|
| That sounds like an unjustified premise.
|
| _Note to the casual downvoter not critically examining my
| argument: I am not saying that I personally do not think hate
| speech is bad._
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It might be Apple forcing them to do so. For example you can't
| publish app with porn content. Even if your app is some kind of
| forum, you're obliged at least to filter out explicit content
| in the app.
|
| Browser seems to be an exception.
| emteycz wrote:
| Apple is forcing Google to remove apps from play store? How?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Let's see their owners first.
| afwaller wrote:
| I know nobody reads the articles but what about reading the
| title?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Does reddit filter out porn in the reddit iOS app? And what
| would Apple have to do with Google's Play Store?
| cecja wrote:
| Yes with the standard settings in place you have to
| navigate directly to nsfw subreddits and even then there is
| a age restriction in place. There are no auto fill
| suggestions nor search results and there is no nsfw content
| on the /r/all page inside the app.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Everyone is constantly complaining about private censorship
| being a slippery slope...
|
| And yet today, despite decades of "censorship" by Facebook and
| Google, you can see whatever porn you want, snuff films,
| terrorist propaganda, hate speech, libel/slander spread by
| instigators like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. Just not on Google
| or Facebook.
|
| Different private entities and people have different levels of
| tolerance. If you want filth, use Gab or 4chan/8chan. If you
| want forums that are partially moderated, use
| Facebook/Google/Reddit. If you want forums that are fully
| moderated, join a private or niche board like HN.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Kindly take this as a devils advocate post before you
| reflexively downvote.
|
| It looks like letting people say anything they want on major
| social media platforms is only having one major positive
| effect: a few advertising companies are becoming very rich.
|
| The negative effects include:
|
| - incited violence (gang-oriented gun crime in Chicago is often
| fanned by social media posts for example)
|
| - bad medical decisions (vaccine/COVID misinformation)
|
| - cancel culture/political manipulation (people taking other
| people's posts as facts when they are not)
|
| I would like to uphold the principle of free speech and forcing
| social media providers to be free speech agents even though
| they are private companies, but it's starting to get hard to
| defend. I am losing faith that strict adherence to free speech
| is going to result in a smarter, happier humanity. It might be
| better if less people speak their mind.
| silveraxe93 wrote:
| I think it's obvious that if less people speak their mind, we
| could have a smarter, happier humanity.
|
| But I also think it's obvious that I shouldn't trust you to
| make the decision of who needs to shut up. And _definitely_
| not the government.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > But I also think it's obvious that I shouldn't trust you
| to make the decision of who needs to shut up. And
| definitely not the government.
|
| Well right now social media companies seem to have that
| power. How is that better?
|
| I hear this point all the time. Is there a better response
| than this?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Well right now social media companies seem to have that
| power. How is that better?
|
| It's not; we're attempting to fix that, and TFA is about
| Google maliciously attacking one such attempt.
| john-shaffer wrote:
| Which powerful, privileged people should get to decide what
| we are allowed to hear about? When the power is inevitably
| abused, how can we address that abuse when we may not be
| allowed to know about it?
|
| Is it even necessary for free speech to directly result in a
| happier humanity? What if it simply preserves the conditions
| that we need for progress, or merely keeps us from sliding
| backwards? Would that be enough to make it worthwhile for
| you?
| kanox wrote:
| > I would like to uphold the principle of free speech
|
| No, you completely against that principle.
| k8skil0 wrote:
| It's removing resilience for perception of efficiency.
|
| There's value in normalizing around shared needs, food and
| infra.
|
| But beyond that the normalizing always happens in a direction
| of the haves.
|
| It's a biological truism of our society we'll avoid
| confrontation with each other. Which enables exactly the issue
| we have socially: everyone is too scared to say no, enabling
| that does not align with an ideology of freedom for the public.
|
| Freedom from having our consciousness filled with the narrative
| all the choices society has made to this point were reasonable
| regardless of the alternatives offered at the time (they're
| usually many, and arguably many would have been better benefit
| to humanity, like the Navy getting Congress to pivot away from
| a decade of thorium reactor funding and research to Uranium
| reactors so the Navy has weapons grade materials available.
| True story, learned about researching energy policy and infra).
|
| Anyway, the point is, normalizing around the basics, food,
| shelter, medicine. That makes sense.
|
| Normalizing around social frameworks outside that above just
| leads to gate keeping.
|
| Gotta get through HR, interviews, don't even bother with FAANG
| you aren't that smart.
|
| They've smoothed off interviewing for a what feels like
| efficiency. Are they even hiring smart people or good role
| players? You can't get scientific with HR that's law so the bar
| has to drop at some point. Lots of capital to leverage on lots
| of output isn't evidence of especially clever engineers.
|
| How easily we discard variables to get to a task we can
| accomplish in a day. I have a hard time believing these giant
| tent pole ideas humans try to build are ever anything more than
| a whole lot of emotional indirection to glorious past (which by
| any real measure was usually awful for the masses) and a whole
| lot of "same old shit different generation."
| eblanshey wrote:
| I recently watched an excellent speech concerning freedom of
| speech and freedom of protest by Rowan Atkinson, and feel it's
| very appropriate to share here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiqDZlAZygU
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >It always starts like that.
|
| many places have cultures and also law that for decades has
| worked perfectly fine reigning in the very worst forms of hate
| speeech (say holocaust denial in my country) while not
| descending into a sort of activism that starts to get silly.
|
| There's no automatic mechanism that turns sensible rules into
| insensible ones, and it's also need not be the case with
| sensible hate speech rules.
|
| With cases like Google's play store the issue seems more
| concrete. On the one hand it's the overwhelming power and lack
| of due process that large firms have over software.
| Decentralise this and put authority into the hands of people
| who know their networks and the situtation will imporove.
| Secondly it also seems to be a very activist employee base at
| companies like Google that's gone somewhat overboard. Again, an
| accountability issue. If these things were decided publicly, it
| would moderate to reasonable levels.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Historic revisionism as an subgroup of hate speech is a prime
| example of slippery slope and moving of definition. I would
| add "fake news" to hate speech.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| sorry I have no idea what you're trying to say. Holocaust
| denial is generally considered to be both historical
| revisionism and hate speech, the former being a tool for
| the latter. Is this just semantics?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Out of context is the favorite goto for most news orgs
| that want to push a particular set of ideals.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye it is semantics alright. Not taking the debate to the
| Holocaust, hate speech is not just incitement to hatred
| (quite broad) or incitement to crime (quite specific),
| against a group anymore. It is like "fake news", in that
| sense, when Trump comically turned the term against its
| creators.
|
| I feel that when it comes to Google its not about if it
| is hate speech or not, but who controls it. I.e.
| Zuckerberg is fine although there are multiple long-
| lasting Facebook groups that have been used to incite
| crimes, but Aaron Swartz would not be (today). It is
| quite amusing how Facebook is not shut down in Europe
| even though many European countries would shut down any
| local company being so lax and arbitrary with moderation
| as Facebook.
| bluthru wrote:
| >I would add "fake news" to hate speech.
|
| What are you doing? Are you trying to ban speech you don't
| like? What body determines what is "fake news" and "hate
| speech"? It can't be done, which is why the only sane
| policy is free speech.
|
| We have laws against violence, and it's a very clear line.
| VLM wrote:
| "Fake News" is merely the 7% of journalists who identify as
| Republicans.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_Stat
| e...
|
| The problem is the political spectrum of journalists is
| wildly biased compared to the average citizen. This also
| apparently shows up with censorship of phone apps.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| And even that is destructive. The slippery slope of "speech I
| don't like" has a tendency to ever expand; not completely
| unlike, say, government. It is a very human tendency. This is
| the main reason, even small encroachment should be pointed
| out.
|
| I think we are in agreement on Google's case in particular
| being a little more straight forward.
| tristor wrote:
| Your suggestion sounds nice in principle, but how would you
| propose to create mandated democratic control of a corporate
| entity?
|
| The only mechanism which exists I can think of would be to
| nationalize the corporate entity and have the folks
| controlling it be elected positions. That seems pretty
| extreme though as a response to a corporate entity becoming
| successful and growing enough that it influences the
| zeitgeist.
| valvar wrote:
| That does not sound extreme at all to me. It would not need
| to be controlled by people in elected positions - it could
| just be mandated that employees have to follow a specific
| charter and be as neutral as possible. A bit like many
| national news services, like the BBC. Considering how much
| influence Alphabet's products (especially Search) have
| gained over everyone's lives, I think something like that
| is much overdue and the only reasonable solution. That, or
| extreme regulation. At the very least, the search algorithm
| should be made fully public.
| api wrote:
| Censorship always starts with unpopular speech. Historically
| it's been raunchy porn, religious blasphemy, and direct
| opposition to the state. Hate speech seems to be a new one that
| works well to sell censorship to liberals (who should know
| better).
| epistasis wrote:
| This is only "censorship" in the sense that Fox News censors
| me by not giving me a 5 minute slot to advocate for Medicare
| For All.
|
| In reality, it's not state sponsored censorship at all, and
| it doesn't lead down any slippery slope.
|
| These claims of censorship are extremely selectively applied,
| to only certain types of political speech. I wonder why that
| is?
| john-shaffer wrote:
| I don't watch Fox News, but even I know that Fox invites
| Democrats on to talk about their opinions. Here is an
| interview where a BLM leader rants for 5 minutes:
| https://youtu.be/FTjBJiXalHU?t=59
| epistasis wrote:
| And yet I have had my pleas for time go unanswered...
| which is "censorship" of me.
| sildur wrote:
| "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
| kleer001 wrote:
| I love that aphorism. Unintended consequences. We should
| teach unintended consequences in grade school, high school,
| and have advanced degrees in it. How to see them before they
| explode, how to mediate them, and how to fix them once
| they're running at full steam.
|
| Lately I've been imagining it along with the slowly boiling
| frog story and the crab-mentality too. As in some people
| can't tell we're headed to hell because it's coming so
| slowly, and some people will actively stop others from
| escaping hell or trying to fix the situation.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a hypothesis I came up with awhile ago and it seems
| to hold pretty true. If we talk about problems as O(n)
| where n is the causation distance[0] we've solved the vast
| majority of O(1) and O(0) problems. It makes sense that
| biologically we would be primed to think in this way
| because they are decent approximate solutions for small
| groups. But the world we live in now is much more complex
| and many events are coupled and the low order
| approximations aren't good solutions. The problem I see is
| that people are treating O(5) problems like they are O(1).
| As a society we discuss things in this way instead of
| trying to understand the complexity, nuance, and coupling
| that exists in many of our modern problems. A good example
| of this is global warming. People treat it as "if we switch
| to renewables then we've solved global warming" when
| reality is substantially more complicated. But I don't know
| how to get people to realize problems are higher order
| problems and that the first order approximation isn't a
| reasonable solution.
|
| [0] So O(0) means x causes itself. O(1) is y causes x. O(n)
| is n causes y causes ... causes x. This is just a
| simplified framework and not meant to be taken too
| seriously.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I agree, I've been thinking along these lines for a while
| too; thank you for phrasing it so clearly.
|
| My current thinking led me to conclude that we don't have
| sufficiently good tools[0] for modelling O(n) problems
| with n > 2. Particularly when (what your simplification
| doesn't capture) there are feedback loops involved.
|
| Take this O(2) problem: x causes more y, y causes more z,
| z causes less y but much more x. Or in a pictorial form:
| (++) X<-------\ | (-) |
| | ------Z \ / ^ (+) v | (+)
| Y-------/
|
| You can't just think your way through that problem, you
| have to model it - estimate coefficients (even if
| qualitatively), account for assumptions, and simulate the
| dynamic behavior.
|
| I argue that we lack both mental and technological tools
| to cope with this.
|
| Speaking of global warming, a year ago I presented this
| problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20480438 -
| "Will increase in coal exports of Poland increase
| Poland's CO2 footprint?" Yes? No? How badly?
|
| The question is at least this complicated:
| Coal exports ^ | [provides Z
| coal to] | | [needs a*X =
| A kWh for coal] Mining coal
| <---------------------\ |
| | | [provides X coal to] |
| v | Coal power plants
| | | | | |
| | [g*X = Y kWh burning coal] | | v
| | | Electricity --------------------/ |
| | [burned coal into b*X = N kg of CO2] v
| CO2 emissions
|
| (Presented this way it not only tells you that, _ceteris
| paribus_ , it will, but roughly by how much and what are
| the parameters that can be tweaked to mitigate it.)
|
| Why aren't we talking about climate change in these terms
| with general public? Why aren't feedback loops taught in
| school?
|
| --
|
| [0] - Or, if they exist, they aren't sufficiently well
| known outside some think tanks or some random academic
| papers.
| godelski wrote:
| Your ascii art is much better than mine and I'm not going
| to attempt it, but I agree with everything that you've
| said except for
|
| > I argue that we lack both mental and technological
| tools to cope with this.
|
| I do think we have the tools to solve these issues. I do
| not think the mental tools are in the hands of the
| average person (likely not even in most of your above
| average people because the barrier to entry is
| exceedingly high and trying to model any problem like
| this is mentally exhausting and it thus never becomes
| second nature). Many of the subjects broached here aren't
| brought up until graduate studies in STEM fields, and
| even then not always. An O(aleph_n) problem is
| intractable but clearly O(10) isn't. We should be arguing
| about what order approximation is "good enough" but
| ignoring all the problems that arises is missing a lot of
| fundamental problem solving. Good for a first go, but you
| don't stop there. I think this comes down to people not
| understanding the iterative process. 0) Create an idea.
| 1) Check for validity. 2) Attack and tear it down. 3) If
| something remains, rebuild and goto 2 else goto 0. I find
| people stop at 1 on their own ideas but jump to 2 (and
| don't allow for 3) for others ideas.
|
| > Why aren't feedback loops taught in school?
|
| I think 3 other things should be discussed as well.
| Dynamic problems (people often reduce things to static
| and try to turn positive sum games into zero sum. We
| could say the TeMPOraL component), probabilistic
| problems, and most importantly: an optimal solution does
| not equate to everyone being happy (or really anyone). Or
| to quote Picard:
|
| > It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
| That is not a weakness. That is life.
|
| The last part I think is extremely important but hard to
| teach.
|
| (I should also mention that I do enjoy most of the
| comments you provide to HN)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Your ascii art is much better_
|
| A skill honed in deep procrastination :).
|
| > _I think 3 other things should be discussed as well._
|
| Strongly agreed with all three.
|
| > _Dynamic problems (people often reduce things to static
| and try to turn positive sum games into zero sum._
|
| That's what I implicitly meant by talking (again and
| again) about feedback loops; problems with such loops are
| a subset of dynamic problems, and one very frequently
| seen in the world. But you've rightfully pointed out the
| superset. I think most people, like you say, try to turn
| everything into a static problem as soon as possible, so
| they can have a conclusive and time-invariant opinion on
| it. But it's not the proper way to think about the
| world[0]!
|
| (I only disagree with the "try to turn positive sum games
| into zero sum"; zero-sum games also require perceiving
| the feedback loops involved. And then there are negative-
| sum games.)
|
| > _probabilistic problems_
|
| Yup. Basic probability is taught to schoolchildren, but
| as a toy (or just another math oddity) rather than a tool
| for perceiving the world.
|
| (Thank you for the kind words :).)
|
| --
|
| [0] - Unless your problem has a fixed point that you can
| point out.
| godelski wrote:
| > (I only disagree with the "try to turn positive sum
| games into zero sum"; zero-sum games also require
| perceiving the feedback loops involved. And then there
| are negative-sum games.)
|
| This is an often snipe I make to people talking about
| economics (I do agree with the lack of mention of
| negative sum games, but they also tend to be less common,
| at least in what people are about). Like the whole point
| of the economic game is to create new value where it
| didn't previously exist (tangent).
|
| > Yup. Basic probability is taught to schoolchildren, but
| as a toy (or just another math oddity) rather than a tool
| for perceiving the world.
|
| I think this is where we get a lot of "I'm not good at
| math" and "what is it useful for" discussion. Ironically
| everyone hates word problems, but at the heart of it
| that's what it is about.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Great point. Those problems are really hard to reason
| about, partly because without specific knowledge of the
| coefficients, all you can expect a _well-reasoned_ person
| to conclude is that "it can go either way". And even
| knowing the data, most practical problems in this
| category would take either computer modeling or
| simplifying assumptions to really draw conclusions about.
|
| Worse, someone motivated to shape the story one way or
| the other can create a just-so story where they emphasize
| only one feedback path or the other, depending on what
| conclusion they want their audience to draw.
|
| I think the best antidote, although by no means a cure,
| is to teach clear and specific examples early on so that
| everyone at least can have a mental category for this
| class of problem, if not the tools to work through them.
|
| Jevons paradox is a great example of one which is both
| clear and counterintuitive:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's a danger of bad reasoning being involved, but I
| argue that "well-reasoned people" and just-so stories are
| problems either way. But I think that attaching a
| specific model to a problem grounds the conversation in
| reality.
|
| Taking the carbon exports example I pasted, the model
| presented _structurally_ tells you that carbon footprint
| is going to grow with exports. We can haggle about "how
| much", but - under this model - not about "whether". You
| can tweak the parameters to mitigate impact, you can
| extend the model with extra components and tweak those to
| cancel out the impact (and that automatically generates
| you reasonable solution candidates!). Or, you can flat
| out say that the model doesn't simplify the reality
| correctly, and propose an alternative one, and we can
| then discuss the new model.
|
| The good thing is, at every point in the above
| considerations you're dealing with models and reality and
| somewhat strict reasoning, instead of endlessly bickering
| about whether A causes B or the other way around, or
| whether arguing A causes B is a slippery slope, or
| whatnot.
|
| I strongly agree with teaching examples, both real
| (serious) ones and toy ones, to teach this kind of
| thinking.
|
| Jevons paradox is indeed great to dig into and I suppose
| offer some sort of counterexample to what I'm talking
| about. The nature of the phenomenon is in a feedback
| loop, and whether it'll go good or bad depends on the
| parameters (the increased use can reduce the value of the
| intervention, cancel it out, or even make it worse than
| doing nothing). But from what I hear, people sometimes
| pick one of the possible outcomes and use it as thought
| stopper (e.g. "we shouldn't do X because obviously Jevons
| paradox will make things worse!").
| notyourday wrote:
| > People agree to very sensible things. Like hate speech is bad
| and it's not censorship if it's not mandated by the government.
|
| I'm paraphrasing what was here a few days ago:
|
| Our banking partner is uncomfortable that the realistic sex
| toys modeled after magical creatures have the colors that
| strongly represent human organs. You will either have to change
| the colors or we will not be able to continue providing you
| with our services.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| To be fair, they didn't claim that people don't _also_ agree
| to very stupid and malicious things, and in fact rather
| implied that that 's the likely result of supposedly sensible
| starting points.
| trentnix wrote:
| And that's why I'm incredibly cynical about politicians and
| activists who use amorphous political terms like "hate speech".
| It eventually becomes a club wielded by whoever is making the
| rules of today's Calvinball game.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Any issue about which there's a cultural movement going on can
| serve as a handy pretext for measures that consolidate one's
| own power. It kind of seems obvious to point out, but
| nonetheless let's continue to be open to the possibility that
| such consolidation is not mere coincidence, or more to the
| point, that the measure is not even well-intentioned and in
| fact _has nothing do to with_ the ostensible issue /reason (in
| this case, hate speech). The most cynical of power grabs are
| usually cloaked in the most noble of pretenses. That's how you
| make the unpalatable, palatable.
| holidayacct wrote:
| This doesn't seem like a complete story or any kind of rationale
| for taking down apps, if you have a problem with hate speech you
| should probably get off the internet.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > if you have a problem with hate speech you should probably
| get off the internet.
|
| The internet, yes, as one cohesive whole. There aren't safe
| places, adult content can't be hidden from kids so let's not
| let kids use google until they're _at least_ 18, maybe 21, and
| hate speech is something we see continuously everywhere...
|
| I think you're overreacting.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Some Fediverse apps have ban lists within them for certain
| instances. This has been hugely controversial in Fediverse
| community, to the point where some apps that fork apps with ban
| lists and republish them without those ban lists, sometimes get
| removed from F-Droid!
|
| You can't just keep banning Fediverse instances. It's like
| banning websites. So what is this going to mean?
|
| Approved instances. Here's a list of 200 instances ... get on our
| approved list to be a part of the app. That list might grow to
| 3000, but if you're not on it, your instance is not accessible.
|
| That is where we're heading.
| est31 wrote:
| > to the point where some apps that fork apps with ban lists
| and republish them without those ban lists, sometimes get
| removed from F-Droid!
|
| Do you have links? The only example I could think of was
| Freetusky, which was unmaintained while upstream Tusky itself
| got regular updates. That's what I'd guess as reason for its
| quite recent archival:
| https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/commit/f9b7a9540f368f...
|
| Latest version is 8.0.7 while upstream Tusky's latest version
| is 12.1.
|
| Back when it was new, the F-Droid devs actually defended
| Freetusky and didn't follow demands for its removal.
| https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/1736
|
| I don't think that F-Droid should pander to people who don't
| care about FOSS or maintaining software, no matter their views.
|
| Disclaimer: F-Droid maintainer/contributor (but gotten inactive
| for unrelated reasons).
|
| Edit to add: note that another Tusky fork had been uploaded to
| F-Droid (Husky) before Freetusky got removed.
| mangatmodi wrote:
| I would say Google should ban Google search, because it allows
| links to the hate speech blogs.
|
| Sarcasm aside, I think its one of the big tech moves to control
| free web.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Shouldn't this policy apply to all communication apps? Web, IRC,
| SMS, and even phone calls can connect you with a hate speech
| provider if you know the right address to dial.
|
| This sets a dangerous precedent and highlights why we should
| continue removing Google/etc as dependencies in our lives.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Like google mail marking all Trump/Whitehouse emails as spam,
| Comcast banning SMS from Republican fund raising.
|
| All depends on who the companies consider a hate group.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Don't make the mistake of believing that systems run by human
| beings are required to be logically consistent.
| mindslight wrote:
| Don't make the mistake of thinking we shouldn't demand that
| bureaucratic systems follow logical rules just because
| they're run by human beings.
| drummer wrote:
| "Don't make the mistake of thinking" is where we are
| heading.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The is the first I (as well as others here, apparently) had ever
| heard of the "fediverse". Wikipedia [1] helps me out with what it
| is technically... but can anyone _who knows_ describe what its
| content is actually like?
|
| In terms of hate speech or illegal content... does that make up
| the vast majority of fediverse content, in the way that pirated
| media makes up the vast majority of torrents? (Even though
| torrents can also still be used for 100% legitimate and legal
| purposes.)
|
| Or is it like the dark web, which from what I understand is
| _mostly_ legal content, but still hosts a _sizeable_ proportion
| of content for illegal services and content?
|
| Or is it more like what Reddit used to be, where it's 99% all for
| good and fun, but with a tiny minority of super-hateful
| communities? (These days all those super-hateful communities have
| been banned for a while, which is why I mean the "old Reddit".)
|
| Just trying to get a basic context here. Not looking for
| speculation, but the impressions from people who actually use
| it...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
| eitland wrote:
| If anything the instances I have visited have been cleaner than
| twitter and Facebook. On Twitter and in Facebook comments I've
| seen some serious hate speech.
| weknowbetter wrote:
| I use Mastodon to get away from the negativity and hate speech
| on Twitter and Reddit.
|
| In my experience, there has been a very minimal amount of hate
| speech on my timeline.
|
| The nature of the decentralized, federated system does allow
| hate groups to easily gain a platform. However it's just as
| easy, if not easier to prevent their instance from
| communicating with yours.
|
| It's very much NOT like the torrent analogy you made and a lot
| more in line with your Reddit analogy.
|
| I would encourage you to go to https://mastodon.online and
| check it out!
| Miner49er wrote:
| I haven't used Mastodon much, but in my experience, the
| Fediverse is mostly being created by people who are politically
| left (socialists, anti-capitalists in general), so the content
| I've seen leans that way and they mostly take a hard stance on
| hate speech. Check out dev.lemmy.ml (federated reddit) for an
| example of what I mean.
|
| However, anyone can create an instance in the Fediverse, like
| when Gab created their own Mastodon instance. Basically every
| other instance chose not to federate with them, though.
|
| That's what is nice about the Fediverse, you can pick what
| community with what rules is best for you.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I had some experience with Mastodon, which is a fediverse
| alternative to Twitter. So basically, think like this:
|
| Anyone could start their own 'Twitter' server, and doesn't
| matter which server you are in, you can send messages/follow
| anyone in any server, unless the person or server blocks
| you/your server.
|
| In Mastodon, it's mostly about legal content, but with
| different servers focusing on different subjects, or offering
| different levels of privacy and/or free-speech. Some servers
| focus on a safe-space for transgenders, others, a non-censored
| place for alt-right people.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Obligatory callout to Apple zealots who say that having a single
| AppStore and no sideloading capability is a good thing.
| ipnon wrote:
| This was the first time in the history of Mastodon that a toot
| reached the front page of Hacker News.
| https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/104768703650147309
| werber wrote:
| I hope I'm being reactionary, but this feels like the possibility
| of leaving the walled garden is basically null
| jasonv wrote:
| Justification for "all/most" in submission?
|
| Any confirmation of the broad speculation in this thread and the
| the linked thread..?
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| For the record, two submissions were combined, the title is not
| mine.
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| There is probably more than what is being said here otherwise
| clients for reddit or 4chan would have been removed a long time
| ago.
| onion2k wrote:
| The thing that isn't being mentioned is that Google allow apps
| that make "reasonable" attempts to block content that violates
| their anti-hate speech policy. Reddit has shown that they're
| willing to ban the very worst content. No idea about 4chan.
|
| In the case of the Fediverse apps they can't block anything
| because firstly there's no resources to police it, and secondly
| it's kind of the whole point of federation to let the user see
| what they want without getting in the way.
| komali2 wrote:
| Last I checked 4chan bans CP and literally nothing else
| except that weird picture of two miscellaneous mascots riding
| a scooter.
| djsumdog wrote:
| You missed the point. You can't police fedi at all. I
| deploy a new Mastodon or Pleroma server in about 10
| minutes.
| komali2 wrote:
| I guess... 4chan has been around for what, 15 years now?
| More? And that's with the media Becoming Aware of it many
| times. Seems pretty robust to me.
| thrownblown wrote:
| They also banned all images from the Netflix film "Cuties"
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/4chan-bans-images-netflix-film-
| cuti...
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| 4chan already bans anime/cartoon style deciptions of
| underage content, so it's not really surprising that they
| ban this too
| Anon1096 wrote:
| No they don't.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It has been a while since I went to 4chan, but for /b/,
| besides very few exceptions like child porn, the rule was
| "no rules, it also applies to mods".
|
| So they can allow the worst kind of hate speech, porn and
| gore, but ban a harmless meme because mods find it
| annoying. So the only rationale from banning images from
| "Cuties" may be "because mods don't like it".
| djsumdog wrote:
| No, the rational for banning the Cuties content is
| because they see it as normalizing pedophilia and child
| abuse imagery.
| ruined wrote:
| yes. husky in particular is a fork of another app called tusky,
| that internally implemented a login blacklist of explicitly-
| nazi instances and instances with lolicon content, after the
| author decided they didn't want those users running their
| software. husky's explicit sole purpose is to be tusky without
| that blacklist. tusky has not been removed from the play store.
|
| i'm not familiar with the other apps on the list but i expect
| it might be some issue like promoting such instances in their
| registration screen.
|
| also interestingly, the instance OP links to qoto.org is known
| within the fediverse for being full of creepers, because
| they've implemented a partial defederation and block
| circumvention. if you have an account on qoto.org, you can
| follow users who've blocked you, on instances that have blocked
| you, because it will recognize such, pull a list of posts via
| RSS instead of via activitypub, and fake an activitypub actor
| internally to generate posts for your feed. in their defense
| they have said that the posts are public anyway, and the user
| could just browse the public feed with a web browser, but it's
| clearly a bit different when posts from a person who has tried
| to block you appear in your feed normally as an item you can
| interact with. it's certainly against the spirit of consent.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > husky's explicit sole purpose is to be tusky without that
| blacklist
|
| This is not true. It is just the personal fork of tusky by
| a1batross. It also contains improvements to the pleroma
| integration.
| robrtsql wrote:
| I don't think there is.
|
| This happens all the time--recently, a podcast app was removed
| from the Play Store because it could be used to listen to
| content which didn't meet Play Store guidelines. The only way
| to fix it is to post about it and generate enough outrage that
| Google hears about it and can undo the ban.
| quotemstr wrote:
| A better fix is barring by law tech companies that control
| important platforms from using those platforms to censor
| legal speech. It simply should be illegal for Google to down
| an app because it contains legal words that blaspheme against
| Google's California values.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| This is workable, there's already cutouts for "private"
| property that serves an important public function like a
| town square or a mall.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| When you say that's the only way to fix it, you are literally
| correct. There is no real ticket or support mechanism, no
| appeals process, nothing. The fastest way to raise an issue
| with Google is to email a journalist or hitup your twitter
| followers.
| benologist wrote:
| Apps being rejected was a talking point for the anti-trust
| investigations for Apple. I don't think Google is quite so
| famous for its rejections but they were part of that
| investigation for other abuse, hopefully any changes that
| come about will apply to them too.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/26/antitrust-
| investigation...
| pbronez wrote:
| Perhaps the FTC should have an office dedicated to
| overseeing policy enforcement for the largest store
| platforms. There could be a mechanism for saying "hi, I was
| banned by store X under policy Y but I believe my app was
| unfairly targeted because Z circumstance and Q other apps
| should all be treated equally here, including the first
| party app they're trying to protect..."
| fluidcruft wrote:
| 8 years ago "Reddit Is Fun" was removed from the Play Store
| because it included "sexually explicit" material and it was
| related to the inclusion of NSFW and hate subreddits in the
| app's _default_ subreddit list. Google was fine with people
| adding that stuff on their own, they just didn 't want the app
| to be promoting or pushing it. The app was adjusted and updated
| and it was reinstated.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r3dhg/reddit_is_fu...
|
| So the issue isn't so much that content is accessible, it's
| when the content is more integrated with the app.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| Big 4chan apps like Clover got banned off the play store long
| ago. The reason given was nsfw content, but in the app you had
| to manually add nsfw boards, much like Reddit's nsfw
| communities. Picking and choosing which social media platforms
| to ban has already been a thing.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| I used to use chanu years ago, and I vaguely remember it
| installing with no imageboards registered to it. You had to
| go into the settings and tell it which imageboards you wanted
| it to access.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Whether or not you agree with the action taken here, Gab has
| provoked this behavior for years, by calling itself uncensorable
| and asking its users to fork and resubmit fediverse apps with
| minimal changes to explicitly circumvent the Play Store
| Guidelines (even apps that did not implement a block of Gab to
| begin with), so it is hard for me to feel bad for Gab.
|
| That a few app developers have now been put in a position where
| they must implement the block is unfortunate. I always thought it
| was a good indicator of the developer's morals, but not much
| more.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I don't like hate speech. But the only thing that worries me more
| than the fact that there are so many people filled with so much
| hate is not allowing that to be out in the open where society can
| address it.
| [deleted]
| sriku wrote:
| Is it hard for Google to blacklist these questionable domains and
| block them at the Android level instead? .. if the claimed issue
| is really a concern. That way browsers will also benefit from it.
| raydev wrote:
| There's not much to say on this subject anymore.
|
| We desperately need a mobile general purpose computing platform
| that doesn't make side loading so onerous. Apple and Google are
| going to continue pretending they aren't selling general purpose
| computers and they may well convince the regulators.
|
| Consumers need to be able to choose an operating system that
| gives users full control. I don't want to be confined to a
| desktop or a laptop.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Seems likely anyone using Mastodon would know about alternative
| "stores" and manual installs.
| aloisdg wrote:
| It still slow down neophytes to try it.
| doiwin wrote:
| I know about them. But I would have to root my phone to install
| them. And that means trusting some binary blob from someone on
| the internet. So I would not do it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You don't need to root your phone to sideload on Android...
| at least I've never encountered an Android device where that
| was true.
| Hasnep wrote:
| Why would you have to root your phone? On my Android phone I
| just go into the settings app to enable third party
| appstores.
| daniel-s wrote:
| Not true on Android, you just need to download and install
| F-Droid; a free software app store.
| djsumdog wrote:
| True, but it's still a terrible user experience for the
| average person.
| pricechild wrote:
| On iOS maybe, but there's no problem installing 3rd party app
| stores on Android without rooting. See for example F-Droid.
|
| Recent versions of Android have also improved the permissions
| model... you can specify what apps (e.g. F-Droid) are allowed
| to install other apps. You don't need to add a blanket allow
| forever.
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| While true for early adopters, this won't hold true as the
| network grows.
|
| Moreover, if you can access the very same content from Google
| Chrome, should Google remove their own browser too? The same
| happened to Podcast Addict, police all the podcasts in the
| world or we will remove your app.
|
| The concern is Mastodon app developers are small one-man shops,
| less likely to be able to bring reason to bear and get Google
| to review these warnings. These app devs cannot possibly be
| held responsible for every post on the entire Mastodon network.
|
| https://twitter.com/PodcastAddict/status/1261651512947691520...
| gargron wrote:
| Mastodon is aimed at the average person. Knowing how to
| sideload apps should not be a requirement for using it.
| oropolo wrote:
| Using this rationale the Facebook and Twitter apps should be
| removed from the Play Store as well: an abundance of hate speech
| can be found in/with those apps.
| cft wrote:
| This is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites
| in Chrome.
| tzfld wrote:
| That will be the moment when Chrome drifts into it's slow death
| spiral.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > Like hate speech is bad and it's not censorship if it's not
| mandated by the government.
|
| To be fully accurate, this is absolutely _censorship_ , but it's
| not a violation of anyone's First Amendment rights. People often
| conflate the two.
|
| We can argue about whether or not Google should ban certain
| opinions on their platform, or where the line should be drawn,
| but it is arguable that hey have the legal right to do so. And
| the Federal Government, just as inarguably, does _not_ have this
| right.
| birdboy2000 wrote:
| It's quite disputable that google even has the right to a
| platform of anywhere near their current power and influence
| (waiting for antitrust law to be enforced) and the distinction
| in any case seems quite artificial when google buys politicians
| and receives significant public funding and such.
| fightingascript wrote:
| Google does not receive public funding. By your logic, a
| $2-off a $10 item coupon is me receiving $2 from the store.
| Strange how I don't have a new $2 in my wallet - in fact I
| seem to be missing 8.
| croes wrote:
| That's a clever trick. Make the medium you want to censor a
| private property than it's legal.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I doubt the US Government has any hand in this, other than
| not wanting to be the ones running social media.
| huntertwo wrote:
| 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.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > 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...
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| 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.
| skissane wrote:
| 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 both popular and elite opinion,
| that obscenity and pornography did not deserve First
| Amendment protection. It was only in the 20th century
| that societal consensus broke down, and it was in that
| context the US Supreme Court decided to reduce the scope
| of that exception. (It still exists, and is still
| occasionally enforced.) The original authors and
| ratifiers of the First Amendment supported laws against
| obscenity, and didn't believe the First Amendment
| prohibited them.
|
| Ultimately the courts have to decide what laws mean, even
| constitutional laws - but they could always have given
| them more guidance, by being more explicit in the text
| about which exceptions are valid and which are not
| selestify wrote:
| How did that shift in attitudes about obscenity happen?
| _jal wrote:
| 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).
| Bud wrote:
| Potter Stewart knew it when he saw it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Of course, being in a crowded theater violates social
| distancing guidelines, so now you don't need to shout
| anything :-)
| [deleted]
| lukifer wrote:
| And of course, the infamous fire in a crowded theater
| argument was first coined as a rationale for punishing
| pamphleteering against the draft: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I assume the reason for that is that the FCC grants a
| government-protected monopoly on wireless spectrum to a
| single entity. In the granting of a monopoly, they also
| demand extra "protections", in much the same way that
| there are regulations on other monopolies.
| electrograv wrote:
| 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.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| 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.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Actually, this doesn't work. There's a specific court
| doctrine called the State Actors Rule. If a private entity is
| working on behalf of the government, then all of the
| constitutional protections applied to the government also
| apply to that private entity within the scope of them being a
| state actor. For example, this is why it is unconstitutional
| for Donald Trump to block you on Twitter, or for the Air
| Force's esports team to block you from their Twitch streams.
| This also extends to physical venues and company towns.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| It's the side effect of allowing a small number of largely
| unregulated companies to control so much of our
| communications. TV and radio using public right-of-ways like
| radio bands are much more tightly regulated to ensure "equal
| time". That's not the case for social media or mobile
| platforms and I suspect any attempt to regulate those would
| be met with a great deal of resistance. Not the least
| complaint would be that regulation has a history of keeping
| small players out, potentially further cementing the monopoly
| of a few companies. I don't know the answer to any of this,
| but I think it's something that will need to have an answer
| if our democracy is to survive.
| indigochill wrote:
| I am very anti-social-media-regulation. Partly for the
| reasons you mention and partly because I see greater
| regulation balkanizing the internet and driving us
| increasingly farther from the promise of an egalitarian
| open internet.
|
| As for alternatives, I think we just need people to
| collectively decide that some other platform (ideally a
| decentralized one) is better than the incumbent. Facebook
| depends on its inertia. Suppose every Facebook use went
| cold turkey and switched to something else instead (let's
| say Mastodon for the sake of argument). In a year, nobody
| would be talking about Facebook's monopoly.
|
| Where I think things get sticky right now, though, and I'll
| even say -the- reason we haven't seen innovation in social
| media, is that incumbents on the scale of Facebook have the
| capital sufficient to either buy or sue any plausible
| competition into the ground before the competition has a
| chance at taking their market share. Imagine a world where
| Facebook had been blocked from burying Instagram and
| WhatsApp with money!
|
| I think I would be in favor of greater regulation against
| these winner-takes-all tactics on a more economic level,
| although exactly how that regulation would work in a way
| that was both fair and non-trivial to evade I don't know.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It seems like the obvious answer is modernized
| competitive market laws that prevent companies from
| leaving competition-mode and entering castle building-
| mode.
| nescoiquid wrote:
| The equal time doctrine was eliminated in 1987:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
|
| >> The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal
| Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a
| policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to
| both present controversial issues of public importance and
| to do so in a manner that was--in the FCC's view--honest,
| equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in
| 1987 and removed the rule that implemented the policy from
| the Federal Register in August 2011.
| nybble41 wrote:
| And for good reason. It doesn't make sense to mandate
| equal time for mainstream and fringe positions, rational
| proposals and ones riddled with contradictions. Either
| some government censor is responsible for deciding which
| positions are "serious" enough to warrant equal time or
| the media eventually gets overwhelmed with nonsense and
| conspiracy theories. If you want to see where the
| "fairness doctrine" leads, just have a look at some of
| the less discriminating social media sites.
| jounker wrote:
| Evidence suggests that the fairness doctrine worked
| really well until we ended it. Until it's elimination
| mass media news in the US was pretty middle of the road.
| KillahBhyte wrote:
| Was it truly that? What evidence?
|
| Seems to me around the time that it was ended there were
| several other things going on.
|
| The advent of cable news networks which gave a massive
| incentive to sensationalism and strong partisan ties as
| multiple players joined the space with a need to create a
| sustainable viewership.
|
| Satellite feeds became common ensuring a single message
| instead of having a layer of abstraction in the form of a
| local or regional newscaster; instead of relaying facts,
| they can relay a highly opinionated version.
|
| Local and independent news stations were being purchased
| and consolidated into national telecom companies with
| their own partisan editorial bends, a la Nexstar and
| Sinclair.
|
| I have to believe that all of the above had a much
| greater influence on news discourse in the past few
| decades than the elimination of the fairness doctrine.
| Furthermore, if you give government the power to regulate
| anything; always expect the current party in power to use
| that regulation as a weapon. Can you imagine what our
| leaders would do given even more power to control and
| manipulate the media narrative? Ending this was a good
| decision.
| prox wrote:
| I feel there should be some laws for when someone calls
| themselves news or journalism. So no monopoly for news,
| but when does call themselves this, there should be some
| ethical and truth finding considerations attached.
| indigochill wrote:
| >there should be some ethical and truth finding
| considerations attached.
|
| But who decides what's true? And why should we let them?
| Majority consensus is an easy answer, but we'd need
| something else if we were to regulate truth at a level we
| could enforce on journalists.
|
| I'm personally more worried about that question spiraling
| out of control than I am about offering equal air time.
| prox wrote:
| Truth might not be the best word, but the intention is
| about factual and empirical observations. So
| news/journalism is X happened at Y, backed up with as
| much sources as the journalist can muster.
|
| What it means is not news, thats opinion.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| A much better reason to get rid of equal time policies is
| because on the Internet, spectrum is effectively
| unlimited.
|
| On TV or radio, you can only have so many stations. But
| with the internet, people can make a new web site and
| publish there, they're not limited by the available
| spectrum. Therefore, the kind of regulation that was
| needed in a constrained environment (broadcasted
| TV/Radio), does not really make sense when those
| constraints are lifted.
| Causality1 wrote:
| That's the problem of the all-private internet. There is no
| virtual street corner at which to protest. There is no
| internet post office to handle your mail. There is no
| internet water utility who isn't allowed to shut off your
| service no matter how many people complain about you.
|
| There is only profit. The moment you become unprofitable for
| whatever reason you will lose everything. If tomorrow 51% of
| the world decided they hated left-handed people they would
| all find their accounts disabled, their website registrations
| suspended, their entire online presence forced into secrecy.
|
| So far that's only happened, to my knowledge, to terrorists
| and white supremacists, but there is absolutely no legal
| reason why it can't happen to anyone else.
| jerkstate wrote:
| >There is no internet water utility who isn't allowed to
| shut off your service no matter how many people complain
| about you.
|
| speaking of shutting off water, this is happening in
| meatspace too: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/los-
| angeles-mayor-eric-g...
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| Yep, and this is the core problem that I think much of the
| debate around social networks and online services in
| general is missing - the debate typically centers around
| these entities' legal rights, and completely forgets the
| fact that the online scenario actually has very little
| equivalent in the real world.
|
| The real world contains public spaces. It contains within
| it the recognition that some part of all of this around us,
| belongs to _everyone_.
|
| And while that has been the center of much of the rhetoric
| about the internet since its inception, that rhetoric has
| never actually been true _IN FACT_. It 's a mishmash of
| private entities controlling their piece of the puzzle.
|
| I think, as another poster mentioned, if democracy is to
| survive, the concept of "some part of the internet and its
| services are a public good" must take hold.
|
| Now, that's a scary-ass thing to say because unlike a piece
| of land, or drinking water, these things don't just
| "exist". They exist only as long as some entity pays for
| them, which means that such a statement implies things
| about who pays (government? subsidies? you pay but it isn't
| yours? special kinds of taxes?).
|
| And yet I think avoiding dystopia requires going that way.
| I have no idea what it would look like.
|
| Of course, there's an alternative.
|
| Google/Twitter/FB/etc. can agree that they don't censor
| anyone unless that person breaks the law. That puts the
| discussion right back where it should have been in the
| first place: In the public, political sphere, where The
| People have the ability to influence the outcome.
|
| But then, why would Google etc. do that? Too enticing, all
| that power.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| And yet. There's a certain "side" that wants to have that
| both ways
|
| Private companies can't censor "bad opinions"
|
| But private companies can also arbitrarily refuse service for
| say, making a "gay wedding cake"
|
| How is this disconnect rationalized?
| karakot wrote:
| Being a gay is not a choice, the same way as being a black,
| a minority etc. Being an asshole is a choice on the other
| way, the same as being radical left or radical right. The
| former is protected the latter is not.
| [deleted]
| colpabar wrote:
| doesn't it go both ways? if you flip both positions, it's
| also inconsistent.
| retpirato wrote:
| Google removing apps with spam/malware is one thing, &
| not something people would actually complain about. That
| also doesn't apply to removing the fediverse apps. They
| don't contain malware, they're simply alternative social
| networks. If they're going to remove them for having
| content they consider inappropriate or whatever excuse
| they're using, they need to remove other social media
| apps like facebook & twitter, because they certainly both
| have plenty of that too. Otherwise it just looks like an
| attempt to remove competitors to facebook/twitter. I also
| don't see what this has to do with a business refusing to
| make a cake. Businesses do have a right to refuse
| service. In this case if you're going to remove apps
| claiming they violate a specific violation, but don't
| remove other apps which will also inevitably be in
| violation the same way, it's reasonable for people to
| question it.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| I have to say I generally agree with you that when
| someone points out a contradiction in some common
| political stance, the reverse of that contradiction
| exists in the opposite stance. It seems pretty common,
| though it generally results from distilling a more
| complex view into a simplified statement (which may edge
| into the territory of creating men of straw).
| colpabar wrote:
| >generally results from distilling a more complex view
| into a simplified statement
|
| couldn't agree more. it's so frustrating seeing this
| everywhere online. this isn't twitter, you can write as
| much as you want. I read comments online to try and
| understand other viewpoints, and I can't do that without
| substance.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| How so?
|
| The first hypocrisy is the defense of the right of a
| business to make arbitrary decisions w.r.t. service (not
| bake the cake), while simultaneously demanding that the
| business not have the power to refuse service (condemning
| private censorship).
|
| The reverse position is not hypocritical in the same way,
| because condemning discrimination against customers on
| LGBT grounds is not at odds with censoring discriminatory
| speech - in fact, the two positions are aligned.
|
| You could try to argue that private censorship is itself
| a form of discrimination, but most people who hold the
| second position would not concede that the people who
| practice hate speech are a minority worthy of protection
| - so for them, no discrimination is occurring.
| tzs wrote:
| None of the reporting I saw on the wedding cake cases
| actually described the cakes.
|
| Are we talking normal wedding cakes, that you can buy from
| nearly any baker, with some ordinary decorations, that just
| have two men's names instead of one men's name and one
| woman's name after the "Congratulations", and have two
| mass-produced little plastic men on top instead of one
| little plastic man and one little plastic woman?
|
| Or are we talking something you'd get from a baker like
| Duff Goldman, which is a custom designed and made unique
| work of art specifically for you that captures the artist's
| interpretation of your wedding, and inherently is an act of
| speech on the part of the artist?
| lenkite wrote:
| Its custom designed cake. That baker has been sued yet
| again because he refused to bake a trans-themed birthday
| cake.
|
| I don't believe he has a problem selling cakes to anyone,
| just that he refused to design cakes with themes.
| TempLogsForOne wrote:
| It's not a disconnect, you are simply not understanding
| because you are clearly very authoritarian minded.
|
| The right to free speech is a God given right that the
| Constitution is the highest law of the land that prohibits
| the government from infringing on. Through the legal
| supremacy clause, the laws of the Constitution apply and
| supersede all other inferior laws and jurisdictions.
|
| I actually agree though that the tech tyrants should be
| allowed to censor if they wish ... once they built a
| private internet that is not using or funded by public
| resources. Problem solved, censor away. That would be akin
| to censoring someone in your own home, but you cannot
| censor someone outside of the home, because you are
| infringing on other's right to free speech. What you are
| actually doing is rationalizing that Google and all the
| other tech tyrants have the right to censor what you say in
| public ... because the internet is public ... it is not
| private unless it is operating solely on private resources
| ... which NONE of them are. You are advocating to control
| others, what they want to say to others, regardless of
| whether you want to hear it. You are not only trying to
| control the speaker, but you are also trying to control the
| listener. It's not healthy.
|
| As to your other authoritarian and tyrannical point; you
| are literally trying to force someone to do something
| against their will and yet you still cannot see anything
| wrong with that. It is not healthy, you are not healthy.
| You are in fact dangerous and evil in your desire to spread
| and impose harm on others and want to control others.
| kbenson wrote:
| It's worth noting that there's also a side that wants the
| opposite of that, to censor bad opinions, but not be able
| to refuse making a gay wedding cake.
|
| Hypocrites are not limited to specific groups, they're
| universal.
| dmix wrote:
| No one is forcing Google or their employees to write hate
| speech on a cake or an app though, that's a pretty
| massive difference in analogies. Nor are people asking
| for a free-for-all where Google can't delete any speech
| on their platforms.
|
| People were fine when they were deleting spam and had a
| limited content restriction policies against things like
| directly promoting violence or posting gore/cp and other
| obvious tier stuff.
|
| I haven't heard many people pushing for governments to
| force Google et al to not be able to delete things from
| their platforms either - outside of some tiny fringes who
| don't understand how the internet works.
|
| Which is therefore still consistently pro-freedom.
| Likewise compelled speech + censorship of an arbitrary
| and ever expanding list of wrongthink is consistently
| authoritarian.
|
| I really don't see the contradiction in either of these
| worldviews.
|
| It's the classic centralized top-down puppet-mastery of
| individuals choices vs embracing the chaos of freedom of
| individual choice (within some limited boundaries). This
| battle has been waged for as long as society has been
| around and is a natural side-effect of power structures.
| kbenson wrote:
| Both situations are really a matter of freedom of speech.
| Forget Google, does a person with a personal website that
| allows comments get to control what comments they want
| displayed on their site or not? Does that person get to
| choose what work they want to accept from a potential
| customer?
|
| Both situations boil down to freedom of speech. Both have
| extra, specific laws that deal with their situations.
| Without a well thought out justification, a mismatch
| between the position on those is likely hypocritical, no
| matter which you are for or against. A well thought out
| positions may not be, but I don't think most people
| actually have a well thought out opinion on the
| intricacies of how these intersect, and what it means,
| and instead fall back on what they would like to be able
| to do in that situation, or on their impression based on
| the way it was presented to them (I think it far more
| likely contextual presentation is to blame for some of
| this than actual reasoning). It does little good to point
| out the hypocrisy of some group on a specific issue when
| that form of hypocrisy is widespread and rampant. We
| should also point out the cause of the hypocrisy itself.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| There's a subtle distinction though: one is censoring
| based on the speech, and the other is censoring based on
| the speaker.
|
| The cake example specifically is more subtle (legally),
| since there's an argument that the cake is custom. I
| think this gets very tricky legally, but on the broader
| point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship based on
| concept is okay, but based on speaker is not.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I think this gets very tricky legally, but on the
| broader point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship
| based on concept is okay, but based on speaker is not.
|
| I don't know. I think that depends on how acceptable you
| think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion, or
| the idea of homosexuality, even if you think censoring
| Muslims and homosexuality is not. At what point does
| censoring discussing about homosexuality become censoring
| homosexuals? I'm sure some people would say immediately,
| and to them, there's no difference between censorship
| based on show they are and what they feel or believe?
|
| That's why I say it requires a very well thought out
| argument. I can be convinced that it isn't hypocritical
| to distinguish these (I'm exploring my thoughts on this
| subject, I don't have extremely held opinions on it,
| other than that it's complicated), but nobody has to be
| satisfaction yet.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is
| to censor based on the Islamic religion
|
| Let me give you an example: It is acceptable to enforce
| the rule that laws cannot favor Islam. It is not
| acceptable to enforce that Muslim individuals cannot hold
| positions in government.
|
| The first is discrimination based on content, the second
| is discrimination based on, let's call it character.
| kbenson wrote:
| That's not really answering the question, which I think
| gets to the point of the distinction you made. Is it okay
| to censor discussion of the Islamic religion? That's a
| concept. We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an
| individual, but you distinguished the types of censorship
| based on concepts and individuals. Why is it okay to
| censor Islam but not Muslims (or is it not okay, in which
| case your prior delineation of circumstances doesn't
| hold).
|
| > It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot
| favor Islam.
|
| That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it
| applies.
|
| Again, this is why I think it's important to have a well
| thought out argument, otherwise it may be hypocritical.
| I'm not even pushing a different side, I'm just trying to
| get you to articulate specifically why these two things
| are different, and pointing to examples doesn't do that
| at all. It's just a list of value judgements that you
| assume someone else will agree with without providing the
| rational behind those judgements (presumably believing
| it's self evident).
|
| If someone cannot distinguish why two separate situations
| are different but states as fact that they are, then they
| are being hypocritical, _whether those situation are
| different or not_. Nobody should be stating things as
| fact that they can 't explain. Being hypocritical has
| nothing to do with the truth, it has to do with
| knowledge, actions and beliefs.
| jwalgenbach wrote:
| Yeah, not so much.
|
| The difference is in the legal definition of protected
| class. It is illegal to discriminate against someone
| based on their membership of a protected class --
| ethnicity or disability for instance.
|
| Removing an opinion or banning a user based on violation
| of an agreed upon term of service is not the same thing.
| Having an opinion does not make you a member of a
| protected class, and a private corporation is free to
| allow you or disallow you from use of their services to
| broadcast that opinion. Newspapers have been doing this
| since the dawn of print. Google could not, for example,
| ban someone for being Jewish.
|
| You can argue about whether sexual orientation deserves
| status as a protected class, but it is disingenuous to
| claim that the two are the same thing under the law. It
| is a false equivalency.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I feel that the goalposts here have been shot out into
| space and are orbiting the barycenter where the point is.
|
| Let's maybe spell out separately whether or not these two
| situations are equivalent or not a) legally, b)
| ethically, c) in principle.
| jwalgenbach wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| a) As I stated in the argument about the difference
| between discrimination against protected classes versus
| hosting content on a private server, I'd say that
| legally, these are not equivalent.
|
| b) Ethically is an interesting question. Since the ethics
| of denying someone service based on their sexual
| orientation is largely viewed as reprehensible, maybe a
| better question would be whether or not (freed from
| questions of protected class) the baker would decorate a
| Nazi themed cake versus allowing federated apps that are
| largely used for the dissemination of white supremacist
| ideology to be hosted?
|
| c) In principle, I'd say they are not equivalent for the
| following reason: selling and decorating a cake is a
| business transaction between two entities. The cake
| (decorated or not) ownership moves from producer to
| consumer. The consumer is purchasing a physical cake. If
| the cake is ever made public, it is at the behest of the
| purchasers of the cake, and any consequences of that
| public display will be suffered by the purchaser.
| Essentially, the baker's name is not on the cake, and no
| one needs to know.
|
| Hosting apps or other contents affects the reputation of
| the hosting company, and damages to their business
| reputation fall on it. Think about Facebook being
| recognized as a conduit for foreign interference in U.S.
| elections, or whether or not the New York Times will
| accept ad content from an adult video company. The name
| on the masthead is the entity that suffers the damage
| first.
| TempLogsForOne wrote:
| If you are referring to what I think you are, I agree.
| All of this abusive and manipulative argumentation about
| these things comes down to the fact that freedom is being
| curtailed more and more with every passing day, with
| people arguing more and more how "we just need to do one
| more thing to curtail people's freedom and then we are
| done" ... but it's never enough and they are never done.
| There is always some other argument and reason to further
| add shackles to people's minds and ankles.
|
| In the end, all of this only adds immense amounts of
| volatility and instability and totally unsustainable risk
| that will invariably blow up.
|
| The Constitution was developed to allow people to live
| and associate and speak freely ... that has been chipped
| away at for decades and even centuries now. It's sad and
| sick, and will only ever result in calamity as the USA,
| the only place on the planet where you used to at least
| be free, is being shackled by useful idiots who have no
| idea they are doing the will of the world dominating
| global ruling class.
| archgoon wrote:
| I don't see the word 'law' showing up anywhere in
| kbensons comment. It's disingenuous to claim that kbenson
| was making a legal argument.
| postnihilism wrote:
| kbensons is explicitly referencing a legal case: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
| dahfizz wrote:
| > but it is disingenuous to claim that the two are the
| same thing under the law.
|
| Have you ever heard the term "strawman"?
| richiebful1 wrote:
| You could make the argument that the "socially liberal"
| side that wants to censor hate speech, but protect gay
| people from discrimination is logically consistent.
|
| A social liberal could argue on the point of protecting
| the rights of a marginalized minority. By censoring (for
| example) calls for violence, social liberals are
| protecting the safety of the targeted group. By requiring
| a cake shop to serve gay couples (or interracial couples,
| to throw in another example), social liberals are
| protecting a marginalized minority's access to services.
| KMag wrote:
| I'm not saying all people making such arguments are
| making consistent arguments, but there's a consistent
| argument to be had that being forced to say (or write)
| something (say on a cake) and being forced to not say (or
| write) something are both compulsions in communication,
| and to be opposed to all compulsions in communication (to
| the positive or negative). I've heard several people
| argue that a cake shop should be compelled to sell a cake
| to a gay couple, but shouldn't be compelled to write two
| same-genedered names on it or compelled to craft a
| plastic figurine of two grooms or two brides for the top.
| I've heard it argued that if the gay couple wants "Susan
| and Jeff" and a little figurine of a bride and groom, or
| any other artistic expressions they'd do for a strait
| couple should be compellable, but the government
| shouldn't be able to compel artistic expressions or
| writing.
|
| Now, I'd boycott the hell out of such an establishment,
| but as an abstract argument, I think compelled expression
| is a bad idea. It's really not that huge a step from
| compelled expression to re-education camps.
|
| Twitter's service isn't that they write 140 character
| prose for you, and YouTube's service isn't that they
| create videos to your specification. It would be
| hypocritical to demand that YouTube be forced to create a
| custom video to your specifications (or a ghost writer
| forced to write a book for someone with whom they
| disagree) and yet the cake shop shouldn't be forced to
| write two same-gendered names on a cake. These people
| arguing against forced cake lettering aren't arguing for
| forced book creation or forced video creation.
|
| Once again, refusing to make a gay wedding cake makes you
| a jerk and worthy of boycotting, but there is a
| consistent argument to be made simultaneously against
| forced expression and against forced silence.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Size (importance) of the company. Can your electricity
| company disconnect you because they don't like what you're
| saying online using that electricity?
| IntelMiner wrote:
| An electricity company is a utility however. They're a
| natural monopoly in a way that a "website" can't be
|
| If [large social media platform] doesn't want that kind
| of content, it's not unreasonable to simply make one to
| soak up that "ignored" market segment. Reddit can't shut
| you down for hosting your own internet forum for instance
| mc32 wrote:
| Interestingly, L.A.'s mayor has threatened as well as
| executed water service disruption to people hosting large
| parties.
|
| I get why one might want to do that, but I don't think
| it's the right precedent to set.
| hkt wrote:
| It's extrajudicial punishment, without a trial. It's a
| godawful precedent and I'd be amazed if was legal.
| Loughla wrote:
| >but I don't think it's the right precedent to set.
|
| I've thought about this statement for about a half hour
| now. What does it mean? That punishing individuals for
| ignoring public health mandates is a precedent we don't
| want? Or is it just the 'utility' being used that is
| problematic for you?
|
| I don't get it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The lack of due process?
| nitrogen wrote:
| Taking away a fundamental requirement for life is cruel
| and unusual, and the punishment does not fit the crime.
| chucksmash wrote:
| I don't know how I feel about cutting off the water
| service, but "cruel and unusual" seems like a reach.
|
| It would be cruel and unusual to deprive a prisoner of
| water because they have no other means of attaining it
| when you withhold it. Turning off city water service to a
| property is different. The property owner has other
| options they can take to get the water they need to stay
| alive.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In Russia the right to access clean water is enshrined in
| the constitution. If a vilage relies on a certain lake /
| river, and lost that access e.g. to pollution, the
| government is complelled by law to fix the issue at no
| expense to the residents. It is not good enough to say
| "they could hire a water truck".
|
| This also strikes me as abuse of power, one must not
| suffer arbitrary and random punishments. Whats bext, we
| will start cutting internet access to everyone who swears
| on the street, disabling electriciry to anyone who
| protests?
| mc32 wrote:
| Today it's "public health" reasons. What other "good
| reasons" will they find apt tomorrow?
| LegitShady wrote:
| I can't see how a head of state threatening to cut off
| basic life necessities punitively is legal.
| clairity wrote:
| it's a terrible precedent, and borderline corrupt. mayor
| garcetti has proven to be a weak orator and leader, and
| weak leaders resort to force rather than reason and
| persuasion. he's solely focused on winning political
| points with wealthy backers here and nationally, because
| of his ambitions (and ranking behind gov. newsom), the
| people and precedent be damned.
|
| he's ineffective with the power he has, can't get the
| homeless off the streets, can't build housing or make it
| affordable, can't improve educational outcomes, can't
| reduce unemployment and underemployment, has no real
| empathy for regular people (despite his emotion-laden
| language, and spanish!), and yet he wants to reach into
| our private lives and coerce behavior at the margin
| (saying this despite wholly agreeing that house parties
| are a terrible idea right now, but let's persuade, not
| force, and have a dialogue).
|
| the irony is that angelenos have been an exceedingly
| compliant group to his orders, adhering to both lockdown
| and _ _outdoor_ _ mask mandates at upwards of 95%. even
| if some of that is social signaling, that's startlingly
| high, making any a dictator proud. and yet he wants more.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If [large social media platform] doesn't want that kind
| of content, it's not unreasonable to simply make one to
| soak up that "ignored" market segment. Reddit can't shut
| you down for hosting your own internet forum for instance
|
| This is true enough for Reddit. It's far less true of the
| Play Store, because the platform (controlled by the same
| people as the store) throws up scary warnings if you try
| to install any other store so that almost nobody uses
| them, and on the only other major phone platform third
| party stores are prohibited outright. Which means to get
| your users to follow you, you don't just have to get them
| to visit a different website, you have to get them to
| replace their phone with one from a different hardware
| vendor, switch operating systems, and replace all of
| their other apps -- if that's even possible for them.
|
| And what when the only two platforms both do the same
| thing? It's obviously not feasible for an individual app
| developer to create their own phone platform and hardware
| and get everyone to switch to it.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because it is illegal (and morally wrong) to treat people
| differently because of who they are, not what they say or
| do.
| WWLink wrote:
| Oh I agree here. I think if you go into business to make
| cakes, you should vow to fulfill all your cake orders.
|
| Likewise, if you say you're a webhost, you host websites.
|
| If there's a legal issue, you report it. That's it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| There is a huge number of bakeries. What one doesn't want
| to do, others will.
|
| Google is arguably in a monopolist situation. If they block
| your app or opinion, you're silenced.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Comparing "allowing/disallowing the use of a tool" to
| spread YOUR message, to the "demanding that an
| artist/artisan create a message of YOUR liking" is very
| disingenuous. To be fair, I'm a libertarian and in a
| perfect world, you can do whatever and allow whoever you
| want to use/not use YOUR business. But this analogy of the
| gay wedding cake is simply not a good one.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| It was the first one that came to mind, forgive me.
|
| The basic thesis of my analogy was "you want 'free
| speech' forced upon private companies, but also want to
| allow them the freedom to dictate what content they allow
| under their 'brand'"
| corey_moncure wrote:
| A bakery is not a speech platform.
|
| Allowing speech on your speech platform is not the same
| thing as compelling others to speech.
| MiroF wrote:
| Capitalism rests on a negative conception of freedom, so yes.
| masukomi wrote:
| not really. it's just saying "this is mine, it's not public
| property or a public service, and thus i get to manage it how
| i want." I think MOST people would agree that that's a
| reasonable approach.
|
| just because a lot of people rely on the google play store
| doesn't mean it's a public service in the legal sense. It's a
| very private piece of software that is NOT open source and is
| very obviously owned and managed by a single entity.
|
| just like you get to choose who you let in your house. they
| get to choose how their software is used.
|
| side note: monopoly is a separate issue.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I agree with you, but the flip side is that they are not
| liable for the speech on their property due to an exception
| in section 230 of the communications decency act.
|
| If they have shown the ability to control speech on their
| platforms section 230 should be repealed and Google etc
| should be responsible for the content on their property
| like any other publisher.
| kube-system wrote:
| Section 230 exists because it is operationally
| impractical for websites to affirmative approve of all,
| most, or even a significant portion or content before it
| is published by users.
|
| If there's anything that is an indisputable fact, it's
| that no high-volume platform with user content can
| proactively police their platform 100%. I think that's a
| silly rationale to say that they should be prohibited
| from manually policing content that is brought to their
| attention afterwards.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I never said they should be prohibited from policing
| content merely that if they are capable of policing
| content they should be held liable for content on their
| platform like every other publisher.
|
| There is no reason to give these censorious companies
| extra legal protections no other publisher has if they
| are censoring society. They have been protected by a
| regulation that is now causing intense centralizing of
| power in the hand of a few technocrats and it is actively
| harmful to the rest of society to so empower them over
| everyone else.
|
| It is operationally impractical that society should be
| subject to Google's whims but Google not liable for
| Google's network content.
| kube-system wrote:
| > There is no reason to give these censorious companies
| extra legal protections no other publisher has if they
| are censoring society.
|
| Yes, there is a very good reason.
|
| Traditional publishers review 100% of content before they
| affirmatively publish it.
|
| User content on most websites are published by
| automation, and are not reviewed by humans, like this
| comment.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >User content on most websites are published by
| automation, and are not reviewed by humans, like this
| comment.
|
| So what? They choose to publish it. They can choose not
| to. Their own internal business practices don't require
| society to give them loopholes with which they get out of
| all liability and abuse the rights of others.
|
| It's a good reason to the publisher, its not a good
| reason for the rest of society.
| Proven wrote:
| > side note: monopoly is a separate issue.
|
| I upvoted you but regarding this last sentence - monopoly
| shouldn't be a separate issue. The same private property
| rights should apply.
| Someone wrote:
| _"just because a lot of people rely on the google play
| store doesn 't mean it's a public service in the legal
| sense"_
|
| I think that's precisely what's starting to be discussed
| now at national levels, with investigations into Apple,
| Facebook and Google in the EU and the USA.
|
| In many countries, utilities are commercial entities, but
| they can't refuse to serve customers because of what they
| say. I can see a future where we think the same of the big
| players on the web: commercial, but still public utilities.
|
| Problem of course is that many countries also fear a
| completely open internet. Providers already have to filter
| pornography, hate speech, etc. So, would we end up with
| commercial entities that cannot filter the content
| published on their platform to suit their norms, but must
| filter it to suit the norms of the government? If so, would
| that apply to all sites, including, say, Hacker News, or
| pro- or anti-abortus sites, or just to large ones? If so,
| what's 'large'?
| nybble41 wrote:
| > just like you get to choose who you let in your house.
| they get to choose how their software is used.
|
| The first instance is property rights. The second is
| _copyright_ , a privilege granted by the government at the
| expense of others' property rights. When a private party
| leverages copyright to conduct censorship it's ultimately
| the government that is responsible for violating the
| victim's freedom of speech. Google certainly has the right
| to grant or deny access to their _services_ as they please,
| but that is not the same as having a natural right to
| decide how the _software_ they develop is used after it has
| already been released to the public.
| vertis wrote:
| Or another trick, just place it in another country and then
| you don't have to worry about the 1st amendment at all, and
| no I'm not talking about China. UK or Australia will do just
| fine.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is not true at all, and neither is the comment you
| responded to.
|
| The constitution doesn't apply to a location or a medium,
| it applies to an actor: the US government (and state/local
| subdivisions). The US government has to follow it
| everywhere, and nobody else has to follow it _anywhere_.
| mindslight wrote:
| It's not a deliberate trick on anyone's part, but rather
| complexity induced contradiction. Similar destruction has
| happened to other rights - jury trial via plea bargains,
| equal representation via forced arbitration clauses, "papers
| please" via driving and flying, unreasonable search and
| seizure via web services, double jeopardy via overlapping
| jurisdictions, and of course federated government via
| pervasive commerce.
| [deleted]
| graeme wrote:
| Google is global. First amendment is purely an american
| concept. Not really helpful for global content moderation
| discussions.
| mc32 wrote:
| They can have and do have regional app stores.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
|
| This is actually still a good Wikipedia article to educate
| yourself.
| Retric wrote:
| Censorship is allowed under the first amendment on obscenity or
| national security grounds. Private organizations just have more
| freedom in this area.
|
| EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation
| hinkley wrote:
| I wonder when someone is going to figure out that obscenity
| laws violate separation of church and state and are thus
| unconstitutional.
| gowld wrote:
| Never, because morality is not the same as religion.
| Morality is well established as a basis for law.
| hinkley wrote:
| I opened this door, but I'm not gonna walk through it.
| andybak wrote:
| I don't understand your point.
|
| Religion and morality _are_ distinct and the rationale
| for the separation of church and state is because of the
| power that religion wields by virtue of it 's structure.
| Look back to the religious conflicts that were raging and
| provided the background for these decisions.
|
| As much as morality can share certain qualities with
| religion, there is a fairly clear distinction that's
| worth maintaining.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The first amendment, like less encompassing provisions in
| other liberal countries, was arguably intended to forbid
| _prior_ censorship, whereby opinions had to be vetted by some
| authority before publication. It was expanded in its
| interpretation to other kinds of censorship, through the idea
| that a chilling effect on speech was comparable to a priori
| censorship.
| felipeko wrote:
| Is allowed under some interpretation of the first amendment.
| It is not allowed by the first amendement per se.
| skissane wrote:
| The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech is worded as
| an absolute, there are no exceptions in the text.
|
| However, no functioning society could allow unlimited free
| speech. There are many exceptions to the First Amendment -
| fraud, perjury, defamation, death threats, "shouting fire
| in a crowded theatre", speech in violation of privacy or
| duties of confidentiality, etc.
|
| I don't think the original authors of the First Amendment
| meant it to be unlimited. They didn't intend it to legalise
| fraud or perjury or defamation.
|
| But, given they didn't leave any guidance in the text as to
| which exceptions are valid and which are not, it is
| basically up to SCOTUS to decide. And which exceptions
| SCOTUS accepts as valid change as the moods of its majority
| changes - and will likely continue to change in the future.
|
| The equivalent provision in the European Convention on
| Human Rights is Article 10, which says: "The exercise of
| these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and
| responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities,
| conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by
| law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the
| interests of national security, territorial integrity or
| public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for
| the protection of health or morals, for the protection of
| the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the
| disclosure of information received in confidence, or for
| maintaining the authority and impartiality of the
| judiciary".
|
| I think that's better than the First Amendment in that it
| acknowledges in the text the reality that exceptions are
| necessary, and makes some attempt to outline what the
| exceptions are. However, there is still a lot of room for
| interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights as to
| the proper scope of all those exceptions, especially
| regarding what is "necessary in a democratic society" and
| what isn't. Few would claim the Court always gets it right.
| But, at least, the European Court of Human Rights is
| arguably a far less politicised institution that the US
| Supreme Court.
| stale2002 wrote:
| 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".
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > 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.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > 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.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| Who are these "most people"? I am not aware of any such
| person myself.
|
| Most (if not all) EU countries protect the freedom of
| speech in their constitution. In addition ECHR protects
| the freedom of speech as well.
| skissane wrote:
| You object to one of the specific exceptions in ECHR
| Article 10, not to the idea of making the exceptions
| explicit. The point I was defending was that the
| exceptions should be explicit, not that the particular
| list of exceptions in the ECHR is the right list
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >under some interpretation
|
| This would imply there are interpretations where it isn't
| allowed even in the cases of the worst most extreme
| content. Does any organization/group advocate such an
| interpretation? As far as I'm aware all groups either
| support an interpretation that allows the government to
| censor some speech or supports considering some speech as
| not counting as speech so it can be censored without
| censoring speech (using sophistry to hide censorship of
| speech).
| nybble41 wrote:
| > This would imply there are interpretations where it
| isn't allowed even in the cases of the worst most extreme
| content.
|
| That would be the interpretation where someone actually
| reads the text of the Constitution instead of making up
| exceptions out of whole cloth.
|
| > Does any organization/group advocate such an
| interpretation?
|
| Yes, obviously. The Libertarian Party is one example:
|
| >> ... we oppose all attempts by government to abridge
| the freedom of speech and press, as well as government
| censorship in any form ...[1]
|
| >> We support full freedom of expression and oppose
| government censorship, regulation, or control of
| communications media and technology.[1]
|
| Direct threats of harm are still actionable, of course.
| In that situation you aren't punishing the speaker for
| what they said but rather defending yourself in response
| to a reasonable expectation of imminent and irreversible
| harm. The speech is merely evidence of intent.
|
| [1] https://www.lp.org/platform/
| Retric wrote:
| The issue is what is classified as free speech? Perjury
| for example might not seem like a free speech issue, but
| under the most extreme versions it must be allowed.
|
| As such it's common for groups to carve out what the want
| limited as simply not qualifying as speech. Aka we can
| ban spam because we are banning the medium and not the
| message. This then gets into issues like should flag
| burning be allowed which blur the line between message
| and medium. Thus simply saying you support free speech is
| a rather meaningless statement. People need to look at
| the specifics on what each group considers speech etc.
| felipeko wrote:
| There's nothing intrinsically superior to either SCOTUS
| or any group or organization's interpretation.
|
| I'm pretty sure you are able to interpret it as not
| allowing even in the worst and most extreme cases, you
| just don't want to. There's no need for an argument from
| authority.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| I'm not trying to claim any one group is authoritative.
| I'm saying that I'm not aware of any group, regardless of
| their level of authority, who uses an interpretation that
| includes the worst material. Everyone (that I'm aware of)
| makes an exception for at least one form of material,
| even the ACLU or similar organizations. Even the
| Libertarian party, one of the groups most in favor of
| limiting government, is not against censorship of the
| worst sort of material.
| felipeko wrote:
| Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
|
| I am anarcho-capitalist, and I have no trouble being
| absolutist about freedom of speech inside one's own
| property.
|
| So there's that.
| andybak wrote:
| > absolutist
|
| Fine.
|
| > inside one's own property.
|
| Ah. That's quite specific. i.e. it excludes much of
| what's being discussed here.
| ascorbic wrote:
| They don't "have more freedom in this area": they're not
| bound by it at all. They can ban whatever they want from
| their own platforms.
| Retric wrote:
| That's not always true. Ex:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
|
| While it's been revoked the FCC fairness doctrine was
| considered constitutional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re
| d_Lion_Broadcasting_Co._v._F...
| ascorbic wrote:
| Right, I meant they're not bound by the first amendment.
| There are plenty of other regulations that apply to
| specific outlets, but they're not rules to protect free
| speech
| jzb wrote:
| That's because the airwaves are public, so the FCC could
| regulate / require equal time in the public interest. A
| TV or radio station isn't operating entirely on its own
| dime - it's using a public resource, so it should be done
| in the public interest.
|
| There was no fairness doctrine applied to, say,
| newspapers.
| just_fred wrote:
| The internet is a public resource.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Not in the same way the airwaves are. You can run your
| own network cable but everyone has to share the same
| limited airwaves.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It is more a massive collection of the different
| resources of many different people.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Then Google should be held liable for the content they choose
| to publish, including under libel and slanderous laws.
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24305473)
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am sure the local water or electricity company can't refuse
| to provide you the service because they don't like your
| politics. And the gay wedding cake controversy. Those platforms
| that operate like a quasi monopoly (search, social network,
| mobile services, internet service providers) could very well be
| treated like utility companies or something intermediate with a
| similar obligation not to use their dominant position to
| control speech in the country.
| stillbourne wrote:
| > To be fully accurate, this is absolutely censorship, but it's
| not a violation of anyone's First Amendment rights. People
| often conflate the two.
|
| It's not censorship, its moderation and editorial discretion.
| notyourday wrote:
| Great. Google should become liable for all the illegal
| content that slips through, all the way to the officers and
| directors of the company.
|
| I think we as the society agree that child porn and child
| sexual abuse is a criminally punishable offense. A platform
| in a possession of it clearly is in a possession and
| distribution of child pornography, hence officers and
| directors should be charged under those statues.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| Are you saying that a platform (be it Facebook, Twitter,
| etc.) shouldn't be allowed to moderate content at all if
| they want safe harbor protections?
| notyourday wrote:
| Blacklisting apps for content that the app _might_ access
| is not moderating content on a platform based on a user
| 's request.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| Yes.
|
| They want it both ways and what we're seeing is the
| outcome. The solution is simple - don't have it both
| ways.
| antoinealb wrote:
| Isn't that why we have safe harbor laws to encourage
| platforms to self regulate and collaborate with law
| enforcement in exchange for not being sued for those
| violations ?
|
| Without those provisions no website could allow user
| created content, as they would instantly be sued to
| oblivion.
|
| (Standard disclaimer of working for Google)
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| If Google wants to be viewed as a safe harbor, so Google
| should behave as one and stop deciding what is "hateful".
| What you/Google/government consider hateful can be what I
| or the people in Belarus consider the truth. This trend
| of "censorship for your own good" needs to stop.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I believe all platforms do moderation of some sort. It
| sounds like what you are proposing is that nobody be
| allowed to do any moderation. How do you think that would
| work?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| It would work as the internet is supposed to work. Like
| it worked about until 2015. Slander and libel is
| punishable under law. This is the way to punish lies and
| excesses. For the rest, lets just talk, freely, and let
| the best ideas win.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| The only moderate for removal of illegal content.
|
| The rest is up to the users.
| [deleted]
| notyourday wrote:
| > Isn't that why we have safe harbor laws to encourage
| platforms to self regulate and collaborate with law
| enforcement in exchange for not being sued for those
| violations ? > Without those provisions no website could
| allow user created content, as they would instantly be
| sued to oblivion.
|
| I want to make it clear that I do not have a problem with
| a safe harbor what so ever.
|
| If Google wants to prevent its users who ask it from
| being able to access some portion of internet, Google
| absolutely can do that. That portion of the internet
| should not be able to go after Google for acting on
| behalf of the users.
|
| What Google is doing is preventing users that did not ask
| for that from being able to access that portion of the
| internet. It is akin to Verizon deciding "that content is
| bad so we are going to block it in our pipe". If Google
| wants to do that, then fine it is providing the "clean
| internet experience" and it should absolutely be punished
| when it fails at doing that (hosting child porn)
| hkt wrote:
| The play store is as near as makes no difference a utility to
| people with Android phones. Try using one without it.
| dtech wrote:
| Moderation or editorial discretion that _censors_ a certain
| piece of information or opinion is still censoring.
| kanox wrote:
| 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.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| It's hard to make a free speech site whose content guidelines
| follow the First Amendment, because the credit card networks
| will ban you. Gab, for example, can only accept checks and
| crypto.
| numpad0 wrote:
| ban credit card network ban you by law.
|
| if it can't be done(yes it can't be done) so is forcing
| platforms be fair(that can't happen as well).
| Natanael_L wrote:
| Even they doesn't actually strive to allow everything
| that's legal.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Why should they be _forced_ to distribute it? That 's a
| pretty extreme stance, and you haven't provided a reason.
| LegitShady wrote:
| They should have to choose between neutral publishing and
| liability on their networks. If they want to censor then
| section 230 of the communications decency act should be
| repealed and let them take ownership of their decisions.
|
| As it stands now they get zero liability for speech they
| can clearly police. I see hate groups in Facebook that
| Facebook doesn't close if reported. Let them own it
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Right, I get that that's a position you can take, I just
| don't see why.
| LegitShady wrote:
| To protect society from technocrat control of speech.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| 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.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'm not on Googles side here, but... As nice as your
| sentiment is, there are plenty of real problems which have to
| be addressed.
|
| Who defines, and what are the definitions of "Large" and
| "General Purpose" in this context?
|
| Am I allowed to moderate content as fits with my ToS at X
| number of users, but at X+1 users I become forced to publish
| all content which is "not otherwise illegal"?
|
| In regards to what is "not otherwise illegal", which laws
| from which country apply?
|
| How does one combat things such as excessive spam? If I am
| forced to allow any content which is "otherwise not illegal",
| and my service becomes literally unusable because of someone
| posting 10,000 cat pictures per second (cats aren't illegal,
| I'm forced to distribute the cats), what is my recourse? Am I
| still allowed to rate limit? Because that, boiled down, is
| censoring a users ability to post "otherwise not illegal"
| content.
| benibela wrote:
| The courts decide what is a large platform. And they decide
| what is "not illegal"
|
| In Germany, there were actually cases where courts have
| ruled that facebook is not allowed to delete non illegal
| posts:
|
| https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Oberlandesgericht-
| Me...
|
| One big part of the argument of the judges was based on
| contracts. When a user makes a facebook account, it creates
| a contract between the user and facebook. The user agrees
| to share their data for ads and stuff, and facebook agrees
| to publish their posts. Thus they have to do that, they
| cannot just decide to not publish some posts, that would be
| a contract violation.
|
| Just like when you order a pizza with 10 toppings, the
| pizza service cannot deliver a pizza with 8 toppings and
| still expect you to pay the full price
|
| And as second part, the court has ruled that a clause "we
| choose which posts to publish" would be invalid in the
| contract, because a contract must be fair to all involved
| parties and not violate basic rights like freedom of
| speech.
| ziddoap wrote:
| My post was meant to be more rhetorical in nature, to
| demonstrate that overzealous censorship is not an issue
| which can be solved by simply stating "force all non-
| illegal content to be/remain published".
|
| It's easy to hand-wave it to the courts, but there are
| many issues with that approach as well (e.g. non-
| technically competent people making decisions about
| technology, government not immune to corruption nor
| censorship, courts are slow by nature).
|
| Your answer also conveniently side-steps the nitty-gritty
| implementation issues. How does a platform deal with spam
| posts if they are unable to delete content that is legal?
| If you don't like a website, simply post a few thousand
| Viagra advertisements to their front page for a few weeks
| and they either have to advertise Viagra or shutdown.
|
| Speaking of advertising, why bother pay for ad-space on a
| website like Reddit, when I can just spam my product on
| every subreddit over and over again and they have no
| choice but to keep it up?
|
| Will these rules also be applicable to other forms of
| media which also have a viewership above the arbitrary
| "large" line? Newspaper, books, TV? If not, why not?
|
| These are just a few off-the-cuff issues that come to
| mind. I'm sure people smarter than me who take some time
| to seriously consider this approach will be able to find
| hundreds of such examples of why "forced to publish all
| non-illegal content" sounds great but is simply not a
| feasible solution to the problem.
|
| As an aside, I find it odd that the answer to censorship
| by private companies is to offload everything to the
| largest centralized system with the longest history of
| censorship: governments.
| mulmen wrote:
| Why would we ask the courts to decide what is large? What
| if I don't like their answer? Surely this is a
| legislative question.
| xienze wrote:
| > To be fully accurate, this is absolutely censorship, but it's
| not a violation of anyone's First Amendment rights. People
| often conflate the two.
|
| You're technically right, but in practice it really doesn't
| matter that the "government" can't censor you when the modern
| "public square" is held almost entirely by private companies.
| The government doesn't really hold any power in shaping modern
| public discourse anymore, tech companies do! Now the fact that
| said private company's ideals line up closely with one certain
| political party is just a coincidence, I'm sure.
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl-uzz5VsAEA2Go?format=jpg
| hinkley wrote:
| You could look at this like private citizens trying to block
| access to public lands (beaches) in order to make them de
| facto private.
|
| Federated apps are trying to establish a commons, right? If
| Google can block access, then there is no commons. If the
| government can force easements on private land owners, I
| suspect the EFF could make a case for the same for App
| stores.
|
| Nobody would be making Google host the Commons, just access.
| This is a much simpler case IMO than forcing Twitter or
| Facebook to carry messages they don't want.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Constitutions are squishy things, ultimately. They evolve over
| the years.
|
| I take your point about legality. But, I'd make the point that
| we don't have a clear moral or legal concept of free speech
| that relates to the current world.
|
| _" We can argue about whether or not Google should ban certain
| opinions on their platform, or where the line should be drawn,
| but it is arguable that hey have the legal right to do so."_
|
| At some point, the distinction between legal and moral breaks
| down.
|
| In theory, google could legally do quite a lot. Say google
| decides to censor all mentions of the tiananmen square rising.
| They could remove it from search, youtube, android phones,
| chrome. Gmail could spam filter emails mentioning it. They
| could exert influence outside of companies/services that they
| own directly. None of that is illegal (at least not
| unconstitutional). In practice, this is very close to what
| China does with the great firewall.
|
| It also wouldn't stand. Something like this would be too
| contradictory to the moral concept of free speech.
|
| Constitutions are interpreted, and the supreme court is not the
| only interpreter. It's a cultural construct as well as a legal
| one.
|
| We are effectively at this point now. Google, Twitter,
| Facebook, etc... These aren't platforms in the way newspapers
| were. They're not platforms at all. They're the level ground,
| in terms of speech, press, the right to petition the government
| or practice religion. The reasons that amendment was written
| runs through google.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| > Constitutions are squishy things, ultimately. They evolve
| over the years.
|
| They're really not -- or shouldn't be. Certainly not when you
| have a textualist/originalist majority on the court charged
| with deciding what is and isn't constitutional.
|
| I get your broader point that societies and norms change. But
| the last thing any of us should want is a constitution that
| is lightly referenced and broadly interpreted because history
| shows such easily interpreted and changed documents benefit
| the oppressor far more than the oppressed.
|
| Your final point is a strong one: Substantial parts (and, for
| some forms of speech, nearly all parts) of our freedom of
| speech runs through a handful of large social -media
| companies. There's little reason that can't be addressed with
| appropriate federal legislation but, if that's not enough,
| then let's get on with the heavy lift of actually amending
| the Constitution, rather than hoping our better angels
| prevail in interpreting it.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Agree. To extend your argument, we find that over the years
| that the application of the constitution has to be
| understood in new contexts. It doesn't evolve, but how it
| is understood to apply is discussed and what it covers
| does. That's why textualism/originalism is important: if we
| understand what someone said and why they said it, we can
| better represent the intention of the rule here, several
| hundred years later.
| Animats wrote:
| _It also wouldn 't stand. Something like this would be too
| contradictory to the moral concept of free speech._
|
| I don't know. If Google decided to censor "hate speech" in
| GMail, could anyone stop them? Some people would applaud.
| Machine learning is good enough now that misspellings and
| euphemisms can be caught. So topic-based censorship could
| really work. Especially for Google, which has so much history
| on each sender, and so much experience with spam filtering.
| intended wrote:
| Hey! I'm fiddling around with this right now for a
| submission. What I've found so far makes it look like hate
| speech is not easy to catch:
|
| 1) Slang evolves.
|
| 2) Combining two languages, especially under-resourced
| languages, mean that a chunk of words fall outside the
| range of a hate-speech lexicon.
|
| So maybe in languages which have huge resources devoted to
| it (English), its easy to figure out, but I don't know how
| well covered the evolving edge, and the code-mixed
| (language mixed) edges are.
| mc32 wrote:
| If the CCP can do it --and they do it to catch all the
| circumventions Chinese internet users use to try to avoid
| censorship --which they do successfully, then we know
| it's possible and if it's possible the big players are
| doing it too.
| intended wrote:
| The CCP doesn't manage to catch all circumventions, AND
| they are not a multinational firm crossing multiple
| jurisdictions.
|
| So when we say big players, do you mean FB or do you mean
| the National Govs?
|
| Side note - the CCP also employs manpower to handle the
| task, so its not just ML, my point hovers on the ML
| aspect of it.
| ummwhat wrote:
| The CCP doesn't need to catch them all. A 90% filter with
| a terrible false positive rate still accomplishes their
| societal engineering objectives.
| Animats wrote:
| Facebook is working on this.[1] There's even a $100,000
| "Hateful Memes" competition.[2]
|
| _In order for AI to become a more effective tool for
| detecting hate speech, it must be able to understand
| content the way people do: holistically. When viewing a
| meme, for example, we don't think about the words and
| photo independently of each other; we understand the
| combined meaning. This is extremely challenging for
| machines, however, because it means they can't analyze
| the text and the image separately. They must combine
| these different modalities and understand how the meaning
| changes when they are presented together._
|
| Facebook is going for the really hard case, where non-
| hate images and non-hate text combine to induce hate.
| They already have a text-only system.
|
| [1] https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/12/facebook-is-using-
| more-ai...
|
| [2] https://ai.facebook.com/tools/hatefulmemes/
| bastardoperator wrote:
| People can be as hateful as they want and the government
| isn't coming after them. What people that use hateful
| verbiage are really arguing for is free from consequence
| speech and that just doesn't exist. They want to be allowed
| to be hateful and hurt Google's reputation and Google just
| needs to shut up aka these folks don't really value freedom
| of speech when people start using theirs to counter them.
| intended wrote:
| So for some of my volunteer moderation work, this was a
| question I tried to answer, so that we could have a
| justification for censorship, instead of "We need to do this,
| or the forum will continue to be a dumpster fire of hate".
|
| The argument was a closer look at the "market place of ideas"
| analogy.
|
| There are actors in the market selling bad content. Content
| designed to addict, poison or over turn the fair functioning
| of the market place.
|
| Earlier things were far slower, so this was not as pertinent
| a threat.
|
| With social media, and virality, this is a clear and present
| danger for the functioning of the digital meeting places we
| enjoy.
|
| Therefore, there is a need for action to prevent these market
| perverting actions.
|
| <This ignores the class of locutionary actions that cause
| direct harm, such as hate speech etc. but the same argument
| can be made for them, and because of the clear harm they
| cause.>
|
| Nathan Mattias at Cornell is someone who wrote/writes about
| it, while also working to help citizen run experiments to
| figure out what works for content moderation.
|
| He had an interesting article which makes a better argument:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/a-toxic-w.
| ..
|
| Other interesting articles:
| https://citizensandtech.org/2020/02/can-public-
| infrastructur...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| We don't even have to argue about it. Folks agree to a legal
| binding contract that can likely be altered at any time for any
| reason and I'm willing to bet verbiage about yanking apps for
| any reason is well defined too.
|
| Decided to look, pretty clear.
|
| "Google may make changes to this Agreement at any time with
| notice to Developer"
|
| and
|
| "Google may terminate this Agreement with You immediately upon
| written notice"
| birdboy2000 wrote:
| Corporate monopolies can easily force one-sided contracts on
| users, but that's just a reflection of their market power. In
| a perfect world judges would rule them unenforceable, in our
| world corporations fund the people who appoint judges.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't see anyone be forced to engage with Google, and
| it's not as if the play store doesn't provide value back to
| developers. It's enforceable because it isn't one sided. In
| a perfect would we hold the legislators accountable for
| this mess since they're the ones writing these laws.
| jimbokun wrote:
| "but it's not a violation of anyone's First Amendment rights."
|
| True. But while technically correct, it is becoming a more and
| more academic distinction.
|
| Facebook-Apple-Google-Twitter, and maybe a few other tech
| behemoths, probably have greater ability to censor people and
| content than most governments throughout history. It's also
| true, in theory, democratically elected governments could reign
| them in. But it's also true they have unprecedented power to
| manipulate public opinion, if they chose to do so, to get
| people elected or legislation passed or blocked.
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Censorship, deplatforming, and cancel culture are some of the
| most dangerous developments that have been normalized by
| progressives. I am not surprised to see Google do this given
| their internal culture has been weaponized by the progressive
| left.
| thesizeofa wrote:
| Excellent - not sure why this racist cancer is spreading so much
| and so fast across the internet, but any such tumour must be
| extirpated. If you refuse to police such content because of "free
| speech" then go back to the 30s, because expressing hatred for
| people is not an exercise of freedom. There are of course
| legitimate websites operating on the fediverse but sadly it is
| also thriving with crime and hatred.
| [deleted]
| codingkoi wrote:
| Does anyone know the US case law on the 1st amendment being
| applied to corporate actors?
|
| I see the argument often that things like this are a free speech
| violation but the 1st amendment says "Congress shall pass no
| law...". It doesn't apply to actors other than the state.
|
| I'm not defending Google's actions here but I also don't think
| it's technically a free speech violation at least as the
| amendment is written, so I'm wondering if there are any cases
| addressing this sort of censorship w.r.t. the 1sr amendment.
| freehunter wrote:
| None, the Constitution only limits the power of the government,
| not private organizations.
| sp332 wrote:
| It's not a 1st amendment violation, but it's still anti-free-
| speech. There's more to free speech than just the one sentence.
| ng12 wrote:
| There's the first amendment and there's the concept of free
| speech. This absolutely violates free speech but does not
| violate the first amendment.
|
| The only current framework to protect freedom of speech from
| private companies is to designate them as common carriers, e.g.
| phone companies legally cannot police what is said over their
| wires.
| bccdee wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily anti-free-speech. The idea of
| free speech is that everyone should be able to express their
| opinions without being prosecuted for it, not that everyone
| is entitled to a platform for those opinions. You should be
| able to write an article about absolutely anything, but
| you're not entitled to put it in my newspaper.
|
| I of course agree that the mastodon ban is a bad move because
| it sets a double standard where browsers can access arbitrary
| web content but other apps can't, and because it grossly
| limits the things that the average user can do with their
| device. However, these are consumer rights issues, not free
| speech issues.
| sfkdjf9j3j wrote:
| I think what a lot commenters are saying is that within
| their conception of the bigger idea of free speech they
| _do_ consider themselves entitled to have their thoughts
| distributed by established platforms. Or put more mildly,
| platforms like Google ought not ban people for their
| content because it 's the right thing to do. But I don't
| see many people advocating for government intervention, not
| with specifics anyway.
| bccdee wrote:
| I think that's kind of a strange take. Like, if you are
| entitled to put an article in my newspaper no matter what
| the article says, doesn't that unduly restrict my speech
| by forcing me to endorse your ideas by using my platform
| to distribute them?
|
| If Google doesn't want to distribute your ideas, I think
| it's odd to say that that's wrong of them. I do think
| that it's a problem that they get to act as a gatekeeper
| like that in the first place. I think the solution is to
| break up larger platforms and create a diverse ecosystem
| of smaller options, not to forbid platforms from ever
| moderating their content.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| On a related topic. I was trying to search videos from the
| Wisconsin shooting of the 17 year old who shot and killed two
| people and injured one. Every video I clicked on was already
| taken down due to offensive content. I found it strange given
| that Youtube is full of videos of shooting incidents.
|
| Now, I do understand the families of the victims may want the
| videos taking down. But it seems to me the mob of people flagging
| these videos have a different motive. This shows that trusting
| the community to flag offensive content has its flaws. (although
| at Youtube's scale there's no alternative really)
| gerbal wrote:
| Right wing propagandists flooded twitter and reddit with
| deceptive edits, frame grabs, and narratives. I expect there
| are now multiple retaliatory take down campaigns by multiple
| groups and bot networks to try to preserve only videos that
| support their preferred narrative.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I mean the NYT has the videos and very clearly shows that he
| acted defensively each time. I was surprised by how clearly
| they were willing to show that considering their bias, I
| didn't really read the content around the video, but that
| alone was interesting. Of course the title at the time made
| it sound like he was guilty so...
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Followup reporting indicates that he was not asked to guard
| the business that he was "protecting", that the business
| asked him and others _not_ to get involved and they did
| anyway, and that he instigated the altercation with the men
| chasing him in the video.
|
| It's not self-defense when you start the fight.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| Here's an interview with a reporter who was on scene and
| rendered aid to the first victim. He gives a minute by
| minute recount of what happened from his perspective.
|
| The instigation that led to the second set of
| altercations isn't entirely clear.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGb3Qv4_gZI
| djsumdog wrote:
| That's actually very disturbing considering the amount of
| misinformation over this incident, and that they're charging
| that kid for murder!
|
| Were you able to find the videos? They tell a pretty different
| story than the media narrative. Every person he shoots attacked
| him or had a gun. He doesn't shoot the kid behind them who had
| his hands up, or any other bystanders. He then walks with his
| hands up and turns himself in to police.
|
| It's still up on several alternative sites (BitChute and
| PeerTube instances) along with some I can't mention here. I
| always use youtube-dl to download YouTube videos, Tweets and
| Reddit videos for anything that's going on right now;
| especially shootings. They get taken down pretty fast and it
| has a chilling effect because people are only seeing the
| CNN/MSNBC/FOX versions that are HEAVILY edited.
| jmull wrote:
| > Every person he shoots attacked him or had a gun.
|
| You're suggesting that having a gun is justification for
| someone to shoot you? I'm sure you can see the problem with
| that logic.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Watch the actual video. Dude pulls the gun and it bringing
| it around to shoot the kid. This is after the kid gets
| kicked in the head. The guy is also a convicted felon.
|
| I do believe what he did was straight up self defense.
| jmull wrote:
| > Dude pulls the gun and it bringing it around to shoot
| the kid.
|
| But the kid had _already_ pointed his own gun and
| actually _already_ shot someone.
|
| If seeing someone pulling a gun and starting to point it
| at you is justification to shoot in self defense, then
| the guy who got shot was acting in self-defense,
| according to you. I guess the only thing he did wrong was
| not shoot quicker than the kid.
|
| How can your self-defense logic only apply to the guy
| doing the shooting but not to the guy not shooting?
| djsumdog wrote:
| > actually already shot someone
|
| This is the issue. There is ZERO video of this (only the
| aftermath). We don't know why that first guy got shot in
| the head, or if it was this kid that did it (forensics
| will show) and that guy he shot had a criminal records.
|
| It could have been a self defense shot too. His ability
| to control himself after the two he shot on video goes to
| enforce that idea.
|
| The kid had zero record. It's a bad situation for sure,
| but I don't think there is enough evidence to say the kid
| didn't act in self defense.
|
| This is community policing by the way.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Self defense is an affirmative defense, so the onus is on
| him to prove that he was acting in self defense, not the
| other way around.
|
| Anyway, it's a lot more complicated than this. I expect
| the prosecution to make the argument that he deliberately
| travelled to the event with an illegal weapon to provoke
| a situation where he could justify attacking someone in
| "self defense". That's still murder, even if he was in a
| genuinely threatening situation. And while Wisconsin has
| no _duty_ to retreat laws, juries can consider
| opportunities to retreat when deciding if an act of self
| defense was actually necessary.
|
| This is also clearly _not_ community policing, since he
| obviously travelled from Illinois to aggressively
| confront a community he is not a member of.
| jmull wrote:
| I don't think shooting three people can be considered a
| demonstration of self control. The standard is to shoot
| zero people, which I guess everyone else managed that
| night?
|
| > The kid had zero record.
|
| That can't really be used as proof of innocence. You
| wouldn't be able to convict anyone, since everyone starts
| off with zero record. He's only 17, so hasn't managed to
| avoid serious trouble for very long.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Yes, I found it eventually. Although the video doesn't show
| the first fatal shooting so we don't know how it all started.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Earlier footage indicates the first man shot was attempting
| to start a fight with the militiamen, but there's a gap in
| the timeline where nobody was filming before the fight
| broke out.
|
| The NYT has a very good article on the subject (and I'm a
| man who's very critical of the NYT)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-
| kenos...
| tinyhouse wrote:
| OK I found a video showing the first fatal shooting [1].
| It's not as clear as the video showing the mob chase
| (where it indeed looked like self defense) but from what
| I can tell the person who died got shot while running
| away from the shooter (it's hard to tell where the
| shooter is exactly during this time). Doesn't look like
| self defense to me. Hopefully there are better recordings
| of the whole incident.
|
| Warning: the video is very graphic, esp in the end. [1] h
| ttps://twitter.com/livesmattershow/status/129848440491897
| 24...
| ethanwillis wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGb3Qv4_gZI
|
| Here's an interview with a reporter who was on scene
| throughout the entire first shooting.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Update: I take it back what I said. I found another video
| [2] that clears the picture. The guy wasn't running away
| from the shooter, he was chasing the shooter and throwing
| something at him. He then kept running after him and the
| shooter turns around and shoots him. The confusing part
| is that she shooter is shown coming from behind after the
| shooting happened. But it's because he goes around the
| car after the shooting and comes from the other side. I
| now believe all the shooting he did that night was self
| defense. He wasn't supposed to be there and play police
| but that's a different story.
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmji3EVxqLM
| gerbal wrote:
| It sounds a lot like you are deliberately seeking bias-
| confirming right wing propaganda!
| djsumdog wrote:
| I want the truth. That's something all US media is failing
| to give us right now.
| gerbal wrote:
| > 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?
| djsumdog wrote:
| > 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 right picture.
|
| We've never had a media that's more blatantly bias and
| unreliable than the one we have right now.
| gerbal wrote:
| 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?
| djsumdog wrote:
| I would highly recommend you watch the 2019 documentary
| Hoaxed. You're immediately going to dismiss it when you
| look it up because of the people in it; which goes to
| show how bad current media bias is.
|
| I don't think everything from the documentary should be
| taken at face value, but it's still incredibly valuable
| in learning how the narrative has been so insanely skewed
| today.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| ..by seeking the actual recordings?
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| The guy in this thread being downvoted clearly has a
| political bias but the part of his argument advocating for
| access to the raw original length video is reasonable.
|
| If youtube wants to disable comments, throw up warnings or
| blur out gore then fine but suppressing media from a highly
| politically charged situation is a mistake.
| kfthrowaway4321 wrote:
| Hit up the kiwi farms for archives of this kind of thing. Wash
| your hands (and maybe your eyes) after, though
| vmception wrote:
| does that mean Blind is next?
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Can they be side-loaded?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Of course, this is Android and open source apps. There are
| almost always apks to be found outside of Google's kingdom for
| open source projects.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| 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.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > 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.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| That's fine and reasonable on an individual level, but not
| only does it seem like a clear case of violation of duty to
| shareholders to make otherwise unsound biz decisions on the
| basis of "it's moral", it's also just not an accurate
| depiction of the business process.
|
| Google is a business, and at the level these decisions are
| made, the decision is made overwhelmingly through the lens of
| business. A more fitting phrase in the context of a business
| would more accurately be "never attribute to goodwill that
| which is adequately explained by sound business thinking".
| spaced-out wrote:
| >They think they're protecting the world from bad ideas,
| without noticing how they themselves promote other bad ideas.
|
| They, being Google executives, are only thinking of the
| company's bottom line when they make these decisions.
|
| Don't underestimate the impact of a few thousand (or more)
| Rose Twitter users spamming a companies marketing page. That
| company goes to Google and says _" make this stop, I don't
| care how"_, then Google execs decide who they want to piss
| off, which is generally the people paying them the least
| amount of money.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Indeed. The real story is federated applications undermine
| their search monopoly.
| icebraining wrote:
| Seems the opposite to me: most of the Fediverse is web
| accessible, where Google Search can crawl it. Google's
| nemesis are closed platforms _owned by other companies_ (like
| Facebook).
| dageshi wrote:
| I really doubt google cares about federated applications at
| all. I suspect they're just trying to avoid a potential
| future shitstorm where they're accused of facilitating
| something nasty because they "approved" apps to be on the
| play store.
| linuxftw wrote:
| No, as others have said, you'd have to apply the same
| reasoning to a web browser. Google dominates the web
| search, so there's no need to prevent other browsers
| because it all drives Google's revenue anyway. Any app that
| allows you to break out of the garden is banned.
| dageshi wrote:
| Viewed through the lens of "what will cause the most bad
| publicity" a browser is understood by 90% of the
| population. The "fediverse" isn't. It can be spun to
| cause damage in the way a browser cannot.
|
| Google don't care about the federated stuff because it's
| not big enough to bother them, in fact it probably
| siphons all the crap they'd rather not index off to a
| place they no longer have to worry about.
|
| They care about bad publicity and being seen to
| implicitly support "bad" things via their app store.
| linuxftw wrote:
| > Google don't care about the federated stuff because
| it's not big enough to bother them,
|
| It seems their using their position to ensure this
| remains true.
| [deleted]
| monoideism wrote:
| I'm not sure what the end-game here is for Google, or for Apple,
| both of whom have recently been pretty openly flexing their
| monopoly power. There seem to be too many of these changes to be
| a coincidence, although that's obviously a possibility.
|
| They seem rushed to establish some kind of precedent. Is there
| someone on Biden's team who is known to be a strong anti-
| monopolist, and this is in preparation for a administration
| change? I don't think Biden himself has ever had strong feelings
| here.
|
| Or maybe someone at the Trump admin has pretty much given them a
| green light?
|
| Rank speculation, all of what I wrote, but there seems to be a
| behavior pattern emerging recently among some of the most
| powerful tech companies.
| arendtio wrote:
| I think the problem is, that two things are getting mixed up.
|
| First, there are content providers like Facebook or Youtube.
| Those platforms store the content of their users and if the
| content can be publicized the content providers have to apply
| their rules.
|
| Second, there are software providers like the Play Store in its
| original function, Apples App Store or Amazons App Store. Those
| platforms should not care about content but just about software.
| If the software is malicious, ban it. But they should not ban
| software because if the content you can reach with it. That is
| the job if the distributing content providers.
|
| That said, I am not a particular friend of censoring content at
| all. I just accept, that some content providers have their own
| rules about which content they accept and which content they
| don't want to support.
| remram wrote:
| "Content provider" usually refers to people making that content
| (e.g. individual users of YouTube or Facebook). Maybe
| "platform" or "service provider" is more appropriate?
| humanistbot wrote:
| 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.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly. This is Google drawing the line on where this "hate
| speech" is from and they believe that such "content" can be
| accessed via the Fediverse.
|
| To see how ridiculous this sounds, Google might as well
| completely take down the entire social media and internet
| browsing category on the Play Store since I keep seeing the
| same content from both extremes on all these platforms.
|
| Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser
| since you can find this "content" with a simple search. They
| will soon realise that "drawing the line on hate speech" is
| more tougher than solving leetcode CS questions.
| rossjudson wrote:
| And yet the rest of the category is still there. This is a
| great opportunity to put on your thinking hat.
| [deleted]
| noworriesnate wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I don't think this is because
| Google cares about hate speech. Google is simply using hate
| speech as an excuse to get rid of apps that it doesn't like.
| Deciding which apps you like and which you don't isn't that
| hard of a line to draw.
| tsherr wrote:
| That's precisely what they are doing. They don't care about
| hate speech. If they did, they wouldn't have Trump ads on
| the YouTube banner.
|
| This is justification to get rid of apps they don't like.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Not allowing a parties political ads would be clear
| favoritism in a political situation. You might not like
| Trump, but it's quite the jump to say republican ads are
| "hate speech." .. in fact that's quite literally
| weaponizing the word "hate speech" to censor political
| opinions you don't like.
| VLM wrote:
| Which is the whole point of hate speech laws. Can't
| market censorship of one party, but who could ever oppose
| censoring hate... then redefine hate to be anything you'd
| like censored, and ... that's what we have now.
|
| Any time anyone complains about censorship, roll out the
| excuse of holocaust denial, regardless whats actually
| being censored.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yes it's why freedom of speech is a thing. Ideas are
| meant to compete and the power to decide which ideas are
| acceptable is an absolute power that completely corrupts
| a society.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| > it's quite the jump to say republican ads are "hate
| speech."
|
| It is not a jump when they have used Nazi symbols in
| their campaign ads, promoted antisemitic conspiracy
| theories in their campaign ads, made transparently racist
| statements about their opponents, etc. It is not that
| "hate speech" is being weaponized to censor political
| position (the Republican party is not even promoting a
| specific policy agency in this election cycle), but
| rather that the term "censorship" is being weaponized to
| legitimize the extremist ideologies of domestic terrorist
| groups (classified as such by the FBI).
|
| To put it another way, if one of your coworkers was
| carrying on about how wealthy Jews were conspiring to
| spread civil unrest as part of a broad plot to destroy
| the United States, you would call it "hate speech" and
| you would be right to report them to HR. Yet that is just
| one of the many extremist conspiracy theories the
| Republican party has promoted in _this_ election cycle,
| which follows the previous two cycles that featured
| similar antisemitism and other expressions of racism.
| Some Republican politicians have publicly stated that
| George Floyd was killed in order to start a race war in
| America, which only a few years ago is a statement that
| you would have only found on a website like "the daily
| stormer." The current Republican president has endorsed a
| candidate who said Muslims marry their siblings, and
| another candidate who said Muslims are a cancer on
| humanity and should be forbidden from holding office.
| None of that is "political opinion," it is extremist
| ideology that is on par with the kind of things that ISIS
| claimed about the Yazidis.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Trump just negotiated a peace deal between Israel and UAE
| and the tired old Nazi trope is still being paraded out.
|
| Trump's son in law is Jewish.
|
| Your ignorance is astounding, but not surprising given
| the level of propaganda that's out there today.
|
| Conservatives are regularly attacked, marginalized,
| deplatformed, intimidated, shot at, and baselessly called
| all sorts of things when they pretty much just stand for
| family, God, and loyalty to the country and ideals of
| individual freedom. There are over 100 million Americans
| that identify as conservative and you are spewing hate
| speech about them right now. You've flattened an
| extremely large diverse group of individuals into your
| caricature viewpoint. I recommend you apply some empathy
| and go and try to learn from them. Ask them why they
| think the way they do. It might surprise you.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Trump just negotiated a peace deal between Israel and
| UAE
|
| There are lots of Christians who favor Israel but
| ultimately hold anti-Jewish opinions. This is _weird_ ,
| yes, but support of Israel should not be mistaken for
| support of Jews (the reverse is also, but only
| incidentally) true.
|
| > Trump's son in law is Jewish.
|
| So were Emil Maurice and Erhard Milch, at least according
| to German law. Didn't stop Hitler and Goering from making
| exceptions for them.
|
| I have quite a few conservative friends. Most of them
| don't support Trump, because Trump _isn 't_ a
| conservative. He doesn't stand for God or individual
| freedom, nor does he stand for loyalty to the country.
| Don't conflate conservatives and Trump supporters.
| They're not the same thing, and trying to present a bait
| and switch between classical conservatism and Trumpism is
| a bad faith argument. This is why you see so many
| _conservative_ politicians that are no longer in office
| supporting Biden over Trump. Because Trump doesn 't
| extoll conservative values. Instead he represents a
| populist and proto-fascist wing with more than a couple
| white supremacist tendencies.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Google is politically very very left. I'm guessing that
| someone at Google may have browsed these apps, decided they
| didn't like what they saw, and pressured to have the apps
| banned. Obviously they can't do that to large players like
| Facebook, but small apps, they can easily crush, and
| nobody's going to do anything about it.
|
| Image if Google decided to just block certain websites on
| Chrome, or if big tech got domain registrars to drop 4chan,
| or whatever humor websites they don't find amusing.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| 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.
| VLM wrote:
| As the editor of the internet, are they not taking on full
| legal liability for anything they haven't blocked yet?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yeah but that can be changed with a simple act of
| Congress and it should be. Their support is rapidly
| eroding the more they flex their power.
| rootsudo wrote:
| You are absolutely right, and this is scary.
|
| Absolute fear.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Just wait until you tell them to take down their own
| browser
|
| Well, they're taking the address bar away, bit by bit; they
| have SafeSearch; and they have AMP. It's a very slow erosion,
| but there will come a point at which going outside of the
| list of officially acceptable sites will become more
| difficult - first with mandatory warnings, then maybe with
| mandatory reporting to law enforcement or whomever, and
| eventually not at all.
|
| Yes, it sounds like a "slippery slope" argument, but we're a
| few steps down the slope now, and any argument that
| encourages us to climb back up has to point out where things
| may go if we don't resist.
|
| It sucks that this requires us to defend the rights of people
| to speak whom we may intensely disagree with, but that's the
| crux of the matter. Either we become mature enough to
| understand that people will have discourse we dislike, and
| avoid it or engage with it as we see fit, or we continue to
| hide behind authority figures who will purport to keep us
| safe by controlling what we can say and think.
| intpete wrote:
| Hate speech is bad.
| m0zg wrote:
| Twitter is literally a platform for hate speech right now, and
| people have been killed because of it. Will they be taking down
| Twitter?
| nomdep wrote:
| I really hope they do.
| euske wrote:
| And they'd replace it with a special browser that limits to the
| amp-enabled sites only. This is so obvious.
| tus88 wrote:
| Why not just get rid of that troublesome feature called the
| internet?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| one of the problems we have in Tech (as an industry and on
| social media) is to allow individuals who make poor and bad
| decisions to hide behind the collective of a
| company/organization. And we continue applauding them for their
| great work they do in areas that are removed from the
| political. But these days innovation acts as a shield where we
| let the innovators get away and reap praise as individuals (the
| inventors of golang, the teams who standardized QUIC, the guys
| doing netflix propaganda about their simian-devops-army,
| facebooks React, Amazon's DSSTNE...) all of them have engineers
| who wear these things like a badge and are proud to give talks.
| Yet when they are responsible for projects that violate human
| rights, remove the Taiwanese flags from their app, or censor
| speech as in this case then we're never talking about people
| but it's always the opaqueness of the firm that hides these
| abuses.
|
| We need a list of these lizards so we know when to throw
| tomatoes and rotten eggs at them whenever they give a talk or
| share feel-good posts on LinkedIn.
|
| people should be ashamed instead of proud when they write
| "disclaimer I work at X"
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| 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?
| VLM wrote:
| The old days are gone.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Cool. So if the issue is hate speech I'll be waiting for Google
| to ban the FB app as well
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Goggle doesn't protect users, they oppress wrongthinkers.
| Moderation of facebook is delegated to facebook.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| You joke about that, but I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years
| (or maybe 1 year?) open browsers are banned and only "allowed"
| browsers are used that allow access to "allowed" websites and
| content.
| Hamuko wrote:
| You don't even have to go that far because you can just find
| plenty on Twitter.
| Legion wrote:
| > Firefox
|
| Don't give Google ideas.
| retpirato wrote:
| Don't forget twitter & facebook, but they won't because that's
| not really the reason.
| laksdjfkasljdf wrote:
| I got a bunch of hate mail via GMail.
|
| When can I expect gmail to be removed too?
| znpy wrote:
| Don't forget Twitter and Facebook. Twitter/Facebook basically
| created hate speech, by the way.
| RedComet wrote:
| That's coming soon enough.
| api wrote:
| Guess they should ban Chrome, since hate speech appears on the
| web. All these Fediverse things can be accessed via web apps
| and progressive web apps (PWAs) too.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There is a specific exception to web browsers, so Mastodon
| app(s) could probably classify as one by prominently displaying
| the web url of a post above the post.
| mkl wrote:
| Where do we find the rules about exceptions? Are group
| communication apps excepted as well?
|
| It's not obviously in the Restricted Content policy page:
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/topi...
|
| The rules there are extremely general, and technically cover
| all sorts of things which are currently let into the Store.
| danShumway wrote:
| :) I wonder how this fits into the Chromium team's insistence
| that URLs are user-unfriendly and that browsers ought to
| redesign them?
| anoncake wrote:
| Unless the rule these apps actually broke is that you
| aren't allowed to do things that go against Google's profit
| interests.
| avivo wrote:
| 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 communities_ which encourage _hatred and real-
| world violence_. Other implementations block these instances,
| and I believe are not banned.
|
| Whether or not this is a good thing is a complex question. If
| you happen to be the target of this hatred and violence, and
| feel it is an existential threat to your livelihood, you might
| believe that it _is_ a good thing to make it more difficult for
| those who are engaging in this behavior to enlarge their
| communities. On the other hand, if you believe eliminating
| communities by platform fiat is an existential threat to your
| livelihood, this may seem like a very bad thing.
|
| (You might also think it's hypocritical, since you can access
| most of these communities via a browser. Google also controls
| the browser, and does make it difficult already to access some
| sites https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 . However,
| it does seem to have a higher bar for browsers than for social
| apps (e.g. malware, csam, iirc); some have suggested that there
| are legal reasons for this, I'm curious to learn more on this,
| but I have not seen any substantiation yet.)
| djsumdog wrote:
| Free Speech Extremist. Shitposters Club. No Agenda Social.
| Lets all love Lain.
|
| There are ton of instances which much of the Fediverse
| blocks, but if you set up your own server and follow people
| on those instances, it's not 80% hate speech and racism as
| others would have you believe. Yes there is some of that, but
| there's also weebs, and anime and political discussion and
| weird gaming discussion and videos not posted anywhere else
| and memes and the great diversity of through we use to have
| on Reddit before it became a monoculture.
|
| There are also straight up anarchist instances that justify
| violence and destruction of the state like Rage Love,
| Anticapitalist Party, and others.
|
| It's a very big space, with new players entering and leaving
| every month.
|
| Banning apps because they do or don't have block lists
| greatly misunderstands how the Fediverse works.
| coldacid wrote:
| TYFYC.
| retpirato wrote:
| So Google somehow knows which apps block certain instances,
| which generally get reputation among other instances & are
| quickly blocked? That's not believable.
| avivo wrote:
| I currently think this may be exactly what is happening. If
| I'm wrong, I'd love to know about that!
| jfarina wrote:
| Why isn't that believable?
| retpirato wrote:
| How does Google know this unless they have some access to
| the databases of each of those sites/instances? Why would
| google have that kind of access?
| fuzxi wrote:
| Such apps tend to advertise that they block instances.
| Tusky, for example, blocks all Gab instances and says so
| right in the FAQ [1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/tuskyapp/faq bottom of the page
| saghm wrote:
| Couldn't this get done as part of the manual review of an
| app's source code? It seems like this wouldn't
| necessarily have to be automated
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| And right after that we can remove any FTP client that
| uses the FTP protocol to download content Google doesn't
| like. We should scan all apps that use a common,
| published protocol to make sure the protocol is not being
| used to consume objectionable content. /s
|
| The app is not the service; the protocol is not the
| platform.
| saghm wrote:
| I think you might have misread my comment; I wasn't
| suggesting whether a course of action was correct or not,
| but just explaining how it could technically be feasible.
| I interpreted the comment I responded to as not
| understanding how it would be possible for Google to have
| done this a certain way, and I was theorizing one
| possible way they might have done it.
| [deleted]
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| >but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to
| join specific communities which encourage hatred and real-
| world violence.
|
| As you state, one can access these specific communities in a
| number of ways, including Google Chrome. If the community is
| the issue, go after the community, not an ActivityPub app
| that can access content from these and other communities.
|
| Should Google also ban RSS reader apps that don't actively
| block RSS feeds from sites Google doesn't like?
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Oh, please don't suggest banning RSS apps - Apple is
| already doing that, they removed Pocket Casts and Castro
| because they allow access to Podcasts that offend Chinese
| censorship, while Apple's own podcast app remains because
| it blocks those particular podcasts:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/apple-
| rem...
| DamnableNook wrote:
| > Apple is already doing that, they removed Pocket Casts
| and Castro
|
| _In china_. That is an important note that you left out
| to make Apple seem worse.
| coldacid wrote:
| In other words, the developers of these apps need to all run
| their own Fediverse nodes, _but not federate them to any
| others_ because otherwise users may be able to access content
| from nodes that Google doesn't like! Because each dev having
| to vet every instance out there is the only other option and
| that's practically impossible.
| gowld wrote:
| Does Safe Browsing block sites that the user wants to visit?
| tasogare wrote:
| > If you happen to be the target of this hatred and violence,
| and feel it is an existential threat to your livelihood, you
| might believe that it is a good thing to make it more
| difficult for those who are engaging in this behavior to
| enlarge their communities.
|
| I'm indeed being threatened by various hate groups (one of
| them actually tried, and almost succeeded, to kill an
| acquaintance), but strangely enough they are never removed by
| Google or any other big corporations. Worst, each time I
| voice any slight complain about them, I am the one being
| censored. Some of those groups are even sometimes getting
| official support by the GAFAM. This is a really odd and
| unfair world.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| Which groups?
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Does that matter?
|
| If op is lying, he or she is lying.
|
| But are some groups ok to threaten? Are some people ok to
| threaten?
| prepend wrote:
| I think it matters because sadly I'm at the point where I
| need to evaluate the death threat for whether it is
| reasonable to fear from it.
|
| It's really unfortunate when someone fears for their life
| and I don't want that for anyone.
|
| However, lots of people fear for reasons that I don't
| think are actually from threats of violence.
|
| I had a friend explain how they literally feared for
| their life. When trying to console them I learned that
| the thing that was making them afraid was a friend's
| Facebook post about a restaurant that supported some
| Bible group. Their reasoning was that the Bible group was
| anti-gay, and they might end up killing them for being an
| ally of gay friends.
|
| Because of this they feared for their own life and wanted
| the friend to stop talking about it.
|
| Now of course, there are multiple lame things about Bible
| groups being jerks, but certainly nothing to make this
| person think their life was in danger or directly
| threatened.
|
| I'm not sure how to specifically help that person, but
| after several episodes like this, I don't pay much
| attention to them when they say that they get death
| threats.
|
| Maybe I'm just jaded but lots of people talk about death
| threats and I'm sure they perceive them as such. But
| having the details of the threat helps to differentiate
| the really dangerous people trying to kill others from
| the plentitudes of people saying "DIAF" who aren't trying
| to kill, just being jerks.
| [deleted]
| dependenttypes wrote:
| It does matter because I would like to avoid said groups.
| gowld wrote:
| Are you saying the banned apps promote banned sites, or
| merely don't block banned sites?
|
| There's a huge difference.
| rektide wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ehsankia wrote:
| 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.
| avivo wrote:
| 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.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Actual safe browsing comes from content-unaware tools
| like NoScript. And yes, I did spend half a hour going
| through about:config and neutering everything related to
| 'Safe' Browsing(R)TM(C)LLC.
| bubblicious wrote:
| It's a lose-lose scenario for content providers. Lose if
| you censor (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19274406),
| lose if you don't (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments
| /artkmz/youtube_is_f...)
| skissane wrote:
| > Google also controls the browser, and does make it
| difficult already to access some sites
| https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4
|
| Safe browsing doesn't include sites for encouraging hatred
| and violence, etc. Only malware, social engineering, and
| "harmful"/"unwanted" applications. If they start including
| those sort of sites in their safe browsing lists, that would
| make your point here more relevant.
|
| (Of course, some people get hit by safebrowsing unfairly. But
| I think in most cases, it is because someone compromised
| their site and used it for a malicious purpose, and then they
| struggle to get Google to remove it within a timeframe which
| is reasonable.)
| asddubs wrote:
| i think the reason would be that with browsers they don't
| control the ecosystem enough to get away with it. I actually
| agree with the ban if your framing is correct (not having
| looked into it any further), but if they did this in chrome,
| people would just use another browser to access these sites.
| you can sideload apps as well of course, but it's much more
| of a hassle than doing it on PC, where people are used to
| software distribution not being as centralized
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| When the cathedral supports real-world violence it's good.
| When you support real-world violence it's bad. They want you
| dead, but will settle for your submission.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Bingo.
| feanaro wrote:
| It's a bit silly to emphasize _specific_ communities if this
| results in a ban of the _entire_ app or network. ~all apps
| and networks have _some_ communities like that. I don 't
| think this is a complex question at all, this is just bad.
| rvnx wrote:
| The same with Discord or Slack that could be removed, or
| Facebook
| dkersten wrote:
| Following that logic, they should also remove Google search.
| Stubb wrote:
| I prefer the term "hated speech" since it's in the eye of the
| beholder.
| ulucs wrote:
| Not even web browsers, Twitter should go first
| throwaway082920 wrote:
| It's pretty rich that Google claims to be removing these apps
| for hate speech when their own search engine returns results
| from sites like Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica on their
| victims so prominently.
|
| (throwaway since the former name searches themselves to find
| new targets.)
| mfer wrote:
| Or, might Chrome start censoring...
|
| If this is the Google policy they may want to bake that policy
| into the way Chrome operates.
| coldacid wrote:
| What do you think AMP is a prelude to?
| matsemann wrote:
| Haven't podcasts apps recently been removed as well? Something
| about it being possible to listen to stuff about covid on them.
|
| Edit, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427
|
| And well, they should probably remove the apps of Twitter,
| Facebook, Reddit, etc as it's plenty of hate speech there too.
| newacct583 wrote:
| They didn't remove Podcast Addict, it's right here: https://p
| lay.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...
|
| That was a mistake, presumably. It's likely this is too. The
| deep desire on the part of posters here to assume malice and
| scream CENSORSHIP is really off-putting.
|
| I actually don't know anything about fediverse, but if it's
| like other pseudoanonymous obscure communications media it's
| probably filled with awful stuff. It's not that hard to
| imagine a naive reviewer who doesn't understand the
| architecture to be confused if they get a report showing
| screenshots of the app with the content available in it.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| The only reason Podcast Addict has been restored (multiple
| times) is that it's high-profile, and the owner raised
| enough stink to cause widespread (enough) outrage about
| this. Otherwise, whether through malice or incompetence, it
| would be gone forever.
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| >The only reason Podcast Addict has been restored
| (multiple times) is that it's high-profile, and the owner
| raised enough stink to cause widespread (enough) outrage
| about this. Otherwise, whether through malice or
| incompetence, it would be gone forever.
|
| This is my concern. These apps are not content hosts,
| they are akin to Web browsers or RSS readers, but they
| are small, one-person endeavours that don't have the
| clout to get Google to notice the difference between the
| content providers (the individual Mastodon servers) and
| the ActivityPub client app that these apps represent.
|
| I know one of the devs is thinking to not push the issue
| as he's worried about his other apps on the same
| developer account.
|
| The discussion has veered off into censorship issues, but
| this is a simple 230-ish problem, these apps are not the
| Mastodon servers that (presumably) some people have had
| issues with. They are agnostic client readers of the
| ActivityPub statuses.
|
| There is no way, nor any legal requirement, for a browser
| like these apps to be held responsible for the million
| possible bits of content it could consume.
|
| The app is not the service.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Honestly it's somewhat telling that Automation for app
| review can get messy fast and that Google should invest in
| Apple's approach to app review (but I also agree that the
| poster is extrapolating the app denial into something much
| more than what it is)
| matsemann wrote:
| It's not a desire to scream about sensorship. It's more
| about how the rules are arbitrarily enforced. And how every
| app's fate is in the hand of two big players, so you're sol
| if they ban you. Even if the ban is a mistake, good luck
| getting it reversed unless you're going viral.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The fediverse is very split, you have some servers that are
| run by people who post straight up Nazi symbolism on their
| admin accounts, and you have some servers that have admins
| who will happily participate in piling on someone for
| appearing Insufficiently Woke. I block both kinds on my
| server because I just want a nice quiet place to talk with
| my friends, and that's a definite segment of the Fediverse
| too.
| Fellshard wrote:
| This much is key to observe: this isn't a partisan
| maneuver by Google, as much as people may want to slot it
| into that. It smells much more like a control maneuver: a
| perceived competitor.
| egypturnash wrote:
| A competitor to what? G+?
| coldacid wrote:
| To the big tech cartel, period. Don't think for one
| second that Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft,
| Adobe, and their friends aren't having one big handshake
| party over this kind of crap.
| neiman wrote:
| I'm surprised they take it down. Why would they do that? Is the
| fediverse a threat to Google? It's a super niche thing for the a
| small minority of people who are not Google target users anyway.
| thu2111 wrote:
| Because they don't consider people who disagree with their
| political views legitimate, and wish to wipe them out via any
| means possible. The fact that the fediverse is small is neither
| here nor there: indeed, starting by picking off smaller players
| is a good way to establish a precedent and desensitise
| employees, so the next round of shutting down bigger players
| doesn't seem so bad. Boiling the frog, right in front of us.
|
| As for why they do it, this essay may prove enlightening:
|
| https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/
| de6u99er wrote:
| It needs to be regulated first by law makers to prevent companies
| applying arbitrary rules and discriminate clients based on
| subjective/someone's personal preferences.
|
| Countries like Austria and Germany have a law called
| Wiederbetatigungsgesetz which prevents public display of
| neonationalistic symbolism or speech. I think such a law would be
| a great starting point for a new law preventing hate speech and
| discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual
| orientation.
|
| We can see a shift to the alt-right in the USA at the moment,
| where reasonable people and certain ideas like universal
| healthcare are being labeled as extreme left.
| jjcon wrote:
| I find it hilarious how people here are so proud that Germany
| is not nationalistic... one might even say their pride borders
| on... nationalism.
| moduspol wrote:
| We've survived 244 years as a country without government
| bureaucrats regulating what is and isn't "hate speech." I don't
| think we need it now.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You'd need to repeal the First Admendment to do that.
| leotaku wrote:
| As an Austrian, while I have absolutely no sympathy for our
| local Neo-Nazi groups and far-right Parties, I would personally
| see the Widerbetatigungsgesetz to be repealed as soon as
| possible. While it might be true that most people who have been
| affected by this law were actually far-right bigots, it is
| still scary to me that my government is able and willing to
| prosecute based on opinion and speech.
|
| Maybe a tolerable law could be modelled using some concept of
| truth (eg. I think the Nazis were great vs. The Holocaust did
| not happen), but I am unsure how that could reasonably be
| applied when talking about contemporary affairs.
| motohagiography wrote:
| This will suffer from a backfire effect where the result is you
| just get more technically savvy radicals. Google's decision here
| exacerbates polarization. However, I actually welcome it because
| I would totally join a fediverse with a higher bar to entry, and
| where ideas had a longer period and participants were committed
| to building alternatives. It's the real punk. Everyone else can
| entertain and outrage themselves to death on public platforms
| where they compete for the reflected approval of a hive mind.
|
| I realize the sort of people who make decisions like this think
| they are doing this to "win," as the only thing on anyone's mind
| right now is influencing November, and making sure it "never
| happens again," but Googlers and tech people like this are
| creating a self-isolating minority of themselves.
|
| Exiting what has become the Karen-net is probably one of the most
| interesting problems to solve right now.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I frequently visits 1 Chinese dota2 esports site. That's a small
| & independent site with 10+ years history. A vibrant community
| with mostly young gamers on dota2.
|
| Naturally, a lot of these visitors often engage in dynamic
| discussions on international relationships and domestic issues.
| Nothing too sensitive from my perspective. And most of the time,
| people contribute personal experiences that are quite valuable.
|
| The site is frequently shutdown for a few weeks, probably once
| every 2-3 months. And sometimes it can be a long one, as long as
| a few months.
|
| The reason is of cuz the site is engaged in "appropriate
| discussion".
|
| I want this to be a cautionary tale that, despite different
| motivation, the end results of these powerful entity, exert
| influence that is almost identify in behaviors.
|
| The good thing is that there is a process in US to correct the
| behaviors. While as there is none in China. And we have to stand
| up to protect the freedom.
| [deleted]
| pkilgore wrote:
| Just the free markets at work nothing to see here!
|
| Its not like we have a MONOPOLY problem in tech!
|
| The markets will just sort it out.
| KirinDave wrote:
| I guess Tusky's decision to ban a blocklist a bunch of instances
| citing that policy is looking pretty prescient, now.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> Holy crap, google is apparently taking down all /most
| fediverse apps from google play on the grounds that that some
| servers in the fediverse engage in hate speech._
|
| Good thing you can't find any hate speech on Play Store-promoted
| corporate behemoths Twitter and Facebook!
| thelean12 wrote:
| This is a bad faith argument. Twitter and Facebook do a lot to
| take down hate speech from their platforms (with exceptions
| made for "public interest" cases like high level politicians).
|
| Some servers on the fediverse specifically allow unfettered
| hate speech.
| kaibee wrote:
| So google is taking down Discord and anything that provides
| an IRC like experience too then?
| [deleted]
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No, it's bad faith to pretend that some random Fediverse
| server that allows unfettered hate speech has the same
| societal impact as the mountains of misinformation and
| bigotry that flourish on Twitter and Facebook, despite their
| half-hearted efforts to look like they're fighting it.
|
| Just look at the scale at which Facebook enables the
| distribution of right-wing propaganda:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/technology/what-if-
| facebo...
| thelean12 wrote:
| Have any of the Fediverse apps that were banned from the
| app store done _anything_ to prevent the issues that you
| say Facebook and Twitter have? I 'll take the simple
| banning of a harmful server on their app as a way to change
| my mind on this issue.
| djeiasbsbo wrote:
| They have done exactly that multiple times. For example,
| the app Tusky has a hardcoded list of hate-speech
| instances for which the login is blocked, to just give
| you one example.
|
| Other than that, the instances themselves simply choose
| not to federate with questionable instances. This happens
| in an almost organic way where if an instance refuses to
| block federation with another questionable instance,
| other instances will then also refuse to federate with
| that instance.
|
| The result is a network where hate-speech and undesirable
| content has been almost organically filtered out.
|
| But keep in mind that the (client) apps themselves are
| more like web browsers. Anyone can host their own website
| and access its content through one of these apps. This
| also means that instances which are blocked by an app can
| very easily circumvent that as well.
|
| (Sorry for my bad english and repeatedly using the word
| "instances")
| thelean12 wrote:
| I asked about the apps that were banned from the play
| store. Tusky is still available on play store. Maybe
| their hardcoded list of hate-speech instances were enough
| for Google to keep them on the play store?
| nikitaga wrote:
| I personally don't know, but neither have Chrome or
| Firefox done anything to block hate speech websites, and
| they're allowed to exist just fine.
|
| Twitter actually hosts the trashpile, they're more
| responsible for it than some app that just lets you
| access trashpiles on third party servers.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No idea. Look it up if that would sway you.
|
| I'm not defending these hypothetical Fediverse apps that
| don't moderate. I'm saying that compared to Fediverse
| apps exposing a few thousand people to hate speech,
| Facebook and Twitter _actively promoting_ bigotry,
| propaganda and conspiracy theories to _tens or hundreds
| of millions of people_ is far more harmful -- even if
| they make a nominal effort to prevent it from happening.
|
| And, more to the point, I'm alleging that the reason
| Google is taking down the Fediverse apps and not Facebook
| or Twitter has nothing to do with their moderation
| policies, and everything to do with money.
| Vinnl wrote:
| But the authors of these apps have no influence over what
| servers you connect with. It doesn't feel much different from
| visiting a hate speech website using your web browser, and
| they (luckily) do not get banned either.
| claydavisss wrote:
| This is how the status quo is maintained.
|
| But please no outrage, most tech folks have demanded "hate
| speech" crackdowns for some time.
| bookmarkable wrote:
| Apple: In the headlines daily, called abusive monopoly.
|
| Google: Hold my beer.
| JeffreyFreeman wrote:
| OP here, let me know if anyone has any questions I can help with,
| I'm the one who made the post this is linking to.
| cft wrote:
| This is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites
| in Chrome.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Chrome already blocks websites.
| cft wrote:
| For hate speech? I thought only for malware so far.
| IncRnd wrote:
| For the most part, yes I believe the blocking is for
| malware sites. The current list I am aware: malware sites,
| deceptive sites, suspicious sites, sites with possible
| harmful programs, sites that load scripts from
| unauthenticated sources, sites that chrome believes were
| typed incorrectly.
|
| I didn't intend to imply that chrome currently,
| intentionally blocks sites on other criteria. However, the
| framework is already there.
|
| History shows that the ego of people always takes over if
| left unchecked. When it is possible to restrict something,
| that will eventually get restricted. This is especially
| true when discussing large companies, such as Google.
|
| I was agreeing with you and not correcting you :-)
| thesizeofa wrote:
| Sadly not yet but blocking sites for hate speech cant come
| soon enough.
| wow_yes wrote:
| We must - otherwise the continued takeover of America by White
| Supremacists like Trump and Ted Cruz will be the end.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| They should ban Gmail too, what if some asshole sends me a death
| threat via email?
|
| Wait, Gmail is made ,,by us" and not ,,by pesky them". Gmail is
| sure ok.
| frollo wrote:
| That's why they read your email, to protect you!
| sp332 wrote:
| Gmail does ban users for content though.
| 0xUser wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse " The Fediverse (a
| portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is the ensemble of
| federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web
| publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or
| websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently
| hosted, can communicate with each other. On different servers
| (instances), users can create so-called identities. These
| identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the
| instances because the software running on the servers supports
| one or more communication protocols which follow an open
| standard. As an identity on the fediverse, users are able to post
| text and other media, or to follow posts by other identities. In
| some cases, users can even show or share data (video, audio,
| text, and other files) publicly or to a selected group of
| identities and allow other identities to edit other users' data
| (such as a calendar or an address book)." (wiki)
| nottorp wrote:
| Well said. It's always funny when some acronym no one's heard
| of shows up unexplained on HN.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Fediverse isn't an acronym, nor is it a term "no one's heard
| of". You haven't heard it before, and it's great to explain
| it, but don't project that either.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Two things:
|
| First, don't assume that just because you've never heard a
| word, that means _no one_ has heard of it. There are quite a
| lot of us who know what the fediverse is.
|
| Second, and this is a little pedantic, fediverse is a
| portmanteau, not an acronym.
| system2 wrote:
| Well, I've been here for over 3 years and never even seen
| fidiverse once in the news feed. Nor did use or needed.
| bovermyer wrote:
| And that's totally fine and a legitimate experience. Just
| be open to the idea that that is _your_ experience, and
| not also the world 's.
| FascistsAreLame wrote:
| I feel you're being overly literal to the point where I'm
| not entire sure you understand English as well as you
| think. Hyperbole is an acceptable literary device. To say
| "No one has heard of this band" is colloquial to English,
| but obviously other people have heard of the band, the
| hyperbole is used to emphasize how few people have heard,
| not that no people have. To correct someone here isn't
| correct, it's suggests a sheltered existence.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| IMO It would be worse to editorialise the submission title
| derision wrote:
| I've seen fediverse numerous times on HN
| MindTwister wrote:
| Thank you, I had no idea what the subject was from the headline
| brownbat wrote:
| I feel like there's a whole series of articles that could be
| filed under "Tech industry decides aol really had the right model
| after all."
| tiny_epoch wrote:
| At what point do we put these devices down? At what point are
| they causing more harm than good?
|
| Is humanity capable of looking away from the screens its created?
| rchaud wrote:
| Taking it outside of the walled garden should always be Step 1
| for apps like this. PWAs exist, and most users these days have
| seen the "Add to Home Screen" prompt on websites. There is no
| reason for this to be a native app.
|
| > This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google
| Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all.
|
| I disagree. Users dependent on installing apps are the least
| likely to use fediverse apps to begin with. I use F-Droid or
| download APKs from XDA, but I have no idea how I would even get
| started with Mastodon or these other decentralized apps. I
| frequently hear the term "start an instance of ___".
|
| What does that mean? Can't I just create an account? When I hear
| "start an instance", I think of launching a Linux droplet on
| Digital Ocean and setting up an app there. I can't imagine what
| an average user that wants a Twitter alternative would think.
| seaish wrote:
| You can of course run your own instance, but yes, you can also
| just make an account. You need to decide which instance you're
| going to make it on, but after that it's 100% the same as any
| other website.
| transfire wrote:
| Please outlaw paper. People have written many terrible things on
| it.
| john_moscow wrote:
| For anyone else concerned with the recent Big Tech censorship,
| people are actively building alternative social medial platforms
| and they are taking off. The RedditAlternatives subreddit [0]
| provides a fairly good overview of them. Some are rather extreme,
| others are more reasonable, but there are alternatives, and it's
| up to us, the reasonable people, to choose where we want to spend
| our time and money.
|
| [0]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...
| cft wrote:
| Wait till they start blocking those Reddit alternatives in
| Chrome.
| Icathian wrote:
| Honestly such a brazen step might be good in the long run.
| People are all to happy to be boiled frogs, and an overreach
| like that might jolt some off their ecosystem.
| moneywoes wrote:
| All of those alternatives seem full of hate speech though
| quotemstr wrote:
| So? Any platform free of censorship is going to have some
| speech you dislike.
| drdeca wrote:
| There's a difference between "has some of it" and "is full
| of it".
|
| As SSC says, even if witch hunts are genuinely bad, if you
| found a town with the founding principle of having no witch
| hunts, you will end up with a town with 5 genuine civil
| libertarians, and 100 witches.
|
| I think an interesting strategy would be to found a site
| with an initially high level of censorship, but a public
| commitment to reduce the amount/degree of censorship on the
| site over time with a particular timetable.
| quotemstr wrote:
| No, there's no difference between "has some of it" and
| "is full of it". Where could the line possibly be drawn
| between those two? Why should _your_ values in particular
| control _other people 's_ speech? If you don't want to
| participate on a discussion because it's full of
| something you dislike, that's your call. But big tech
| companies have no business shutting down other people's
| legal conversations.
| drdeca wrote:
| Quantitative differences are still differences. 1% is
| different from 1.01% and from 80% .
|
| My preferences determine what communities I prefer to be
| a part of.
|
| I prefer to not be part of a community where the majority
| says super racist garbage.
|
| As such, I choose not to join such a community/website.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| I think you guys agree. You are free to not participate.
| The point of contention is: are you free to deny others
| ability to participate if they want? (if you had that
| ability)
|
| That's where idea of public platforms as infrastructure
| (and actual infrastructure like DNS and carriers) if
| coming from.
|
| This reminds me of people wanting to ban or filter
| torrent protocol itself, instead of illegal content on
| it.
| mike00632 wrote:
| I think you just described TikTok. There is an extreme
| level of censorship due to how many children use the app.
| They've achieved a level of family-friendlyness that
| YouTube is trying very hard to get. Regarding politics,
| TikTok has often said that they just aren't a place for
| politics, and now they are being pressured to let up on
| political censorship because of issues about China and
| the coming US presidential election.
| drdeca wrote:
| Huh.
|
| I was imagining an organization which from the outset
| planned to be very permissive in what they eventually
| allowed, with initial restrictions just being in order to
| cultivate a desirable community to start with, but now
| that you mention it, perhaps the motivation behind the
| policies don't matter so much as the policies themselves.
| Good point.
|
| That being said, I don't imagine that TikTok will become
| quite as permissive in the end as I was imagining?
| luckylion wrote:
| Unless there's a limitless supply of witches somewhere,
| the more witch-hunt-free towns there are, the more the
| witches will be distributed among those towns, because
| witches aren't a homogeneous group either.
|
| So in theory, voat & co should either shrink or get less
| radical the more reddit-alternatives there are. That is,
| unless reddit is turning normal people into witches that
| will then populate the new alternative platforms.
| drdeca wrote:
| This is an interesting point! However, I also note that
| there is a limited number of "genuine civil libertarians"
| (or, of people in general I guess), so I am not sure that
| having more of these would necessarily improve the ratios
| between the two within any particular town/site ?
|
| Also if people are spread sufficiently thin, some of the
| sites will die from "no one is using this", I think.
|
| I don't know how this all balances out, but what you
| brought up does seem like an important force/mechanism to
| take into account. So, I'll say "Further work is needed
| in order to understand the behavior in this area.", haha.
| luckylion wrote:
| I'd guess that the need for genuine civil libertarians
| would go down with the witch density. The super majority
| of people is probably fine with seeing one witch per day,
| but they really don't want to live anywhere where they
| feel surrounded by witches.
|
| The dynamics involved in city districts rising and
| falling and rising again might be similar. Online
| communities lack the rent-dynamic however. A "difficult"
| part of town gets more attractive because the rent is
| much cheaper. I don't know whether there's anything
| equivalent in online communities that would "gentrify" a
| toxic community.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| What do you think a normal person thinks when he sees a
| witch being burned?
| krapp wrote:
| Historically speaking, "Good riddance."
| luckylion wrote:
| Normal as in "average" or normal as in some kind of
| healthy & moral?
|
| The average person puts their pitch fork back down and
| enjoys the bonding experience that a successful hunt
| brings to the community. The out-group isn't just
| persecuted because they are different, the whole process
| also helps confirm the unity of the in-group.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Well, because I don't want to join communities where hate
| speech is common, much less the prevailing type of content.
| I don't think that speech should be outlawed, but that
| doesn't mean I want to be where it is. So if reddit helps
| remove hate speech and it funnels to these alternatives,
| that only makes reddit _more_ attractive to me.
|
| Plainly: I want reddit to censor hate speech on their site,
| but I don't want hosting companies to disallow those
| alernative sites to exist, nor do I want Chrome to disallow
| any user to visit any of those alternatives in their
| browser.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Ok. But when you start denying basic infrastructure to
| those with viewpoints you dislike --- domain names, DDOS
| protection, app store distribution --- you're no longer
| trying to just maintain some particular community's
| culture, but instead eradicate certain speech from public
| life.
|
| It should be illegal to deny fundamental infrastructure
| to someone on the basis of his philosophy or point of
| view. That's what a free society means.
| cortesoft wrote:
| They are welcome to buy their own servers or even rent
| them. We don't have to subsidize their free use of
| internet resources.
| core-questions wrote:
| You say that, but it's a well trodden argument.
|
| > We don't have to subsidize their free use of internet
| resources.
|
| We subsidize the FAANG's use of internet resources; the
| Internet was largely originally created with public money
| (military, academia, etc).
|
| > They are welcome to buy their own servers or even rent
| them.
|
| Are they? What if they get banned from there? What if
| they can't collect money from their community, because
| all the donation sites ban them? What if their donation
| sites are killed because all the payment processors drop
| them?
|
| Your argument leads to the logical end of "they're
| welcome to make their own internet".
|
| What happens when something you like to discuss falls
| into the category of hate speech? You think it couldn't
| happen, but plenty of topics that were totally reasonable
| subjects of discussion, plenty of totally reasonable
| publicly-held opinions from 20 years ago are now in this
| basket. It's totally plausible to imagine some newer
| topic you feel strongly about eventually becoming so, and
| you ending up on the side of wanting to have honest
| discussion about it and being locked out.
|
| Can't imagine it happening to you? Well, maybe you don't
| like pedophilia, or the huge push of incest porn that
| seems to be everywhere. Maybe you have legitimate, non-
| racially-oriented concerns about the riots around the
| country? Maybe you're worried about some particular
| changes coming to your children's education, or you're
| worried about the impact of ideas like UBI? Well, your
| opinions that are acceptable to post in polite places
| today might not be in 2030.
|
| The only way anyone should be okay with this continual
| incursion into free speech is if they have truly tied
| themselves to the idea of being 100% on board with
| whatever restriction is coming down the pipe next. Such a
| person has no principles, and it's hard to imagine
| defending them.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > Are they? What if they get banned from there? What if
| they can't collect money from their community, because
| all the donation sites ban them? What if their donation
| sites are killed because all the payment processors drop
| them? Your argument leads to the logical end of "they're
| welcome to make their own internet".
|
| This is slippery-slope nonsense, just where this
| conversation always ends up. You can "what if..." you're
| way to us banning these individuals from driving cars if
| you want, but it's not what's being discussed.
|
| I am very, very, very in favor of reddit disallowing hate
| speech on their community as that is an _active_ behavior
| on the site itself for a community they own. I am very,
| very, very against any organization barring access to
| things like domain name registration, hosting, etc. on
| the basis of their expressed ideas up to the point of
| them directly enabling clearly criminal behavior (e.g.,
| directly organizing violent attacks, sharing revenge
| porn, etc.).
|
| Private citizens kicking someone out of a restaurant for
| being rude is not the same thing as government actors
| barring them from ever owning a restaurant, or going
| somewhere else where their rudeness is welcome.
|
| > The only way anyone should be okay with this continual
| incursion into free speech is if they have truly tied
| themselves to the idea of being 100% on board with
| whatever restriction is coming down the pipe next. Such a
| person has no principles, and it's hard to imagine
| defending them.
|
| This is a false dichotomy built on the aforementioned
| slippery slope fallacy.
| rbecker wrote:
| And they're welcome to build their own anti-DDOS
| infrastructure.
|
| And their own app stores.
|
| And their own apps.
|
| And their own domain name registrars.
|
| And their own payment processors.
| pferde wrote:
| Isn't that exactly what these federated platforms (and
| the apps to access them) are doing?
| ziddoap wrote:
| You're arguing a point that the parent poster never made.
|
| The parent poster simply said that they want to join
| communities free of (or, mostly free of) hate speech and
| that being free/mostly free of hate speech is an
| attractive quality for them.
|
| Not once did they advocate for denying infrastructure or
| any of the other things your entire comment is based on.
| In fact, they stated the opposite.
| icebraining wrote:
| But is Reddit a community, or is it infrastructure to
| create communities (which would be the subreddits)?
| [deleted]
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Engage in whatever wordplay you want: reddit is a website
| built on community content and interaction. That there
| are user-created communities within the larger community
| does not turn it into some sort of "infrastructure" of
| internet expression. The infrastructure to build one's
| own site, and communities that go with it, are and should
| continue to be made available to all regardless of
| viewpoint. Given Voat's existence and the fact that
| people do use it, I do not see a problem.
| gadders wrote:
| You can also get banned from payment processors and Uber
| as well.
| krapp wrote:
| There are few if any platforms on the open web free of
| censorship, they just draw their line in the sand in a
| different arbitrary place than others.
|
| Banning illegal content, spam, harassment, etc (which even
| the most hardcore "censorship free" platforms do) are also
| forms of censorship.
| quotemstr wrote:
| The danger here is _viewpoint based discrimination_. It
| should be illegal for a big platform to shut down certain
| points of view when these points of view are legal and
| expressed in a normal manner. You can shut down spam
| without harming the principle of free expression because
| you can express any idea in a way that isn 't spam.
|
| The law gives you a legitimate and stable line that you
| can draw between allowed and disallowed speech. It's fine
| for a platform to censor what's illegal, because in a
| sense, we all agree on the law and have a say in its
| content. But we have no say in big tech content policy,
| and that's what makes it illegitimate.
|
| My basic point is that it's infuriating and wrong for big
| tech to impose its _values_ on the public. A public space
| that 's privately owned is still a public space. A free
| society is one where you don't get barred from public
| spaces because of your opinions.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Why should e.g. hate speech be allowed but not spam? Spam
| is perfectly legal.
|
| You're not actually against lines being drawn through
| legal speech -- you just don't like where they fall.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Spam is perfectly legal
|
| That's a somewhat bold claim. At minimum, CAN-SPAM makes
| the worst of it illegal.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| CAN-SPAM only covers email [1]:
|
| _> [An Act] To regulate interstate commerce by imposing
| limitations and penalties on the trans-mission of
| unsolicited commercial electronic mail via the Internet._
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cas
| es/2007...
| [deleted]
| thu2111 wrote:
| Spam is made illegal in America via the CAN-SPAM act.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| CAN-SPAM only covers email; see sibling comment.
| krapp wrote:
| > It should be illegal for a big platform to shut down
| certain points of view when these points of view are
| legal and expressed in a normal manner.
|
| Platforms aren't public venues, they're private
| businesses offering access to a service under terms that
| serve their interests and business needs first and
| foremost... terms that _everyone agreed to_ before being
| able to use the platform.
|
| >The law gives you a legitimate and stable line that you
| can draw between allowed and disallowed speech. It's fine
| for a platform to censor what's illegal, because in a
| sense, we all agree on the law and have a say in its
| content. But we have no say in big tech content policy,
| and that's what makes it illegitimate.
|
| The law also allows for private ownership of businesses,
| contracts and freedom of association. The law says
| Google's platform is Google's property and Google can do
| whatever it darn well likes with it.
|
| >You can shut down spam without harming the principle of
| free expression because you can express any idea in a way
| that isn't spam.
|
| Who gets to define what spam is? Free expression isn't
| free if someone has the ability to define any arbitrary
| speech they don't like as "spam" and censor it. All of
| the slippery slope arguments applied to censorship of any
| other form of speech also apply to spam.
| Mxs2000 wrote:
| Given that they are not operating as neutral public
| venues then they should also not be afforded protection
| under Section 230. If they actively moderate they should
| be fully liable.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The very point of section 230 was to protect companies
| _even if they did moderate_. What you are suggesting is
| that section 230 should be repealed, and let the courts
| sort it all out.
| krapp wrote:
| IANAL but I've seen enough controversy around this to
| mention that not everyone agrees with that interpretation
| of 230 or its ramifications.
| mikecoles wrote:
| It's a shame they don't bake cakes.
| noxer wrote:
| You never head of Freenet? There is no such thing as
| censorship there.
| mike00632 wrote:
| I'm sure they would censor messages used as a denial of
| service attack.
| noxer wrote:
| Its not possible to do that. Nodes cant know whats in a
| chunk of data that comes by and from whom it comes. But
| freenet is to host website like sites called freesites.
| You cant really spam anyone with sites you can create as
| many as you want but if no one visits them they will
| eventually just "fall out" of the de central storage.
|
| Technically you could probably bring it down if you
| simulate a massive amount of users who only access spam
| sites but that would probably become rather expensive
| because you would attack your own nodes and your own
| nodes would try to help the network. It would also need
| to persist forever else everything would simply go back
| to normal shortly after the attack is stooped.
| MyNameIsMyName wrote:
| Censorship not related to government always strikes me as
| just complaining. Private entities, whether they be
| individuals or businesses should be free to determine what
| is an acceptable uses of their services, and what is not.
|
| Do you allow any form of speech in your house or is your
| house a platform that censors speech?
| michaelt wrote:
| I think this specific case is a bit different, as Google
| sold the house (i.e. phone) to me, yet they want to
| retain control as if they were the owner.
| icebraining wrote:
| The Play Store is not really part of the phone. The phone
| just has a client that connects to it.
|
| If they deleted the apps already installed on your phone,
| then I'd agree.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think comparisons between trillion dollar companies,
| counties, and houses make for weak arguments.
|
| Counties can imprison or kill you for speaking
| incorrectly.
|
| Companies? Only have the power to cause me trouble when
| they are oligopolies, e.g. big tech right now. It can be
| quite severe trouble, even if it isn't literal
| imprisonment.
|
| A house? I am aware that poverty (and being a minor)
| forces some people to live with abusive persons who can
| give them a choice of silence or homelessness. That kind
| of evil doesn't scale up to affect everyone (perhaps if
| it did we might try harder to fix it?)
| anoncake wrote:
| A home is not a platform at all, let alone a public one
| open to everyone, anonymously and without needing an
| invitation. It's a personal and intimate place.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Most service platforms are not public, either, requiring,
| at minimum, a way to identify the content creator, even
| if only to the admins. While consuming the content may be
| anonymous, production is not. The platform itself is only
| acting as a publisher. In this specific instance, Google
| is n the wrong.
|
| 4chan, being the obvious exception, since content can be
| created anonymously.
| anoncake wrote:
| Irrelevant nitpicking. So it's pseudonymous, there is no
| practical difference.
| john_moscow wrote:
| We live in a time of extreme devaluation of terms. The
| Democratic Republic of Congo is a hardcore dictatorship. The
| People's Republic of China is run by a close circle of
| elites. Likewise, "Hate Speech" is used far too often to shut
| down fairly reasonable criticism against the "equal outcome,
| not equal opportunity" policies bundled together with
| original sin and Orwellian struggle sessions.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Places like voat _consistently_ have holocaust denial and
| calls to actually murder jewish and black people at the
| very tippy top. There are few places that can be more
| accurately called "filled with hate speech" than voat.
| john_moscow wrote:
| In my _personal_ opinion, Voat is completely bonkers. So
| I _personally_ don 't go there and consider the problem
| solved.
|
| Other places on the list are much more reasonable.
| offa wrote:
| OK, but to be fair, it's hard to suggest a meaningful
| alternative to "hate speech" to describe the conversations
| happening on Voat and other such platforms.
| angio wrote:
| lemmy.ml does moderate content and does not allow hate
| speech. Once federation is implemented they said they will
| ban "free speech" instances.
| kixiQu wrote:
| to be clear, I believe they will be defederating from
| instances that push over content against the flagship
| instance's ToS; those instances will still be able to run
| Lemmy software.
| naravara wrote:
| I think that's a natural selection bias. Most people are
| either fine with reddit and therefore don't care about
| finding alternatives, or they aren't interested in what
| Reddit has to offer, in which case they ignore it. Even if
| they'd be open to an alternative that's better, spending a
| lot of time on a subreddit focused on alternatives, shopping
| through curated lists of them to try them all out is a pretty
| high investment of time and energy.
|
| The kinds of people who are going to spend a lot of time
| doing that are likely to be people who like how reddit works
| a lot, but have an ax to grind against some aspect of it, and
| usually that aspect is moderation. Most normal people who
| interact inoffensively have very few interactions with
| moderators. It's only going to be controversial people who
| gravitate to that sort of thing, and any platform that's full
| of people who frequently court controversy is bound to fill
| up rather quickly with insane freaks.
| gadders wrote:
| I think them being full of "hate speech" is a consequence of
| them being deplatformed - they were forced to find a new home
| (I put "hate speech" in quotes because even saying "Make
| America Great Again" qualifies with some people).
|
| Unless you have been deplatformed, then there is a lot of
| inertia stopping a community from upping and moving to a new
| platform.
| viro wrote:
| When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the
| issue isn't Reddit.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| A good rule of thumb, but it's worth noting that content
| banned from reddit isn't necessarily 'too cancerous', it can
| also be 'the wrong kind of cancerous'.
| drummer wrote:
| Reddit itself became cancer a while back.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Reddit recently dramatically revised their moderation policy
| and has generally been banning a lot of subs. Reddit very
| much wants to be a profitable business, and has no problem
| elimiting non-profitable subreddits.
|
| "When your content is too cancerous for church, maybe the
| issue isn't the church".
|
| Feel free to replace church with whatever is appropriate to
| your situation, but there have always been censors and there
| will always be people who resist the censors. The censors
| have acted against homosexuals, trans folk, hippies, anti-war
| demonstrators and many others who we no longer see fit to
| censor today and I will continue to be in the camp of people
| who work to thwart the censors.
| chapium wrote:
| Even so, OP still has a point. Reddit is pretty lenient as
| far as content is concerned.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| This is a tricky problem even to define, because there's
| "Reddit" which is the owners and paid moderators, then
| there is "reddit" which is the universe of its subreddits
| and its unpaid, unaccountable moderators.
|
| For example, it's been well known for awhile that if you
| subscribe to any of the men's rights subs, you are auto-
| banned from several of the feminism ones (including
| TwoXChromosomes). That kind of thing certainly isn't
| lenient but also isn't under Reddit's control.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| This site listes Parler and Voat which have rampant,
| unchecked antisemitism and racism. I would love to see a
| non-censorious site that takes hate speech seriously but
| they don't seem to exist for some reason...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The thing is, any service that offers a "censorship-free"
| alternative will instantly attract mostly by those whose
| content is garbage for everyone else: usually it's
| pedophiles until the operators get a couple not-so-nice
| letters or a police raid and then at least introduce
| modest moderation, and then come Nazis, antisemites and
| conspiracy myth peddlers.
|
| And said hate peddlers then complain that they don't have
| the reach they enjoyed on Twitter, Youtube and
| Facebook... well d'oh. Turns out one who is not a Nazi, a
| journalist reporting about them, or an antifa activist
| collecting information wants to spend their free time on
| a platform dominated by Nazis.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > usually it's pedophiles until the operators get a
| couple not-so-nice letters or a police raid and then at
| least introduce modest moderation
|
| You're describing illegal content. Nobody is objecting to
| taking that down. Everyone else is talking about
| censoring legal content.
| askafriend wrote:
| Last time I checked, Voat was a bunch of people letting
| the n-word rip in every comment like they're 10yo and
| discovered a bad word for the first time.
|
| There was very little sign of intelligence. I had no urge
| to go back.
| sneak wrote:
| You can't be non-censorious and also take down hate
| speech, if that's what you mean by "takes hate speech
| seriously".
|
| You're either a censor or you're not. If you want a
| censored platform, say it; if you want an uncensored
| site, say that.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Yes, if the only defense of your content is that it isn't
| literally illegal to produce and distribute, maybe choose
| something better to do with your time.
| [deleted]
| omginternets wrote:
| By that logic we should outlaw all things are neither
| illegal nor valued.
|
| I can think of no faster way to stifle innovation,
| research, and the human spirit.
| 95_JL_OK wrote:
| In the context of a lot of Reddit alternatives, the
| argument of 'not literally illegal' isn't always what is
| being made. Sometimes it's more along the lines of 'stop
| interfering with our law breaking' or 'let us openly
| promote real workd violence'. Sometimes people have
| migrated to sites where the administration is either
| legally insulated by strong local laws (ie: Voat in
| Switzerland), or otherwise ambivalent attitudes towards
| actually following regulations (Chan sites, self-hosted
| forms). The incel communities, and many other violent
| communities come to mind right away.
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| There are some non cancerous communities that aren't welcome
| on reddit.
|
| Lots of legal gray area ones that revolve around data
| hoarding / archiving are constantly threatened and sometimes
| taken down for piracy. The subreddits try to police the most
| blatant piracy but due to the nature of why people
| archive/hoard data it can be difficult.
| ptd wrote:
| Can you give an example of such a community?
| ethanwillis wrote:
| I can give you another one. Reddit banned /r/Holodomor ht
| tps://www.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/bedmbv/rholo
| d...
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| The highest profile one is /r/piracy. The illegal sharing
| part of the subreddit spawned a forum for good general
| piracy discussion. It was at serious risk of being
| deleted and had to go to extreme lengths to preserve the
| community that formed around the actual illegal sharing
| part.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvygwq/reddits-piracy-
| sub...
|
| /r/datahoarders and /r/opendirectories are a couple other
| I personally have seen similar things happen. In my
| opinion they're a couple of the greatest subreddits out
| there so the fact that they could be banned out of
| nowhere on a technicality is a little concerning.
| ptd wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I suppose these are the
| results of the gap between technology and legislation.
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| There are similar adjacent problems with discord and
| violation of the terms of service.
|
| Luckily most of these groups are tech savvy enough to run
| their own IRC servers.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Reddit bans wrongthinkers and hoards cancer.
| core-questions wrote:
| Reddit is plenty cancerous, depending on how you define that.
| Certainly in the sense that people aren't arguing in good
| faith, aren't actively engaging, but are just firing talking
| points or insults at one another... the sort of thing good
| moderation used to help limit so that the quality of
| discussion remained high.
|
| I'd way rather read a good-faith, well written exploration
| into a controversial topic, than someone who toes the
| mainstream line of acceptable opinions entirely while being
| rude and belligerent.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this.
| There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal
| opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps. And while the "equal
| opportunity" people mostly have the "just let me grill"
| attitude, "equal outcomers" are pushing increasingly harder,
| while doing their best to silence any opposing voices. It's
| now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud
| of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick
| friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is
| being pushed back against.
|
| As a person who was born in a country that tried implementing
| equal outcomes for 70 years, and ended up with extreme
| corruption, poverty and social distrust, I don't want to see
| another round of this happen here. So I am hoping that if
| enough reasonable people acknowledge the problem, the society
| will reach some sort of a compromise before the lives of
| several generations are completely wasted, like they were in
| the USSR. And having platforms where this sort of discussion
| is not considered "cancerous" is a very important step IMHO.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| "Equal outcome" is a term created by the right to dismiss
| liberal policies that are about equal opportunity.
|
| The equal opportunity people, aka liberals, mostly just
| want people to have the same access to schools that whites
| have had for decades.
|
| The "equal outcomers," aka the right, have decided that
| minorities having equal access to schooling is a conspiracy
| theory at the highest levels, and have been attempting to
| silence the opposition. (See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker
| Carlson urging their followers to doxx and threaten their
| critics.)
|
| _It 's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to
| be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and
| pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful
| and is being pushed back against._
|
| Again, this is something to take up with the right, which
| is dismissive of science, academic performance, or the
| general use of one's brain (see e.g., the current
| administration), and which has instituted ideological
| purity tests for leadership positions (see e.g., the NRA,
| the Federalist Society, the current administration, etc.).
|
| On the left, academic, athletic, cultural and artistic
| treatment are celebrated, but not at the expense of values.
| See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music industry,
| etc. Compare to the NFL, the most popular sport among
| conservatives, where athletic achievement is the only thing
| that matters--cheating, drug use, physical violence, and
| other personal misbehavior is acceptable by athletes and
| coaches as long as they're winning).
| unix_fan wrote:
| As a part of a minority, I heavily disagree. The new push
| for diversity create self doubt. am I really achieving on
| merit, or just the result of this new social justice
| movement? I tend to think the people of the left are
| politicians. They haven't done much to help me as a
| student, business owner, or parent. Rather, they just
| want me to be a victim, someone who they can rely upon to
| keep themselves employed.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Yep. You know the trick of surviving 10+ years in a
| corporate managerial position? You pick your subordinates
| out of slightly underqualified mediocrities. Not only
| they will be completely helpless without you (let alone,
| challenge your position), but they will also be
| infinitely loyal to you, as they won't get another chance
| under anyone else.
|
| Well, that kind of people now want to run our entire
| society this way. They want you to be that loyal
| mediocrity, infinitely thankful for the handout, and
| supporting their cause without questioning.
|
| Believe me, it's a road to nowhere. Corporate
| mediocrities end up taking antidepressants for life, or
| killing themselves after the boss gets fired and they
| have zero shot at paying that mortgage. The life of self-
| improvement, hard work and achievement is 1000x more
| rewarding and I'm glad more people are starting to
| realize that.
|
| We need more people like you speaking up though. Because
| virtually every criticism from outside the minorities is
| now almost unconditionally labeled racist.
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| >mostly just want people to have the same access to
| schools that whites have had for decades.
|
| I would disagree with that. Kids from the families with
| inherited wealth always enjoyed their hilltop mansions,
| gated communities, private schools and Ivy League
| admissions by donation. And they continue doing that,
| they're above the rules. Nobody is going to put a low
| barrier social housing in their backyard, or force their
| kids to network with us, the plebs.
|
| It's the middle class that made their own wealth is under
| attack now. Doctors, engineers, small business founders.
| Apparently, we can't have in a community with no used
| needles near the playgrounds. Because poor homeless. I
| can't apparently spend time teaching my pre-school kids
| to read and to write, so once they go to school, they can
| focus on more advanced stuff with other like minded kids.
| For the sake of social justice, the class has to be
| diluted by a few troublemakers whos parents didn't care.
| But, of course, not the class where the Governor's kids
| go.
|
| Mind you, nobody will mind if you go and help the
| affected people directly. Go offer free counseling to
| homeless. Go teach Python to kids from poor families. Go
| do lemonade stand projects with underrepresented
| minorities. But do it in your own free time and at your
| own expense. I am pretty certain, many reasonable people
| will follow, since our society generally values being
| generous and positive. Except that's not what the
| activists are doing. _They_ don 't want to solve the
| problem in their free time, they want _others_ to somehow
| find time and solve the problem for them.
|
| >See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker Carlson urging their
| followers to doxx and threaten their critics.
|
| I've seen the piece from Tucker Carlson. NYT journalists
| threatened to publish his home address. He stated that it
| already happened before, leading to threats to his
| family, and said that if they do it again, he will
| retaliate. He didn't mention any personal details there,
| so the NYT pulled back and they've reached a stalemate.
|
| >See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music
| industry, etc.
|
| Hollywood has deteriorated to releasing heavily
| engineered comic book films. The art aspect is gone, the
| creativity is gone, many genres like parody/comedy are
| gone. Mainstream music isn't at it's peak either. It's
| pretty consistent with the left-leaning big tech, that
| focuses on making people replaceable drones following
| procedures, because they have much less bargaining power
| this way. I am not into sports, so no clue on NBA/NFL.
| jf22 wrote:
| A lot of countries only said they were trying for "equal
| outcomes" while rather openly being authoritarian states.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm confused about this response. A powerful authority is
| how you enforce those "equal outcomes." You can have
| authoritarian left (communism) or authoritarian right
| (fascism), but both are authoritarian. Let me put it this
| way: Fascism is authoritarianism but authoritarianism
| isn't fascism.
|
| Edit: Can someone explain the downvotes? Is the argument
| that there isn't an authoritarian left? I'm referring to
| this basic model [0]
|
| [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/
| 9/9c/Po...
| failuser wrote:
| Soviet Union was never about equal outcome. It was
| proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. Jews
| were limited in access to education, ex-nobility was
| limited in rights, the party members were given all kinds
| of preferential treatment and nomenklatura living in
| relative luxury while the peasants were starving. Hey, even
| the city dwellers were privileged compared to peasants who
| were tied to the land and required visas for inner travel.
| And access to Moscow and its opportunities was tightly
| controlled.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| I think this is the point. It's not going to work out
| here either, but it will still be proclaimed.
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| >It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way
| possible.
|
| It always does. Each time someone proclaims equity, they
| carve out some sort of exception for themselves and their
| family. Like the mayor of Chicago that mysteriously had
| heavy police presence around her home, while ordering
| them to stand down everywhere else.
|
| [0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-
| hall/2020/8/20/21377608/li...
| [deleted]
| idreyn wrote:
| The distribution of outcome in one generation is, rather
| explicitly, the distribution of opportunity granted to the
| next one. Policies like progressive taxation and universal
| welfare programs that can be cast as equal outcome
| initiatives are, in the minds of their proponents, often
| about checking this runaway feedback loop that might
| otherwise leave all the opportunity (wealth, by another
| name) piling up with fewer and fewer people.
| augustt wrote:
| Any evidence at all that self-improvement is under attack,
| or are these all euphemisms for something else? Maybe "pick
| friends based on shared values" means "I wouldn't let my
| kids play with kids from the other side of the tracks",
| which should indeed get some pushback.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Here's one for you [0]. That's an infographic from the
| Smithsonian museum that attributed Enlightenment-age
| values, like individualism, family structure, and work
| ethic to "whiteness" and implied that it should be
| opposed. They removed it after pushback (search
| archive.org for more).
|
| That's the tip of the iceberg though. There's a whole
| industry of wrapping this narrative into struggle
| session-like training while charging 7 figures to
| various-level budgets. You can find many examples like
| [1] if you search for Chris Rufo. Except adults sort of
| understand that it's a kickback-driven nonsense and don't
| take it seriously. So now they are taking the Critical
| Race Theory with very similar postulates into schools.
|
| It's not about helping minorities learn from the more
| successful, and reach for the stars. That's purely about
| making kids hate what their parents did for them, rather
| than building on top of that.
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https:/
| /nmaahc...
|
| [1] https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-
| seattle/
| augustt wrote:
| I don't see anything that indicates these values should
| be opposed. I've seen controversy over this before and to
| be honest it mostly seems to be people projecting their
| own idea of what the left thinks - that "white values"
| implies they are not "black values" and that all
| whiteness = bad. Then they conclude from a decent summary
| of dominant values in America something like
| /r/conservative's take: "#DefundSmithsonian ... We are
| paying for white genocide with our tax dollars."
| 205guy wrote:
| Maybe I should just let this just let this comment stand
| for its own inanity, but dammit, someone is wrong on the
| internet.
|
| That poster was at the National Museum of African-
| American History and Culture, where you might expect to
| learn the differences between African-American culture
| and the dominant White-Anglo-American Culture. Context is
| important. In no way it implied that "Enlightenment-age
| values ... should be opposed." Also, it's kind of ironic
| to be cheering for the takedown of speech you didn't like
| on a thread where you complain about the silencing of the
| speech you do like. If you don't like what the poster
| said or how it said it, maybe oppose it with more speech.
|
| About the whole industry of "training while charging 7
| figures" isn't that just how the pendulum swings right
| now? Before it was prayer meetings and then survivalist
| tactics for team-building. Plus most employment in the US
| is at-will, so I suppose if employees don't like it, they
| are free to find other employers. Freedom cuts both ways
| too. Also, what's wrong with 7 figures? I thought the
| free-market and entrepreneurs charging for the value they
| bring to willing buyers were all good things.
|
| When you conclude it's "purely about making kids hate
| what their parents did for them", well, that's the kind
| of hyperbole that's hard to take seriously. It is totally
| free of argument or evidence, and it sounds so much like
| the conservatives of the 50's and 60's about how the
| peace-activists, civil rights leaders, and hippies were
| going to turn their sons and daughters against their
| parents.
| notacoward wrote:
| That's a noxiously inaccurate caricature of what people in
| each "camp" believe (to the extent there even are two
| camps). Practically nobody believes in strict communist-
| style equal outcomes. The most any significant number want
| is _more_ equal outcomes, because the distribution of
| outcomes has clearly diverged from the distribution of any
| real merit. What the majority want is equal opportunity,
| just like they say. That 's something we don't have, and
| it's disgusting to appropriate that phrase for those whose
| beliefs are more accurately described as discriminatory
| and/or segregationist. It's equally disingenuous to imply
| that pride in achievement or desire for self-improvement
| are either distinguishing characteristics of or unique to
| that group. The vast majority of those you deride as "equal
| outcome" believers also have those characteristics. If
| anything, it's the "OK for heritage to determine outcome"
| crowd who _don 't_ believe in achievement and improvement.
|
| People call that kind of twisting of facts and words
| "cancerous" because _it is_. You could argue reasonably
| that attempts to address current inequity are misguided or
| have gone too far, but not by misrepresenting what people
| believe.
| limteary wrote:
| I liked /r/watchpeopledie in a morbid curiosity way.
| mike00632 wrote:
| I know you're just expressing a common curiosity. A
| friendly reminder that snuff film production is a thing and
| if a community creates a big audience/market for this stuff
| then the consequences are horrific.
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| Isn't this the justification for every kind of moral
| panic? If we let kids watch sex scenes they'll become
| prostitutes. If we let kids play grand theft auto they'll
| shoot up their school. Everything has the potential for
| negative externalities. I don't expect anyone to "think
| of the poor morbidly curious people" because it's
| strongly taboo in our culture but suggesting that - cause
| and effect: gore equals more murder for snuff - is a
| stretch.
| tpxl wrote:
| You got it the wrong way around. If a lot of people
| consume a type of content, there are going to be people
| wanting to produce it for <money, fame, kicks, ...>.
|
| To push the analogy to the extreme, consuming illegal
| pornography doesn't actually harm anyone, the production
| does, however the consumption drivers production,
| therefore the consumption does harm.
| verylittlemeat wrote:
| Yeah but we're not talking about "the knockout challenge"
| or destroying milk jugs in the supermarket. Most people
| don't murder for the lulz and they also enjoy not being
| in prison for decades. Despite the FUD pushed by popular
| media there aren't going to be that many people producing
| it for money/fame/kicks. The vast majority of gore on the
| internet is a product of security cameras or otherwise
| hidden cameras.
| tpxl wrote:
| >there aren't going to be that many people producing it
| for money/fame/kicks
|
| I agree.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| believing that reddit covers the entire spectrum of ideas is
| also an issue.
| gambler wrote:
| This sort of sloganistic un-logic that constantly gets up-
| voted here is a great reminder that most tech people aren't
| mature enough to make decisions about how the rest of the
| society communicates.
| nyczomg wrote:
| If you think reddit only censors cancerous content ...maybe
| the issue isn't Reddit.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a33ep/orlando-
| shooting-r...
| dencodev wrote:
| They recently banned every popular Marxism/Leninist
| subreddit. They claim it was for advocating violence but I
| know for a fact it didn't happen with any more regularity
| than any other political subreddit, including /r/politics.
| Medicalidiot wrote:
| I was an early adopter of Voat during the first Reddit purge
| but it turned into a racist cesspool. I'm wondering how many of
| these alternatives will follow that trend.
| effingwewt wrote:
| I was in the same boat. I ended up bouncing because it was so
| bad I couldn't stand it. But to me, that should be the
| solution- if you don't like it, don't participate in it.
|
| We live in an age where people seem to think in very black
| and white terms and if your beliefs don't align you shouldn't
| have them or be able to voice them.
|
| Aside from inciting violence, your beliefs are yours. If they
| aren't breaking the law, you do you. I don't have to agree
| with them or support them, essentially 'don't tread on me'.
|
| But people need to remember when you deplatform these racist,
| ugly thoughts and words, you push those people together,
| galvanizing them and their beliefs. As others in this thread
| have stated, I believe that's why voat got so bad so quickly.
|
| As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
|
| I don't know what the end all solution is here, but I know I
| deal with racism on an almost daily basis in real life, and
| I'm Hispanic, so I can't imagine how bad it must be for some
| others. Pretending it doesn't exist won't fix it. Pushing it
| to the furthest corners of the internet won't make it go away
| in real life.
| vmception wrote:
| They typically get addicted to advertising dollars and clean
| their sites up
|
| Opening an opportunity for someone else to sell the same "my
| fictional private sector free speech assurances that I
| imagined were part of the constitution are being upheld here"
| story to build a community
| gerbal wrote:
| unmoderated forums tend to drive off anyone but those holding
| the most extreme and toxic views.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| look, i'm not trying to cut down alternative platforms by any
| means, however these alternative platforms are failures waiting
| to happen. the reason is that although they start low cost,
| eventually, if they grow, they need some form of income in
| order to continue. at that point, they need some form of
| advertising which, cause of their content, they cannot get and
| as such, they close up.
| [deleted]
| newhotelowner wrote:
| > 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.
| oehpr wrote:
| 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 disagree with, voooote for meeeeee".
|
| In fact, the ONLY political subreddit I'm aware of that does
| not engage in this behavior is r/Libertarian. Credit to them
| for putting their money where their mouth is.
| Miner49er wrote:
| /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.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is like saying:
|
| > Pretty much all the discussion groups that are against
| government censorship will censor you (throw you out) just
| for showing their hypocrisy.
|
| It's not hypocritical to moderate one forum, on a platform
| where everyone can create his own forum, while also demanding
| that the platform itself doesn't censor discussions, anymore
| then it's hypocritical to moderate a discussion group, while
| also demanding that the government doesn't censor your
| discussions.
|
| Moderation happens at the lowest level possible. Any content
| removal at a higher level is censorship.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| But they can't (and shouldn't be able to, even while I agree,
| they would want to) ban you from starting your own subreddit
| with your own rules.
| [deleted]
| _iyig wrote:
| This problem is common to nearly every subreddit, on every
| side of the political spectrum. Unaccountable moderators will
| ban you in a heartbeat for arbitrary reasons, such as
| disagreeing with the sub's majority opinion.
|
| I was banned from my (very liberal) U.S. state's subreddit
| for quoting Martin Luther King. I quoted a passage from one
| his speeches that denounced political violence, such as the
| arson and vandalism we've seen in Kenosha recently. The
| subreddit moderator banned me within minutes, called me a
| Nazi, and immediately denied the appeal.
| bredren wrote:
| Weird to see HN just four links away from 4chan.
| bjo590 wrote:
| Wouldn't you expect less than that on a website literally
| designed to be a curated list of links?
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Try 1:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=4chan.org
| [deleted]
| spiznnx wrote:
| I think censorship of hate speech is good, but doing so through
| the play store is a terrible idea. This will just promote more
| side loading which is not good for the security of android as a
| platform.
|
| The play store needs to be fairly permissive in terms of content,
| so that people keep their phones secure. The primary purpose of
| app review needs to be security and quality, not censorship and
| rent-seeking.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| There was a thread on twitter recently about how app stores would
| have rejected the first web browser, asking what future
| innovations might not happen due to them. Guess federated social
| media is a part of the answer.
| splitrocket wrote:
| Yup. The internet is supposed to be "dumb" in the middle and
| "smart" at the edges. These app stores are centralized points
| of failure.
| langitbiru wrote:
| This is the tweet:
| https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1297199788316692480
| jariel wrote:
| The problem is the 'App Stores'.
|
| Think of them as retail outlets, in a mall. Do you see shady
| stuff going on there?
|
| Would 'The Gap' sell porn to increase profits by 15%? Of course
| not. And for obvious reasons.
|
| We shouldn't think of 'App Stores' as some kind of truly open
| marketplaces, any more than a shopping mall is.
|
| What we need is just more independent means of distribution.
| Sargos wrote:
| These threads make it obvious that most people would be okay
| with malls being the only place where shopping is allowed to
| happen.
|
| "Our local mall is great, I don't see a need for any other
| malls or standalone stores. Malls provide an air conditioned
| space, on-site site security, and even refreshments while you
| shop."
|
| I think it stems from a lack of empathy for others. I don't
| buy dildos so I see no reason to allow dildo stores to exist.
| [deleted]
| duckMuppet wrote:
| Partially correct.
|
| Thinking about them in terms of the mall or a shopping plaza
| is good. However, you mistakenly compared the app store with
| the Gap.
|
| The app store is the mall space, numerous apps abound, as do
| shops. The gap might not sell porn, but Victoria secret,
| Spencers, Hollywood (nights?? I can't recall) exist in the
| mall and might not be porn but... Some retail plazas might
| have an adult section. Best buy or Fry's at one point had
| adult magazines and videos.
|
| Some retail plazas even have other things progressives and
| democrats find offensive, like guns and old classic
| literature. Occasionally you can also find a pawn shop in a
| retail plaza.
|
| There was a point where you would rent out your mall or
| retail space to anyone with the money to cover the cost plus
| a small profit. The decadence, wealth inequality, and
| unrealistic valuations from government interference have led
| to a world where it's fairly easy for some to cherry pick who
| they want renting from them based upon their ideological,
| political, or racial spectrum or beliefs. The same now occurs
| in our app stores.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| High end malls never had any of those things, anywhere I've
| been in the US. Victoria's Secret and Spencer's are pretty
| far from sex shops or pornography in my opinion.
|
| Not that I agree the policies of app stores to restrict
| items solely because they are pornography or sex related.
| But high end mall operators might reject sex shops for many
| of the same reasons.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Shopping Malls can have Sex Shops. Play and AppStore don't
| allow them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have never seen a shopping mall with a sex shop. Maybe
| lingerie or some novelty items at a Spencer's, but I doubt
| mall operators would want to deal with people complaining
| about their kids walking by a store selling pornography and
| sex toys.
|
| They usually end up in undesirable locations or in rundown
| strip malls.
| stryan wrote:
| The mall down the street from my old apartment had one.
| It was small and discrete though; I passed it plenty of
| times before realizing what it was.
| ben_w wrote:
| I go past a mall with a dildo shop inside it on my
| current walking commute to work.
|
| I saw another one of the same chain in the main train
| station of... I think it was Hannover? I was travelling a
| lot by InterRail and the places are blurring together.
|
| Zurich has (or had) a sex shop with the wares clearly
| visible from the outside in the expensive bit of the city
| centre.
|
| Cambridge (UK) has an Ann Summers in its main shopping
| centre. Thinking of the UK, I've seen vibrating cock
| rings openly stocked in Tesco, which is the largest
| supermarket chain in the UK.
|
| Attitudes to such topics are surprisingly flexible.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sorry, I meant in the US. I can easily see them in places
| with healthier attitudes about sex.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I think most of the comments here are US-centric, which
| also happens to be where the app stores are mostly
| implemented, so they come with the same source values.
| jariel wrote:
| "Shopping Malls can have Sex Shops."
|
| Why do people find a corner-case of an analogy, and somehow
| think it negates the analogy?
|
| It's just an analogy.
|
| Of course 'some malls have sex shops' - but obviously, most
| of them don't.
|
| The vast majority of corps don't want their brands anywhere
| near porn, sex, guns, politics, hate/contentious speech
| etc..
|
| Most decent malls are actually selective of who they want
| in there, and the 'other residents' of the mall have a say
| as well.
|
| There are an infinite number of places porn/guns/politics
| can be sold, so that's not a problem, it's just not going
| to be in a system wherein the other players are wary of it.
|
| It's actually good reason why we need a lot of alternative
| points of distribution.
|
| I wonder if there should even be some legislation around
| that, in terms of the kinds of app stores that are
| preloaded must be more 'open' and that alternative options
| must be provided very easily.
| nabla9 wrote:
| That was the original Microsoft vision (Blackbird project, MSN
| and other names).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform).
| aftergibson wrote:
| I use an Apple device and it's decisions like this that make me
| glad of that, however, it's just the lesser of two evils right
| now. Both mobile platforms are making scary decisions lately and
| my faith in them decreases daily.
|
| I'm going to start supporting pine and any other open
| alternatives more. Pine is the only mobile platform I'm even
| vaguely optimistic about.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Wouldnt this be the same as banning web browsers because you can
| goto hate sites? Ban irc clients because you can connect to evil
| irc servers? Ban email clients because you can email to hate
| domains? Its up to the user to configure and connect to a server
| in a open client.
| [deleted]
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Can't the same offending toots be viewed in Google Chrome? Just
| screenshot their own browser with the same content they are
| reporting and ask when they will turn the lens inward. Or, find
| similar content in Twitter, or Facebook, etc. This sets a
| dangerous precedent.
| Longlius wrote:
| Continue digging that antitrust grave, Google.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Okay, so take down twitter, reddit, and facebook too?
| twirlock wrote:
| I'm glad I degoogled. This kind of thing is why. It wasn't even
| hard after I got email switched over. If they didn't have a video
| monopoly, I would never have to use their stuff.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| The only thing still tying me to google is Gmail. I'm a bit
| timid about running my own mail servers.
| lucb1e wrote:
| _Any_ other mail service is already better than Google 's.
| You don't have to host your own to get off Google, if that's
| what you're aiming for! There are a lot of other trustworthy
| providers. As someone who hosts their own email, I'd thank
| you for diversifying.
|
| While, one the one hand, I don't have a lot of trouble with
| delivery even from a residential IP address and I'd recommend
| self-hosting, I understand anyone who's hesitant. My mail
| lands in Google spamboxes much more often than it should (I
| don't send any automated mail these days, i.e. not even
| website notifications or anything: everything is hand-written
| or at least triggered by the person receiving the email; my
| sending IP has been stable for a decade). Another downside of
| Google is that they hide the existence of the spam folder and
| many people will simply never see it and be able to update
| its filters by replying to me or marking it as not-spam.
| Heck, some Google-for-corporate mail service even blocks your
| email at smtp level and there is no recourse. By diversifying
| receiving servers, at least Google doesn't get to set one
| standard: if your mail doesn't arrive in a Google inbox, it's
| currently extremely hard to argue that "but it's google's
| fault" (when it totally is). Clearly I as an individual have
| an issue and the big google doesn't.
| Forbo wrote:
| Not sure why this comment was dead, but I vouched for it. I've
| been slowly separating from Google for a while now for slightly
| different reasons, namely that I've grown increasingly
| distrustful of surveillance capitalism on the whole.
| pixxel wrote:
| > Not sure why this comment was dead
|
| The amount of Google employees here on HN who enjoy
| surveillance capitalism salaries and bonuses might be the
| reason.
| swiley wrote:
| "Curation is necessary and won't result in censorship."
|
| Only free (free as in freedom and open source) software is ever
| acceptable. Everything else eventually leads to Hell.
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| Original post combined with this one, so just for completeness'
| sake here's the original toot from the lead Mastodon dev
| @Gargron: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I don't like this type of content. At all. But having Google or
| similar decide for me is freightening. More so are the people who
| buy into the idea of Google & Co being benevolent dictators.
|
| Marginalizing ideas that breed on marginalization is to me a
| fool's errand. Light the ultimate sanitizer.
| jokit wrote:
| They're letting us know what we should have already known for a
| long time.
|
| It's not the abuse of power that is the problem but the power to
| abuse.
|
| Decentralize all the things!
| zeveb wrote:
| When I opened up YT Music today, almost the entire scree was
| taken up by a link to a political playlist. I don't want to
| participate in politics -- I just want to listen to some
| background music while I work. Why is Googling silencing one
| bunch of creators and promoting another bunch? How is this good
| for Google, the country or the world?
| djsumdog wrote:
| Big tech is directly influencing people today in the way so
| many screamed "The Russians" were influencing us in 2016 (and
| back during McCarthy).
|
| I have a 500GB microSD card on my phone with all my music. I've
| been collecting it for decades, many from artists I meet in
| bars and pubs. I buy off Bandcamp when I have to, which only
| charges 15%, compared to Google/Amazon/Apple which charge 30%+,
| or streaming services that pay artists pennies.
|
| Take control of your music. Download it, buy it DRM free, save
| it, back it up.
|
| Take control of your video feed. Subscribe to YouTube channels
| using an RSS reader. Use 3rd party frontends like Invidious.
|
| If you're and tech and know how to do this, than do it, and
| help write posts to show how others can too.
| zelly wrote:
| Unfortunately phones with SD cards are hard to come by these
| days. I think that was intentional to help prop up streaming
| because both each of the duopoly has heavy investments in
| streaming media.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Without getting into the details of this - yeah I disagree with
| it - but, Android allows side loading. Isn't that what everyone
| wanted from Apple?
|
| On a higher level, what's the problem and what should be changed?
| Google has a policy that people don't like, Android can side
| load, isn't that exactly what people want?
| superkuh wrote:
| Sorry to go off-topic, but the entire existence of the word
| 'side-loading' is some 1984-level language manipulation. As if
| installing applications without getting the permission of some
| abstract corporate owner is the _weird_ thing. No, having to
| get permission is the weird way to install things.
| chii wrote:
| as a computer moves ever more towards a white-label appliance
| with a single purpose, the act of "installing" becomes more
| and more alien. It sucks, but a majority of the computer-
| using population cares not for it, and only want it to work.
| Think washing machine - have you ever seen people want to
| install apps into their washing machine?
| mindslight wrote:
| Many people complain about newer washing machines not using
| enough water to get their clothes clean, etc. So yes, even
| if they don't know it.
| 1_person wrote:
| If the singular fucking purpose of the washing machine was
| to run apps, I sure as fuck would expect to see people
| wanting to install apps on their washing machine.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And Android doesn't stop you from doing that - from
| anywhere you wish. So what's the problem?
| scarface74 wrote:
| You can call of whatever you wish. But how did loading from
| any untrusted source work out for the average consumer for
| the last 30 years? Viruses, malware, ransomware, etc?
|
| Yes outside of the little HN/geek bubble, it's way too easy
| for the average consumer to install malware on their
| computer.
|
| HN users have been whining about not being able to side load
| on iOS devices for years. What they really seem to want is to
| force the app stores to carry anything.
| mindslight wrote:
| You must get really tired after destroying straw men all
| day.
|
| 1. It worked out great by fostering tons of invention.
|
| 2. Untrusted code with sandboxing works well for the
| web/javascript ecosystem.
|
| 3. Yes "HN users" want the freedom to run software of their
| choice. Discussing a single aspect where one system is
| better is not some total endorsement of the whole system.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Regarding #3 Android gives you that choice. The open
| source community didn't just complain about proprietary
| software they created something. Linux wasn't easy to
| install along side Windows on PCs. But they made a
| product that some people wanted and advocated for their
| position until Linux is now the most widely used OS on
| phones and on servers - including Azure.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Because the policy is unfairly applied.
|
| There's plenty of hate speech on Facebook, but their app
| remains. Chrome allows you to access sites with hate speech
| too, but it's not going anywhere.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So what do you propose? You want the government to come in
| and enforce fairness? The HN talking point has been that
| users should be able to install whatever they want - with
| Android they can.
| hising wrote:
| I think this is really interesting. You hit the nail. A lot of
| the discussions nowadays on app stores is about having the cake
| and eat it. The app store providers are doomed if they do and
| doomed if they don't. What I hear is: "I like your platform for
| reach, but I would like to use my own policy"
| gpm wrote:
| Google should be prohibited from pressuring device creators
| into not including other app stores and apps. While they do
| allow side loading, they still maintain an effective monopoly
| by making it difficult to use any other app store.
|
| (Or at least that's the most reasonable argument/step that I've
| seen from an anti-trust perspective)
| aequitas wrote:
| > This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google
| Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all.
|
| So this hurts discoverability and credability ("if it's not bad
| software, why isn't it allowed in the Google store like all the
| other apps?") of fediverse apps and networks.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You can't both say that you want the main App Store, to be
| trustworthy and say that they shouldn't have standards.
| SamWhited wrote:
| If you read HN you might know what sideloading is and how to do
| it. If you're anyone else and you even get as far as trying it
| (which isn't likely) you get a big scary warning about how
| obviously everything sideloaded is a virus and Google won't be
| able to scan it and you should use the play store (I don't
| actually know what it says, but the point is that it's a big
| scary warning).
|
| The point is that sideloading presents several barriers to
| entry and at every extra step you'll lose a few more users.
| very few people will get all the way through enabling
| sideloading, figuring out how to actually do it with ADB or
| something, ignoring the scary prompts, and get all the way to
| actually installing and running an app. This is a nice
| workaround for a few people, not a solution to Google applying
| their policies in an aggressive way to remove apps they don't
| like that clearly aren't themselves dedicated to hate speech.
| scarface74 wrote:
| _If you 're anyone else and you even get as far as trying it
| (which isn't likely) you get a big scary warning about how
| obviously everything sideloaded is a virus and Google won't
| be able to scan it and you should use the play store (I don't
| actually know what it says, but the point is that it's a big
| scary warning)._
|
| So now you want both side loading _and_ you don't want
| warnings about the possible risks of doing so?
|
| So on one hand you're arguing that users are too ignorant to
| figure out side loading but they are smart enough to not
| download apps that may be malware?
|
| It's not like any mainstream vendors have had side loading
| and introduced a security vulnerability....
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-
| fo...
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| It is said that sideloading in Android will essentially be
| disabled in an upcoming release. It will still be possible for
| that small handful of nerds who know how to enable developer
| mode and install an .apk via ADB, but for the vast majority of
| people, the Google Play store is only going to become further
| entrenched as their sole source of apps.
| detaro wrote:
| Here the main issue complex is IMHO that a) the ability to
| access is counted, b) this is penalized despite the system
| shipping with apps doing that too and c) the policy isn't
| consistently applied.
|
| Roughly, web browsers, podcast players and Fediverse clients
| (and probably a bunch of other apps, those are just obvious
| examples) all fetch contents from a user-supplied source over
| HTTP(S) and display it. As long as they are not specifically
| promoting "banned" sites, they should all be treated the same
| in that regard.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So what do you propose? Not only have most HN users been
| advocating that the platform vendors allow alternate means of
| installing apps and being forced to do so by the government,
| now do you also want the government to make rules about what
| is allowed in the App Store?
| detaro wrote:
| I propose for Google to apply their guidelines consistently
| and fairly. Ideally on their own. If it takes a shitstorm
| every time, that's very annoying (but helped last time they
| tried to play this game with podcast apps) but at least
| fixes the problem for a bit. Maybe there is grounds for a
| lawsuit if they apply it massively unfairly, I'm not a
| legal expert on that.
|
| Looking back at our last discussion, you have a serious
| problem of equating everything with a call for government
| intervention.
| [deleted]
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