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

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.

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.

A reminder that F-Droid [1] is a free software app store that can be used to download free&#x2F;open source software, including Mastodon clients.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse</a> &quot; The Fediverse (a portmanteau of &quot;federation&quot; and &quot;universe&quot;) 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&#x27; data (such as a calendar or an address book).&quot; (wiki)

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.

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.

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&#x27;s up to us, the reasonable people, to choose where we want to spend our time and money.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RedditAlternatives&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hi97fz&#x2F;list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RedditAlternatives&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hi97fz&#x2F;...</a>

<i>&gt; Holy crap, google is apparently taking down all&#x2F;most fediverse apps from google play on the grounds that that some servers in the fediverse engage in hate speech.</i><p>Good thing you can&#x27;t find any hate speech on Play Store–promoted corporate behemoths Twitter and Facebook!

&gt; Like hate speech is bad and it’s not censorship if it’s not mandated by the government.<p>To be fully accurate, this is absolutely <i>censorship</i>, but it&#x27;s not a violation of anyone&#x27;s First Amendment rights. People often conflate the two.<p>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 <i>not</i> have this right.

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.<p>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.<p>We shall see if Google follows it&#x27;s own policy on this manner or if they are descriminating based on what lines their pockets.

Shouldn&#x27;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.<p>This sets a dangerous precedent and highlights why we should continue removing Google&#x2F;etc as dependencies in our lives.

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.<p>&quot;Oh it doesn&#x27;t matter they went after people I disagree with&quot;<p>Okay wise guy, what happens if the other side takes power? Think that&#x27;s never happened historically? Then they&#x27;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.

The is the first I (as well as others here, apparently) had ever heard of the &quot;fediverse&quot;. Wikipedia [1] helps me out with what it is technically... but can anyone <i>who knows</i> describe what its content is actually like?<p>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.)<p>Or is it like the dark web, which from what I understand is <i>mostly</i> legal content, but still hosts a <i>sizeable</i> proportion of content for illegal services and content?<p>Or is it more like what Reddit used to be, where it&#x27;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 &quot;old Reddit&quot;.)<p>Just trying to get a basic context here. Not looking for speculation, but the impressions from people who actually use it...<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse</a>

There&#x27;s racist stuff all over Google&#x27;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.<p>This is nothing more than a monopoly stomping out a platform it doesn&#x27;t like. Probably because federation is a threat to Google&#x27;s position as the central hub of the internet.

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.<p>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&#x27;s scale there&#x27;s no alternative really)

Can&#x27;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.

There is probably more than what is being said here otherwise clients for reddit or 4chan would have been removed a long time ago.

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&#x2F;with those apps.

I would say Google should ban Google search, because it allows links to the hate speech blogs.<p>Sarcasm aside, I think its one of the big tech moves to control free web.

As if their assault on the open web wasn&#x27;t already painfully obvious.

I think the problem is, that two things are getting mixed up.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;t want to support.

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.<p>That being said, imagine if this happened on the Apple App Store...

How long before platforms start blocking websites using this logic? Or get rid of the web browser which suffers from this exact flaw?<p>Disclaimer: Views expressed are my own and do not reflect my Employers position

This is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites in Chrome.

“Curation is necessary and won’t result in censorship.”<p>Only free (free as in freedom and open source) software is ever acceptable. Everything else eventually leads to Hell.

They should ban Gmail too, what if some asshole sends me a death threat via email?<p>Wait, Gmail is made „by us” and not „by pesky them”. Gmail is sure ok.

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&#x27;t be affected by this ban.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;packages&#x2F;com.keylesspalace.tusky&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;packages&#x2F;com.keylesspalace.tusky&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;ve never used this service, but let&#x27;s play along for a moment.<p>Let&#x27;s say that 100% of the servers were bastions of hatespeech. It seems like the folks in this thread would be <i>against</i> banning it in that case. But I think that&#x27;s wrong. If the app was 100% just hatespeech sites, then it should probably be banned.<p>Now, then we get to reality: What is the real mixture? 80%? 50%? 20%? I don&#x27;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.<p>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.

I had no idea of Fediverse, and now I do. Thanks, Google censorship!

This was the first time in the history of Mastodon that a toot reached the front page of Hacker News. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;web&#x2F;statuses&#x2F;104768703650147309" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;web&#x2F;statuses&#x2F;104768703650147309</a>

This is a hint that the next step maybe blocking certain websites in Chrome.

I think this is a good example of &quot;you can&#x27;t solve human problems with cute tech workarounds&quot; because I think Google is actually in the right here (given you think their ban on hate speech is general is legitimate). It shouldn&#x27;t matter at all the technical details of how an app works or the fact that it&#x27;s federated or distributed. All that really matters to the policy is what a user sees when they download and open the app.<p>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&#x27;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&#x2F;chat programs&#x2F;communities where you have to seek out that kind of content.<p>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 &quot;content on other servers is not vetted, are you sure?&quot; would be allowed to stay.<p>[1] Which makes sense since these are some of the only havens for people who can&#x27;t make it on Twitter&#x2F;FB&#x2F;Reddit.

There’s not much to say on this subject anymore.<p>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.<p>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.

I feel like there&#x27;s a whole series of articles that could be filed under &quot;Tech industry decides aol really had the right model after all.&quot;

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 &quot;Add to Home Screen&quot; prompt on websites. There is no reason for this to be a native app.<p>&gt; This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all.<p>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 &quot;start an instance of ___&quot;.<p>What does that mean? Can&#x27;t I just create an account? When I hear &quot;start an instance&quot;, I think of launching a Linux droplet on Digital Ocean and setting up an app there. I can&#x27;t imagine what an average user that wants a Twitter alternative would think.

I frequently visits 1 Chinese dota2 esports site. That&#x27;s a small &amp; independent site with 10+ years history. A vibrant community with mostly young gamers on dota2.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The reason is of cuz the site is engaged in &quot;appropriate discussion&quot;.<p>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.<p>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.

I&#x27;m sure all the people who were for taking down certain Fediverse apps for hate speech from the F-droid app store won&#x27;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..<p>Serves you right.

It needs to be regulated first by law makers to prevent companies applying arbitrary rules and discriminate clients based on subjective&#x2F;someone&#x27;s personal preferences.<p>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.<p>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.

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!<p>You can&#x27;t just keep banning Fediverse instances. It&#x27;s like banning websites. So what is this going to mean?<p>Approved instances. Here&#x27;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&#x27;re not on it, your instance is not accessible.<p>That is where we&#x27;re heading.

I&#x27;m surprised they take it down. Why would they do that? Is the fediverse a threat to Google? It&#x27;s a super niche thing for the a small minority of people who are not Google target users anyway.

If we&#x27;re going to play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with &quot;hate speech&quot; (a term that&#x27;s loosely defined, of course) then there simply isn&#x27;t going to be any internet left.

I really wish people would just ignore hate speech online like we&#x27;ve been doing for forever. I&#x27;m so tired of Google &amp; Twitter trying to be the &quot;internet police&quot;. It&#x27;s so infuriating. The internet feels too &quot;safe&quot; now.<p>Obviously a &quot;KKK Members&quot; 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&#x27;re adults. Let us see what we want to see.

Wait? Isn&#x27;t the Fediverse full of nazis, freeze-peachers and non-moderated unsafe instances? Oh, yes!<p>There we are. When framapiaf.org, mamot.fr and other &quot;free speech&quot; and &quot;anti-censorship floss activists&quot; 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.<p>Those spaces are totally out of control and this is a part of the problem.

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.<p>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.

Meanwhile multiple 4chan clients are still up: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;search?q=4chan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;search?q=4chan</a><p>Maybe it&#x27;s too soon to say but given the reputation of 4chan vs the small user-group of fediverse I&#x27;d say these rules are being enforced selectively.

OP here, let me know if anyone has any questions I can help with, I&#x27;m the one who made the post this is linking to.

Original post combined with this one, so just for completeness&#x27; sake here&#x27;s the original toot from the lead Mastodon dev @Gargron: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@Gargron&#x2F;104763960269049818" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@Gargron&#x2F;104763960269049818</a>

Middle size Mastodon instance moderator here.<p>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 &quot;Google Play ban&quot;, I am laughing very very strong.

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?<p>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?

I don&#x27;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 &amp; Co being benevolent dictators.<p>Marginalizing ideas that breed on marginalization is to me a fool&#x27;s errand. Light the ultimate sanitizer.

So did anyone build a twitter-over-bitcoin microblogging platform yet? That would be pretty hard to censor.

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.

I don&#x27;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.

Pretty soon Google is going to yank YouTube out of their App Store as well.

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.

Please outlaw paper. People have written many terrible things on it.

This doesn&#x27;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.

I&#x27;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&#x27;s obviously a possibility.<p>They seem rushed to establish some kind of precedent. Is there someone on Biden&#x27;s team who is known to be a strong anti-monopolist, and this is in preparation for a administration change? I don&#x27;t think Biden himself has ever had strong feelings here.<p>Or maybe someone at the Trump admin has pretty much given them a green light?<p>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.

Okay, so take down twitter, reddit, and facebook too?

Justification for &quot;all&#x2F;most&quot; in submission?<p>Any confirmation of the broad speculation in this thread and the the linked thread..?

I hope I’m being reactionary, but this feels like the possibility of leaving the walled garden is basically null

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.<p>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.

Just the free markets at work nothing to see here!<p>Its not like we have a MONOPOLY problem in tech!<p>The markets will just sort it out.

Top comments in that article are one of the most well known hate speech sites is hosted therein.

When I opened up YT Music today, almost the entire scree was taken up by a link to a political playlist. I don&#x27;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?

In case you want to know the alternative way, install F-droid from f-droid.org

Tusky appears to still be up.<p>Wonder if this has to do with the recent Husky&#x2F;Tusky drama.

Continue digging that antitrust grave, Google.

I guess Tusky&#x27;s decision to ban a blocklist a bunch of instances citing that policy is looking pretty prescient, now.

Remember when Google tried their own federated communication app and failed? Maybe they’re just jealous.

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?<p>And also maybe revise all those antitrust laws into something actually useful - they&#x27;re using their (kinda, mostly) monopoly to hinder competition by selectively applying their rules to whever they want and never themselves.

Can they be side-loaded?

subjugated by corporations, what a life.

does that mean Blind is next?

&quot;Don&#x27;t be evil&quot; my ass.

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 &#x27;capitalism&#x27; and &#x27;privateness&#x27; as an excuse for censorship on platforms that have become as good as public utilities.<p>The open web has never been more important. What next, will Google&#x27;s Chrome browser start blocking fediverse web domains? That&#x27;s their &#x27;platform&#x27;, too.

Obligatory callout to Apple zealots who say that having a single AppStore and no sideloading capability is a good thing.

I&#x27;m glad I degoogled. This kind of thing is why. It wasn&#x27;t even hard after I got email switched over. If they didn&#x27;t have a video monopoly, I would never have to use their stuff.

They&#x27;re letting us know what we should have already known for a long time.<p>It&#x27;s not the abuse of power that is the problem but the power to abuse.<p>Decentralize all the things!

Here&#x27;s a simple riddle:<p><pre><code> 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. </code></pre> This isn&#x27;t &#x27;doing the right thing&#x27; and Google is not your friend.

This will suffer from a backfire effect where the result is you just get more technically savvy radicals. Google&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>I realize the sort of people who make decisions like this think they are doing this to &quot;win,&quot; as the only thing on anyone&#x27;s mind right now is influencing November, and making sure it &quot;never happens again,&quot; but Googlers and tech people like this are creating a self-isolating minority of themselves.<p>Exiting what has become the Karen-net is probably one of the most interesting problems to solve right now.

I guess they&#x27;ll have to remove Youtube and Facebook apps next. F the App Stores anyway.

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.

Does anyone know the US case law on the 1st amendment being applied to corporate actors?<p>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.<p>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.

Seems likely anyone using Mastodon would know about alternative &quot;stores&quot; and manual installs.

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.<p>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&#x27;s morals, but not much more.