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.)
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.
I disagree about your comparison. This app can connect to arbitrary domain names. This is getting blocked because you are not filtering the list of domains a user can connect to proactively.
That's wild & I can think of zero precedent for it.
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.
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.
> but a ban on specific implementations that make it easy to join specific communities which encourage hatred and real-world violence
So basically, Google only supports the Fediverse if, like itself, it engages in censorship. The Fediverse exists not to encourage hate speech, but to discourage censorship. Hate speech is the inevitable result of allowing humans to say what like they like. Some people will choose to be nasty. Many people believe the greater good is the free flow of information, and that adults are more than capable of filtering out and avoiding those information sources which make them uncomfortable. Instead, Google wants to treat everybody like children, and be the helicopter parent that swoops in and removes anything objectionable.
>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?
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:
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.
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.
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.)
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.
It concerns me that the company taking down the apps also owns my entire mobile OS from browser to network stack, as well as the DNS resolver, the search engine, and the email client I use.
So Google somehow knows which apps block certain instances, which generally get reputation among other instances & are quickly blocked? That's not believable.
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.
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.
Ah, then yes, apologies -I did not mean to put words in your mouth. Technical feasibility is likely easier than imagined; most Mastodon services use the auto-generated list that appears on their "about" page - easily scraped if not available through the API - here's the list on the instance I moderate on for example:
It wasn't that long ago when virtually everyone understood that "hatred" was completely subjective. Trying to remove all communication channels because of the potential for "hatred" means nothing but total silence.
They do it with youtube now as well and demonitize ANYTHING with firearms in it. Doesn’t matter if you’re a hunter or trying to sell people on a new product.
All these disparate media sources that we yearned for back in the cable-only days have finally turned to dogshit.
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
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.
Which i have always suspected was the real reason they killed off Google Wave in such a hurry, even thou we were told they found it useful for collaboration within Google.
> 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.
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.
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.)