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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. At least three apps I know of anyway and I'd imagine the others will follow soon under the exact same reasoning.} Seems to be the case with Husky, Fedilab, and "subway" tooter.
this is a scary precedent if google play is going to ban any apps that can in any way be used to access content with hate speech. So what about a forum client, do they take that down just because there is a forum somewhere on the internet posting hate speech?
This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all.
Picture attached of one of the notices received by fedilab.
https://toot.fedilab.app/@fedilab/104761140268193772
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818
@fedilab @tateisu #fediverse #mastoadmin #freespeech #censorship
@freemo this happened to Clover, an imageboard client, because it supported access to 4chan - a site that Google considered unpalatable.
At the time, it was mostly cheered by a lot of the same people as use mastodon. It's unfortunate the precedent has come full circle.
@kline Yea, what goes around comes around.. for many this will be a taste of their own medicine...
@kline @freemo Or, Google has sown and now they will reap. The Fediverse and its future incarnations, are the future of social networking which has become a huge part of the internet and how people get their news. With this kind of pressure solutions will be produced. War time always brings with it great innovations.
@master honestly if this rule were universally applied then any app with a social element would pretty much have to get axed at that point.
At the same time, Twitter actively censors one type of hate speech, but allows another. It's interesting because this means Twitter actively supports, and therefore publishes hate speech.
@freemo @kline Literally all of that "offensive" content--fedi instances--can be viewed by #Chrome anyways. Unless you're going to ban the #Fediverse from the browser, there isn't any consistent logic here.
Yea its absurd logic.. the only difference between chrome and a mastodon client is that chrome gives you access to hate speech servers through http protocol and mastodon client gives you access to hate speech servers through the ActivityPub protocol
@freemo to be fair, I suspect this could be a time of reckoning for the fediverse. The willingness of people to draw instant parallels between software ("FOR ANY PURPOSE") and the beliefs and moral values of the users.
In the past, large swathes of the fediverse have written off pleroma and pleroma users as undesirable, regardless of whether that was true or not, because of a small element who were.
Google has now decided that fediverse apps, it seems, are likewise undesirable because of a small number of non-representative users. First we have sown, now we reap.