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.)
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.
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.
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"
Don't give Google ideas.
(throwaway since the former name searches themselves to find new targets.)
The far more likely reason is that they know we have an issue. They've been monitoring and they don't like what they've been hearing.
If this is the Google policy they may want to bake that policy into the way Chrome operates.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Censorship can be conducted by private institutions, governments and other controlling bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Browser seems to be an exception.
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.
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.
EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation
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.
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.
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"
This is actually still a good Wikipedia article to educate yourself.
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.
It's not censorship, its moderation and editorial discretion.
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?
(Or at least that's the most reasonable argument/step that I've seen from an anti-trust perspective)
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...
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.
> 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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.keylesspalace.tusky/
Countries like Austria and Germany have a law called Wiederbetätigungsgesetz 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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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.
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.
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)
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.
This sets a dangerous precedent and highlights why we should continue removing Google/etc as dependencies in our lives.
All depends on who the companies consider a hate group.
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.
Wait, Gmail is made „by us” and not „by pesky them”. Gmail is sure ok.
Good thing you can't find any hate speech on Play Store–promoted corporate behemoths Twitter and Facebook!
Some servers on the fediverse specifically allow unfettered hate speech.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
That being said, imagine if this happened on the Apple App Store...
Disclaimer: Views expressed are my own and do not reflect my Employers position
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
As for why they do it, this essay may prove enlightening:
Obviously a "KKK Members" app in the app store is absolutely unacceptable, or something overt like that, but to dig into the content of an otherwise harmless app? Cmon, man. We're adults. Let us see what we want to see.
Why? if you want the internet to feel less "safe" and for people to simply ignore hate speech, why would this be unacceptable? It would certainly make the internet feel less safe for a lot of people, but maybe you're not one of those people, and those people can just ignore it as you said.
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.
Be aware that while it's possible for Android users to download Fediverse apps from an alternative app store like F-Droid instead, the same would not be possible on an Apple device if Apple were to do the same.
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.
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.
For Google, seems like it's because there's an election in a few months and Google's doing whatever it can to stop Trump winning again.
Sarcasm aside, I think its one of the big tech moves to control free web.
Only free (free as in freedom and open source) software is ever acceptable. Everything else eventually leads to Hell.
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.
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.
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.
Serves you right.
There we are. When framapiaf.org, mamot.fr and other "free speech" and "anti-censorship floss activists" will start to apply a proper moderation and clear blocks of fascists instances and users, maybe Google would reconsider to publish the Android clients on Google Play.
Those spaces are totally out of control and this is a part of the problem.
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.
When I see the amount of people registering with Gmail accounts on the Fediverse when it is supposed to be a tech giants escape (Twitter here but still) and then complaining and crying about a "Google Play ban", I am laughing very very strong.
Marginalizing ideas that breed on marginalization is to me a fool's errand. Light the ultimate sanitizer.
Any confirmation of the broad speculation in this thread and the the linked thread..?
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.
Its not like we have a MONOPOLY problem in tech!
The markets will just sort it out.
Wonder if this has to do with the recent Husky/Tusky drama.
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.
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.
It's not the abuse of power that is the problem but the power to abuse.
Decentralize all the things!
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.
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.
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.
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.