[HN Gopher] Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google ...
___________________________________________________________________
Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store
Author : redsolver
Score : 1709 points
Date : 2021-01-29 23:28 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Don't forget that F-Droid is a thing, and Android still has at
| least that much freedom - to install your own software.
|
| Who would have thought 30 years ago someone would be saying
| "People can run any code they want on their computer" as a
| shocking thing.
| dominotw wrote:
| I use the app to chat with my mom. My mom is not going to
| install F-Droid or whatever. This comment reminds me of the
| famous dropbox comment on HN.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Care to share the famous comment for those not in the know?
| _huayra_ wrote:
| iirc, the quote s/he's referring to is approximately
| "Dropbox won't ever take off because it's just glorified
| rsync and everyone can already do that", i.e. "everyone"
| can rsync
| dgellow wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| oji0hub wrote:
| Installing software outside of play store is technically
| possible, but if something contains enough hurdles, most people
| won't do it, which results in no users and a meaningless
| platform.
| imhoguy wrote:
| It is not meaningless, but agreed not something for mass use
| yet. Similarly like 30-40 years ago with personal computing,
| now also geeks start the paradigm shift into privacy-aware
| computing.
| corty wrote:
| I guess at some point Google will close the F-Droid
| loophole in Android and only allow installations through
| the Playstore anymore. You know, for security reasons...
| _winkwink_
|
| Maybe the real reason will be pressure from the government
| to hurt the ones like Huawei a little more, maybe it will
| be the need to squeeze more money, or maybe the need for
| censorship because those evil alternative app-platforms
| allow whatever unwanted stuff.
| brmgb wrote:
| > I guess at some point Google will close the F-Droid
| loophole in Android and only allow installations through
| the Playstore anymore.
|
| Google standing in Europe is already really shaky. They
| keep taking fines after fines for abuse of their dominant
| position. That won't last forever. If they close the
| ability for other stores to exist, the best case scenario
| is the EU giving them a huge fine and forcing them to go
| back. Worst case is being force to split Android out of
| the main company. Google knows that which is why they
| will not do it.
| herewegoagain2 wrote:
| The other aspect is that Google is now jeopardizing many
| people who now enable "other sources", making them more
| susceptible to malware. (Not saying you shouldn't enable
| "other sources", but many people don't understand what they
| are doing).
| grishka wrote:
| There aren't that many hurdles.
|
| 1. You download the apk
|
| 2. When you try to install it, it tells you it's from an
| unknown source and the installation was blocked to protect
| you
|
| 3. You tap "settings" and flip a switch to allow installing
| apps from your browser
|
| 4. You go back and tap "install". That's it. It's done. And
| you won't need to go to the settings the next time, it'll
| just work.
| spians wrote:
| These are still four more steps then what it takes to
| directly install from the Play Store. Most people would
| view any of these four steps as hurdle.
|
| > And you won't need to go to the settings the next time,
| it'll just work.
|
| You will still have to find the apk when there is an
| update, download it and confirm install. There are still
| three steps to update the apk compared to Play Store's one
| tap (or even zero clicks if automatic updates are on). Only
| "Allow installing from this source" step is removed when
| updating the app.
| grishka wrote:
| It's possible to build self-update functionality into an
| app, just like many apps do on desktop. An app can open
| that installation prompt to update itself.
| anderspitman wrote:
| Not on the latest versions of Android, unless you're only
| updating interpreted code like Python. You can no longer
| execute files that weren't packaged with the original
| APK.
| grishka wrote:
| You can download an apk and launch the package installer
| activity to install it. In latest versions of Android,
| you'll need to serve the apk through a ContentProvider. I
| tested this myself, it works, even if the app is updating
| itself.
|
| But I think you can actually still load arbitrary dex
| files using a ClassLoader? I thought that the update was
| only affecting JNI libraries. I remember reading how they
| wanted for any and all executable code to come from a
| signed package. Even then, if you're determined enough,
| you can load arbitrary native code by allocating some rwx
| memory pages and copying it in there ;)
| anderspitman wrote:
| Yeah I misinterpreted your original comment. I was
| thinking in terms of the app being in control of itself
| ie JNI type stuff.
|
| Sounds like there are ways to do it within the Android
| ecosystem, but in cases where Google is suspending things
| wouldn't they just turn off all the self-update stuff?
| grishka wrote:
| Google doesn't have the technical ability to "turn off
| all the self-update stuff", if you mean preventing non-
| store apps from updating themselves by downloading and
| installing apks. The worst thing they can _try_ doing is
| bullying the users into uninstalling the app through
| Google Play Protect.
| anderspitman wrote:
| I'm not deep enough in the Android ecosystem to
| understand all the details. I've only had the misfortune
| of trying to get a (very portably-written) golang
| application to run in the environment, and hitting
| roadblock after roadblock.
|
| I guess my overall point is that Google is motivated to
| have complete control over Android app distribution, and
| they'll plug as many of the types of holes you're talking
| about as they can get away with.
| oji0hub wrote:
| No major apps have gained traction that way. So
| unfortunately, those are enough hurdles that this isn't
| realistic.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The main hurdle is that (without rooting) there doesn't
| seem to be a way for alternative app stores to silently
| update software.
|
| That's _bearable_ though unpleasant when you have one or
| two pieces of software that rarely get updated, that 's
| absolutely impossible when you have 10+ pieces of software
| - you'll sit there for 5 minutes just approving install
| prompts every week, which isn't something a normal human is
| going to do.
|
| It doesn't help that FDroid is pretty broken, and
| constantly pops up notifications about updates that don't
| work/aren't actionable (i.e. tapping the notification
| doesn't result in an install prompt followed by a
| successful installation, instead I get various errors
| etc.). Also, apparently the FDroid review process is even
| slower than the Play store review process.
| thu2111 wrote:
| _The main hurdle is that (without rooting) there doesn 't
| seem to be a way for alternative app stores to silently
| update software._
|
| Does this actually matter? On the desktop it's normal for
| apps to update themselves. Is there some fundamental
| reason an Android app cannot do this too?
| Macha wrote:
| Yes. The application's executable is not writeable to the
| app. You need to go through the package installer. This
| requires a system controlled prompt for the user to
| confirm an installation, and requires a seperate
| permission to even ask which is not allowed for third
| party apps published to the play store (https://developer
| .android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...).
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Er, not quite. The permission required to trigger the app
| install prompt for an APK is _REQUEST__ INSTALL_PACKAGES,
| which _is_ available to third-party apps.
| TheJoYo wrote:
| even google play store has a hard time silently updating
| these days.
| exikyut wrote:
| The non-root way to silently update is to install a DPC
| (device policy controller). Has existed for the past 10
| years to support enterprise MDM. Only catch is that to
| install the DPC you have to factory reset your phone to
| place it into the special state where no accounts have
| "ever" been signed in to, which is what allows a DPC to
| be installed. (Removing all accounts from the device may
| also work)
|
| The nice thing is that once the DPC is installed you can
| `adb install -r` (reinstall, ie update) it without
| needing to factory reset. Just don't uninstall it
| accidentally :D
| morsch wrote:
| Is that something I can do to my phone to make updates
| via F-Droid more seamless?
| pmlnr wrote:
| That's a feature, not a bug. Believe it or not, people
| don't like app/sw updates. Devs and money people do.
| grishka wrote:
| > there doesn't seem to be a way for alternative app
| stores to silently update software
|
| Yes -- because that's something reserved for privileged
| system apps. You have to root your device to take
| advantage of that, or make a custom ROM with the
| alternative store in it. Having that ability as a
| permission you could grant to any app is an immense
| security risk. But then there are "device administrator"
| apps that can literally factory reset the device... I
| don't know. Maybe package installation should be part of
| that. Especially now that the legacy permission model was
| taken care of -- if you install an app that doesn't
| support runtime permissions, you'll get a list of its
| permissions with toggles next to them when you run it for
| the first time.
|
| > you'll sit there for 5 minutes just approving install
| prompts every week
|
| Unpopular opinion: well-made software that serves its
| user doesn't need to be updated very often. Remember how
| you bought a program on a CD and used the exact same
| build for years?
| im3w1l wrote:
| How very convinient for Google that "security" means
| competitors can't have feature parity. But then why are
| you saying there aren't any hurdles?
| GordonS wrote:
| If you root your device, doesn't that mean you will no
| longer be able receive Android OS software updates from
| the phone manufacturer?
|
| > Unpopular opinion: well-made software that serves its
| user doesn't need to be updated very often. Remember how
| you bought a program on a CD and used the exact same
| build for years?
|
| Sure, I'm even old enough to remember this but on
| cassettes and floppy disks! But - software now is _much_
| more complex than it used to be - most software has
| dependencies on other libraries /frameworks, and has to
| deal with communication and encryption (where it is all
| to easy to make subtle mistakes). IMO, for security
| reasons alone, it's no longer realistic to expect
| software without at least occasional updates.
| grishka wrote:
| > software now is much more complex than it used to be
|
| I'd say software now is much more complex than it _needs_
| to be. It 's made to ease the life of the developer,
| usually an inexperienced one, at the expense of the user.
|
| > IMO, for security reasons alone, it's no longer
| realistic to expect software without at least occasional
| updates.
|
| If people would stop rewriting things that already work
| fine, we'll run out of vulnerabilities at some point. Or,
| if you must rewrite them and have a good reason to do so,
| at least use a memory-safe language. Even C++ is much
| better than C and raw pointers. Anything is better than C
| and raw pointers. Yet all major OS kernels and most
| userspace components are written in C and use raw
| pointers and vulnerabilities in those are being found all
| too often.
| neop1x wrote:
| > If you root your device, doesn't that mean you will no
| longer be able receive Android OS software updates from
| the phone manufacturer?
|
| It often means that. :( But it is not that bad for some
| devices. Geeks from Lineage community regurarly update
| closed vendor code in the LineageOS. So if you are lucky
| and Lineage is well-supported on your device, you can
| still have root nowadays with up-to-date vendor blobs.
|
| For example I rooted my Xperia XZ2 Compact and I am quite
| happy with it. By using Magisk and Magisk Hide, I am
| still able to use Google Pay. At the same time, I can use
| Titanium Backup and f-droid root extension to let f-droid
| install updates automatically. I hope this device will
| last me for a long time as I don't see many alternatives
| - most other phones are too big for me, too old/slow or
| unsupported.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Having that ability as a permission you could grant to
| any app is an immense security risk
|
| A risk to whom? There is no permission that is a
| "security risk" so long as it's the device owner granting
| that permission.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| Sadly, you lost the 90% of users who are not tech experts
| by point 2.
| grishka wrote:
| So be it. It's okay for technology to require education.
| Stop infantilizing users.
| dominotw wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
|
| Dropbox wouldn't be a thing if we can "educate" users.
| grishka wrote:
| Dropbox's selling point is its simplicity. Apple's as
| well, for that matter. It's perfectly fine to have
| simplicity as your selling point.
|
| Many people, myself included, love products that "just
| work" out of the box. That's what everything should be
| like, ideally. My gripe with modern technology is that it
| actively inhibits your ability to go in and tinker. DRM,
| forced app stores, code signing with enforced signing
| identity, all that kind of stuff.
|
| See, imagine someone releases an amazing messaging app
| that's lightyears ahead of everything else on the market.
| But -- it's only available through F-Droid or as an apk
| download on the developer's website. People will flock
| there and install it. And they will be unstoppable.
|
| A concrete example of this phenomenon: Pokemon Go wasn't
| officially released in Russia, so you couldn't download
| it from the app stores. Yet, everyone played it. And I
| mean everyone, in 2016, especially during summer, you
| couldn't take a walk in the downtown St Petersburg
| without hearing the Pokemon Go sounds from people's
| phones. Android users sideloaded apks, iOS users created
| separate Apple IDs to bypass the geoblock. Suddenly
| everyone educated themselves to get the thing they
| wanted.
| bogwog wrote:
| 99% of consumers will stop at step 2. 80% won't have the
| technical skills to make it past step 1.
|
| But even if 99% of people _could_ figure it out, it 'd
| still be an unnecessary hurdle whose only purpose is to
| provide Google with an unfair competitive advantage.
|
| Until all of that bs goes away, side-loading and secondary
| app stores will be nothing more than a hobby for
| enthusiasts.
| thu2111 wrote:
| Google shouldn't be doing what they're doing, no
| question. BUT, this reaction to the idea of people
| downloading apps is over the top. The world is full of
| people who made lots of money on the back of people
| downloading and installing their apps, even _with_ far
| worse UXs than what Android provides.
|
| Minecraft.
|
| Steam.
|
| Heck, every video game ever.
|
| Skype.
|
| Microsoft Office. Made billions when people had to
| physically go to a store and get it.
|
| Google Earth. Chrome itself.
|
| IntelliJ, any developer tool.
|
| Zoom. WebEx. Most video conf tools, actually.
|
| Any pro tool whatsoever.
|
| You get the picture. No, ticking a box and tapping is
| _not_ the end of the world and never has been. The UX for
| app installation on macOS and Windows is totally
| atrocious in both cases and people figure it out.
|
| If you live in the Valley bubble world where every single
| app that exists is VC funded and desperately racing to
| get to a 100M daily actives first, then it might seem
| like one extra click is literally the end of the world.
| But FFS the vast majority of all businesses and products
| require more effort to get than that, and they work just
| fine.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| thats a huge hurdle for normal people, it means you can't
| make a business out of selling things that way unless you
| have an established product like fortnite
| grishka wrote:
| > make a business
|
| Well here's your problem
| akvadrako wrote:
| Only if your users are really lazy. It's certainly easier to
| install Element from an Apk then it is to set element up from
| then on.
| oji0hub wrote:
| That's almost all people in practice.
| poisonborz wrote:
| The same was said of purchasing stock options.
| notassigned wrote:
| Thanks for sharing F-Droid. Don't know how I've missed this so
| far
| olah_1 wrote:
| F-Droid bans apps for "hate speech" too[1].
|
| Any mastodon app that refused to blacklist Gab got banned from
| F-Droid or something like that.
|
| It is the perfect example of why I don't even bother with
| federated projects. It's just "wouldn't it be great if _I_ were
| in charge?"
|
| If that's the situation, I'd rather Big Tech be in charge
| because at least they have some name recognition and hierarchy
| for decision making. Nobody cares if pizza-witches wrongfully
| broke terms. With Twitter at least peoples' ears perk up.
|
| In other words, there's no rules in the alley. But there are
| rules in the town square.
|
| [1]: https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app/
| inshadows wrote:
| App Store is about central authority. F-Droid is about
| freedom to add whatever repositories you deem useful. It's up
| to operators of F-Droid-the-repository to decide what they
| want to host. But it's up to you to add another repository to
| the list. You say there's no other repository hosting Gab?
| That is not a problem that can't be dealt with. Unless
| network operator decide to ban routes, it's just a work
| (setting up a repository and trust) that needs to be done.
|
| EDIT: This is mentality I find hilarious. It's either I can
| something for free or I can't get it at all. I think freedom
| in this case is about having something with little expended
| work.
| Zak wrote:
| F-Droid is both a client and a repository. The official
| F-Droid repository has policies that were clarified in other
| replies, but it's also important to note that you can add
| arbitrary repositories and manage software from them with the
| F-Droid app.
|
| The "build your own if you don't like it" answer is often
| absurdly impractical, but not here. Someone who feels it's
| important can put up an alternate repo containing clients
| preconfigured to connect to Gab and even an alternate build
| of F-Droid preconfigured to use it in an afternoon.
| Macha wrote:
| This is mostly untrue.
|
| There was no requirement to blacklist gab. Mastodon clients
| on f-droid are allowed let users use Gab.
|
| What f-droid does not allow is apps preconfigured to connect
| to Gab, or who's primary purpose is to connect to Gab.
|
| There was even a petition to have fdroid remove an app
| (fedilab) that had a blacklist to disallow Gab then removed
| it, claiming that removing Gab from the blacklist was
| specifically endorsing it, and there were some people who
| tried to claiming that not apps that were not blacklisting
| Gab when other apps did meant those apps primary purpose was
| to connect to Gab, but f-droid weren't having it:
| https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/1736.
|
| However, they did consider an app that was a straight fork
| tracking another with the only change being the removal of a
| blacklist to be disallowed.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Could you rephrase the fourth paragraph?
| Macha wrote:
| fedilab was allowed despite removing a blacklist. This
| was because not having a blacklist was not the app's sole
| distinction from other mastodon apps (it had a majorly
| different UI), so its purpose was determined to be more
| than just accessing Gab.
|
| However, some fdroid users asked for its removal. They
| felt removing the blacklist feature, which had previously
| only blocked gab, was itself an endorsement of Gab and
| indicated the app's purpose was to access Gab since the
| other available mastodon app (Tusky) still had a
| blacklist.
|
| fdroid did not agree and fedilab is still available.
|
| OpenTusky was not allowed as it was literally Tusky with
| the server blacklist removed, created in response to
| Tusky blocking Gab. It also advertised this in the app
| description, so fdroid judged it to be primarily for
| accessing gab and removed it.
| dleslie wrote:
| So.. They don't ban apps that connect to verboten services,
| but they do ban apps that acknowledge the existence of
| verboten services, and apps that remove barriers to
| verboten services.
|
| That's cutting the hair mightily fine.
| erik_kemp wrote:
| _Sigh_. These kind of things, as well as the Signal outage, are
| not helping efforts to help people switch to better messaging
| alternatives. It nicely illustrates the centralisation of power
| though.
| newfeatureok wrote:
| How could this be - I was told our corporate overlords are able
| to do whatever they'd regarding kicking people off their
| platforms?
|
| Whatever shall we do?
|
| The funny thing about the whole "do bad things and get kicked
| off" strategy is that every platform has abusers. Since Big Tech
| can arbitrarily decide the thresholds and circumstances that lead
| to being kicked off, this effectively means they can kick anyone
| off for any reason.
|
| Even on here, on Hacker News, if you dig deep enough I guarantee
| you can find questionable content (albeit probably downvoted) to
| justify deplatforming if you were tasked with deplatforming this
| site anyways.
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| FYI your comment was dead, and I vouched for it. You might be
| shadowbanned? Not sure, but regardless you might look into it.
| [deleted]
| nabla9 wrote:
| Instead of putting some money into good service in two sided
| markets, Google is fine with automatized or low effort curation.
| High visibility post in Hacker News seems to be how errors can be
| corrected.
|
| Monopoly power in action. There is little pressure to fix this.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| A lot of people seem to believe that there's much more to this
| than there really is.
|
| Google has hired a bunch of 28 year old kids in HR and PR, that
| never used Usenet, that never used IRC, that barely remember AIM,
| that had a smartphone before they had their own laptop, _that
| don't understand the internet or technology_.
|
| And they're the ones making these decisions. There aren't rooms
| full of Google PMs and programmers and engineers debating the
| implications. It's 3 or 4 kids in-between the ages of 24 and 34,
| and that room is increasingly technically illiterate, and
| increasingly unable to imagine an internet before (or after)
| FAANG hegemony.
|
| This isn't Google being evil to protect advertising dollars, or
| to kill Matrix, etc.
|
| It's google hiring young, unimaginative, uninteresting social
| justice warriors. We've taken for granted that most of the people
| working in FAANG have been using computers for longer than these
| companies existed. That's no longer really the case, and the
| attitudes of these companies are going to continue to change
| further and further from the unique values that the industry used
| to represent. In ten years it's going to be worse, and in 30 it's
| going to be unrecognizable.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| There are plenty of people under 30 more of the "hacker"
| aesthetic, who independently adopt Linux and have a seething
| contempt for social media and streaming titans and data hoard
| and play Dwarf Fortress and roguelikes and what have you.
|
| Some of them are even in the disaffected, alt-right or anti-SJW
| crowd[0] (but those are generally more like under 20, I think).
|
| The ones who live on their phones and Macbooks and don't
| understand technology are _normies_ , of which there are more
| since CS has become much more popularized and pop-culturally
| embraced, I think. There's plenty of those in their 50s and
| above, too, just less-so at FAANGs.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz/videos
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you want to get away from those sort of 28 year olds - go
| work in core engineering for an ISP. The sort of persons who
| are entrusted with admin access on the big, expensive, vitally
| critical Cisco and Juniper boxes that run a medium to large
| sized ISP are pretty much the _opposite_ of the raised-on-
| shiny-GUI persons you describe.
|
| However I think it's unfair to say that people under age 40 are
| 'social justice warriors'. They've been raised in a bubble of
| superficial user interfaces and have never been _forced_ to
| encounter the fundamental underpinnings of the software and
| Internet.
| [deleted]
| prohobo wrote:
| You have a point, but it's not entirely that. For one, the
| boomers are the ones who still own everything, and they've
| never given over leadership roles down to the next generations.
|
| There's a combination of a certain subset of millennials who
| are like this, and the leadership that doesn't care and wants
| everything to go their way (as it always has).
|
| A large part is also that the mainstream internet is still so
| new, and people are so poorly educated that they don't
| understand that they're the bad guys.
| swiley wrote:
| TL;DR: Google has likely delegated policing everyone's PCs to a
| handful of incompetent children and that should make you feel
| less worried.
|
| Smartphones are bad. "Apps" are bad. OS vendors using their
| position to change public behavior is bad. (this last idea
| something the courts in most countries agree on.)
|
| You need to get this stuff out of your life, it's beyond coke
| levels of harmful.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| Not unlike the CCP.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| It's a second comment in this thread like this. I'm not a
| native speaker and it's hard to tell whether CCP is supposed
| to be:
|
| - CCCP a cyrillic of SSSR?
|
| - CCP, Chinese Communist Party?
|
| - CCP, the cyclic something peptide, which is a top websearch
| hit for me?
| COGlory wrote:
| Chinese Communist Party
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am around 25, and I remember all that and loved it. I miss it
| terribly. I do not like this trend and direction. Quite scary,
| to be honest.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| I'm in that age bracket, I remember the open internet. I
| wouldn't get super ageist about it, but I think the point still
| stands. Google just wants to believe the internet is for
| megacorps and everyone who isn't on a mega platform doesn't
| belong connected to it.
| ArcVRArthur wrote:
| This is very disruptive to me. Our business chose to use Element
| because of the privacy and interoperability functions it afforded
| us through end-to-end encryption and the bridges feature
| (matrix.org/bridges).
| J_tt wrote:
| I'm in the same boat here, at least on Android alternatives
| such as F-Droid exist, however I'm concerned about the
| repercussions for MDM, as in our case (intune) we go through
| the Play store.
|
| My largest concern is if Apple follows suit, which could lead
| to large problems with our employees who use iPhones.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Recently I've been seriously considering finally ditching
| iPhone because I share the same concern. After all, Apple did
| the same to another company recently... so we know they are
| willing.
| zepto wrote:
| What other company did they do this to?
| jtbayly wrote:
| I think it started with a P.
|
| Paler, maybe? or Parter?
| zepto wrote:
| Google ditched that app too.
|
| If you move from iPhone, where would you go?
| 0x10c0fe11ce wrote:
| I'm seriously considering ditching my iPhones for any
| Nokia dumb phone. But what we really need is a mobile OS
| that is really free with no marketing BS, ideally BSD
| derived.
| teddyh wrote:
| Like this one? https://pureos.net/ Running on a phone:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
| tpxl wrote:
| Pinephone for a cheaper, less performant alternative:
| https://pine64.com/product-
| category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
| zepto wrote:
| Unfortunately (since otherwise I'd be using one) both are
| unusable as practical replacements for Android or iOS.
| tpxl wrote:
| Once calls/texts work with 100% reliability and it isn't
| slow as hell I'm going all in :)
| zepto wrote:
| Yeah - I don't even care about calls that much.
|
| Texts, not slow as hell, decent battery life, would do it
| for me.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| You mean Ubuntu touch?
| jtbayly wrote:
| I don't really want to go to Android, but as was pointed
| out above, at least side loading is possible. Everyone
| still _can_ get Element right now, even though Google has
| banned it from their store. But if Apple banned it, I 'd
| be immediately unable to get it.
| Karsteski wrote:
| You can use an open source community driven Android build
| like LineageOS or GraniteOS, if your phone supports it.
| You can even conpletely degoogle your phone this way :)
| [deleted]
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Parlez? Palais? Parley?
| calabin wrote:
| We're in the same boat - fortunately we're a small company so
| it's not going to be brutal to switch if we have to, but we're
| huge fans of the privacy and encryption features and it would
| be a disappointment to have to go back to the old standards of
| Slack or Teams.
| 4f8fje9frn wrote:
| It's surprising to me you'd switch to a new platform because
| of this when it still works on the desktop. You could install
| it via F-droid or an APK, use alternative frontend app or you
| could even just use the web interface.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Does this also affect existing installs, or only (attempted)
| new ones?
| haakon wrote:
| Only new ones. At least my installation is still there.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Thanks. That should limit the disruption, at least.
| chaganated wrote:
| These actions have been so fast and furious and brazen that you
| have to wonder: They obviously see people as cattle, but are they
| right? Or, do they have an ace up their sleeve that makes the
| answer irrelevant?
| danaugrs wrote:
| Why is Element suspended but not Signal? Is Signal compromised?
| ognarb wrote:
| Now I have one reason more to continue to develop a matrix client
| for Plasma Mobile.
| elkos wrote:
| If I get to work with matrix and element io plasma mobile I'm
| ordering a device next day.
| ognarb wrote:
| NeoChat does work on Plasma Mobile but it is still missing a
| few features to be production ready.
| https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/23/announcing-
| neochat-1.0-the-...
|
| I'm currently working on encryption support in the base
| library: https://github.com/quotient-im/libQuotient/pull/443
| and once this is done the other big missing feature are
| notifications.
| COGlory wrote:
| Thank you for your work on that
| COGlory wrote:
| F-Droid Link:
|
| Element (previously Riot.im) (Secure decentralised chat & VoIP.
| Keep your data safe from third parties.) -
| https://f-droid.org/packages/im.vector.app
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Aren't some Matrix servers, which Element can connect to,
| considered "free speech zones" where hate speech and
| misinformation propagates? If so, expect F-Droid to do the
| needful to Element like they have before[1].
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html
| ncmncm wrote:
| By the way, "Foxy Droid" does the same job as F-Droid but is
| much less annoying. Available on F-Droid.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| i like g-droid as well since it lets you bookmark apps so you
| can check them out later
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| And the app search on G-Droid is so much better than the
| main F-Droid app.
| berkes wrote:
| Off topic, but since you brought it up: what is annoying
| about f-droid?
| ncmncm wrote:
| It shows all kinds of stuff unrelated to the thing you are
| trying to do, to the point of making it harder to do the
| thing.
| nolim1t wrote:
| The fight has started..
|
| Luckily theres other clients available too. Client diversity is
| important
| Causality1 wrote:
| It's incredible that they still host web browsers and email
| clients with these kinds of policies in place.
| williamonill wrote:
| Perhaps a little cynical but what would stop Google from
| classifying praising other search engines as "hate speech" and
| deleting any comments in this direction from their platforms? And
| when "hate speech" is just a little too absurd then they just
| classify it as "security risk" and ban it as well.
| alangibson wrote:
| It's been remarkable to watch the sad old "first they came for
| them..." saga play out in real time over the past few years.
|
| At first there were just a few, heavily downvoted, voices saying
| that Twitter shouldn't be deplatforming obnoxious cretins on
| grounds of free speech principles. And now here we are with open
| source chat clients getting removed from the app store.
|
| I know alot of smart people will try to argue Its Not The Same
| Thing, but I'm with the side that says there's a direct line
| through these events.
| jariel wrote:
| This notion that your business can evaporate without notice
| overnight has to stop.
|
| We absolutely need clear legislation on this, this is causing
| harm and the power asymmetry is monumental.
|
| Also - consider the conflicts of interests: Google Apps would
| never, ever get treated the same way.
|
| I think it's time to separate app distribution from the devices
| themselves.
| JBiserkov wrote:
| >in the interim there's
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/im.vector.app/ but it's a few
| versions behind.
|
| Honest question: Why is the F-Droid option a few versions behind?
| boudin wrote:
| The release process can be quite slow on the f-droid official
| repository as the signing step is done on an offline machine
| manually. https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Security_Model
| fblp wrote:
| Hi there, if you're a small business impacted by this please
| comment how below, i can raise the issue with congressional
| representatives via the national small business association. I've
| seen a couple posts about this already.
|
| From my perspective, decentralized, free and open source software
| enables and supports a range of small businesses. The
| replacements for tools like Element are big-tech tools ranging
| from Whatsapp (Facebook) to Slack (Salesforce).
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I am going to install Element with F-droid or manual APK load on
| principle now. Fuck this.
| js4ever wrote:
| It seems all those deplatforming started really recently with
| trump/parler and turned into a witch hunt. It's now totally out
| of control and we start to look like CCP
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, it started with facebook being myspace with nazis and
| nudity banned; developed through a few waves of Google search
| reprioritization and the sanitization of Reddit(i.e. normie
| 4chan); eventually became open bans of radical Islam,
| Russian/Chinese political speech and commentary, leading into
| the Great Youtube Demonetization.
|
| The Trump/Parler ban is largely the chickens coming home to
| roost; that crowd energetically supported all of this that
| wasn't personally against them, a lot of the modern US right is
| second-generation inspiration from the anti-Islam "Ground Zero
| Mosque" controversy and people like Pamela Geller (long
| forgotten.) Another anti-Islamic precursor to this has also
| been the constant anti-Palestinian activism at every
| university, and a good example of the career direction of the
| people who energetically participated in that is Bari Weiss,
| who now cries about cancel culture (which is both real, and
| responsible for her entire career.)
|
| Now, with all the recently converted lefty Millennials minted
| over the last two elections still mostly seeing the world
| through the lenses of Obama Democrats, they've come to agree
| that the only real problem is that not enough people are
| censored. That's unanimity from left, right, and center.
| [deleted]
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| The coordinated banning of the president of the USA across all
| mainstream platforms was just the beginning. It's like they
| were afraid, previously. Now they found out they can deplatform
| everyone they want and no one can really stop them!
| vbezhenar wrote:
| But Google is a private company and can decide who they want to
| see in their stores. Right?
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Yes, this legal void needs to end. If you have a majority of
| some market, there need to be additional legal
| responsibilities.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| It's not that simple. Let's say that Google sell a tv half or
| even a quarter the price of normal tv, but it can only access
| channels authorized by google, and the authorized channels
| can change anytime. Furthermore it can only access consoles
| and devices only authorized by google.
|
| At first, the authorization is very permissive and the
| unauthorized channels or devices are very rare. People begin
| to buy the tv, and channels begin to optimize their content
| around it. Other tv lose their market share, and begin to
| adapt "google tv" architecture to sell their own to survive.
|
| After 10 years google begin to unauthorize some channels, in
| prefer to their own which launched 3 years before, as well as
| consoles in preference to stadia. The ban is same with these
| similar cases, where it's framed as illegal content, or
| error. But it's happening often.
|
| Is google in the wrong here? IMO it's debatable.
| icelancer wrote:
| That was the parent's point - made via sarcasm.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| I know, for me it's just an interesting case where there
| are no clear / definitive answer. Both sides have good
| arguments and it's hard to determinate who is wrong.
| Thorentis wrote:
| We really are seeing the cultural revolution of technology. The
| era of open innovation and freedom of expression is over. And
| because both sides of politics can only see as far as the next
| election, they will just use this to their advantage to
| deplatform their opponents. And who loses? The proles, of
| course.
| powersnail wrote:
| It might be a possible opportunity for alternative platforms
| to grow.
|
| Before, network effect makes Twitter/Google Store/AWS etc
| dominant over alternatives, because everybody could be on
| there. There is no reason to use XXX, because why not
| Twitter.
|
| Now that they make it clear that they are not unbiased
| moderator, and they remove apps/people from their platform, a
| bunch of people become refuge. Alternative stores and social
| media become viable, because they could grab those audience.
| I can see that in the next few years, we will have more
| fractured platforms.
|
| > because both sides of politics can only see as far as the
| next election, they will just use this to their advantage to
| deplatform their opponents
|
| Meanwhile, there are other countries.
| petre wrote:
| I wish Google and Apple are going to be hit with fines and
| regulation in the EU because of this once the comissioners have
| better things to occupy themselves with other than the
| pandemic.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| If you look at any legislation that's been proposed to
| address this, in the EU or anywhere else, it hasn't been
| anything that's going to make the situation any better. Lots
| of governments around the world are very upset that these
| cartels have the ability to restrict people's access to the
| internet without any oversight or due process. But that's not
| because they think it's harmful for peoples access to these
| services to be taken away without any oversight or due
| process, they just want to be the ones wielding that power.
| petre wrote:
| I'm not talking about acces to the internet but about app
| store monopoly. It's similar with MS shipping IE bundled
| with Windows for which they got fined.
| golemiprague wrote:
| They should be the ones wielding the power because they are
| elected and if we don't like their decision we can vote
| someone else in, we don't have any right to vote who runs
| Google. The whole thing is a slippery slope started by the
| left which they still support. Hopefully it will all
| crumble the same way the USSR did, but it might take time.
| throwdbaaway wrote:
| Exactly. If a chat service is banned in some authoritarian
| countries, that's the strongest signal that it is indeed
| secure.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Widely recognized "authoritarian" countries are hardly
| the issue here. Western democracies have been trying to
| usurp this power from the tech cartels for quite a while
| now. "Hate speech" laws have been successfully normalized
| in many countries already. The latest push has been to
| legally regulate "misinformation". The EU has already
| started the process of establishing a government
| authority to regulate the truth. Then again, they've been
| trying to ban E2EE for years as well, so perhaps
| authoritarianism is the issue...
| walrus01 wrote:
| Element and Parler are nothing alike.
|
| Element is a chat client. It's an empty piece of software for
| use with your own choice of server. Element is to a chat
| server, as Thunderbird is to an email server. It's basically a
| glorified IRC client. It contains no content of its own.
|
| Parler was basically a curated, centrally run, Facebook-
| message-board-replacement for neonazis, antisemites, qanon
| conspiracy theorists, and the lunatic fringe of the alt-right.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| You posted an identical comment here?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25967058
|
| Copying and pasting posts is generally discouraged.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Yes I did, and I intend to leave it up. I don't really have
| any personal compunctions about a mild breach of the rules
| when calling out apologists of Parler and the Mercers.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Do you think the CCP is
|
| a) happy about this or
|
| b) unhappy about this
|
| I'll give you three guesses.
| js4ever wrote:
| c) not happy nor unhappy, probably they just noticed that US
| also started to use same recipes to mute any deviant or
| discordant voices. Next step could be to replicate GFC
| jimworm wrote:
| They have to be happy on average. It's like being in a race
| where all the competitors started running in different
| directions, but eventually finding that the others have
| turned around to follow your target, effectively giving you a
| head start.
|
| To spell it out more clearly, here is a great place for one's
| opponents/competitors to be stuck in - authoritarian enough
| to eliminate any advantages of liberty, but not authoritarian
| enough to be efficiently coordinated.
| teekert wrote:
| I wonder what stuff like this does for the French government who
| rely on Matrix (and presumably element?). Sure they have their
| own servers and maybe another client.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Right now, the only solution to this situation seems to be
| sticking to SMS and newer non-IP protocols extending and/or
| replacing it as a service offered in the regulated TelCo market
| (in EU at least, but practically in most places). Then mid-term
| extend regulations to IP- and web-based markets as well, forcing
| checks/balances, appeals, and an open ecosystem of alternative
| providers in place where there is feudalism right now. Won't work
| with FAANG providing services "for free"; that is, by bundling
| and ad-financed offerings. So bundling has to be regulated as
| well.
| GNU_James wrote:
| Tutorial for newfriends on how to join Matrix federation.
|
| https://glowers.club/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:newfriends
| agravier wrote:
| Time to Riot again.
| [deleted]
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Not funny. Do you think the riots are leading to better
| society/life ?
| ArcVRArthur wrote:
| Element.io rebranded from Riot.
| agravier wrote:
| The other comments are right. I found it mildly amusing that
| this happened after the name change, which was presumably in
| part motivated by some worries over political correctness.
|
| Sorry for the confusion, throwaway.
| ziftface wrote:
| Like the other comments said, that wasn't the meaning, but
| also yes.
| 1986 wrote:
| Riot is the name of another Matrix client
|
| *edited - the old name of Element, apparently.
| makeworld wrote:
| That is often what riots aim to do, yes.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| According to Durkheim , riots and really crime in general
| have the purpose of pointing out (perceived or real)
| deficiencies in society.
| anuragsoni wrote:
| I believe the parent comment is referencing the fact that the
| Element application used to be called Riot [1].
|
| [1] https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/
| johnisgood wrote:
| According to my country's history, they indeed did.
| dbmikus wrote:
| Riot is the name of another Matrix client.
| swiley wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Riot was the original name of Element until
| 2020.
| snvzz wrote:
| Vector was the name, before they renamed to Riot.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Sweet. Was not aware. Thanks!
| [deleted]
| worik wrote:
| Looking for a reason?
|
| From https://element.io/
|
| "Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and
| ads"
| brink wrote:
| Remind me again what Fascism is and tell me how this isn't
| fascist.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Not fascist. So far they're not targeting a specific race, nor
| are they killing people by this decision.
|
| Monopolistic, capitalistic, cronyism -- yeah lots of that.
| young_unixer wrote:
| A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of
| the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the
| individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic
| government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and
| social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
|
| This is Google just being enormous assholes. Nothing to do with
| fascism.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Mussolini had a somewhat different view, quote:
|
| _> "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism
| because it is a merger of state and corporate power."_
|
| See: https://roanoke.com/news/local/quote-of-the-day-benito-
| musso...
| ttt0 wrote:
| > "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism
| because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
|
| Not to be confused with corporate capitalism.
| 8note wrote:
| What would Mussolini have thought about filling the Italian
| government with brits or Germans?
|
| They definitely had the Italian enthocentrism with the
| trying to recreate the Roman Empire thing
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> They definitely had the Italian enthocentrism with the
| trying to recreate the Roman Empire thing_
|
| Sure, but I think the main point Mussolini tried to make
| with this statement is that corporations are just an
| extension of the state in a fascist society. At least
| that's how I read it.
| jadbox wrote:
| There is a good difference between anticompetitive corporate
| practices (that may feel quasi authoritarian)
|
| The ideology of fascism which divides people into camps of
| others/enemies and us/victims, portraying the 'other' as
| keeping "keeping us from returning to our rightful status, like
| in our glorious past". Fascism is usually used by a singular
| leader to sow fear and deep resentment that allows for
| social/political manipulation.
|
| Both situations horrible of course, but in these times, it's
| good to be clear on their differences.
| ulucs wrote:
| Uhhh so we have already divided the public to groups (by skin
| color, gender and religion even!), we constantly talk about
| how Christian White males have been opressing the other
| groups for centuries and keep them from their rightful
| status, which made it _really_ comfy for our corporate
| overlords because identity politics pit the plebes against
| each other and completely took over class warfare, which
| _was_ the thing that really threatened them.
|
| One thing that differs is the degree of discrimination being
| much lower, which really helps longevity for these politics
| of division. Men can take it, because the current situation
| for them isn't _that_ bad.
| shripadk wrote:
| I got banned here for saying this but I'll continue to say it
| nevertheless. We are already in the Censorship Era. This is an
| Orwellian Nightmare. The quicker this is brought under control
| the better. The last thing we need is Corporate Overlords
| controlling what we say or do online. This includes Hacker News
| as well.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| I think this is a fair point.
|
| That said I think we're more a corporate oligarchy that is
| behaving like a feudal system.
|
| We essentially seem to have corporate lords who are trying to
| appease the king government. Whether it be via censorship or
| other tools.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You got banned for saying that? I am skeptical
| shripadk wrote:
| I was banned for "flamewar" comments that I have been
| indulging in "for months". Sure I was banned for the last
| comment that ticked the mod off (a comment against privacy
| violations of users who had their data stolen through theft)
| but the decision was not based on that alone. It was based on
| comments leading up to it: Most of which concern Big Tech
| Censorship. You can check my comments section if you are
| sceptical. It's publicly accessible anyways.
| ArcVRArthur wrote:
| I agree entirely.
| afavour wrote:
| We live in an era of unprecedented communication. You can
| instant spread a message to millions of people at little or no
| cost. Compared to history (even relatively recent history) we
| are in no way in a "Censorship Era", that's utter hyperbole.
| shripadk wrote:
| > we are in no way in a "Censorship Era", that's utter
| hyperbole
|
| The irony is that you are literally replying to my account
| that got banned for having a contrary opinion. It isn't
| hyperbole. It just so happens that you are living in your own
| bubble where you coincidentally are in agreement with powers
| that be. Or you aren't vocal about your opposition to things
| online. Both of which don't test the limits of free speech.
| People feel Censorship is real when they test the limits. And
| those are in plenty. Maybe when you test those limits you'll
| understand what Censorship is all about.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In dictatorships at least there is a clear authority with clear
| rules. Here we have multiple aithorities makiblng it up as they
| go
| simonh wrote:
| So choice is a bad thing then?
| sova wrote:
| Judges get appointed, not elected; in a similar way, tech
| companies get appointed to these bizarre overseer positions,
| and it seems that they do not mind playing judge, jury, and
| exe.
| int_19h wrote:
| The "Orwellian Nightmare" is 100% correct, but it's not about
| 1984. In 1943, Orwell wrote an essay, "Freedom of the Press",
| that was meant to be published as a preface for "Animal Farm".
| Ironically, the essay itself was censored in exactly the manner
| Orwell described, and would only be published in 1973. Here's
| bit that rings truer than ever:
|
| "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that
| it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and
| inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official
| ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know
| of instances of sensational items of news--things which on
| their own merits would get the big headlines--being kept right
| out of the British press, not because the Government intervened
| but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do'
| to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers
| go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely
| centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have
| every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But
| the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and
| periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given
| moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is
| assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without
| question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the
| other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian
| times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of
| a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds
| himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely
| unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing,
| either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
|
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
| Havoc wrote:
| >suspension is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix; we're
| working with them to explain how Element works
|
| What a joke. Does google remove their own messenger platform and
| email app too when someone uses them to send something naughty?
| cheph wrote:
| Report it, and report their browser, and all E2E encrypted
| messaging apps (Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook):
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/cont...
| einpoklum wrote:
| Use F-Droid - An app repository ("store") for Free Software apps:
|
| https://f-droid.org/
|
| Naturally, it has the Element app.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Just a reminder you can install the APK and there's nothing they
| can do about it.
|
| Not a friendly experience, but not insanely hard either.
| swiley wrote:
| Not if you're using outlook with certain configurations that
| require disabling sideloading. Also they're really torquing
| down on the API and making it harder and harder to build useful
| apps outside the play store. I'm not an android developer but
| my understanding is that notifications are starting to look
| much more like iOS for example.
| naebother wrote:
| Private company they can do what they want.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Remember,
|
| Competitors on youtube do this all the time to take down
| competitive content.
|
| E.g. false flags of inappropriate content or copyright to take
| down videos or channels.
|
| This is a good situation for big players, because there will
| always exist a real or fake excuse to take down any potentially
| competitive threat.
|
| Also, unfortunately this system aligns with the goals of our
| political system that wants to have a one stop shop for
| surveillance of 'law breakers'.
| tylerjwilk00 wrote:
| Good bye free speech. Hello unbridled control and censorship.
| Uhrheber wrote:
| Any reason why the F-Droid version is behind the official one?
|
| I mean, you should now have learned that you can't rely on one
| single distribution channel.
| 153791098c wrote:
| The same reason that software is outdated in many GNU/Linux
| repositories. F-droid is a repository that builds all software
| from source on a different schedule than every individual
| application developer, the google play store is just a platform
| where the application developer uploads the binary.
| 435243543543 wrote:
| If there's a backlash, it will just be explained as an "oops,"
| like when Firefox devs catch them doing stuff like this:
|
| >https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-executive-claims-that-go...
|
| >In a thread on Twitter, Mozilla's Technical Program Manager has
| stated that YouTube's Polymer redesign relies heavily on the
| deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API, which is only available in Chrome.
| This in turn makes the site around five times slower on competing
| browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Mozila Firefox. He went on to
| say that:
|
| >>YouTube serves a Shadow DOM polyfill to Firefox and Edge that
| is, unsurprisingly, slower than Chrome's native implementation.
| On my laptop, initial page load takes 5 seconds with the polyfill
| vs 1 without. Subsequent page navigation perf is comparable.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I worked around this problem in Firefox by changing the browser
| useragent for the YouTube site to an older version # though the
| fix won't last forever.
|
| I have become accustomed to using multiple browsers and OSes
| simply because of all the issues surrounding video playback.
| 4f8fje9frn wrote:
| If I need youtube, I go to an invidious instance first.
| swiley wrote:
| I worked around this by removing YouTube from my life. I've
| been making much more progress on my personal projects since.
| pmlnr wrote:
| I simply accepted it loads slower. It's long bad if I don't
| have 5s to wait.
| tylerl wrote:
| Hold on. Nobody has explained why TF I'm supposed to care. Is
| Element important or something? Does this affect real people?
| chc4 wrote:
| A friend group and I all jumped ship to Matrix and Element
| literally like two weeks ago because Discord randomly banned
| the server admin for "spam and abuse", which is shorthand for
| "triggered an opaque heuristic, probably from using Ripcord".
|
| So yeah, it's kinda a big deal to me that Google is saying that
| if Discord stops letting you play with their ball, you're not
| allowed to play with your own ball either.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Matrix is like a free, open source self hosted version of
| discord.
|
| You can use a popular homeserver, do it it yourself and host it
| at home.
|
| The element app is a client, just like chromium is a web
| browser.
| seaourfreed wrote:
| Facebook & Twitter found that they must trap people there. The
| flood to Parler that caused Parler to the top of Apple/Android
| App Stores made them block free speach.
|
| Matrix app. Discussions on what to do about Telegram / Signal.
| Blocking Parlor.
|
| Citizens can only challenge the establishment around a rigged
| economy if citizens have a place for free speech. FB/Twitter
| enable censorship.
| GNU_James wrote:
| Why do Americans hate freedom so damn much? Why?
| alangibson wrote:
| > We've had contact from Google confirming that the suspension is
| due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix
|
| If this takedown stands, this effectively means that all
| distributed message systems are banned from the Play store.
| cheph wrote:
| Does not have to be distributed, can be any E2E encrypted also.
| Signal should be banned, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger:
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/cont...
|
| Report them all, if you can't find objectionable content on
| those, write it to yourself, screenshot it and report the apps.
| croes wrote:
| All browsers too. I've seen a lot of shit it that so called
| internet.
| Arathorn wrote:
| So we got notified by the developer console at 21:45 UTC that the
| app had been suspended, but still haven't had an email to explain
| why - it's 02:24 now.
|
| Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive
| content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame --
| although this is currently speculation.
|
| To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web
| browser, and just as it's possible to view abusive material via
| Chrome, the same is true of Element.
|
| However, we abhor abuse, and on the default matrix.org server
| (and other Matrix servers the core team maintains) we have a
| fairly strict terms of use at https://matrix.org/legal/terms-and-
| conditions#6-play-nice-cl... which we proactively enforce.
| Meanwhile we have a comprehensive toolset at
| https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation to help folks moderate,
| and are making good process with decentralised reputation to
| empower users and admins to filter out stuff they don't want to
| see, as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-
| in-matrix....
|
| So, it's very unfortunate and frustrating that we're in this
| position - hopefully Google will explain what's going on shortly.
| tomstockmail wrote:
| There are a LOT of channels unmoderated in the matrix directory
| that could have been reported, so this isn't surprising. I have
| abuse complaints emailed to your abuse address that have gone
| unanswered, so I don't believe that you're taking your terms of
| use seriously.
|
| You can find my complaints in your inbox. It's good to know
| Google is taking action - will send the same complaints to them
| in the future since that seems to get more of a response from
| the devs.
| soupbowl wrote:
| Yeah, we better make sure every corner of the internet is
| moderated. /s
| tomstockmail wrote:
| These are rooms that are on matrix.org directory list. So
| yes, they should be moderating this content.
|
| If you don't have anything to contribute other than a
| sarcastic comment that misses the point of my statement
| then consider not contributing at all.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| Good luck! I hope you get this resolved soon.
|
| In the meantime, what is the explanation for the F-Droid
| version lagging behind?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Lack of resources, plain and simple. The f-droid folks are
| operating on a shoestring budget last time I checked, which
| is shocking for a project of such significance.
| Arathorn wrote:
| F-Droid publish their own builds; part of their mission is to
| independently build and package the upstream from source to
| avoid risk of the upstream doing anything unpleasant.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| Got it, thanks for the info. I donated 100 dollars via
| https://f-droid.org/en/donate/ in the hope it helps them.
| Thank you and everyone working on Element and Matrix as
| well!
| lukeramsden wrote:
| Can they not automate that? That would probably put them
| _ahead_ of the Play Store
| tomp wrote:
| Parler was a warning shot. But you didn't listen. In fact,you
| probably supported it.
| avereveard wrote:
| should have built your own phone with your own store
|
| - hn hivemind
| chuckSu wrote:
| lol... This is true
| m12k wrote:
| Can we just please pass some legislation to break Google and
| Apple's app installation monopoly already?
|
| Sure, they built the phones, doesn't mean we can't demand
| more rights than they decide it's profitable to give us (or
| put another way, just because the king's ancestors founded
| the country doesn't mean we shouldn't demand freedom and
| democracy).
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Can we just please pass some legislation to break Google
| and Apple's app installation monopoly already?_
|
| Agreed, but then Apple/Google and the fans of their walled
| gardens will argue that without this heavy censorship,
| grandma will install some malware on her phone that will
| empty her bank account or that their kids will install some
| malware that will spy on them (other than the social media
| apps that already do that).
| echelon wrote:
| You don't even need to bring grandma into it. They like
| it themselves.
|
| There is an entire population of humans that hypes
| companies, franchises, celebrities, etc. and treats them
| like a member of their own family. With a fondness. And a
| desire to defend their selection.
|
| There's a technical means to lock down grandma and the
| kids. Fans are quick to dismiss it and shift the
| conversation back to why their choice is great.
| dexen wrote:
| _Can we just please pass some legislation to break Google
| and Apple 's app installation monopoly already?_
|
| No, we can't solve the problem that way: the very same
| problem wound remain: EU and 5/9 Eyes want e2ee backdoored
| or gone. If you start legislating which apps are allowed,
| you're putting yourself even more at mercy of gov
| regulation.
|
| And the regulation would be blanket, with little to no way
| of sorting things out through unofficial channels as it can
| be done with Google. It'd be "backdoor or jail", not even
| sideloading apps to help you.
| xenophonB wrote:
| They can't practically do that, you're just making up a
| course of events that can't happen (people can develop
| things anonymously and be paid anonymously, and it's
| absolute nonsense to say that governments are going to be
| arresting the general public for the "crime" of privacy.
|
| And in America at least it's almost certainly
| unconstitutional.
| feanaro wrote:
| And while we're at it, let's disallow Google from mandating
| the exclusive use of their own service for push
| notifications.
| ufmace wrote:
| Fat chance. Have you seen the way politics is going these
| days? It's far more likely that they'll pass legislation to
| do the opposite - bar anyone from making, using, or
| distributing a communication system that can't be monitored
| and censored by Trusted Authorities.
| pdkl95 wrote:
| These tech monopolies were built on _adversarial
| interoperability_! IBM made their "PC", but a lot of
| Silicon Valley's growth in the 80s and 90s happened because
| businesses had the _freedom_ to innovate _adversarially_ ,
| creating the IBM PC _clone_.
|
| As Cory Doctorow recently explained[1]:
|
| >> It's how we got Gateway, Dell, Compaq and all of the
| other PC vendors that might have sold you that IBM PC clone
| in 1984 running an operating system that IBM hadn't made,
| on phone lines that had been broken up from AT&T.
|
| >> And so it felt in those days like maybe we'd found some
| kind of perfect market, a market where you could make your
| products with low capital, just with the sweat of your own
| mind, by writing code. That you could access the global
| audience of everyone who might want to run that code over a
| low cost universal network. And that that audience could
| switch to your product at a very low cost, because you
| could always write the code that it would take to to port
| the old data formats and to connect the old services to
| your new product. It was a market where the best ideas
| would turn into companies that would find customers and
| change the world.
|
| >> as these companies acquired new monopolies, they
| diverted their monopoly rents to foreclosing on competitive
| compatibility.
|
| When talking about monopoly, people tend to focus on price,
| but modern tech monopolies don't need to use traditional
| form of rent seeking. Exploitative prices don't make sense
| when the monopolist undermines the entire market with "free
| services". Instead, tech monopolies are about _control_ of
| what is allowed to participate in the market.
|
| [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11337-what_the_cyberoptimist
| s_got...
| danieldisu wrote:
| It's amazing that bureaucrats fined Microsoft for putting
| IE as default and keep allowing apple to do what they want.
| Europe should force these companies to allow users to
| install any software they want in their devices as long as
| it is legal...
| Veen wrote:
| > It's amazing that bureaucrats fined Microsoft for
| putting IE as default and keep allowing apple to do what
| they want.
|
| The difference is that Microsoft attempted to use its
| operating system monopoly to win the browser wars.
| Bundling Internet Explorer with Windows made it difficult
| for other browsers to compete on an even playing field.
|
| Apple doesn't have an operating system monopoly on the
| desktop or mobile. MacOS and iOS have a smaller userbase
| than both of their main competitors. It doesn't have an
| app store monopoly either.
| xenophonB wrote:
| Sorry but a duopoly is little different than a monopoly
| functionally.
| Yoric wrote:
| We tried.
|
| - The FirefoxOS team.
|
| - The Jolia team.
|
| - The UbuntuPhone team.
|
| - ...
| m4rtink wrote:
| If you mean Jolla, that's still a thing - I (and many of my
| friends) run official supported Sailfish OS on Xperia
| hardware:
|
| https://jolla.com/sailfishx/
|
| And there are community maintained builds for the PinePhone
| and many other devices.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Those were pretty poor attempts: corporate driven and not
| very cooperative.
|
| Since PinePhone became available, Linux distributions made
| huge leaps forward - Debian/Mobian especially.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I'm optimistic that PinePhone may finally be the one to do
| it, at least to an extent that it's usable if you're
| willing to hack on it.
| oji0hub wrote:
| > usable if you're willing to hack on it
|
| Most people need things just work.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I concur. But if we have a platform that is actually
| suitable for the community to work on, we can get to that
| point.
|
| Much like Ubuntu made desktop Linux a viable prospect for
| many people, after being enabled by Debian, I could see a
| future libre smartphone being enabled by the work done on
| PinePhone.
| oji0hub wrote:
| Well maybe, but even Ubuntu / Debian aren't workable for
| most people. I've used Linux and FreeBSD since the 90s
| and I'm still pleasantly surprised when my printer works
| out of the box.
|
| They're great for developers, but they've been unable to
| provide a usable and simple alternative for most people.
| Imo, partly because a lack of incentives since developers
| tend to create for themselves. Partly due to
| fragmentation leading to projects moving in every
| direction at the same time, which does not lead to a
| consistent or simple user experience.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Actually Ubuntu is not less usable than Windows 10. Ex on
| intel NUC - wifi on Ubuntu : out of box - wifi on windows
| : plug ethernet, install driver manually. Old printers
| works better on Linux, eg when driver do not work on
| windows 10. Libre Office outof box, Office : where is my
| key ? ...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Actually Ubuntu is not less usable than Windows 10."
|
| For you and me maybe. But don't expect other people to
| have your standard of software choices etc.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The problem is Ubuntu, but that consumers have migrated
| from desktops/laptops to Phones. (Bad for Linux, and bad
| for society as it's much easier to be a non-passitive
| participant on a desktop/laptop.)
| seniorivn wrote:
| for most people app selection on ubuntu is big enough to
| never need anything more only professional/rare software
| sometimes has no support/suitable alternative
| oji0hub wrote:
| - Can I install my "favourite program" on Linux?
|
| Well sure, it's supported on X, Y and Z!
|
| - Oh but I'm on distro A.
|
| Oh sorry, that's not supported. But here's a post by some
| guy on some forum who says he made it work by doing a
| bunch of complicated things no one understands.
| m4rtink wrote:
| This is often no longer an issue thanks to Flatpak &
| Steam Proton built-in Windows emulation.
| Shared404 wrote:
| In addition, there's a significant subset of people who's
| only program they use is a web browser.
|
| This is obviously quite doable with basically any distro.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yes, while this has issues of its own (as long as the web
| services they are using are centralized and corporate
| controlled) I have observed the less technical users I
| have been helping with computer issues are totally happy
| as long as they sit in front of a computer with a web
| browser, where they can log in to their online accounts
| and get going.
|
| Some might want a full mail client and possibly a printer
| configured and that's about it.
| Macha wrote:
| We're talking about Ubuntu. Distro X is always Ubuntu. Y
| and Z are usually picked from Debian, Red Hat, Fedora and
| Arch
| neop1x wrote:
| When I am purchasing HW peripherals, I always check Linux
| support in advance. Since I started doing that, I had
| zero compatibility problems.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The problem with Desktop Linux was by the time it got
| better, regular people spent too much time on phones and
| not enough time on laptops/desktops.
|
| But I can't really imagine phones going away that fast---
| what, we all get some Uber regulated neural thing? I
| think the tech companies are too unpopular for that---and
| so I think PinePhone can catch up. Plus, the Duopoly is
| way more annoying for regular users than Windows ever
| was.
| awwaiid wrote:
| An important lesson from my openmoko days - "sorry I
| didn't get your call sweetie, see I needed a new video
| driver for my window manager animations so I recompiled
| my kernel and that broke the modem..." ....... turns out
| to not be a good excuse for missing significant-others
| calls on a regular basis!
| swebs wrote:
| It probably won't. I love my Pinephone just like I love
| desktop Linux, and both are great choices for people who
| keep up with tech, but neither will reach more than a few
| percentage points of marketshare without a $100m+
| marketing push. They would need the help of some tech
| philanthropist to make it to the mainstream.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| You, like Parler, have been targeted by the powers that be. You
| may have nothing else in common other than that but, you're in
| the same boat it seems.
| tomstockmail wrote:
| I don't agree with OP here but I've found a lot of people
| from the Parler/Gab crowd have found Matrix lack of content
| moderation appealing and have been in channels on the Matrix
| directory that have all the same content as Parler/Gab. I
| would recommend the Matrix team start taking content
| moderation more seriously as my experience is they do not
| take it seriously. They may want to disable room creation on
| matrix.org in the meantime.
| soupbowl wrote:
| Can you give me an example of the things you have seen on
| matrix that should be moderated? Should matrix devs limit
| the amount of people that can use their open federated
| network so they can afford to moderate every e2ee group
| chat around the globe?
| tomstockmail wrote:
| So to clarify, these are rooms that are on matrix.org.
| I'm not following your statement on limiting opening
| federated network. I am suggesting that matrix.org stop
| users with the name "kikedestroyer" on their own instance
| from connecting to matrix.org rooms and talking about
| exterminating jews. What KD does on their own instance of
| matrix is not of my or matrix.org concern.
| ttt0 wrote:
| People will surely point out the obvious differences between
| the takedown of Parler and Element and I'd agree that it's
| not exactly the same thing, since Parler is its own platform
| and Element is just a client.
|
| However, when looking on a bigger picture of the recent
| takedowns and trying to make sense of it, it does indeed seem
| to be connected. The only conclusion that seems rational to
| me is as follows:
|
| Everyone tries to push their burden of moderation on people
| below them, because _no one_ can actually keep up with it.
| And if the moderation is not enforced, they risk being taken
| down by someone above them. That would explain why everyone
| is so trigger happy when it comes to censorship. When the
| WallStreetBets people were taken down by Facebook and
| Discord, they didn 't ban the individuals who were actually
| violating the policy, but the entire community.
|
| It's also worth to note, that the takedowns can be enforced
| selectively, as we see here - Google obviously won't take
| down their own browser or email client, that also allows to
| access abusive content - assuming that's what Element was
| taken down for. It's probably selectively enforced on the
| social media too, but I'm out of the loop on what actually
| goes on there, so to be fair, I cannot prove it.
|
| If this is actually what is happening, the only solution as
| far as I see it, is to extend the First Amendment to social
| media. Another solution could be to convince the people and
| the media to stop pressuring companies into deplatforming
| other people, but that's in my opinion definitely not going
| to happen. So it's either applying the protections of 1A to
| the internet or the censorship will get worse and worse.
| laumars wrote:
| > _If this is actually what is happening,_
|
| That's a big "if" though. The "abusive content" angle is
| just a working theory. It could just as easily be Goodge
| taking a dislike to a website link offering donations
| outside of the Play store (or something equally mundane).
|
| The problem is, until Google respond, we have no idea why
| the takedown happened.
|
| And here lies the real problem: without Google being
| transparent about their takedowns it leaves app developers
| in a difficult position where they can't really support
| their uses.
|
| The one slight good thing from all this is that at least
| with Android you can side load apps (which is more than can
| be said for iOS).
| ttt0 wrote:
| Sure. But as we learned, the only way to get them to
| respond at all is to do what we're doing right now. Blow
| the story up all over the internet, accuse them of
| censorship, call for regulations and hopefully get the
| media to pick it up.
|
| And just to be clear, I'm not saying that the accusations
| of censorship and calls for regulations are dishonest on
| our part. I really do believe that what they are doing is
| censorship and they need to be regulated.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Yep, abusive content.
|
| > Morning all. We've had contact from Google confirming
| that the suspension is due to abusive content somewhere
| on Matrix; we're working with them to explain how Element
| works and get the situation resolved.
|
| https://twitter.com/element_hq/status/1355465650114846720
| swebs wrote:
| >the only solution as far as I see it, is to extend the
| First Amendment to social media
|
| I would love this, personally.
| lnl wrote:
| > Parler is its own platform and Element is just a client.
|
| Indeed, people made that point, but I don't see how this is
| a useful distinction. Parler (the app) that Google and
| Apple removed is also just a client, that facilitates
| access to Parler (the social media website) that can be
| accessed via other means, e.g. a web browser. And Google
| and Apple didn't really have any problems with the app
| itself, which has no content on its own; they wanted
| different moderation policies on the website. As they have
| no direct control over the website, they acted against the
| client app; it was Amazon that took down the website.
|
| One difference might be that Elements and Matrix have
| different developers and Parler (the app) and Parler (the
| social media website) have the same owner. But again, this
| is not a meaningful difference; e.g. if Google and Apple
| had problem with content on Reddit (the website), surely
| they would remove both Reddit (the app) and all 3rd party
| clients, Apollo, Boost, Sync, etc, at least those that fail
| to actively censor the objectionable parts of the website
| in the app.
|
| So Apple/Google saw Parler (the website) as having
| dangerous content and took it out on Parler (the app). If
| they are justified in that; it is not a big stretch that
| they saw Matrix (protocol) as having dangerous content and
| took it out on Element (app), and presumably other clients.
| I don't think whether it is decentralized or not matters
| from an app store policy point of view.
|
| Two companies having the say on which programs almost
| everyone can run on their mobile devices, especially on the
| iOS side, is a huge problem, that becomes increasingly
| evident as they start to flex their muscles.
| yokem55 wrote:
| >If this is actually what is happening, the only solution
| as far as I see it, is to extend the First Amendment to
| social media.
|
| The first amendment works now by having clear boundaries
| between private and public spaces. Public spaces have clear
| first amendment protections. I can hold a sign on a
| publicly owned sidewalk (well, public right of way) begging
| for money or praising 'bong hits for Jesus'. But private
| spaces do not. I can't do the same thing on your living
| room. This allows folks to exercise their freedom of
| association, which is a pretty big part of the first
| amendment.
|
| Where and how do you draw the line between public and
| private spaces then in an online context? Should the
| government be required to host unmoderated and uncensored
| discussion boards? And how do you keep the unregulated
| public spaces useful when such spaces are easily overrun by
| trolls and spammers?
| ttt0 wrote:
| There is already somewhat of a precedent set for it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v
| ._R...
|
| As to how you would implement it, Poland recently had a
| proposal that if you were banned from a social media
| website, you can appeal via the government in a certain
| period of time.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25736155
|
| I'm not a lawyer, so I might be saying a bunch of
| nonsense here, but you could categorize the social media
| into topical (eg. HN is about technology) or "general
| purpose", off-topic services (Facebook, Youtube). Or just
| do it by the size of user base. Facebook has like a 2 or
| 3 billion users, let's not pretend it's the same as a
| comment section on your blog.
|
| It's just to throw some ideas around, because again, not
| a lawyer, so I can't come up with a robust policy on the
| spot and take care of every potential loophole.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Everyone tries to push their burden of moderation on
| people below them, because no one can actually keep up with
| it. And if the moderation is not enforced, they risk being
| taken down by someone above them. That would explain why
| everyone is so trigger happy when it comes to censorship.
| When the WallStreetBets people were taken down by Facebook
| and Discord, they didn't ban the individuals who were
| actually violating the policy, but the entire community.
|
| There's a much simpler explanation: Google wants as much of
| your communication as possible to go through them or their
| partners, so they can monetise it. People using Parler or
| Matrix don't leak any information to Big Tech, so
| commercially it makes sense to deter people from using apps
| like that, and they'll use whatever excuse they can get
| away with.
| ttt0 wrote:
| But as of right now Telegram and Signal is still up,
| isn't it? Though they're already being slandered in the
| media, so you might have a point here.
|
| To support my explanation, see for example this:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/25/21532883/paypal-cuts-
| tie...
|
| PayPal terminated Epik's account, because they refused to
| kick out Gab. I believe there were a couple more cases
| where the money people pressured companies to do things
| like that. My memory is getting blurry with this though,
| so I can't point you to the articles.
|
| And that leads me to something even more important. Gab
| was not only kicked out off their domain registrar, but
| the owner's family was blacklisted by Visa. So the social
| media is actually the least of my concerns right now, the
| most urgent thing at the moment is regulating the banks,
| so they can't terminate your account for no reason.
| Because they _will_ come after your money at some point.
| And good luck paying in cash in a middle of pandemic.
| cbradford wrote:
| In theory the recent Office of Comptroller of the
| Currency rule banning financial discrimination should
| stop that. But I am sure the current administration will
| be quick to reverse it. They like to use all tools to go
| after their political enemies
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Parler curated the content on their platform for months
| including shadowbanning new accounts until they had been
| approved by volunteer moderators. Accounts on Parler called
| for and planned violence against elected officials for
| months. Executives at the company spoke often and publicly
| supporting that content.
|
| If your going to argue with a straight face the this new
| situation is the same as Parler, your putting Element side by
| side with some very bad company.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > If your going to argue with a straight face the this new
| situation is the same as Parler
|
| Just go reread what gp wrote. He basically said the exact
| opposite of this. You are putting words in his mouth and
| interpereting his comment in the least charitable way
| possible.
| [deleted]
| wernercd wrote:
| > call for and planned violence
|
| And yet, accounts that did the same for AntiFA fascists and
| BLM "peaceful protests" for 4 years still stand. As do the
| platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
|
| Banning platforms while letting those who encouraged much
| worse for longer isn't a way to instill confidence in
| unbiased decisions.
| oji0hub wrote:
| > Accounts on Parler called for and planned violence
| against elected officials for months
|
| When Trump was elected there were riots for weeks under
| banners like "not my president" and "never trump".
|
| No one wrote anything about the capitol being under attack
| or people storming the capitol etc. Instead they were
| "activists" and "protesters" and to the extent anyone did
| anything really bad, they were "incited by Trump" so it was
| really his fault anyway.
|
| Then for the following years, organizations like antifa and
| blm and countless individuals have been inciting violence
| on a daily basis on platforms like twitter, reddit and
| facebook.
|
| These platforms are still up. More than just up, they enjoy
| the support of the same organizations that banned parler.
|
| The conclusion? These people are apparently fine with
| inciting violence. They don't want to discuss things. They
| just want to make sure the people who get attacked are
| people they don't like.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > No one wrote anything about the capitol being under
| attack or people storming the capitol[.]
|
| Because no one attacked or stormed the capitol during
| those protests.
| oji0hub wrote:
| I don't know what to say. For weeks people were roaming
| the streets, smashing windows, cars, beating people up,
| etc.
|
| ???
| slavak wrote:
| The Capitol is a literal building in Washington DC, which
| is the seat of the United States legislative. Even if it
| _was_ true that "people were roaming the streets smashing
| windows" when Trump was elected, no one was storming the
| Capitol building, which is why no one wrote anything
| about people storming the Capitol...
| oji0hub wrote:
| Even if it _was_ true?
|
| Do you live in a cave? Did you also miss all of the other
| "demonstration"? Like just recently a bunch of groups
| were rioting and smashed and looted every single shop in
| block after block in a whole bunch of locations?
|
| One side smashes things up for weeks all over the country
| and "oh they're activists and protesters" and another
| groups does barely any damage in one location for a day
| and they're "storming the capitol"?
|
| I don't think you are speaking in good faith.
| manquer wrote:
| Op said they there is nothing else in common.
|
| They are in the same boat as parler in the sense that
| another communication platform not owned by a big corp is
| being targeted and removed.
|
| Matrix likely will come back for some of the reasons you
| mention . But fact is google and apple arbitrarily without
| warning or notice remove apps from their store. The stores
| should be considered utility like electricity google should
| not able to refuse service randomly.
| flunhat wrote:
| > parler in the sense that another communication platform
| not owned by a big corp
|
| Parler is owned by the Mercer family, of Renaissance
| Technologies fame, one of the most successful hedge funds
| in existence. They are personally worth tens of billions
| of dollars.
| manquer wrote:
| Still not even close to the trillon+ worth of google or
| apple.
|
| Also just cause they worth billions means they will back
| parler with billions. Parler itself is pretty small fish
| financially speaking
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Do you have any sources supporting your statements here?
| This feels like fake news to me.
|
| A large portion of these protests were planned on Facebook,
| Instagram, and YouTube: https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech
| nology/2021/01/13/faceboo...
|
| ...should they be removed and silenced because of it? Or
| should all of these gigantic tech companies with the
| checkbooks to provide exhaustive moderation enjoy their 230
| powers while denying the right to all of the little guys?
|
| Parlor and Gab are fairly harrowing examples of what
| happens when censorship occurs. People leave platforms with
| diverse views and head to echo chambers. Those folks end up
| having stronger, more radical opinions because they were
| forced into a corner.
|
| No one has ever given me any compelling reason for
| censorship. Hate is defeated in the open, it is fairly
| impossible to deal with in private channels. Censors also
| cannot censor everything, so content always slips through
| the cracks.
| cheph wrote:
| > Accounts on Parler called for and planned violence
| against elected officials for months. Executives at the
| company spoke often and publicly supporting that content.
|
| Did not know this, you have a source for this?
| kortilla wrote:
| No, Parler executives did not "speak often publicly
| supporting planned violence against elected officials".
| They would have been arrested already if this was that
| clear of a trail.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It turns out it was Facebook that was used for planning.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Element and Parler are nothing alike.
|
| Element is a chat client. It's an empty piece of software for
| use with your own choice of server. Element is to a chat
| server, as Thunderbird is to an email server. It's basically
| a glorified IRC client. It contains no content of its own.
|
| Parler was basically a curated, centrally run, Facebook-
| message-board-replacement for neonazis, antisemites, qanon
| conspiracy theorists, and the lunatic fringe of the alt-
| right.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| lol, Parler was just right wing Twitter.
|
| There's extreme content on both those websites. Calls for
| violence and death threats galore. If Parler called for an
| insurrection then you must also hold Twitter accountable
| for the violence it propagated.
|
| Matrix is probably not coming back for exactly the reason
| Parler was nuked, because it provides a free speech
| platform to "undesirables".
|
| I hope they double down on PWAs after this incident.
|
| Edit: Please have a conversation instead of drive by
| downvoting.
| patrickaljord wrote:
| Don't count on PWAs. Once these free speech platforms
| start embracing PWAs and they become super popular,
| Chrome and Safari will simply censor them directly. When
| you will try to visit these PWAs, you will get a message
| that says "this website contains hate speech and has been
| blacklisted as it doesn't respect our terms of services
| for a safe and friendly browsing experience we thrive to
| offer our users".
|
| Any browser that allows accessing these PWAs will be
| banned from the app/play store. Let's not kid ourselves
| this isn't what's coming next.
| dextralt wrote:
| This is exactly what's going to happen, not just with
| PWAs but with all websites. The mechanism ("Google Safe
| Browsing") is in place, precedents are being set, the
| number of hysterical ideologues who will support that is
| growing.
|
| But on the bright side, I think if it was Mozilla with
| 90% of the browser market and not Google, this would've
| happened already.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| As I said nothing else in common....
| alangibson wrote:
| Technical distinctions are irrelevant to someone at
| headquarters worried about having a regulatory probe
| inserted in their backside.
| throwagainway wrote:
| But this one is important, no? This is like banning
| Firefox because it can connect to illegal content.
| alangibson wrote:
| Yea, it's a lot like that. The idea of banning browsers
| that don't actively police what users are able to access
| (maybe via something like a global blacklist) is no
| longer crazy.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| It is relevant, it makes it more absurd than Parler's
| bans but, I was just trying to point out they're for the
| same core reason.
| [deleted]
| paulcarroty wrote:
| > Google will explain what's going on shortly
|
| It's definitely not Google style.
|
| But I hope Matrix will get more promotion in result.
| GlennS wrote:
| Can we get Elon to tweet?
| Shorel wrote:
| Newsflash: there is a chat system so secure, Google doesn't
| want you to know it exists.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I don't think that can be the full rationale behind
| whatever got it removed, if that were the case, they'd
| absolutely have removed Signal quite some time ago.
| 0df8dkdf wrote:
| the difference is Signal is NOT federated, and matrix is.
| Which make it more like email, harder to censor.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Not necessarily, I run a non-federated synapse (matrix
| protocol) server for intranet type use. It's in an
| environment where it has no connection to the wider
| internet at all.
|
| The default matrix.org servers _are_ federated.
|
| In terms of what the default Element install presents to
| the user upon launch in its GUI, I think it does offer
| the 'official' matrix.org servers as a place to create an
| account and sign in, start browsing 'rooms'.
| est31 wrote:
| Your users still benefit from less centralization. The
| main matrix.org instance might ban them for whatever
| reason, but their access to your internal server is not
| touched. It's different if all of you used Signal or
| Discord and their account got banned e.g. for using an
| alternative client.
| o-__-o wrote:
| Signal is open source you can run your own non-federated
| signal server. You can use a custom signal client against
| the federated network too.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vq4k/thousands-of-
| users-un...
| est31 wrote:
| Moxie is not friendly towards such third party clients
| that connect to the main network. Also, I only used it as
| an example. There might be other reasons for a ban. The
| point is that you don't depend on them.
| rglullis wrote:
| Signal Server has not seen updates for over 9 months.
| Moxie openly states that is not part of Signal's core
| values to support federation in the network.
|
| IOW, even though they say they don't want to control your
| conversation, they _do_ want you in their hands.
| o-__-o wrote:
| But. The point is still that you can run your own non-
| federated signal server or connect your own client to
| their federated network.
| rglullis wrote:
| An _outdated_ version of the server whose development
| team has no incentive whatsoever of supporting for your
| use case.
|
| Can you run it? Sure. _Should_ you?
| o-__-o wrote:
| Why does any source code exist then? What is the point of
| GitHub with codebases that are 7+ years old? Would mass
| adoption of the outdated server force updates or god
| forbid a fork of the code base?
|
| Please excuse me for being direct, I do not accept your
| defeatist attitude on this one. You won't have stickers,
| such a shame, but you would have the ability to create
| your own signal service
| johnisgood wrote:
| And for the love of God, people should stop calling
| Signal secure as long as it is tied to a phone number.
| You cannot get a SIM card in my country without not
| having it tied to your ID card number, address, and so
| forth. You are not anonymous on Signal.
| mickotron wrote:
| They can tell that you got a phone number and use signal.
| Apart from when you first and last used signal
| (timestamp), as in sent messages, that's about all the
| info signal has on you, and can provide. That sounds
| pretty good. Even if it is tied to a physical identity.
| The fact that your content is sufficiently encrypted and
| cannot be tied to your identity, even by signal, means
| what you say is anonymized.
| chithanh wrote:
| Signal can at least in principle censor user content,
| because they control both server and clients. (And they
| do, for example you can "delete" your messages that are
| stored on other clients.)
|
| With Matrix you have the choice to use whatever server or
| client you like, which makes it difficult to censor.
| pmlnr wrote:
| So in this regards, Matrix is no different from email.
| Should it be expected that the play store will ban email
| clients?
| sitapati wrote:
| This would be a point weighting that Signal's servers or
| the network connection to the servers is compromised, in
| a Bayesian filter.
|
| To put it in terms of your logic: it that were case, it
| means Signal is not secure.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| haven't followed matrix implementation for a while. Last
| time I checked their e2ee was still not quite ready to
| deserve that name[1]. is it a solved problem now and is
| crypto used in matrix now truly e2ee so that it can be
| comparaed to Signal. Maybe I've missed the research
| papers suggesting otherwise but it seems comparing Signal
| w. Matrix is _apples and oranges_ (even when just talking
| about e2ee and ignoring the centralized /federated
| aspects of the 2 technologies)
|
| what is the actual state of matrix e2ee today? (or is
| that question silly because it depends what the
| individual matrix clients chooses to implement).
|
| I'm extremely excited about having a federated e2ee
| messenger, however as a "Lawful-Intercept" realist, I
| don't have a lot of hope that it will not get forced to
| comply with current EU regulation proposals, that
| prevents Matrix from fulfilling its promise as fully
| e2ee. (e.g. the future that we're heading to in the EU is
| the same as 5/9-eye countries: there will be a "legal"
| way of encryption and another one that is illegal, all
| depending if access can be given to 3rd parties / LE...)
|
| [1] (Sad) state of E2EE in Matrix clients (from 2018): ht
| tps://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/9avyen/sad_state_
| o...
| feanaro wrote:
| > e.g. the future that we're heading to in the EU is the
| same as 5/9-eye countries: there will be a "legal" way of
| encryption and another one that is illegal, all depending
| if access can be given to 3rd parties / LE...
|
| Why do you say there _will_ be, as if the future is
| predetermined? Perhaps we should re-evaluate that and
| help prevent it from happening instead of complacently
| stating something as if it is a foregone conclusion?
|
| Your words matter here. The way you are using them is
| helping materialize the future you do not want.
| Macha wrote:
| So that article talks about third party clients - third
| party e2ee support has gone from "basically none" to "a
| few clients". It's complaints for the official client is
| that e2ee is opt in (not anymore), fingerprints are shown
| base64 rather than base10 (a: who cares, b: there's an
| emoji encoded display now for shorter user recognisible
| fingerprints) and that it warns about being in beta (it
| isn't anymore).
| Shorel wrote:
| I was attempting to imitate one of these "clickbait
| headlines".
|
| It seems this always requires the /sarcasm tag. =)
| StavrosK wrote:
| Which one?
| ttt0 wrote:
| I on the other hand hope that they won't just say "oops, our
| bad!", reinstate it and sweep the entire thing under the rug
| like nothing happened, without explaining anything.
|
| There are people here who work on mobile applications. If
| they depend on Google and Apple delivering their app to their
| clients, it's still unacceptable that they can potentially
| put you out of business, just like that. I already saw a
| couple of people here that claimed it happened to them too.
| Without any reason, without the ability to appeal, nothing.
| echelon wrote:
| Deplatforming is the story of the year.
|
| If we're not careful, they'll come for our individual rights
| next. Be it companies or the government.
|
| We need to remain vigilant and develop distributed platforms.
| We also need to demand that the government takes control away
| from corporate interests. This shouldn't happen.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Do not paint deplatforming as unequivocally bad thing.
|
| Most decentralized platforms (mastodon, IPFS, XMPP,
| Matrix...) have mechanisms to block and defederate unwanted
| accounts/contents/servers: racism and hate speech, CP, spam,
| malware
|
| Many people don't want government-driven censorship but are
| very happy with community-driven policies and guidelines.
| cbradford wrote:
| Once you throw in "hate speech" you are just saying that
| censorship of things you don't like is ok.
| ezrast wrote:
| Censorship of things I don't like _is_ okay when
| performed at the level of an actual community that nobody
| is forced to be a member of.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > We need to remain vigilant and develop distributed
| platforms
|
| They are there already. Matrix, XMPP, email, activitypub
| based systems, (secure) scuttlebutt, IPFS, and so on.
|
| This is more a people and their conformist attitude problem,
| like "eh, my friends use X, I'm too lazy to convince them
| otherwise", "but everyone is on Y, I'm not willing to be the
| odd one out on Z", and so on.
| patagonia wrote:
| How do we get Google Chrome pulled for abusive content?
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| That's good. I switched away from IRC to Discord back around
| 2016 because it was tedious to use with mobile networks.
| Discord has served the community I moderate pretty well, but I
| am always concerned that the company will go under some day.
| I've been eyeing Matrix for a while as an alternative and it'd
| be a blow to have one of its largest clients removed. Here's
| hoping it gets back soon.
| edrxty wrote:
| My comment elsewhere got buried but it might be useful to you.
|
| Pattle also appears to have been removed. Ditto and FluffyChat
| at the moment appear to still be up on the store though. For
| those unaware, these are all Matrix clients.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Afaik Pattle is discontinued
| edrxty wrote:
| Dunno, it's still listed as an official app and links to
| the play store.
| feanaro wrote:
| It's discontinued, the links are stale.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Update posted on Twitter:
|
| > _Morning all. We 've had contact from Google confirming that
| the suspension is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix;
| we're working with them to explain how Element works and get
| the situation resolved._
| itronitron wrote:
| Maybe someone can let Google know that Element is not a
| publisher.
| Spivak wrote:
| No but Matrix.org will likely be considered one. I mean the
| Twitter app isn't a publisher but Twitter sure it.
|
| If Matrix only facilitated private communications then they
| could probably tell Google to piss off but they became a
| social network when they included public chatrooms.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think it's funny that they think Google cares at all about
| the implementation details of your service. The only thing
| that matters to app reviewers is what the user sees when they
| use it. If you make your app technically unmoderatable,
| impossible to remove illegal content, or impossible to
| respond to DMCA requests you don't get to just throw your
| hands up.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > The only thing that matters to app reviewers is what the
| user sees when they use it.
|
| If that were true, web browsers would be in trouble.
| brettwilcox wrote:
| I'm testing Element and Matrix at American Airlines.
|
| There are big players with clout that take issue to instability
| such as this. How can I rely on my company using Element when
| it gets pulled? Not cool Google...
|
| To the element team, reach out to me if you can't get the
| support you are looking for.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Google may be able to control the Element app on the play
| store, but at least for the server side there's no way to do
| that with synapse (the official matrix protocol server side
| implementation), which is fully open source and distributed
| directly from the developers.
| brettwilcox wrote:
| They are also working on a Go version called Dendrite -
| https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite
|
| The Matrix team is doing a LOT of cool stuff. :)
| absorber wrote:
| Yes, but IMO the Matrix team should _really_ focus on
| Dendrite since Synapse is extremely resource hungry and
| prevents a lot of people (including me) from running
| their own servers.
| feanaro wrote:
| It's not _that_ resource hungry anymore. Hovering stably
| around 500M RSS and 8% CPU for me right now. That 's with
| ~25 users and a lot of federated, public rooms, some of
| them quite large.
| absorber wrote:
| What CPU are you running it on and how many cores are
| being used? Are you also in really large rooms like
| Techlore and Matrix HQ? Because I think I'm in all of the
| largest rooms (and a lot of the smaller ones)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Big players with clout can commission their own closed access
| app. The C levels just need to take a $0.5M hit among
| themselves.
| markvdb wrote:
| This comment alone should be reason enough for the company
| behind Element to sue Google.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| How can you rely on the app/play store for any app? This
| suspension has nothing to do with element, it could have been
| any app.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| That's why XMPP has been adopted for military and industrial
| use.
| acatsdream wrote:
| You can use FDroid though.
| qwertox wrote:
| How are you going to explain that to your manager?
| foolmeonce wrote:
| How does your manager explain to you that you must agree
| to TOS from Google to install apps necessary for your
| job?
|
| In the explanation to a company I see nothing wrong. In
| the tendency to make employees agree to arbitrary ToSes,
| I see massive liability that should be dealt with using a
| massive class action lawsuit against some behemoth.
|
| I actually think federated protocols are a get out of
| jail card for employers since making your job related to
| owning a car is reasonable, to owning a specific brand of
| car is not.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| Hello employee,
|
| We have a new corporate policy that removes your access
| to anything related to O365 by Date. The only way to
| remediate this issue is to install InTune and the
| corresponding corporate security office's profile so it
| can enforce our policy on the device. If you qualify for
| our corporate device program, we will cover the cost of
| the device and data plan.
|
| Sincerely, CTO
|
| Honestly, it's very common at the largest public
| corporations and most corporate r&d groups in the US.
| It's not like we don't already do black box development
| or have strict vpn only enforcement rules. I wonder how
| risk assessment sees these kind of federated protocols
| because in theory you are right about it reducing
| liability if they run the system.
| justaj wrote:
| There are debug version apks available here:
| https://buildkite.com/matrix-dot-org/element-
| android/builds/...
|
| Click on "Assemble GPlay Debug version" (or "Assemble FDroid
| Debug version" if you don't have Google Play Services), then
| click on "Artifacts" and then choose your apk from there.
| dewey wrote:
| How is that a solution to the problem? Of course there's
| other ways to install software, just like you could build
| your own iOS app and sideload it with a certificate. If an
| app is gone from the store it's basically dead.
| justaj wrote:
| If I were to test the implementation of an app in my
| enterprise, then it would benefit me to cut down on the
| unnecessary dependencies. Being dependent on the Google
| Play Store has shown to be a liability in the past
| because there were moments where it became a single point
| of failure (as demonstrated in this thread)
| volta83 wrote:
| Can't you just use a web app or any other matrix client if
| this happens?
|
| If Google were to "ban" slack from their store, their
| browsers, etc. then you would be quite in trouble.
|
| But with matrix, just pick a different client and move on.
| brettwilcox wrote:
| Yes, I'm doing a custom react client integration. AA has to
| prepare for black swan events from every angle and this is
| a perfect example of one.
|
| When you have 100,000+ employees, it's not trivial to just
| switch up communication platforms.
| GlennS wrote:
| I take your meaning, but pedantically I think the idea of
| black swan is that you couldn't ever see it coming, so
| the only way to prepare for it is some sort of general
| robustness (which to be fair Matrix does have).
| volta83 wrote:
| Let each user pick among any of the multiple clients
| available. Don't design your system / process to only
| support one client.
| brettwilcox wrote:
| It puts too much pressure on Helpdesk to provide the
| support needed when you don't have a common path.
| jancsika wrote:
| This reality should be yelled by a death metal band
| singer 24/7 at every FOSS developer.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I laughed hard ... but actually no.
|
| That should be yelled at every FOSS evangelist, those
| people who claim everywhere that no one needs Windows,
| because Linux has everything Windows has, just better,
| etc.
|
| We FOSS developers are free to do what we want. Most of
| us develope mainly for pleasure, not to ease the workload
| of some corporate helpdesk.
| StavrosK wrote:
| If you need to prepare for Black Swan events, doesn't it
| make sense to have your own channel to distribute APKs to
| all devices? Why would you rely on the Play Store at all?
| vvillena wrote:
| It's easier to simply ensure that the apps you need are
| present in multiple stores.
| beowulfey wrote:
| that's a lot of tooling to build for a single application
| --plus not everyone is tech savvy and installing from
| non-standard locations requires more user support
| exikyut wrote:
| A 100K-sized company is going to have a BYOD or corporate
| device issuance program with tie-in to MDM, which
| effectively functions as a private appstore (the DPC
| (device policy controller) (itself an app) can silently
| install apps (as in, download APK from $anywhere, hand to
| PackageManager) without confirmation, etc).
|
| MDM infra is big bu$ine$$, but DPCs are quite simple to
| write.
|
| (Psst. They also let you read CPU usage on Android 7+
| (sadly not per task, but at least with per-core
| granularity). The catch? Installing a DPC requires a
| factory reset. xD)
| e12e wrote:
| > A 100K-sized company is going to have a BYOD or
| corporate device issuance program
|
| Some will, some might run a more open org, with a lot of
| rather independent contractors, focusing on providing
| services on standard platforms (email, chat, wiki,
| bugtracker etc).
| corty wrote:
| Not every device is under MDM in a big corp. Often you
| have people like external consultants bringing their own
| devices, who need to participate in (semi-)internal
| communications. You cannot just MDM those and you cannot
| just issue bigcorp devices to them, so you need something
| like the normal appstore to distribute the software.
| Maybe you even have BYOD for internal people, so MDM
| could be hairy from a GDPR/employee rights/liability
| standpoint. And maybe you even have customers and
| partners who you want to communicate with, whom you have
| to provide with a viable option of communicating. You can
| (maybe) separate those into an internal and an external
| communication tool. But then you just have two different
| tools, one of which will have the exact same problem
| about needing installation via commonly available
| appstores.
| yorwba wrote:
| Reach out how? You have no public contact information in your
| HN profile.
| brettwilcox wrote:
| We've already had conversations and I reached out
| personally.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Sorry for this :((
| sneak wrote:
| What is your policy surrounding your push notifications for
| your apps in the stores, when those notifications are
| originating from end servers on which people are saying things
| that you don't like?
| khimaros wrote:
| please keep F-Droid repo up to date. please don't create your
| own repo.
| [deleted]
| enriquto wrote:
| > Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser,
| and just as it's possible to view abusive material via Chrome,
| the same is true of Element.
|
| > However, we abhor abuse, and on the default matrix.org server
| (...) we have a fairly strict terms of use (...) which we
| proactively enforce.
|
| These two sentences are contradictory. Either you are a road or
| a road restaurant. You can't have it both ways.
| Arnavion wrote:
| The first sentence is about Element.
|
| The second sentence is about matrix.org
| enriquto wrote:
| It seems to me that it is the other way round, isn't it?
| Although having matrix.org be an Element client is
| extremely confusing. If "matrix.org" is moderated it would
| seem that the whole protocol is moderated (and thus, not a
| neutral carrier).
| dkarp wrote:
| Matrix.org is just one server deployment that implements
| the matrix protocol. You can deploy your own server or
| even your own implementation, and moderate it how you
| want. It has nothing to do with element. The apology is
| apt, as just like a browser speaks http, element speaks
| matrix.
| HereBeBeasties wrote:
| In web terms: - Element is like a browser - matrix.org is
| like a bulletin board
|
| In e-mail terms: - Element is like a mail client -
| matrix.org is like a given community of mailing lists
|
| In IRC terms: - Element is like an IRC client -
| matrix.org is like an IRC server/network e.g. Freenode.
| feanaro wrote:
| Element is just one of many Matrix user agents and
| matrix.org offers just one of many Matrix servers.
|
| Each server has the freedom to enforce its own policy.
| Given that the matrix.org server is a kind of a public
| face for the protocol, it makes sense that its policies
| are more mainstream.
|
| There is nothing in the protocol itself (nor in the
| official Element clients) enforcing any kind of content
| policy.
| Arathorn wrote:
| We received a generic update at 05:31 UTC confirming that the
| app had been suspended due to abusive content (Sexual Content
| and Profanity: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/answ... ); we're following up to explain how Matrix
| and Element works and get this resolved.
| pmlnr wrote:
| This is insane. This jeopardizes every email, xmpp, matrix,
| etc; basically any 3rd party application.
| veeti wrote:
| Being suspended for user generated content has been a rite
| of passage for third party reddit clients. It's crazy how
| this happens again, again and again.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/96l0at/sync_for_r
| e...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/6dwv1f/boost_for_
| r...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5fqrr8/now_for_re
| d...
| pmlnr wrote:
| There is a significant difference there though: reddit is
| still a single, central entity. Matrix, XMPP, email, (and
| activitypub based systems, ssbc, and anything federated)
| could be connecting to one's own server. It could be a
| machine in my basement.
| Erlangen wrote:
| I don't see the difference. "Sync for reddit" a custom
| client for reddit. It was suspended for "hate speech".
| Then why isn't the official reddit app not suspended?
| pmlnr wrote:
| > I don't see the difference.
|
| ?
|
| 1. I install synapse (a matrix server) on my own machine.
| I install Element on my own phone. I connect one to
| another, and via the server to other servers.
|
| 2. I install a client that connects to reddit. Same
| reddit as everyone else. Same reddit as the reddit
| website.
|
| There is a rather significant difference, isn't there?
|
| EDIT addressing the 'hate speech' part, you are correct.
| If one reddit client is banned, all should be banned. But
| that is not true for communication apps, like Element.
| ksec wrote:
| I pointed this out not long ago. When will it comes to
| Email? How is mailing list any different?
|
| And what about Chrome or Web Browser? Or they going to have
| built in Filter for website? Although without the reach of
| Google Search Engine having a filter or not makes no
| difference anyway.
|
| But it is great they are doing it, the more the better.
| People were extremely supportive on HN not long ago about
| banning speeches they dont like on Internet. Hopefully they
| finally learned something here. They opened the Pandora Box
| and there is nothing anyone could do until the Pendulum
| swing to its limit before swinging back.
| ignoramous wrote:
| History repeats over and over again:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597025
|
| For all the chaos, the Internet continues to be
| surprisingly consistent with one set of rules for BigTech
| and friends and another set of rules for the rest.
| api wrote:
| It's largely based on who has more lawyers. Google would
| never suspend Twitter because they would be instantly
| sued... like within 24 hours... and by a top tier law
| firm.
| qwertox wrote:
| > This jeopardizes every email, xmpp, matrix, etc;
| basically any 3rd party application.
|
| Except of course Google's own applications. Gmail,
| Hangouts/Meet/whatever-it-currently-is, Chrome.
|
| Luckily it's not possible to display illegal content with
| Google's own apps /s
|
| I remember when my nephew got groomed on Google Plus, I was
| way to naive to think that this would not be occurring in
| Google's walled gardens. But in there, it turned out to be
| quasi-public.
| arduanika wrote:
| > my nephew got groomed on Google Plus
|
| That is genuinely horrifying and I'm so sorry for him and
| your family.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Don't worry. Google will kill it's own chat apps. Sad but
| true.
| sneak wrote:
| The app in question wasn't suspended for illegal content,
| it was suspended for profanity.
| pmlnr wrote:
| That's ridiculous on it's own. I mean... got out on the
| street and listen to how people talk.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Luckily it 's not possible to display illegal content
| with Google's own apps /s_
|
| Perhaps one day they will make this argument to justify
| having to spy on _everything_ you do with their software.
| kreeben wrote:
| All web browsers that are not Chrome, beware. You're next.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Those might be the exceptions, at least for now. Ever
| since Firefox's crusade against IE the majority of people
| seem to still know there are different ~programs~ apps to
| access the internet with. As long as Chrome is not the
| default in the overwhelming amount of the operating
| systems, this might even stay like this, which is why I'm
| extremely unhappy that Android ships with Chrome these
| days and not with a thin gui on top of the system
| webview, like it used to.
|
| EDIT: this ties in to the conversation I had on different
| platform recently, that it's getting arduous to make
| people understand that an app is not necessarily the same
| as the system behind it. Choosing an email client used to
| be a thing (Thunderbird, The Bat!, Outlook Express, mutt,
| etc; to name some across contrasting needs) not even too
| long ago. I despise that we came to a world where even
| the tech moderation fails to understand an app !=
| protocol.
| ainar-g wrote:
| > As long as Chrome is not the default in the
| overwhelming amount of the operating systems, this might
| even stay like this, which is why I'm extremely unhappy
| that Android ships with Chrome these days and not with a
| thin gui on top of the system webview, like it used to.
|
| That is also why I was rather sad when Microsoft
| announced that they won't develop their own browser
| engines any more. I disliked IE as much as anybody else,
| but what I did like was the competition. With Edge
| switching to Blink, essentially becoming yet another
| partially-degooged Chrome, part of that competition is
| gone.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > With Edge switching to Blink, essentially becoming yet
| another partially-degooged Chrome
|
| Now it sends half of your data to Google and the other
| half to Microsoft. That's an improvement, they
| decentralized spyware.
| ptero wrote:
| Its 75% each way. And they will for many years work to
| reduce spying by lowering this percentage, to 50% in the
| asymptotic case.
| LocalH wrote:
| I would posit that Google has a vested interest in
| blurring the lines between apps and the protocols that
| drive them
| znpy wrote:
| I wonder why this hasn't been escalated to an anti-trust
| case yet.
| waheoo wrote:
| Because every time a libertarian raises the issue they
| get called a racist trumping alt right nazi.
|
| Y'all made your bed. True libertarians checked out a long
| time ago.
|
| We can either die for your sins against free speech or we
| can watch them come for you. I know what I chose.
| geofft wrote:
| Let me get this straight - you're saying "true
| libertarians" are people who decide to stop caring about
| advancing libertarian causes because someone else
| exercised their right of free speech, and now cheer for
| the loss of liberty of people they don't like?
| waheoo wrote:
| No, I'm saying true libertarians have been getting
| ostracised by polite society for years now.
|
| I'm a massively left leaning libertarian, if it weren't
| for its consistently proven failures in practice I would
| be a commy.
|
| But here I am, over the years of commenting online I've
| been labeled a trump supporter, a Republican, alt right,
| white, male privileged, white privileged, racist, pseudo
| intellectual, biggoted, transphobic, and a Nazi.
| XorNot wrote:
| Aren't libertarians all about the absolute sanctity of
| private property over all other concerns?
|
| How is a pro-business ideology remotely justifying
| government intervention in the practice and moderation
| decisions of a private company? Wouldn't the
| rectification involve the government specifically
| dictating their business behaviour?
| ttt0 wrote:
| > Aren't libertarians all about the absolute sanctity of
| private property over all other concerns?
|
| They divide themselves on left-libertarians and right-
| libertarians. What you're thinking about is right-
| libertarians, so anarcho-capitalists, minarchists etc.
| waheoo wrote:
| Wikipedia:
|
| Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political
| freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice,
| individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians
| share a skepticism of authority and state power, but some
| of them diverge on the scope of their opposition to
| existing economic and political systems.
|
| If you want to get specific on the economic front I
| diverge a bit and fall somewhere along the mutualism line
| of things where I'm more interested in a pragmatic free
| market socialism. Basically just do what you feel like
| but don't be a prick about it, and yes, we'll organise
| some free healthcare and education.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm not seeing a meaningful objection to Google doing
| what it wants with moderation of its own platform though.
|
| "Do what you want" in the free market is exactly this
| behavior.
| LocalH wrote:
| There needs to be a term for otherwise libertarian-minded
| people, who also understand that the platform should
| revolve around correcting the power imbalances between
| large wealthy organizations and individuals, whether
| those large organizations are governments or
| corporations. I don't see why we can't restrict the
| ultra-rich billionaires while still protecting the small-
| to-medium rich who actually did bust their ass to gain
| their fortunes.
| arduanika wrote:
| A little polemical, but there's some truth here. We've
| become so fixated on left-right as the only dimension
| that whenever you advocate for something clearly in the
| centrist-ish public interest, all anyone wants to know is
| which side you're on so that they can reduce you to a
| caricature.
|
| Which prompts the question, who is responsible for all
| this vitriol? What people or corporations are driving us
| further and further into these two filter bubbles?
|
| Oh no.
| ttt0 wrote:
| It used to be that if you even uttered the words "freedom
| of speech" here you'd be instantly downvoted and jumped
| on by five people saying that censorship is only when
| it's done by the government. Some people still double
| down on supporting the censorship, but at least no one
| even mentions that free market argument anymore.
| waheoo wrote:
| Used to be? -6 and counting. Should get flagged any
| minute now. Can't have people speaking untruths ya know?
|
| edit That didn't take long.
| arduanika wrote:
| They don't bust trusts anymore, but FAANG sure is
| determined to bust all our trust in them.
| Arathorn wrote:
| We've just published an official blog post updating on the
| situation at https://element.io/blog/element-on-google-play-
| store/ which we'll keep updated as things progress.
| cxr wrote:
| Will Matrix respond to this by pointing out that F-Droid is
| a viable option for people intending to publish or use FOSS
| apps?
| Arathorn wrote:
| good point; have updated the blog post.
| Cyphase wrote:
| FYI, unless you're providing reproducible builds to
| F-Droid signed by your key (which doesn't seem to be the
| case), that APK is going to be signed with a different
| key. So it's either uninstallable over top of a Play
| Store-derived APK, or if someone does install it who
| doesn't currently have Element installed, they won't be
| able to install a Play Store-derived APK later - at least
| not without uninstalling first, and unless they do that
| with the right adb option, they'll lose any app data they
| have.
|
| Ideally you could set up reproducible builds and make
| sure that the version in the default F-Droid repo stays
| up-to-date, but reproducible builds may not be practical
| for you right now (I'm not sure). Barring that, as you
| mentioned in the blog post, setting up your own F-Droid
| repo with self-signed APKs is a good option.
|
| I haven't yet played with Matrix nearly as much as I
| would like, but I love the vision. Thanks for your
| efforts!
|
| Also nice plug for F-Droid; they're doing good work as
| well.
| cxr wrote:
| > We're also looking into running our own F-Droid
| repository going forwards
|
| That's great to hear as well.
| khimaros wrote:
| i disagree. the main repository enforces reproducible
| builds and restricts trackers. please keep the main repo
| up to date.
| cxr wrote:
| Well, I disagree with your disagreement. Part of the
| value of F-Droid is that the main repository can host
| packages that are vetted and maintained by uninvolved
| parties. Second, if the Matrix-run repository does
| reproducible builds, then... there's no problem. (That's
| the nature of reproducible builds.) Third, F-Droid was
| conceived to be distributed and decentralized. That's why
| it allows you to add other sources in the first place,
| there's even a feature baked in that lets you get/share
| apps (including F-Droid itself) in-person with people
| around you, and under the hood the whole thing uses a
| DVCS-style model where the package index is "dead" data
| and your device manages a copy. Fourth, an app author
| choosing to run their own repository means that they're
| invested in F-Droid, moreso than instances where
| F-Droid's role is to achieve "mere availability" for the
| package.
|
| What's more, this incident is evidence that we need more
| decentralization, not less. In instances where
| decentralization is either already working or is up for
| consideration, we should encourage it, not try to
| eradicate it.
| sneak wrote:
| The main repository also signs everything with f-droid
| keys, not the original developer's. This means any
| compromise in f-droid compromises _everything_.
| khimaros wrote:
| sounds like a problem to solve. build in both places,
| verify build hashes agree, upstream dev infra signs and
| sends signed build to f-droid, f-droid verifies hash
| against its own build, verifies upstream signature, signs
| and then lists. apks can have more than one signature.
| khimaros wrote:
| actually, it turns out this is no longer a limitation:
| https://f-droid.org/docs/Reproducible_Builds/
|
| "Publishing signed binaries from elsewhere (e.g. the
| upstream developer) is now possible after verifying that
| they match ones built using a recipe. Publishing only
| takes place if there is a proper match."
| Grollicus wrote:
| Did you think to maybe give your article a more self-
| explanatory title? It's harder to spread the message when
| the primary qualified source for this is titled "Element on
| Google Play Store" instead of maybe "Element (Matrix chat
| app) banned on Google Play Store".
| Arathorn wrote:
| updated.
| malwrar wrote:
| Kudos on the quality of this post, makes me feel like the
| project is in level-headed hands!
| brnt wrote:
| Wonder if we can get Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp off the Play
| store like this as well. "Side effects include: sexual
| content and coups."
| Daho0n wrote:
| You could if it were small apps.
| sneak wrote:
| No need to wonder. The Facebook and WhatsApp apps are why
| people buy phones. If a phone/platform can't run
| Facebook/WhatsApp, people will buy different ones that can.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Could this be related to all the WSB shenanigans going on?
| Banning their chat groups makes them move to another, repeat?
| loceng wrote:
| That would be absurd but compared to everything that
| happened in 2020, that could be very likely. A lot of $
| billions are being lost which very well may impact a large
| amount of expectant people.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| alex_reg wrote:
| This is probably not a coincidence or an oversight, but
| rather a "what can we get away with" attempt, similar to
| previous efforts to remove UBlock Origin.
|
| But why? Matrix is tiny and no threat to Google services.
|
| I'd personally expect three letter agencies to be involved
| here. The US government has been aggressively going after
| encrypted communication for years, with extreme tactics like
| personal intimidation and secret courts. Read this story
| about a secure email provider if you doubt it. [1]
|
| This doesn't work so well with EU based companies, even
| though they have been pushing EU governments to do the same.
| (There recently was a leak that the encryption ban currently
| discussed in the EU parliament has some roots in Five Eyes
| efforts and that governments were pressured by the US to
| support it. Published by FAZ or Sueddeutsche, I'm trying to
| find the article...)
|
| I also doubt that iMessage and What's App gaining "backdoors"
| to their encryption is purely motivated by user experience.
|
| At a time where a lot of people want to switch communication
| platforms, nipping any such efforts early might well be
| viewed as important.
|
| "Abusive content" is a convenient excuse that can be
| arbitrarily applied.
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-
| the-...
| conradev wrote:
| This seems like a classic case of Hanlon's razor and I
| don't see any evidence to the contrary (yet).
|
| An NSL would be handled a lot differently than removing an
| app from a single app store for sexual content. Every
| indication so far points to it being a mistake by Google.
|
| From less than a week ago:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/googles-bots-
| decide-...
| alex_reg wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| But if you always discount such events as coincidences,
| you risk remaining blind to emerging patterns.
| mimi89999 wrote:
| The pattern is that their reviewers are really bad and
| the appeal process is almost nonexistent. Improving the
| quality would probably be a huge cost and they have no
| real reason to do that.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Having a appearantly random blackbox system is handy when
| you want it to do shady stuff. Just blame the algorithm!
| zaroth wrote:
| > _But why? Matrix is tiny and no threat to Google
| services._
|
| There is an absolutely unprecedented shift going on as we
| speak, one of those groundswell events that have the
| potential to shift usage habits of hundreds of millions of
| people.
|
| We got a taste just recently with the shift away from
| WhatsApp based on a _TOS update_. Imagine arguing last year
| that ten million users would jump ship based on a TOS
| change?
|
| Matrix, and services of its ilk, are absolutely an
| existential threat to Google in the next 20 years.
|
| Don't forget that Google has _all the threat intel_ you
| could possibly imagine from their existing analytics
| platforms. They will see the shift coming before anyone.
|
| I can absolutely see them acting now to try to disrupt the
| initial rumblings of a seismic event that has the potential
| to go totally viral and popular sentiment shifts against
| megacorps.
|
| Killing them gets exponentially harder over the next 6
| months if there were a successful campaign across the
| internet to switch to these services, and 2021 is very
| close to seeing a very significant grassroots campaign like
| that truly take off. Certainly the time has never been
| better and the populace never been more primed to make the
| move out of the walled gardens.
| conradev wrote:
| Google has no (competitive) horse in the messenger race,
| so while that theory might fit your ideological point of
| view, I don't understand why Google itself would have any
| incentive (or grounds) to remove an open source chat app.
|
| How is Matrix a threat to Google?
| zaroth wrote:
| Google counts up every minute users spend using their
| electronic devices.
|
| In their world view, every single minute per day spent
| looking at screens that don't have Google ad targeting is
| a minute that a competitor is stealing value from Google.
| johbjo wrote:
| > How is Matrix a threat to Google?
|
| A matrix user identity will eventually compete with a
| google account.
|
| When google accounts are considered as important as
| myspace accounts, then much of their surveillance loses
| relevance.
| eganist wrote:
| > How is Matrix a threat to Google?
|
| Conjecture on my part: it's a threat to the ad spend
| Google gets from Facebook.
| conradev wrote:
| Facebook (24%) and Google (32%) compete pretty intensely
| for mobile ad spend. While we don't know how much
| Facebook uses Google ads, that theory isn't particularly
| satisfying because they compete so intensely.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/4032442/its-still-pi-day-so-
| we-d...
| eganist wrote:
| > Facebook (24%) and Google (32%) compete pretty
| intensely for mobile ad spend. While we don't know how
| much Facebook uses Google ads, that theory isn't
| particularly satisfying because they compete so
| intensely.
|
| And yet...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-
| faceboo...
| vector_spaces wrote:
| That really sucks. Here's to hoping they don't end up using
| this to pressure you into compromising your feature set
| somehow.
|
| Incidentally I was always kinda surprised that the upgrade nag
| links in Riot Android redirected to Play store instead of
| f-droid
| blondin wrote:
| sorry this is happening to you guys. i hope this situation gets
| sorted out.
|
| not saying i agree with the decision here, but hn is sometimes
| so quick to blame google.
|
| what surprised me though, is that you guys are aware of abusive
| content on the network and even put a "moderation" guide in
| place. so much good faith in people here...
| ekianjo wrote:
| So are you going to remove email clients from the play store
| if someone sends offensive emails?
| tabbott wrote:
| I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's
| scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to
| us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that connects to self-hosted
| servers!).
|
| I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for
| why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams,
| are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune
| their tactics and so tend to never explain anything.
|
| But the details of how Google screwed up here also don't
| matter. A sudden Friday night suspension of a popular,
| legitimate app is insane! That possibility shouldn't be in the
| flowchart.
|
| I get that for malware/spam/etc., it's important to immediately
| suspend, but I don't understand why Google doesn't take more
| seriously the very negative harm caused by doing that to a
| legitimate app. Some notice and appeal opportunity should be
| required before suspending a popular app by a legitimate
| publisher.
|
| I'm upset, and a bit scared, but I can't say I'm surprised.
| This sort of random/erroneous/arbitrary punishment without
| explanation happens all the time with Google and other major
| tech companies. And every app developer I've met has
| experienced _significant_ disruption to their app publishing
| efforts due arbitrary/random rejections by an Apple app store
| reviewer, and this has been the case for years, so we can
| pretty confident that the vendors won't improve unless they are
| forced to do so.
|
| There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app
| stores and the negative consequences for everyone else of their
| error-prone and ruthless enforcement processes.
| panarky wrote:
| If you accept that (1) there is a substantial amount of mal-
| content that Google should censor, and (2) a key use case for
| federated messaging platforms is to evade censorship, and
| that (3) client applications can be functionally part of a
| federated messaging platform while legally separate from it,
| then those client applications are fair game to be censored
| when they deliver mal-content.
|
| Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or
| weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client
| application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just
| because the client application is legally but not
| functionally separate from the federated network.
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| While we're at it, should we ban email apps as well? And
| probably the Internet itself and go back to "safe" walled
| gardens like AOL, since there are almost certainly bad
| people on the net?
| altano wrote:
| By the way, "malcontent" (no hyphen) is an English word
| that doesn't mean "bad content" or "malicious content" like
| you're intending.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| That would presumably include Chrome and https and enabling
| use through VPNs?
|
| The above are use daily for extremist content, CP,
| circumventing numerous national laws in numerous places...
|
| Hard to draw the line.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| Legitimate app yes, but was it actually popular? The cached
| copy of the Element store page says 100k installs, <2k
| reviews. Compare to e.g. Signal at 50M installs and 1.2M
| reviews. Or WhatsApp with 5B installs and 130M reviews.
| Arathorn wrote:
| This is in part because we had to replace the app in 2019,
| and also because it's not the only client for Matrix - many
| deployments are actually forks of Element (e.g. France's
| 5.5M user deployment of Tchap).
| NoOneCaresAtAll wrote:
| > the bad guys
|
| With a mindset like that, you should stop paying taxes since
| the bad guys benefit from federal government as well.
| white-moss wrote:
| I don't understand what google want to do...Evil.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Opt out. No Google. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Amazon. You don't
| need them, you might even enjoy life more without them.
|
| You can't change how they operate. But you can change how you
| operate.
| gjvnq wrote:
| Let me get my dusty PDP-11 then... /s
| nexthash wrote:
| Personally, I heavily rely on Google and Amazon. All my emails,
| purchases, photos, and browsing goes through them. Opting out
| would mean uprooting gigabytes of data to other services, which
| takes time to research, backup, and transfer. And even then you
| can't fully get rid of them, because switching to Apple from
| Android costs money, and I am not willing to root Android. This
| is merely my personal situation, but saying that people don't
| need Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon is ignoring the
| massive dependence these companies have forced onto users and
| the cost of leaving, which is not worth the time and money for
| many.
| nabilhat wrote:
| I agree that going cold turkey on every trace of these orgs
| would be unrealistic. There's a lot to be said for locking
| down phones and shopping locally, but taking control of the
| assets those orgs hold is where it really pays off no matter
| who you are.
|
| Migrating email is intimidating, but alleviates the highest
| cost risk and is actually pretty painless. In my own case, I
| started a Fastmail account and told it to use my own domain
| and sync from my gmail account. I didn't have to commit to
| anything until I felt like it. After a couple of weeks I
| started lazily updating a few subscriptions as they got
| forwarded from gmail, and replying to people with 'hey, check
| it out this is my new email'. Now, Fastmail could vanish and
| I'd be temporarily inconvenienced for only as long as it took
| to staple my domain to some other email host. Losing access
| to my gmail account before making that switch would have been
| a disaster.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I am not willing to root Android.
|
| Why is that? I'm not being snarky, I just don't understand
| why.
|
| The difference between a rooted and non-rooted android is
| like the being in the wheel group or sudoers file on
| unix/linux and not being in them.
|
| Personally, I like to have full control of my own property.
|
| What reason do you have for not wanting that?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In theory it's nice, in practice are there phones that you
| can root without leaving the bootloader in a vulnerable
| state? And it looks like the future is a situation where
| it's impossible to prevent software from detecting unlocks
| and refusing to run.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >In theory it's nice, in practice are there phones that
| you can root without leaving the bootloader in a
| vulnerable state?
|
| I've always just unlocked the bootloader, then installed
| TWRP[0] (or similar) and then re-locked the bootloader.
|
| Once a reasonable recovery partition is in place, you
| don't need keep the bootloader unlocked.
|
| [0] https://twrp.me/
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And then how do you actually do the rooting in a way that
| doesn't make your phone fail to boot? What model of
| phone?
| PostOnce wrote:
| "massive dependence"
|
| Switching from gmail to another provider isn't like living
| without electricity, it takes a couple of days updating some
| external accounts to reflect your new email; I did it.
|
| Buying shit from somewhere that isn't Amazon isn't exactly
| trekking through the jungle for 3 weeks. All you have to do
| is type in another domain. There is no shortage of non-Amazon
| sellers with similar prices.
|
| Switching from Chrome to Firefox takes 5 minutes, you can
| import your bookmarks and whatnot. Maybe you'll have to type
| in a password again. No climbing K2 level difficulty there
| either.
|
| Android and iOS aren't that different, you can click a
| browser, camera, or email in either in the same amount of
| time with the same UI.
|
| Sure it's effort, but it's not a hell of a lot of effort.
| nexthash wrote:
| I hope you understand that this is all relative... what if
| you were in a situation where all of your friends/news are
| on Facebook? Where you don't have time to update 30+
| accounts/subscriptions to reflect a new email address?
| Paying $500+ for an iPhone? Depending on the person, that
| _is_ a hell of a lot of effort. If it wasn 't, FAANG
| wouldn't be the empire it is today. It would be taking
| million user hits like WhatsApp after a single scandal.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Well, they got to where they are by being trusted at what
| they do. They have rapidly lost that trust, in my mind.
| Once a party violates some level of implicit trust, you
| have to distance yourself from that party. Big tech has
| shown their true colors. They will abuse their monopoly
| power to exploit politics, manipulate people, cut up and
| coming competitors off at the knees, and censor anything
| they don't agree with. This is not the web I signed up
| for. This is not the revolutionary open tech that kids
| like me that grew up in the 90s gushed about. This is a
| dystopian Orwellian nightmare. It's time to get off the
| ride.
| COGlory wrote:
| I did it:
|
| - LineageOS + MicroG and F-Droid for mobile.
|
| - NextCloud (and DAV) running on an old laptop for calendar,
| contacts, and file storage. The mobile app uploads all my
| photos automatically. It backs up to Backblaze
|
| -ProtonMail with a custom domain for email.
|
| Amazon is pretty avoidable. Shipping has gotten faster and
| cheaper everywhere else at this point. At least for the rural
| place I am.
|
| I'm not particularly tech savvy. This took a significant time
| effort for me. At this point, it's all pretty stable, I don't
| really have glitches anymore. I imagine the average HN user
| could easily replicate it, and if this type of setup got more
| popular, it would invariably get easier to set up.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| What phone did you load LineageOS on? Do you know of any
| guides for it?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >What phone did you load LineageOS on? Do you know of any
| guides for it?
|
| Not GP, but I'd been using LineageOS on my HTC OneMax. I
| like it a lot.
|
| Here's a list of supported devices:
|
| https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
|
| Click through the links on the above page for install
| guides.
| COGlory wrote:
| I was using a Pixel 2, but the list of well documented
| phones is available:
|
| https://lineage.microg.org/
|
| It's pretty simple if your phone is supported. You enable
| developer mode, enable USB debugging, download the image,
| and run a couple ADB commands. For me it was:
|
| fastboot flashing unlock
|
| fastboot update image.zip
|
| And that was it.
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| It is good to see such implementations adopted more and
| more
| afavour wrote:
| > You can't change how they operate.
|
| You can, by pressuring politicians to create laws and
| regulations. It's just something the US hasn't tried all that
| much lately.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I'm there. We're early, everyone else will eventually abandon
| ship.
| marcinzm wrote:
| > You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without
| them.
|
| So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make a
| statement that will have no impact on them at all?
|
| >You can't change how they operate.
|
| Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws and
| so on.
| bordercases wrote:
| You gotta be a man with principles. And why do you think your
| petitioning the government would make as much of an impact in
| this case, when opting out of using their services deprives
| them of revenue and data almost immediately?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make
| a statement that will have no impact on them at all?_
|
| God forbid we "lower the quality of our lives" for such lowly
| things as principles!
|
| > _Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws
| and so on._
|
| Else what, you'll vote for another party? Both parties (in
| the US) take money from Big Tech, and they vote the same shit
| anyway. That will "show them" nothing. Especially since their
| stance on such laws is 1/100 of the things you vote a
| party/candidate about (so you will still vote for them if you
| agree on other matters).
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| America is hopeless here, much better to try and fight them
| elsewhere.
| cheph wrote:
| EU gave us GDPR popups, so, not sure there is hope there.
| mastazi wrote:
| I quit Reddit, Amazon, Twitter, Google, Instagram and
| Facebook. My life has never been better. Minor inconvenience
| does not outweigh major improvements in my mental wellness.
|
| (Edit: I mention mental wellness because those products, and
| the ads they carry, are designed to be addictive.)
| thebladerunner wrote:
| Are you saying that not using Google search has improved
| your quality of life?
| pleeb wrote:
| Google search has gone significantly down in quality over
| the last year or so. Even just searching for simple
| things only seems to yield articles from the same 20 or
| so major websites, and it's worse if you're looking for
| niche items. DuckDuckGo on the other hand is starting to
| give relatively better and more diverse results these
| days.
| narrator wrote:
| I agree Google has gone downhill. DuckDuckGo is much
| better now.
| bdefore wrote:
| The alternatives do not have better quality. I
| periodically go with DDG and realize I'm !g'ing
| everything.
| Shorel wrote:
| It totally depends on how do you write your search query:
|
| If you write "teen movie about vampires" or something
| equally vague, Google is king.
|
| If you write a direct quote or the exact error message,
| without typos, DDG gives better results. I can also put
| sentences in quotes to force an exact match. DDG is just
| an older school search engine, so old school tricks work
| better.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| It has for me. Most of my searches are pretty generic and
| DDG does well enough. It has a nice dark theme and is
| fast and clean. And the !bangs are extremely useful.
| Saving a couple of seconds and a couple of clicks every
| search when I want to land up on the arch wiki or
| wikipedia adds up over time and I find it hard to go back
| to google now.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| In recent months I went from treating DuckDuckGo as some
| exotic search engine to using it many times a day. That
| is only because Google search is becoming useless, ad-
| ridden mess.
| mastazi wrote:
| Some of Google's products e.g. Youtube are designed to be
| addictive, and in my experience addiction decreases one's
| quality of life. I still use the !sp operator on
| Duckduckgo to get proxied google results, you don't need
| a Google account for that.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Are you implying that Google search is any longer the
| only quality search engine? Honestly, I've been using DDG
| for years now and only less than 1% of my searches do I
| ever jump over to Google for.
| risyachka wrote:
| Those are just tools that give you a lot of leverage if
| used correctly.
|
| Instagram is a great tools for business, and now it's
| practically impossible to run one without using it. Twitter
| and reddit can provide you a ton of useful info that you
| will have a hard time finding anywhere else (or it will
| take way longer). I've built a business on Play Store.
|
| It's all about how you use them.
| mastazi wrote:
| I agree about the possible business use cases and to
| solve that issue I have created _business only_ accounts
| that are on a different browser, they are connected to my
| work email, they don't contain my personal data and I
| never use them outside of work tasks.
| burnte wrote:
| So let me ask you a question, how were they negatively
| impacting your mental wellbeing? I ask this genuinely,
| because I have a tendency to feel these tools only
| negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating
| ways. That, however, feels like victim blaming. There's a
| difference between a using a circular saw dangerously and a
| circular saw that is MADE with electrical failures that
| shock you. Let me give the example of MY use so you can
| contrast it for me to help me understand.
|
| I use GMail, Google Search, Youtube Twitter, Amazon, and
| Facebook.
|
| I'm not thrilled about FB but it lets me keep tabs on
| friends. Sometiems I interact with a few people who are
| friends but sucked in by a lot of the disinformation
| around, so I try to engage with them sometimes but not
| often. I also spend maybe 15 minutes a day on it, tops.
|
| Twitter never stresses me, I don't follow toxic people,
| just friends, entertainers, tech people and such. Again,
| maybe 15-30 minutes a day, tops.
|
| I get a lot of satisfaction from Youtube, I even pay for
| premium so I don't get ads, and follow a bunch of great
| creators.
|
| Amazon's pricing and delivery are great. that makes me
| happy. I just make sure not to by crap/scam products and
| I'm good. I use Amazon Music every day, and their video
| streaming is great too (although they need to stop changing
| the name).
|
| Google Search is by far the best, IMO, and saves me hours
| every day.
|
| I have my personal domain go to gmail, and it makes
| managing ages of email a breeze.
|
| So I can't see a way in which ditching any of those would
| benefit me, and aside from Facebook, I feel NOT using them
| would cause me more stress, or less enjoyment.
|
| I'd love to know how you find leaving them has benefitted
| you.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| This is the classic advertising doesn't work on me
| mentality.
|
| Whether you realise it or not, the algorithms behind
| these services are having a subtle impact on you and show
| you things for various shady reasons. For me, that was
| enough just to ditch those services.
|
| It's good to see that you're limiting your exposure to
| them though.
| burnte wrote:
| To be honest, advertising DOES work on me, but only
| insomuch as it alerts me to potential things. I presume
| all ads are lies, and research the thing before I by. I
| have a strong anti-authority reflex and trust VERY little
| (if anything) on face value. I don't even trust myself.
| "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself
| -- and you are the easiest person to fool."
| beefield wrote:
| > I don't even trust myself
|
| But you trust yourself so much that "advertising DOES
| work on me, but only insomuch as it alerts me to
| potential things"
|
| That sounds a bit contradictory to me. (I think I could
| describe myself somewhat like you did in the latter part,
| and I still have absolutely no illusions that ads would
| not be able to get me. So I just actively try to avoid
| them. And I do not need or want anyone to alert me on
| potential things. Even further, I try to live by the
| principle of never, ever making any kind of commercial
| transaction with anyone where I have not been the
| intiator of the communication.)
| burnte wrote:
| Well, I stated that it queues my interest, then I
| research it understanding it's probably not as good as it
| looks. I'm not sure I agree that's contradictory. I'm not
| saying they don't succeed in attracting me, I'm saying I
| don't buy based on ads.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > This is the classic advertising doesn't work on me
| mentality.
|
| Only if you're massively moving the goalposts.
|
| The claim wasn't anything about "subtle impact" or "shady
| reasons". It was about whether those services are causing
| major stress and problems.
| bordercases wrote:
| Google reads your e-mails to develop its ads.
| Psychological profiles are collated from every click you
| take on each of these platforms and pulled into ad
| brokerships. The people that are hired to do this
| profiling often have crossovers into government sectors,
| as this is just another form of surveillance. I am
| personally shocked (not necessarily appalled) at anyone
| feeling OK with this level of scrutiny being applied to
| themselves at all the times by government bureaucrats, or
| companies just looking to make a buck off of your
| behavior without you even knowing. We're past the point
| where anyone can claim ignorance of these facts.
| mastazi wrote:
| Another example regarding Google and more precisely
| Youtube. When my daughter was younger we created an
| account on a smart TV and watched a few videos for kids
| on a newly created Youtube account... Over time I
| realised that they tweak recommendations in such a way
| that kids are presented with highly addictive (and
| sometimes borderline disturbing) content. With kids
| content it is more obvious, but the same is true for
| adult users, even though the "addictiveness" aspect tends
| to be more nuanced. A couple of years ago there was a
| TechCrunch article that talked about this topic:
| https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/12/i-watched-1000-hours-
| of-yo...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's creepy and all but I thought we were talking about
| mental well-being?
| burnte wrote:
| > Google reads your e-mails to develop its ads.
|
| Why do I care? That's the implicit bargain, I get a free
| service in exchange for ads. I don't care about the ads,
| they don't show up in my actual mail feed, just on the
| side so they're easy to ignore/block.
|
| > Psychological profiles are collated from every click
| you take on each of these platforms and pulled into ad
| brokerships.
|
| Why do I care? We build profiles of every person we meet
| in our heads. I'm a very open person.
|
| > The people that are hired to do this profiling often
| have crossovers into government sectors, as this is just
| another form of surveillance.
|
| Again, why do I care? I'm not trying to be argumentative,
| but I truly do not care if people know I looked at new
| Kias, or I use Old Spice deodorant. I don't find any of
| that information being out there harmful to me.
|
| > I am personally shocked (not necessarily appalled) at
| anyone feeling OK with this level of scrutiny being
| applied to themselves at all the times by government
| bureaucrats, or companies just looking to make a buck off
| of your behavior without you even knowing. We're past the
| point where anyone can claim ignorance of these facts.
|
| It's not that I'm ok with it, I simply don't CARE. It
| doesn't impact me in a negative way. There is no human
| out there looking at my buying/watching habits and taking
| notes, passing them on to men in trees with binoculars
| plotting to abduct me. There are machine learning
| algorithms using them to suggest things I might buy, or
| might want to watch on TV. They're right sometimes, so I
| actually get some value out of it.
|
| I don't make it easy, I opt out of everything I can, but
| I also don't really care as long as I can not hook my TV
| to the network to avoid Samsung's built-in ads which is
| offensive bullshit and SHOULD be regulated, then I'm ok.
| When I go out into the world, I don't have any rights to
| who can see me who what they can learn about me, it's the
| same online. As long as I have the power to control what
| comes into my home, that's what matters. Outside, or out
| on the internet at large, I'm on someone else's property,
| and if I don't like their rules, I can leave.
|
| There's a difference between watching me in public and
| forcing me to do things. One is your right which doesn't
| harm me, and the other is NOT your right because it CAN
| harm me.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So let me ask you a question, how were they negatively
| impacting your mental wellbeing? I ask this genuinely,
| because I have a tendency to feel these tools only
| negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating
| ways._
|
| They use highly optimized and self-optimizing techniques
| and psychological tricks (including A/B testing,
| consulting experts in cognition, using dark patterns, and
| everything) to get you hooked on dopamine hits, make you
| jealoush of your timeline peers, anger you, milk your
| engagement etc.
|
| The idea that "I'm different, these ads don't work on me"
| is basically the 21st century version of "I'm not
| addicted can't quit anytime" of the drug addict (not to
| mention that it's not just ads, but the feed that's
| problematic, from reasons that range from echo-bubbling
| to comparing yourself to 1000s of people you don't know
| but are your "friends" -- and even with actual friends,
| people used to have less visibility to their spending
| habbits, vacation photos, etc, not share everything
| including pics of their branch).
| mastazi wrote:
| Yes I agree, the main point that led me to quit is that
| all of those services are created to "maximise screen
| time", in other words designed to be addictive.
| burnte wrote:
| It's very possible I AM different. I have an insanely
| high tolerance for alcohol and most drugs (legal and
| otherwise). I've had situations where I was prescribed
| vicodin for months at a stretch, and when the pain was
| gone, half a bottle sat in the drawer until I threw it
| out (TMJ neuralgia and gallstones leading to gallbladder
| removal). If I don't look at FB for a day or two, I feel
| no compulsion to look at it. Sometimes I don't open
| twitter for weeks. I use them to fill time in the
| bathroom or waiting on the wife. Maybe I'm just
| disproportionately well-balanced. I've had incredible
| hard times throughout my life, so maybe I just understand
| what's actually important better than the average bear.
|
| I completely agree with the echo-chamber effect, but I
| also don't feel Facebook or Twitter are actually good
| sources for political discourse or information so I'm not
| exactly trusting anything I see there. I think cable news
| is far more "addictive" and mood-warping than Facebook,
| though. It's totally passive, you just sit there and
| absorb the anxiety-laden "coming up in just minutes, how
| some politician is literally trying to kill you and your
| family with new regulations on ocean cargo ships! After
| these ads."
|
| Yes, they absolutely want to boost engagement and use.
| Yes, they use tested algorithms to select content
| appealing to you. Yes, some of them even have sleazy
| policies on content and ads. Some types of content and
| some types of personalities lend themselves well to that
| type of information dissemination, especially right-wing
| content due to the more conformist/authority-pleasing
| nature of those mentalities. Do I think Facebook and
| Twitter actually want to make me angry at people? No.
| People that use FB and Twitter for propaganda reasons do,
| but that's what propaganda from any source is meant to
| do, highlight differences between groups and increase
| inter-group tension to reinforce tribal identity.
|
| But, you didn't actually answer my question. I asked how
| they affected YOU, not what the goals of these platforms
| are. I want to hear how they actually affected a person,
| not how they might affect groups. I'd really like to know
| how Google and Amazon fit in there too. Again, feel like
| it boils down to "maybe you shouldn't be so affected by
| people you don't know and ideas you haven't checked" but
| also again I don't want to victim blame. I also don't
| generally like blaming tools for problems, so I'm trying
| to get more data.
| coldtea wrote:
| You might or might no be that different.
|
| But it's worth to note that most people are delluded in
| this regard, thinking they're different. Besides
| "different in tolerance" and "hookable" are not entirely
| contradictory. One might resist Vicodin and fall for
| social media echo- bubbling for example, the same way
| some can resist alcohol, but fall for drugs or food at
| obesity-level, and so on. In other words, some are
| different in the set of tolerances, but still human, in
| that they have their soft spots.
|
| > _But, you didn 't actually answer my question. I asked
| how they affected YOU, not what the goals of these
| platforms are._
|
| That would still be asking the wrong question. We don't
| live in isolated fishbowls. What negatively affects
| others also affects me (that's not even to mention the
| direct harm to my family, relatives, and friends, I'm
| speaking in more general community terms).
| mastazi wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your experience!
|
| > how were they negatively impacting your mental
| wellbeing?
|
| I think the answer to your question is obviously very
| personal and will change from an individual to another.
|
| For me personally the stress came in 2 forms:
|
| * Outrage/politics, especially on Twitter and Reddit. On
| Twitter, it's impossible to escape this, even if you
| carefully sanitise the list of those who you follow, due
| to the trending section being visible to everyone. On
| Reddit, if you visit the site while you are not logged
| in, again you will see all of the above.
|
| * Time sink. The worst offender here was Youtube. E.g. "I
| need to do X in my aquarium let me just quickly double
| check that video by Aquarium Co-op" - 2 hours later
| (spent watching "recommended next" videos) I would
| realise "wow I just wasted 2 hours of my life". Note that
| I can still quickly view a video without having an
| account, but due to not having followlists and such, the
| recommendations are less addictive. Facebook and
| Instagram were also a time sink and unlike Youtube they
| weren't really useful in any obvious way, except maybe a
| couple of Facebook Groups I was part of (e.g. my
| daughter's school parents group where I could get some
| news about the school - I now subscribe to their
| newsletter instead).
|
| * Instigating compulsive spending, e.g. Amazon - this is
| quite obvious due to it being an e-commerce website and
| knowing well what you're thinking to buy. I now shop on
| local retailers whenever possible and as a last resort on
| eBay, since at least it is less pervasive - unlike Amazon
| which entices you to take advantage of the rest of their
| ecosystem e.g. Prime Video or Kindle or Twitch, then
| "follows" you in all those places with tracking ads.
|
| > Google Search is by far the best, IMO, and saves me
| hours every day.
|
| If you use Duckduckgo, you can add !sp at the end of your
| search, and you will get proxied Google results. You
| don't need to have a Google account for that.
|
| > I have my personal domain go to gmail, and it makes
| managing ages of email a breeze.
|
| Having a personal domain is a great first step, well
| done! I didn't have it so I had to setup an "out of
| office" message, warning everyone that my Gmail address
| would be deactivated soon...
| burnte wrote:
| I reddit daily, I like it a lot. I just gloss over the
| propaganda crap there, on twitter, facebook, etc. When I
| want to do politics for real, I do actual fact-based
| research (as opposed to "my facebook friend watched a
| youtube video about chemtrails!"). I personally find it
| easy.
|
| Youtube CAN be a time sink, but so can movies, books, and
| music. It's my responsibility to manage my time, but I
| appreciate that it makes it easy to find content I WANT
| rather than crap.
|
| I grew up dirt poor, homeless twice before I was ten. I
| make 6 figures now because I work hard, I'm good at what
| I do (and also because being a white male in America is
| very useful), and because I know how to spend and not to
| spend. Good tea is worth it, grocery store milk and
| butter are fine. A good car is essential, it should work
| well and look nice, but I'm not buying a Mercedes ever. I
| have an $1,000 TV that I got for $450 because I love to
| bargain hunt like some people like to actually hunt.
|
| I don't _generally_ care about remarketing ads, as long
| as they don't go on for months. My biggest problem is
| when I see ads for three weeks AFTER I BOUGHT THE DAMN
| THING.
|
| So I can go to Duck Duck Go, get Google results, but
| without the benefit of having a profile to determine
| what's most likely more relevant to me? That doesn't
| sound useful. I LIKE that Google says, "hey, the last
| three things he searched were actors in the same TV show,
| I bet when he's typing a name it's probably related to
| that same show." I like that Google knows if I search
| "stars fell on alabama" the chances I want the lyrics to
| the Frank Sinatra song are 100%. That's beneficial to me.
|
| I have a personal domain for vanity reasons, and also
| control, yes. If I decide to leave, it's on my terms.
|
| I applaud you for being in charge of your own life, I
| think I am too. I will say, however, that I think you
| probably concern yourself with the concept of privacy
| than me. I'm not a big "what if" person, not a big
| existential question person. To me, privacy was ALWAYS a
| lot less encompassing than we ever thought, and at the
| same time, no one cares about us nearly as much as we
| think they do. Do FAANG know a lot about me? Yep. but I
| don't care, because they don't care about me, I don't
| matter to them. I'm a line in a database, nothing more.
|
| My life philosophy is, "The universe wants to kill me.
| Eventually it will. My priority is prolonging the magic."
| That doesn't include worrying about how many databases
| know I like BSG, Sinatra, Mountain Dew, and liberal
| politics.
| mastazi wrote:
| > I applaud you for being in charge of your own life, I
| think I am too.
|
| Oh of course, I never suggested otherwise! We all have
| different priorities, and also our heads all work in
| different ways.
|
| But, I wanted to make it clear that, if one has moral
| exceptions, then they can quit those services and be OK.
| Many are under the impression that they could not
| possibly live without X or Y, that's the idea I wanted to
| dispel.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > I have a tendency to feel these tools only negatively
| impact people who use them in stress-creating ways
|
| I came to the same conclusion. It is much easier to blame
| some internet website (which is basically just some
| pixels on a screen) instead of figuring out internal
| psychological reasons for being addicted. If a person is
| looking for addictions, they will find them. If it won't
| be facebook, it will be porn, binge-watching, sugar,
| compulsive excercise, compulsive talking, etc. etc. The
| list is endless.
|
| I just don't buy an idea that some pixels have more
| responsibility for their choices than the person itself
| does.
|
| Also when they start mentioning "dopamine" it makes me
| laugh. Brain just doesn't work that way. Dopamine doesn't
| make you do things, you make you do things. Dopamine is
| just a way for the brain to encode whatever you like. If
| you want to be addicted to facebook - it will encode
| facebook. If you want to have a healthy life - you'll get
| your dopamine exactly the same way when you get up in the
| morning, look outside and just think for yourself "this
| is a beautiful day", or when you solve a particular
| puzzle in your work, or when you say hi to a stranger.
| Brain has no shortage of dopamine and it is you who
| decide when it is released. Unless you are addicted of
| course. But don't blame the thing, work with the
| addiction instead, it's the only truthful way to stop
| being addicted.
|
| Now, for some people who are highly addicted, quitting
| facebook completely - might be a good thing. Like for an
| alcoholic, it might be good to quite 100% of alcohol for
| a while. But it doesn't mean that a healthy person can
| easily enjoy a glass of wine every now and then and don't
| have any problems with it.
| [deleted]
| adventured wrote:
| > Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws
| and so on.
|
| Ask the government to do something about it? They're allies,
| they're in it together.
|
| There is no scenario where they don't take out encryption
| this decade. It's a top priority and big tech is going to
| very happily assist them. Big tech will give them what they
| want, they will act as an arm of tyranny assisting the
| government in smashing human rights, and in return they'll
| get to continue to expand (they'll get a light touch
| regulatory treatment). It now has a lot in common with how
| China handles their giant corporations (so long as you do
| what we tell you to, you get to exist and thrive), and big
| tech in the US looks more like a CCP apparatus by the passing
| day.
|
| All forms of expression and speech will continue to be
| restricted more by the passing year. The government won't
| need to do it themselves, big tech will do the dirty work
| with a wink and nod. That includes all app stores, all online
| content and forums, all software.
|
| So, when you can't petition your government any longer
| because it's hell bent on taking your liberty away, what does
| that leave? The War on Domestic Terrorism of course. They'll
| create it, spur it, and then have an excuse to crack down on
| their own invention (not terribly different from how they ran
| the war on drugs). The US will be a horrible place to live in
| the near future. The foreign war on terrorism, in which the
| US did such unbelievable vicious things to other nations,
| will now turn inward, and the monster will come home, rolling
| over human rights as it goes.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Ask the government to do something about it? They're
| allies, they're in it together.
|
| If that's how it is where you live, and you live in a
| democracy, you can change that.
| zeeone wrote:
| If your quality of life depends on big tech then I suspect
| your life is of low quality in the first place.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Different people fall into different lives for all sorts of
| reasons, not all intentional. Consider having a bit more
| compassion for others.
|
| --
|
| "'It ate his head. Another loser.'
|
| She said to the two of them, 'It's easy to win. Anybody can
| win.'"
|
| -- _A Scanner Darkly_
| zeeone wrote:
| So, your definition of "different" is someone who uses
| Big Tech social networks?
| falcolas wrote:
| Do you expect these companies to stand still and wring their
| hands while you convince the government to stomp on their
| cash cows, or are they going to take some of the money you
| and your data have earned for them and lobby government more
| effectively than you ever could?
|
| My bet's on the latter. And so long as we all continue to
| support them (while claiming "but my boycott won't do any
| good"), they'll continue to use that financial support to
| ensure the continued non-involvement of the government in
| their affairs.
|
| Doing nothing costs nothing, but it also changes nothing.
| na85 wrote:
| >lower the quality of my life
|
| Quitting Facebook will objectively increase your quality of
| life.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I use Facebook for my Etsy shop and finding funny FFXIV
| memes. Pretty much a ghost town of a feed beyond that. Both
| of which I feel increase my quality of life.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I don't think it lowers quality of life. YMMV of course.
|
| Petition the government if you like. It doesn't matter. You
| don't have millions to donate to the next campaign or their
| personal enrichment. You're not who they care about.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or
| Facebook services.
|
| I quit Facebook along with most Google services, I feel much
| happier and more well adjusted than when I was using them.
| Meeting with family and friends is also much more interesting
| because I don't have a constant stream detailing their life.
|
| Good luck petitioning the government to act on it... this
| goes double for US businesses and people who live outside the
| US.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or
| Facebook services.
|
| Offhand the parent post would require me to give up Google
| Search (including via DDG), Gmail, Google Cloud, AWS,
| Amazon, Zappos, Audible, Comixology and Woot Shirts. I
| barely use Facebook or Twitter but the rest would lower my
| quality of life (and not just due to the large drop in
| employment opportunities I could take).
| illustriousbear wrote:
| Sure but there are plenty of perfectly acceptable
| alternatives to those services.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Which are, to me, of lower quality. Thus lower quality of
| life. Not zero quality of life. Just lower.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| To me they are close enough to not mind.
|
| Especially when considering the unethical nature of these
| businesses and how they abuse their power.
|
| That ties into the quality of the platform and it is
| alarming that some people will tolerate it for some
| comfort.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's really not. Google.com is still there. You can use
| the alternatives 99% of the time and get what you're
| looking for. Google itself is not a perfect algorithm.
| It's exploitable, censorable, etc. It doesn't always find
| what you're looking for. You shouldn't ever limit
| yourself to a single search engine, honestly.
|
| I think YouTube is a far stickier service than Google
| Search, just because it's acted as an informal video
| archive of the past 15 years of internet video history.
| But I fully recognize the risks with this monopoly
| structure in place and have started to embrace
| alternatives like https://odysee.com/ and
| https://rumble.com/. It's time to disentangle from
| monopolies. Take your digital sovereignty back.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _Google Search (including via DDG)_
|
| DuckDuckGo doesn't use Google Search, so you'd be okay
| there.
| marcinzm wrote:
| It does if you do '!g' which most people do a lot as the
| Bing results are often crap.
| crumbshot wrote:
| No that just ends up redirecting your browser to
| google.com with the search query, it's equivalent to
| going there and typing it in yourself.
|
| Which if you were to give up Google Search, is something
| you wouldn't be doing (or would have blocked).
| cortesoft wrote:
| > It's sad that your quality of life depends on Google or
| Facebook services.
|
| Quality of life is not a binary, where you either 'have' it
| or not, so I don't think it makes sense to say "your
| quality of life DEPENDS on google or Facebook"
|
| Many things make your quality of life a bit better, and
| some things make it a bit worse, but no one says they can't
| have a quality life without Facebook or google.
|
| The person is saying that stopping using Facebook and
| google will slightly decrease their overall quality of
| life, but will have zero impact on Facebook and google.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| I understand that.
|
| I still maintain it's sad that removing Facebook/Google
| can have any significant drop in your quality of life.
| And by significant, I mean one where you're willing to
| debate about it.
|
| I like to keep my happiness as far as possible from the
| services that some soulless multinational provides.
| victorhooi wrote:
| You say you don't want your life to depend on a soulless
| multinational corporation.... but I suspect you might not
| be aware of how much it does.
|
| Do you see a doctor, or use any healthcare services? Or
| use any pharmaceutical products or cosmetics that are
| mass produced? Shampoo? Soap? Hand sanitizer?
|
| Do you wear clothing that you didn't make yourself from
| raw cotton you made? Or shop at a store like Gap, Cotton
| On, Target, Zara etc?
|
| Do you drive a car? Or take Uber? Or use something like a
| bus or car, or other vehicle made by a large
| multinational engineering company?
|
| Do you eat any fast foods? Or eat at restaurants that use
| any produce or mass produced raw ingredients? Or use any
| kitchen utensils or kitchenware? Do you shop at say IKEA?
|
| Or do you use electronics like a laptop, phone or desktop
| computer?
|
| Or do you keep any of your money at a bank? Or use things
| like car insurance?
|
| It slightly irks me when people claim they want to stick
| it to the man, and don't like "those corporations".
|
| We have a Green party politician in Australia who lives
| off the grid, and grows his own produce. Whilst I don't
| agree with all his policies - I respect that he lives
| consistently with his beliefs.
|
| If you're on HN - I'd posit that your life (like mine,
| and billions of others) is dependent on multinational
| corporations for our current quality of life.
|
| If you don't agree with one of them, that fine, but often
| it's less to do with principles and more "their customer
| service is terrible" or "they didn't fix this one issue
| that is very important to me", or "I read on
| Reddit/FB/Techcrunch this terrible fact about them"
| Arainach wrote:
| My happiness depends on all sorts of multinational. I
| depend on quick access to all sorts of medications,
| gasoline, shampoo, shipping, industrial food production,
| airplanes, and more. Why should technology be different?
| design-material wrote:
| Maybe their quality of life is increased by not having to
| spend part of their life (and possibly money - I can't
| think of a free Gmail alternative that's not as bad as
| Gmail's practices) searching for services that are at
| least as good as what they currently use?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| > I can't think of a free Gmail alternative that's not as
| bad as Gmail's practices
|
| Protonmail comes to mind:
|
| https://protonmail.com/
| vhanda wrote:
| I like the company, but their email service is nowhere
| close to being a GMail alternative. A few things that are
| lacking -
|
| 1. Using standard IMAP/POP is only available for Paid
| users and only on the desktop. Not Mobile.
|
| 2. Conversation view is not implemented on their mobile
| clients. It has been over 5 years - https://protonmail.us
| ervoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/sugg...
|
| 3. Their conversation view on the desktop groups messages
| based on the sender and not always the subject. It
| results in old conversations being grouped together.
|
| They are working on all these issues, but till then, my
| productivity was impacted a lot by switching.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'You can't change how they operate'
|
| We used yo have laws..
|
| And opting out is literslly impossible, there are people and
| authorities i -have-to- communicate with, and its impossible
| outside those platforms
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's not impossible. You just have to make choices.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Building management, landlord, local charities and
| residents association are using whatsapp and Facebook, good
| luck moving them.
| illustriousbear wrote:
| What people and authorities?
|
| I stopped using these services and told people to contact me
| via sms or signal. No problems so far.
|
| The people who won't make that extra step aren't worth my
| time because clearly I'm not worth their time.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| > What people and authorities?
|
| - Make bank account.
|
| - Bank forces you to use their app for obtaining TANs.
|
| - App refuses to run because "your phone is rooted", i.e.
| because you removed Google's crap.
|
| - No bank account for you, sorry bro.
|
| I have personally been through this shit. Sure, some banks
| offer using a physical TAN generator - but not all!
| passerby1 wrote:
| Not sure what TANs are, but why not using a separate
| (SIMless) old/cheap Android device only for that?
| illustriousbear wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| That is a situation where I'd move bank, use an iPhone or
| just allow GServices on my device.
|
| There is certainly a point where you just need to be
| pragmatic above all else. Otherwise, you can still reduce
| your interactions with their other services as much as
| possible.
| arduanika wrote:
| Have you considered just making your own bank?
| marcthe12 wrote:
| In my case, unofficial communication channel for
| college/school/job. You can handle it just with offical
| email and classes or phone but since everyone is on 1 app
| and basically no one on any other you loose out anything
| which is not necessary but not helpful. And goodluck
| convincing a non tech boss or several profs to switch. This
| is kinda the issue with network effects.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Far better to opt in, recover control of the legislature from
| the large corporations and Reclaim the State.
|
| There's nowhere to run away to.
| fossuser wrote:
| Amazon is great, Twitter can be great if you use it well, and
| the other two are pretty easy to drop.
| arendtio wrote:
| Does someone know why f-droid versions tend to be 'few versions
| behind'?
| diragon wrote:
| Push vs pull perhaps. F-droid packagers need to a) notice
| there's a newer version and b) implement the change of
| packaging a newer version. Plus whatever additional process
| they might have to keep things from breaking.
|
| Element's developers just upload a newer version to Play
| themselves as part of the release.
| shash7 wrote:
| Add a link to the app's website.
| lousken wrote:
| https://element.io/
| mkl95 wrote:
| Within a day, Google have removed 100k Robinhood reviews and
| suspended this application. I wonder if these arbitrary actions
| will become a daily thing soon.
| toyg wrote:
| They already have been, since the very first day of the Apple
| AppStore (and hence its copycat Play Store). But they typically
| hit smaller developers with no recourse. Occasionally they hit
| the "wrong" crowd and shit flies for a few days, until some
| bigwig goes "okay, I guess these particular cats deserve a
| pass, just approve and move on."
|
| Google and Apple stores are like nightclub bouncers. If they
| don't like you, you ain't gonna dance. "Normies" don't care
| until the bouncer picks on them.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Some normies simply don't like going to those particular
| nightclubs because it makes the owners even more powerful and
| puts money in their pockets.
| meekrohprocess wrote:
| If you think about it, a lot of Google and Apple's power comes
| from their dominance of the smartphone market.
|
| I hope that mobile computing follows the path of desktop
| computing, and we end up with more viable small-device OS
| options.
| clircle wrote:
| What is Element?
| rottc0dd wrote:
| https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/element
| baby wrote:
| The chat client of Matrix
| ArcVRArthur wrote:
| One of many. matrix.org/clients
| blhack wrote:
| What is matrix? Like the movie? Or the math thing?
|
| (https://matrix.org/)
| vecter wrote:
| https://matrix.org/faq/
| garmaine wrote:
| It's basically (IRC + XMMP) 2.0.
| einpoklum wrote:
| ... but in which typical client sessions look like Slack
| sessions, and the clients are typically heavy and slow
| and you would not enjoy running them on weak hardware :-(
| SahAssar wrote:
| There are a number of different clients to choose from,
| including web-based, electron-based, native, terminal:
| https://matrix.org/clients/
| einpoklum wrote:
| > web-based
|
| The browser is a resource hog :-(
|
| > electron-based
|
| Essentially a browser under the hood, but separate from
| your actual browser :-(
|
| > native,
|
| I tried a few of those last year, and had all sorts of
| trouble, but I guess it's time to give them another shot!
| Can any of them be made to behave and look like IRC
| chats? Not screens full of mostly white space?
|
| IIRC however - Element is not a native client.
|
| > terminal
|
| That's good :-)
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to
| arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like?
| (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.) I might of
| course be exaggerating a bit here, keep that in mind.
|
| - Element and Matrix are growing but still not equipped to fight
| back at large against this, so it is unlikely to create too much
| negative press
|
| - If Google starts to catch too much critique for this decision
| they can put it back and always blame $error
|
| I believe Element will be back soon, the problem I see here is
| that it will be framed as an "honest mistake" and then become
| forgotten until they pull another stunt like this.
|
| Even if these removals are temporary, they can still hurt growth.
| Let's assume a bit more malice: Couldn't Google just monitor and
| analyze metrics of an undesirable app (downloads, usage, hype),
| pick a critical point in its growth then "accidentaly" remove it
| for a few days, causing damage that isn't immediately apparent,
| but nonetheless long lasting?
| thoweri234234 wrote:
| They kicked out Paytm in India because they were offering
| "lottery" prizes in the same way that their Google-competitor
| Gpay was.
| colllectorof wrote:
| _> Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to
| arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like?
| (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.) _
|
| Absolutely. They've done similar things with similar apps. You
| just have to pay some attention to see the pattern.
|
| Let's take video for example. They Kicked LBRY client off Play
| store not so long ago. (It eventually got reinstated.) They
| permanently banned BitChute app. Not app-related, but currently
| Rumble is suing Google for manipulating video search results in
| favor of YouTube. Look up the details, they are quite
| interesting.
|
| Meanwhile, Google has an agreement with all Android hardware
| providers that forces them to pre-install YouTube and make it
| non-removable.
| colllectorof wrote:
| And then you occasionally see more subtle stuff like this:
|
| " _Since Android 8.0 Oreo, Google doesn 't allow apps to run
| in the background anymore, requiring all apps which were
| previously keeping background connection to exclusively use
| its Firebase push messaging service."_
|
| https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-
| FOSS/blob/mas...
| walrus01 wrote:
| how is this handled for SIP softphones that can run
| persistently in the background, in a direct SIP or SIP-
| over-TLS connection to a server? for instance:
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.linphone&
| h...
|
| that's just a random example I thought of since I use it,
| but I can also think of a lot of other Android apps that
| I'm fairly sure aren't using any client-server
| communications mediated through google firebase, yet they
| continue to function while backgrounded on android 10 and
| 11.
| Un1corn wrote:
| I'm not sure how Linphone is doing it but all the apps I
| used that required to run in the background were required
| to show a notification at all time.
|
| This is a terrible UX, my notification center is useless
| because I always have those apps in there (KDEConnect and
| Syncthing for example)
| walrus01 wrote:
| Linphone does show a persistent notification while
| running and registered to a server.
| anderspitman wrote:
| Don't forget that turning off the screen can wildly
| affect service behavior even for foreground services, and
| these effects vary across vendors:
|
| https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-
| sta...
| aasasd wrote:
| Just FYI, you can set those notifications to be 'silent'
| (not displayed on the top) and to collapse into a thin
| line each--in the system's notification settings. The
| apps still keep running, however I haven't figured out
| whether this change affects the frequency with which the
| background service is called by the system, and thus
| synchronization delays.
| vbsteven wrote:
| VoIP has always been treated a bit differently to regular
| apps on both platforms. I vaguely remember about 10 years
| ago both iOS and Android had special permissions
| specifically for VoIP apps to run in the background.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| On iOS that's pretty much all been removed. The access
| gateway has to send an APNS notifications when there is
| an inbound call.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| Android has it's own SIP stack. It's even exposed in the
| standard Android phone dialler from Google. In the
| settings for that app look under "calling accounts".
|
| https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/s
| ip
|
| I haven't looked, but I'm sure just like Firebase,
| services get a special exemption to receive SIP
| notifications.
| Teever wrote:
| > It's even exposed in the standard Android phone dialler
| from Google.
|
| If I recall correctly Samsung modifies the standard
| android dialler to disable this functionality. Or at last
| they did in the S5 that I used.
| posguy wrote:
| The Android SIP stack is pretty crummy. Last I tried to
| use it there was no support for TLS registration (leaving
| your calls unencrypted, barebacking the web) or for push
| notifications.
|
| Linphone, Zoiper, etc can show a badge in your
| notifications menu/top bar at all times and get semi-
| reliable access to run in the background, but expect to
| miss 5% to 20% of all incoming calls. Firebase push
| notifications are mandatory if you care about battery
| life or reliable inbound calling :c
| nomercy400 wrote:
| Firebase push messages are best effort an by no means
| guaranteed. You will still miss calls/notifications, even
| high priority ones.
|
| I'm still looking for a guaranteed push service/library.
| cma wrote:
| Seems like the first step to kicking out competing web
| browsers, if the browsers don't moderate what you browse.
| ekianjo wrote:
| "Don't Be Evil" - Looks like the roots of Google are far
| behind them now.
| etiam wrote:
| Don't be evil - Google 2004
|
| We have a new policy - Google 2012
| ttt0 wrote:
| And email clients.
| [deleted]
| foxhop wrote:
| Yes, I'm convinced the YouTube algos did this to my channel
| during summer 2020. Their algos wait in silence until
| triggered.
|
| Big tech platform who participate in anti-competitive practices
| (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) know the optimal time to pull
| the plug to flatten the curve and prevent competition from
| going exponential.
| imhoguy wrote:
| > Even if these removals are temporary, they can still hurt
| growth.
|
| I don't think so. A lot of people were not aware of Matrix
| even, it's geek tech.
|
| Now, just watch how this Streisand effect unfolds over the
| weekend.
| nip180 wrote:
| This is a critical growth period for smaller platforms.
| COGlory wrote:
| I don't think this is the case. But in my opinion, the fact
| that we have no way of knowing and have to rely on Google not
| to do that is the real issue.
| whichquestion wrote:
| Would there be a way to demonstrate that this hurt your growth
| and could you seek damages for this, despite the terms of
| service?
|
| And if this is actually a pattern with the Google Play Store,
| couldn't someone design an elaborate set of traps to
| demonstrate this in Court?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Say you demonstrate it in a fullproof way, what are you
| seeking damages for? A store kicking your product out
| according to the agreement?
|
| I.e. the thing you need to show in court isnt that Google
| stopped selling your app in its store because it didn't like
| it rather that it's a monopolistic marketplace or the terms
| are somehow invalid or so on. These are much higher bars,
| especially with 3rd party stores and side loading being
| available and used on the platform. It's considered a battle
| to prove these things in the Apple ecosystem I can't imagine
| trying to prove them in Play first.
| neonate wrote:
| I think the situation is probably more interesting than
| deliberate anticompetitive evil. I bet that there was indeed
| some policy violation, and some minor bureaucrat is reasonably
| applying the policy, but in a way that misses the big-picture
| impact of doing so, for example threads of outrage high on
| Hacker News. The policies back them into being a monopolistic
| heavy whether they mean to or not, because they're so big that
| they basically have to rule the world and there's no mechanism
| for outsiders to have a say.
|
| The real problem is that the policies are not adapting to
| rapidly changing conditions (i.e. yet another takedown, howls
| of outrage, calls for regulation), and the big tech companies
| have become too sclerotic to cope with that. Worse (for them),
| they're vulnerable to being gamed. Once people figure out that
| saying "Jehovah" triggers the policy, some will keep saying
| "Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah" just to fuck with them and grow the
| popular outrage.
| clusterfish wrote:
| > The policies back them into being a monopolistic heavy
| whether they mean to or not
|
| That only happens because they deliberately put themselves in
| a position of market power. If they didn't have such crazy
| amounts of power nobody would care about their "policies"
| misfiring. None of this is accidental in the big picture,
| we're well past any window of plausible deniability with
| Google. They can't perpetually claim incompetence.
| neonate wrote:
| I'm not sure what the complaint is there. They grew their
| business, which is what every business tries to do, nothing
| unique to Google about that. The interesting question is
| are they finally becoming a victim of their success. It
| seems obvious to me that the big tech companies have grown
| past the size where public interest / public square
| questions start to kick in, which is why the "it's a
| private company, they can do what they want on their own
| platform, no free speech issues to see here" argument is so
| weak. It's also not at all in the long-term political
| interests of the people who've recently adopted it as a
| mantra, just for a temporary advantage over their
| adversaries. Not smart, guys.
| clusterfish wrote:
| The complaint is, we don't need to allow big tech so much
| power. Utilities are heavily regulated to prevent
| monopolistic abuse. Big tech is showing similar "natural
| monopoly" tendencies and so needs to be reigned in with
| regulation because free markets are failing here.
| bdefore wrote:
| Very well put. Sympathetic. Yet still culpable even if they
| can't scale Google scale right?
| someonehere wrote:
| So what happens if people start flagging Google chat products as
| abusive? Will Google pull its own apps? Probably a big fat no.
|
| I was so close to proposing moving off of Slack and onto
| something like Element/Matrix. Unfortunately this will be a
| harder sell to my management considering Google or Apple can just
| shut down any chat client businesses use.
|
| This is ridiculous.
| amelius wrote:
| Question: did this action "only" stop the sales of apps, or did
| it also break already-installed or even running apps?
| Thorentis wrote:
| This is basically the last straw for me. The past week has made
| it perfectly clear that Big Tech will close the circle and
| protect their own. Anything that appears to be censorship
| resistant, that allows the little guy to get ahead and compete,
| or that allows individuals to have greater levels of privacy and
| freedom, will be shut down and de-platformed.
|
| As was predicted in 1948, "hate speech" has just become a smoke
| and mirrors term. Facebook and Discord used this excuse to
| deplatform WSB. Twitter uses this to deplatform people left,
| right, and center. And now Google is using it deplatform one of
| the few decentralised projects I had a lot of faith in.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| As always, the Four Horsemen were acted upon first. Only this
| time around it is " _actual_ Nazis " (not actual Nazis, no
| matter how much "literally shaking" was done). And who could
| defend _that_? (The ACLU, and the left, should have, we all
| should have) And complaining about it is obviously the slippery
| slope fallacy (or the camel 's nose in the tent) so it can be
| ignored until it is just too late. And now there's a whole
| series of well-honed defenses ("it's a private company!" "go
| make your own!" "freedom of speech is not freedom from
| consequences") ready to back up these bold moves, along with
| the handily-set precedent.
|
| Whatever shackles are being forged against your worst enemy, do
| not be surprised if they end up on your wrists at some later
| date.
| monopoledance wrote:
| > This is basically the last straw for me.
|
| Now you're just out of straws, or pulled the trigger on some
| decision? What's the implication?
| nip180 wrote:
| I imagine if you wanted to 100% stop buying or using products
| from FANNG (+Microsoft & Twitter) it would be impossible
| without doing anything short of living completely off the
| grid.
|
| Imagine, you ditch your smartphone. You switch to Linux. You
| stop using _search engines_ because all of them use Google or
| Bing in the backend. You abandon Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
| YouTube, GitHub, and Gmail. Before you go to a website, how
| do you know if they are going to load an asset from AWS or
| GApps? Maybe the server loads an asset from AWS and
| redistributes it to you, so you can't just blacklist IPs. How
| do you know if your Bank's ATMs are using AWS? Or your
| hospital's digital records? Eventually someone you do
| business with will do business with FANG and you'll be
| indirectly supporting them.
| monopoledance wrote:
| I don't believe in "vote with your wallet" kinda dogmas. I
| mean watch the news right now..
|
| We need regulation and government investment in open tech
| and software. The App/Play Store are anti-competitive, but
| Apple and Google have a Duopoly in the mobile market. There
| can and should be rules regarding this. I don't see how
| they should be even allowed to profit off these markets.
| Like at all. Every app there increases the value of their
| platforms by itself.
|
| Even if you use F-Droid, you then have to compromise on
| security deeply embedded into the Android OS.
|
| Platforms should be allowed to be repairable, open and
| documented and users should be allowed to do whatever they
| please with them.
|
| The market won't fix this. You need to become politically
| active.
| nip180 wrote:
| I'm not typically one to "vote with my wallet", and I
| think it's very impractical to do so with all of big
| tech.
|
| I do however tend to buy products and services that align
| with my values and shy away from products and services
| that go against my values. For example, I'd be more
| inclined to buy a Tesla and install home solar panels
| then I would be to buy a VW because Tesla is emissions
| free and VW lied on their emissions tests. VW lost some
| long term customers because of that incident and Tesla is
| continuing to attract new buyers that are concerned with
| climate change. Due to this trend we are able to deploy
| more electric vehicles then government regulations
| require.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Tesla right now is ignoring worker rights in Germany.
| They will learn like Wallmart before, that you cannot
| roll the same shit here, as you do in America.
|
| Elon Musk is the richest person on the planet. You really
| do not need to prefer either of those companies for
| anything but the products they sell. Your decision does
| not matter.
|
| What matters is single entities like Musk, VW, Bezos,
| Wallstreet and Gates not having the undemocratic mandate
| to form the world to their liking, "good" or bad. Nobody
| should have that much power.
|
| If you want to change the world with money, invest in
| those who consider having 100$ or 1000$ more or less life
| changing. Pay for FOSS, invest in local communities.
| Strengthen the collective.
| fsflover wrote:
| >This is basically the last straw for me.
|
| So are you going to switch to a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5 or
| Pinephone?
| ike77 wrote:
| > will close the circle
|
| Precisely. Even if they are acting in good faith, their current
| set of rules would make them ban internet if it was to be
| created now.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| From Alex Carey in 1995: "The twentieth century has been
| characterized by three developments of great political
| importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate
| power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of
| protecting corporate power against democracy"
| eternalban wrote:
| Wait until CBDCs roll out. Right now, it is your speech and
| communication. Tomorrow, it will be accessing your money. Then
| they will have their desired perfectly obedient population.
| est31 wrote:
| I've thought CBDCs ensure the opposite? Currently if you have
| an uninsured account at a bank, and the bank goes bankrupt,
| your money is gone. With CBDCs it seems to me that the money
| is truly _yours_ instead of in a currency pegged to the fiat
| but that can always break.
| eternalban wrote:
| I live in US and we have had FDIC as long as I remember.
| I'm not even sure there is such a thing as "uninsured
| account" in US, or if there are, why would anyone use such
| a bank.
|
| https://www.fdic.gov/
|
| It's a simple equation to grok: if utility X is _only_
| available in a digitized form on a controlled and
| centralized platform, then that utility is subject to
| central controls. And as we see, these control mechanisms
| will inevitably require AI moderation to scale.
|
| You think things are bad when Google arbitrarily kicks you
| off gmail? Wait until it happens to your bank account. Who
| are you gonna call? Where are you going to go and speak out
| about it?
| est31 wrote:
| I guess it all depends on how it's implemented and what
| the censorship policy is. If it's implemented with a
| "everyone, including the homeless, felons and racists
| gets access" mindset then there isn't much concern. If
| it's implemented with a "having access is a privilege not
| a right" mindset, it's different.
|
| USPS has to service everyone, even those where they don't
| make any money with. If this FDIC thing is more like the
| USPS, your concerns would be unfounded.
| throwawayfrauds wrote:
| USPS only services people who have a residence or pay a
| fee to have a box. Homeless people require a special
| approval to receive mail. So USPS does not have to
| service everyone, but at least they can't ban people
| based on mail content.
| dmantis wrote:
| No, with distributed cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin money is
| yours. With CDBCs your wallet is managed by your government
| and not you.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > I had a lot of faith in.
|
| I wouldn't give up faith in Matrix yet. Remember, there are
| other clients, and there is always the Element web client.
| indymike wrote:
| I suspect that Google will eventually get Matrix clients
| right. It's really no different than an email client or web
| browser. Element is *not* a content community it's a
| communication client app. As a customer, I do not want Google
| regulating my communication software clients for content.
| That is my job as a user.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Looks like it was indeed due to abusive content:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/element_hq/status/135546565011484...
| croes wrote:
| Than it would be logical to suspend all browsers too.
| cheph wrote:
| And all messengers that support E2E encryption. I just wrote
| some abusive content on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in
| end to end encrypted chats so I expect Google to remove those
| now also.
|
| And I used google chrome to access 4chan. So google must ban
| google chrome also.
| edrxty wrote:
| It appears they've also removed Pattle, but Ditto and FluffyChat
| are still available at this time.
|
| Odd that they'd only remove half of the Matrix clients
| available...
| ORYDRICA wrote:
| Is it maybe because FluffyChat is developed by a German
| company, Famedly GmbH?
| feanaro wrote:
| Wasn't Pattle removed for a longer time? I know the developer
| stopped working on it some time ago.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| Ironically this move finally made me to consider Matrix. I'm
| thinking about spinning a server on a non FAANG provider like
| Vultr or Linode and setting IM services bridges from there.
| Nowadays I use lots of different communicators to talk to
| different people and most of these apps track me. If I setup a
| Matrix server somewhere that allows me to use those networks
| without having their software installed on my devices that will
| not only be convenient but also improve my privacy. Not to
| mention the Matrix network and protocol that can be used to do
| fun stuff.
|
| Is Dendrite ready for use? I don't have a lot of memory available
| and I heard Synapse is kinda heavy on resources.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Dendrite is okay for personal use (a few users), matrix-native,
| using the better-tested clients. IIRC some bridges work with
| it, but it doesn't implement the whole appservice API, which
| blocks you from using some of the better bridges.
|
| I do not recommend synapse if you don't have a lot of memory. I
| put an extra 8 GB stick in my server for it, bringing it to 14
| GB.
|
| It routinely likes to take more than 4GB to itself, though it
| has become a lot leaner lately.
| alfyboy wrote:
| I'm in the process of setting up a Matrix homeserver myself. It
| seems like there are some missing features.
|
| From their github:
|
| > Is Dendrite stable?
|
| Mostly, although there are still bugs and missing features. If
| you are a confident power user and you are happy to spend some
| time debugging things when they go wrong, then please try out
| Dendrite. If you are a community, organisation or business that
| demands stability and uptime, then Dendrite is not for you yet
| - please install Synapse instead.
|
| > Does Dendrite support push notifications?
|
| No, not yet. This is a planned feature.
|
| > Does Dendrite support application services/bridges?
|
| Possibly - Dendrite does have some application service support
| but it is not well tested. Please let us know by raising a
| GitHub issue if you try it and run into problems.
| sigwinch28 wrote:
| Use Synapse.
| ssivark wrote:
| I have no idea whether this is correlated with the other recent
| de-platforming events, but the rapidly growing list of examples
| is now getting ridiculous. It's crazy to imagine that the rug
| could get pulled out from beneath any of us, any time, under any
| pretext (or no pretext at all!). I don't know whether a more apt
| metaphor alludes to serfs on feudal land, or The Trial by Kafka.
|
| If it turns out this is because of specific discussions/channels
| then banning the Element app for that makes about as much sense
| as banning Facebook/Twitter for what some people said, or Google
| because of what some website says.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Banning Element because of channels created on a decentralised
| network makes as much sense as banning a web-browser because of
| websites created on a decentralised network (i.e., the
| Internet). Looking forward to Chrome's imminent removal from
| the Play Store.
| seniorivn wrote:
| only if chrome is not censoring internet which google is
| happy to do
| DLA wrote:
| This is the upside down crazy we are faced with when a tiny
| number of giant companies make decisions on whims of ever
| changing policy.
|
| We need to fight back with things like PWAs to bypass the app
| stores, web socket chats, distributed social platforms, and
| plain old web pages to publicly document these attacks on free
| speech. Call/email Congress too. Get friends and neighbors to
| do the same. They are already alerted to this growing abuse by
| these monopolistic giants.
| [deleted]
| Arathorn wrote:
| Good point. https://hydrogen.element.io works very well as a
| PWA, but doesn't have push support yet.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| HSTS preloading blacklists may at some future point, block
| PWA as well.
|
| The _real_ problem is indeed how much power society has
| given these corps. It 's time to take back some power or we
| will never be able to.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > HSTS preloading blacklists may at some future point,
| block PWA as well.
|
| What on earth are you talking about?
|
| 1) As far as I am aware, there is no "HSTS preloading
| blacklist". I'm not sure what that would even mean.
|
| 2) HSTS preloading is not a prerequisite for creating a
| PWA. Nor is presence on the HSTS preload list (not
| "blacklist") an obstacle to creating a PWA.
| mrighele wrote:
| Even easier, the website used by the PWA can end up on
| the blacklist of Google Safe Browsing [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802366
| drchaos wrote:
| In the medium/long term, this would just train people to
| ignore those popups. Or to use a patched browser.
|
| There is simply no way to suppress content as long as
| there's enough demand. Somebody's always going to find a
| way to deliver. That's even true for really illegal stuff
| like drugs, copyright infringement or child abuse
| material, but so much more for content which is legal.
| mrighele wrote:
| I was thinking specifically about PWA on Android. I don't
| think you can change the browser used in that case, and I
| could see Google decide that you cannot open a PWA if the
| website is on the blacklist.
| georgyo wrote:
| Apple has a hard requirement that you use the safari
| rendering engine for all browsers. So even Firefox on iOS
| is really just reskined safari.
|
| Android is much more open, you can download Firefox on
| Android and it will infact be Firefox.
|
| What would be more scary is if the force all browsers on
| the Google store to implement and enforce the same deny
| list.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'Private company, they do what they want' gang arriving in 3, 2,
| 1..
| onethought wrote:
| Does that make you part of the obnoxiously useless comment
| gang?
| ziftface wrote:
| I'm convinced they think they'll be billionaires one day and so
| always jump to their defense.
| pb7 wrote:
| No one is convinced of that. Do you only advocate for things
| because you're afraid you'll be in the same position someday?
| ziftface wrote:
| Well I can't think of a better explanation why so many
| people jump to these corporation's defense when they do
| something this immoral and damaging.
| pb7 wrote:
| Perhaps they like the value proposition and would like to
| continue participating in the mutually beneficial
| transaction with these corporations as we all should in a
| free society. Your opinion is not more valid than your
| opponents'. "Immoral" is highly subjective.
| young_unixer wrote:
| 'Private company, they do what they want'
|
| That's correct, but we can still boycott companies that do
| this.
| honest_guy wrote:
| We really can't. Smartphones are practically a mandatory part
| of modern life. My previous job required me to have one for
| tons of work-related authentication/software.
|
| There is no choice outside Google/Apple when it comes to
| mobile devices. None which are fully compatible with a normal
| person's way of life, or which provides access to the same
| apps.
|
| It may be technically possible to avoid them, but
| 'technically possible' and 'competitive alternative' are
| worlds apart.
| swiley wrote:
| The alternative is the pinephone. It's coming along and has
| gotten to the point where it's stable and fast. Most
| distros will probably have MMS support at some point this
| year.
|
| That doesn't help if everyone you want to interact with
| refuses to talk to you if you don't have an iPhone because
| doing that has become fashionable.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| > That doesn't help if everyone you want to interact with
| refuses to talk to you if you don't have an iPhone
| because doing that has become fashionable.
|
| People do this?? Wow, that is unbelievably snobby.
| dmix wrote:
| Just monopolies protecting our democracy, like Adam Smith
| envisioned.
| xxpor wrote:
| That's true, but you can also disagree with the decision. It's
| not iOS where there's no alternative.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Not if the "Hanlon's Razor" crew gets here first
| arduanika wrote:
| Wouldn't this just not be a problem if they rewrote it in
| Rust?
| lokedhs wrote:
| Add a blockchain in there and we're in business.
| arp242 wrote:
| Only if it would be on the blockchain.
| pojntfx wrote:
| One of the reasons I really like Element is the fact that it runs
| completely in the browser, no need to install a native app -
| which, lets be realistic, is really only a viable option (for the
| average consumer) if you submit to the proprietary App Store or
| Play Store. Sadly, Element Web is not yet responsive, but I hope
| that changes soon so that it can be finally free from the
| constraints of the constraints of proprietary native platforms
| like iOS and Android.
| callahad wrote:
| It's still early days, but https://hydrogen.element.io works
| well on mobile
| lousken wrote:
| would be interested to hear from googlers what's going on
| joshbuddy wrote:
| I wonder if there is a way we place these App Store decisions
| into the hands of a third party. Either that or break Android
| away from Google and forbid them from colluding.
| simonkafan wrote:
| It would already help if the rules of the app stores were
| decided by a parliament. And kicking a provider out of the
| store requires a court ruling.
| matbatt38 wrote:
| That would make legit ban very slow and ineffective tho
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Handset makers could start some sort of ... Open Handset
| alliance, oh wait..that's how we got Android.
|
| Nope. Better alternative would probably be some sort of
| blockchain thing with reviews baked in and maybe authority
| nodes (devs with experience) could validate/clear apps from
| having viruses/etc... or just have a reporting mechanism so
| apps get pulled when suspicious.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Legislation equating these walled gardens as a new kind of
| monopoly. Legislation making "terms and conditions" less like
| laws, and less enforceable.
| onethought wrote:
| But wouldn't that bring down most software companies... terms
| and conditions have some pretty important legitimate uses...
| colechristensen wrote:
| No, software isn't special, you should be able to buy it
| just like you buy other things.
| onethought wrote:
| What other things? Do you mean not using copyright as the
| underlying control mechanism?
|
| how do you recoup your investment then when making
| software? wont everyone just pirate/duplicate it?
| dvdkon wrote:
| "Terms and conditions" often contain more than just
| restrictions on copying, they can have everything from
| arbitration clauses, through anti-interoperability
| clauses, to obligations that go directly against local
| laws.
| onethought wrote:
| That's not what I was replying to. There are legit uses
| is terms and conditions... so where should they go?
|
| The GP said software should be bought like everything
| else... but everything else can't be easily duplicated
| and shared... so how will that work?
| peteradio wrote:
| If I buy an apple, maybe I want to eat it. Perhaps I'd
| like to smoosh it under my boot. Maybe it goes up me bum.
| Now what does a magic apple copier have to do with me
| putting apples up my bum?
| onethought wrote:
| You could produce at no cost all the apples and cut out
| the original apple grower with no upfront costs yourself.
|
| So the problem is: you break capitalism, hard.
| hda2 wrote:
| OEMs and software vendors have been pushing hard towards locking-
| down and controlling people's computing devices and people have
| largely been indifferent.
|
| It genuinely seemed all was going to be lost until the tech
| industry went crazy exercising their control. Their recent (and
| imo unjustifiable) actions have clearly demonstrated to everyone
| what it means to hand over control. It remains to be seen whether
| people will grasp this chance to reverse the course that this
| rotten industry has charted and is adamant on following.
| userbinator wrote:
| A lot of people already know that you can get apps directly as
| .apks, but the majority of them have been conditioned by
| corporate "propaganda" that they'll be almost certainly getting
| malware that way. The term "sideloading" was invented to
| ostracise and discourage the practice of acquiring software
| independently --- which was the norm up until Apple and its
| walled garden appeared.
|
| But now, perhaps when sufficiently large numbers of people
| realise that what "malware" means to the big corporations is
| different from what it means to users, we'll have another mini-
| revolution back to the independent sharing and community trust
| model that the industry tried to eliminate because it would
| subvert their control.
|
| I don't want to get too political here, but after seeing the
| outcome of the US election, and the events from then until now,
| I knew that stuff like this was going to happen.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This would have happened no matter the outcome of the US
| election. The trend towards consolidation of corporate power
| is really inexorable.
| simonh wrote:
| Ok, that's some historical revisionism I've not see before.
| The term sideloading was invented by an internet storage
| service company to refer to copying files between remote
| storage buckets without having to do an upload or download.
| The term then got adopted by the community for copying MP3
| files to a player from your computer.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Keep in mind that you're making a somewhat pedantic point
| about the difference between "invented" and "adopted" and
| the core of the criticism is still true.
|
| The thing you did with software direct from the developer
| used to be called "installing" but now the platform
| companies call it "sideloading" which sounds like something
| that would cause an airline to lose your luggage.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Maybe in your social surroundings. In some/many other
| countries - granted, mostly non-English-speaking they just
| call it (literal translation) "Installing applications from
| a file" or "Installing APKs".
| userbinator wrote:
| In the communities I participated in, that was just called
| copying, and generic MP3/MP4 player owners were often quick
| to point out that they could just simply plug in and copy
| files like a USB drive, whereas iPods needed iTunes and
| "syncing". I've never seen sideloading being used to
| describe anything other than to suggest "impropriety" or
| something that's not "officially unapproved", and only in
| the context of applications --- I haven't ever heard of
| someone "sideloading" music to a player either. I bet for
| the vast majority of others, this is also the case.
| simonh wrote:
| There are other terms many people use, for sure, but
| nevertheless, that's where the term sideloading comes
| from.
| onethought wrote:
| But nothing about your facts help me hate on Google and
| Apple more... can't the GP be right?
| simonh wrote:
| Whatever, I just think it's useful when evaluating an
| opinion to know whether the person is prone to
| fantasising and making shit up. There's way too much of
| that going around these days.
| hg35h4 wrote:
| Stallman was right all along. The Google and Apple play to lock
| down your devices in order to "keep you safe" was not about
| malware or data privacy, it's about keeping away what THEY
| classify as thoughtcrime. It's about keeping you under their
| shoe. Now feed them your data or else!
| swiley wrote:
| People on here think that most "normal" people are going to
| figure out how to sideload apps.
|
| No.
|
| I visited my parents church at the beginning of this year and
| very few people were talking about that. What they _were_
| talking about is giving up on smartphones and social media
| altogether which is probably not a bad idea.
| mrec wrote:
| > _What they were talking about is giving up on smartphones
| and social media altogether_
|
| That's incredibly encouraging to hear. It seems to be a
| common feature of "I quit Facebook/Twitter/whatever" accounts
| that once you break the immediate addiction there's no real
| urge to go back, so if this does happen it should have a
| decent chance of sticking.
|
| (And as a mobile refusenik I sometimes feel like the last
| holdout left, so a bit of company would be nice.)
| emayljames wrote:
| Yeah, I totally get the enjoyment of not being "always
| available". I have had lengthy periods without a phone, and
| it teaches you that; no, you don't have to be always
| available, and no the world will not end etc.
|
| The only "social media" I use is Reddit, but it isn't/I
| don't use it as they person centric networks like
| boomerbook/twitter.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Reddit is by far the hardest to quit tho. I get
| constantly dragged into the shitshow, but can't really
| get off, because there _is_ useful information there, I
| can 't find anywhere else.
|
| In a similar way, I can't quit smartphones for encrypted
| messaging and navigation (not even Google Maps, but
| OSMand).
| mrec wrote:
| I don't lump Reddit into the same bucket as FB/Twitter.
| It's perfectly possible to have a sane, even pleasant
| experience there if you stay out of the default subs and
| the obvious dumpster fires. And I think stable-but-
| pseudonymous identity is turning out to have been the
| right call.
| monopoledance wrote:
| No doubt, I absolutely agree.
|
| However, I was just saying I cannot stay out of those
| dumpster fires. Sooner or later, I think to myself "Well,
| I wonder what's up in the world otherwise. Let's check
| out /r/all for a moment."... And there we go.
|
| It's not like other people are idiots and I am in control
| over addiction, impulse, outrage and dopamine. I have
| spend waaaay too much time on reddit. I hate it, for what
| it is. Yet, I can't manage to not use it for a prolonged
| time. Too many niche forums I depend on, and I simply
| can't tolerate linear, unranked forums anymore.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Assuming from the subtext that GP means they're wanting to
| give up because of (app)(?) censorship. Having a whole
| strata of society no longer participating in the
| conversation is not healthy. Politicians are now looking to
| these platforms to guide policy decisions, so anybody not
| on them has no voice.
| alichapman wrote:
| Surely politicians aren't using social media as the main
| driver for policy? The demographic who votes the most
| (the elderly) is also the demographic that has the
| smallest presence on social media, so only listening to
| Twitter seems like shooting yourself in the foot.
| malwrar wrote:
| It doesn't even matter if politicians aren't making
| decisions based on social media---their constituents are
| demanding action because of what they see on it. A video
| of one person in power choking another person to death
| got widely shared on Twitter and the result was massive
| and worldwide protests. Hell, in general social media has
| replaced pretty much every other form of it, we can't
| keep pretending the internet is a niche place anymore.
| einpoklum wrote:
| "the conversation" is not held on Facebook nor on
| Twitter.
|
| _A_ conversation is held there, which presumes to be
| _the_ conversation.
| mrec wrote:
| Anybody not on them still gets to vote. If anything, I
| suspect that making these platforms increasingly
| unrepresentative will end up hurting pols who pay
| attention to them, by giving them an increasingly
| distorted view of public opinion. If you optimize your
| messaging for Twitter, an actual electorate is going to
| drop you like third period French.
| im3w1l wrote:
| People will trade off convinience and representativeness.
| A lot of psychology studies are famously done on
| students, because it's just so cheap and easy. I think
| it's very likely they will just say "screw those
| backwards hillbillies, I bet they are all racist
| unpersons anyway"
| mrec wrote:
| Oh, I'm sure they will. And they'll end up losing
| elections as a result.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Both sides will. They can't both lose.
| eternalban wrote:
| (LOL), you're not alone.
| mrec wrote:
| There's literally twos of us!
| Sunspark wrote:
| I wonder if France will have something to say to Google about
| this in the EU.. France uses Matrix. Google's powerful, but
| they're not a legislative body.
| Iv wrote:
| France uses Matrix but not Element. They forked it and called
| it Tchap.
| koalp wrote:
| They use their own matrix client : tchap. They also use their
| own app store (not sure what it's based on) Therefore, French
| ministry that use matrix may not be affected
| dathinab wrote:
| > not sure what it's based on
|
| As far as I know it's based on element or at least co-develop
| by the element so while their "business" should not be
| affected directly. The secondary affects this will have if it
| continuous does affect them indirectly I think.
|
| The more worrying think that this is by far not the first
| time Google (or Apple) have taken down clients to "non http"
| networks. Sometimes blaming them for content on the network
| sometimes not saying anything. Which lets be honest is absurd
| given that they would have to delete all web-browsers using
| this arguments.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| at least they are not called 'riot' anymore. i can imagine a lot
| of people might have thought it was an app for organising riots
| or something
| darig wrote:
| How can I install Matrix on an android phone without using the
| Google Play store?
| nolim1t wrote:
| There is other clients available too.
|
| The protocol is essentially decentralized
| colllectorof wrote:
| F-Droid is the best way for open source apps, but also most
| APKs are available outside of Play Store via websites like
| https://www.apkmirror.com/. It's a bit of a risk to load apps
| like that, though.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| It's a different risk than having your app removed because
| google doesn't like it indeed.
| cft wrote:
| How do push notifications work when it's not intergated with
| Google Play?
| swiley wrote:
| It's a shame EV certs are so hard to get. APK signatures use
| certificates and we could use the already existing CA
| infrastructure to make app stores unnecessary but stuff
| didn't work out that way.
| ranger207 wrote:
| It's on F-Droid.
| opan wrote:
| F-Droid has Element and a few other Matrix clients available.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Huh! That's unfortunate. But in the end it's Google's platform
| and they have the right to kick you out for any or without any
| reason and/or recourse. If Element doesn't like it they can just
| make their own Android, play store and sell billions of phones
| around the world. It's a non-issue.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Agreed! This is just the free market in action. This is a good
| thing.
| dathinab wrote:
| > This is just the free market in action.
|
| It's not free marked at all.
|
| Free marked is about having a competition between companies
| where the user decides who wins by buying the best products.
|
| The concept of a free marked was invented before there had
| been massive marked limiting factors like "lock down" of
| digital devices and similar.
|
| Somehow a lot of people still take all the original arguments
| why a free marked is good but then use them to argue for a
| marked which is neither free nor has the marked dynamics
| anymore which make a free marked a potential "good" marked
| strategy.
|
| In the end a free marked needs to have proper competition.
| Weather that is limited by the government or by companies
| abusing a change in technological landscape which gives them
| powers which originally at best governments had doesn't
| matter, it's no longer a free marked at all and no of the
| reasons why it's supposedly good do uphold then.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I'm think GP is missing an /s :)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Actually not! I think capitalism always trends towards
| centralization of power. I went fishing for "actually,
| this isn't a free market because..." and caught me a big
| one.
| j_barbossa wrote:
| While we have found a way to establish and execute rules in the
| real world (legislature and jurisdiction) we have completely
| forgotten that we need something like that in the digital world
| as well.
|
| And now a few VPs of Google and Apple dictate who's allowed to
| bring in their apps into their holy app store.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > While we have found a way to establish and execute rules in
| the real world
|
| You are assuming that states legislate primarily in the public
| interest. I disagree. Public pressure can influence
| legislation, but fundamental interests of ruling classes
| usually take precedent.
|
| > we have completely forgotten that we need something like that
| in the digital world as well.
|
| We have not "forgotten" something which is a claim, or opinion
| (and which I do not share).
| kgin wrote:
| This seems like a perfect use case for a PWA
| IceWreck wrote:
| I don't use any google services other than youtube at all, but
| this is hard to justify, even for google.
| alangibson wrote:
| Something is being missed in these "Element isn't Parler
| because..." comments. Distinctions about client vs platform do
| not matter _at all_ to someone at Google headquarters. Content
| they find unacceptable is accessible, or it's not. Full stop.
|
| The FAANGs now have a strong incentive to boot anything and
| anyone making objectionable content available in any way because
| that's the way public sentiment has shifted. It's really
| incredible to see how quickly the deplatforming chickens came
| home to roost. We're now shooting ourselves in the feet at
| Internet speed.
| frivoal wrote:
| That's still weird though. By that logic, they should ban all
| web browsers, and mail clients... Content they find
| unacceptable is definitely accessible through those.
|
| Banning all applications that enable access to non-moderated
| decentralized content is simply not compatible with a phone
| being a smart phone.
| cma wrote:
| Apple already does, no real third party browsers.
| Objectionable content has to go through their webview.
| bdefore wrote:
| Again the giants overplay. But when does the hammer come down
| upon them that they like to so wield?
| onebot wrote:
| One take away that this has on me, is that with Google and Apple
| controlling content on mobile phones, it might be impossible to
| have a truly decentralized application. I believe that Apple
| should be required to allow 3rd party installs if the user so
| chooses. If there is an example of monopolistic behaviour this is
| one for sure.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Thank goodness for F-droid.
| zeroping wrote:
| I totally agree. Last time this happened with an app I use and
| trust, I rooted my phone and switched to lineageos to allow
| F-droid auto-updates. Google is not making me want to keep
| using their services.
|
| https://f-droid.org/packages/im.vector.app
| canofbars wrote:
| Until you find out that the app isn't able to use the google
| notification service so it puts a persistent notification in
| your bar and uses more battery.
| ycombigator wrote:
| Stop using apps whenever you can.
|
| Use your browser.
| canofbars wrote:
| The browser can not do push notifications when the device is
| locked. Which is kind of a core feature for IM.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I would say the exact opposite. Do not use your browser, use a
| native application whenever you can.
| flipcoder wrote:
| It's only a matter of time until they start banning browsers
| for not blocking certain websites. It's the exact same logic.
| lawl wrote:
| Which one? The one also made by Google, the one paid for by
| Google, ones of those based on the one made by Google, or the
| one made by the other smartphone OS owner with a walled garden?
| krastanov wrote:
| I will bite: Firefox, the one that cares about privacy and
| open standards, even if it has a lot of income coming from a
| search bar deal with Google.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think he covered that by 'the one paid for by Google' as
| the main income for Mozilla is the default search engine
| deal.
|
| But I agree, FF is the best
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| ...and doesn't care about deplatforming.
|
| "We need more than deplatforming"
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-
| than-d...
| prohobo wrote:
| The title of the article is bad, but the actual
| suggestions for action against extremism are quite good.
|
| We do need research to fix social media, and we do need
| transparency.
|
| Firefox is generally good; they have some identity
| politics, but it hasn't taken over their ethos.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That post sounds quite skeptical of the _way_ the
| deplatforming was handled, and the power of sites to
| arbitrarily deplatform. Can you be more specific about
| your actual objection?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Don't pretend like you're patronizing them. You're using
| a free browser. There's nothing they've done or can do to
| affect your experience within the browser, and it still
| remains an open browser. There's no moral hangups here
| beyond the ones you imagine for yourself.
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| If I'm not patronizing them, who is? Why would a browser
| want to get into the censorship business?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Google is, and people purchasing their other products
| are. You and I are at best enjoying the fruits of their
| labour.
|
| >Why would a browser want to get into the censorship
| business?
|
| Is having an opinion getting into a business now? It was
| a pretty bad article and I don't care for it, but please
| explain how they're "getting into the censorship
| business".
| swiley wrote:
| Here's a short list of some browser engines that are not
| based on google's or paid for by google:
|
| Webkit: [1] It's a thousand times easier to compile and was
| the original base for chromium
|
| Servo: [2] This is much more recent, I haven't looked lately
| (until today) but it looks to be making rapid forward
| progress
|
| Elinks: [3] and friends, these are more capable than you'd
| think (hackernews works, even if you don't build it with
| javascript enabled.)
|
| Also it's surprisingly easy to write your own engine, it's
| just keeping up with some of the more political
| stupidity/abuse is hard.
|
| [3] http://elinks.or.cz/
|
| [2] https://servo.org/
|
| [1] https://webkit.org/
| danielscrubs wrote:
| "Surprisingly easy to wrote your own engine"
|
| Could you explain that part to me because because I'd guess
| at at least 150 man-years to get a PoC.
|
| Servo was started at 2012 and I think it had full time
| employees so it's at least 8 man years to get to that state
| (I'd guess it was a lot of people in the team, but as a
| minimum).
| cabirum wrote:
| Why, when an app is "suspended", Play Store shows 404 as if it
| never existed?
|
| Can't Google display the app page with some status banner and a
| reason for suspension while disabling install button, or allow
| installing last known "approved" version?
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's how they implement the memory hole.
| dunefox wrote:
| Of course they can. They don't want to.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Why, when an app is "suspended", Play Store shows 404 as if
| it never existed?
|
| It's the ever more popular historical revisionism movement.
| croes wrote:
| "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the
| present controls the past."
| slow_donkey wrote:
| If anyone needs a download, you can easily install/sideload via
| f-droid or the app can be trivially built with './gradlew
| assembleDebug' (provide your own keys to build a release version)
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| What would be funny is if every developer who has an app in
| android, were to in a single day submit their own "branded"
| version of matrix/element.
|
| Basically as a protest. This can have far reaching effects for
| anyone worried about privacy, walled gardens, competing with
| social networks, etc...
| jl2718 wrote:
| Is there a guide to doing this safely? As in, protected from
| malware.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Go to the fdroid website, and download the store.
|
| Alternatively, pull the code from git, and follow the
| instructions to build the apk.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Bookmarking this one for when my friends chide me for "still"
| using iOS.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| F-Droid, or use Element as a PWA.
| crumbshot wrote:
| On Android, it's still much easier to install apps from outside
| Google's app store (just change the "install unknown apps"
| setting, download the .apk file, and open it) than it is on
| iOS.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As a practical matter, though, only a very small number of
| people will ever do that. Being kicked out of the play store
| is almost always going to be a death sentence for the app.
|
| Apple has earned plenty of criticism themselves, but I do
| appreciate that they curate the app store with humans.
| crumbshot wrote:
| But if both Apple and Google remove your app from their
| stores, at least Android has a fairly straightforward
| method for your users to install it straight from your
| website.
|
| For iOS your users will have to sign it themselves (but
| still via Apple, who could block that too) with their own
| developer account, just to get a time-limited install. Or,
| even worse, use a jailbroken device to work around all
| this.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Maybe we should be jailbreaking again
| Sunspark wrote:
| They should kick Facebook out of the play store. See what
| happens. Facebook can then pivot to paying OEMs even bigger
| sums of money to bundle it with their devices.
| swiley wrote:
| If you think this isn't coming to iOS next you've got another
| thing coming.
|
| If you actually do care about privacy and free speech and
| aren't using an iPhone because they're fashionable in your
| country then you should check out purism and pine64. They're
| the only phones I know of that are designed not to run "mobile
| OSes".
| rangoon626 wrote:
| It's not that iOS is safe from this, it's that in all
| practicality, Google is not really that different as what my
| friends popularly suggest. Android is not a free, open OS.
| Well, it is to a point, but realistically that point is not
| much further than ios for most users.
|
| As for an alternative mobile OS, I would love to get my hands
| on Sailfish, but it's not available for the US.
| kemonocode wrote:
| It's trivial to sideload apps on most Android devices. You
| can't sideload on iOS unless you jailbreak or spend some time
| and money on a developer account, and even then you're rather
| limited on what you can do.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Side loading is clunky.
|
| If Android were really as free and open as everyone says it
| is, then there would be a method built into the os to
| download and install apps directly through the web browser,
| without hunting through settings and enabling it.
|
| As it is, this is barely better than iOS, and I'm kind of
| disgusted that everyone thinks it's fine and normal as a
| solution.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| It's not thaaat clunky. With my phone I click the download
| link, it downloads the apk, asks me if I want to allow to
| installing apps from the browser and then asks me to
| install the app. Installing a program in Windows is more
| complicated 95% of the time.
|
| On top of that, if you have a rooted phone, you can use
| F-Droid to automatically install updates. For me updating
| apps from F-Droid is actually more convenient than updating
| apps from the play store, which I have to manually install.
|
| There absolutely could be phone vendors selling LineageOS
| phones with F-Droid as the default app store. The only
| really important thing that would be missing for a lot of
| people would be WhatsApp.
| Saris wrote:
| The difference is, good luck getting Element installed on iOS
| if Apple removes it from the app store.
|
| On Android you just grab an APK or use F-Droid and it's a
| couple taps.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Lots of google fans on this website.
|
| Like legit it's like the inverse of wading through the
| comments section on macrumors.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| How are you liking the new Fortnite update ;) ?
| rangoon626 wrote:
| SMH playing games on a cell phone os LMAOROTFLLOLLLLLLLL
| ORYDRICA wrote:
| Check https://matrix.org/clients/ for alternatives. You cannot
| take down the matrix network by blocking one app.
| young_unixer wrote:
| I hope more apps start allowing to directly download an .apk file
| from their website.
|
| I don't have Google Play Services or the Play store installed on
| my phone nor do I want to install them. Yes, it's my
| responsibility to update the app, whatever, just give me the
| file.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Or they make F-Droid more known. Publishing apks yourself means
| you have to implement an update feature. F-Droid takes care of
| that
| vbezhenar wrote:
| How is F-Droid conceptually different from PlayStore? They
| can ban anything just as well.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| What @throwaway525142 said and you can host your own repo.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Considering their political stance I would not be
| surprised if they would blocklist some repositories.
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Everything is open-source. They block what they want and
| you can fork it or recompile it. You don't have that same
| liberty with Google, the Apple Store, Amazon, Samsung,
| etc.
|
| On the store that you host you can also choose to enforce
| whichever rules you like.
|
| Plus, they were talking about Gab there. If you think
| you're going to write the next Gab or... Pander or
| Flander or whatever that website was that allowed people
| to plan storming the US capital, then you can still have
| your own store.
| throwaway525142 wrote:
| You can add your own repositories.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Whats wrong with F-Droid?
| duckmysick wrote:
| It allows only free and open source apps, which might be a
| no-go for some.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| They allow adding alternate repositories, but the ones I've
| come across have all also only allowed FOSS apps. I wonder
| if it's a policy any repo has to follow or if it's possible
| for someone to create a non-FOSS repo too.
| darkwater wrote:
| I might be wrong but I don't think most non FOSS apps
| authors would be fine with an unwanted third party
| publishing their software on their repo.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Even when you can use a non-free repo, that still leaves
| the question of payment. Because most who distribute
| nonfree apps, want money first. I doubt this is
| compatible with F-Droids architecture.
| cft wrote:
| Then how do you get instant messaging notifications?
| young_unixer wrote:
| I think I don't.
|
| Sometimes I get notifications, sometimes it may take hours
| for me to get the notification.
|
| I rarely use instant messaging for important things, and when
| I do, I make sure to check my phone often so I don't miss the
| messages.
|
| Is this stupid? Maybe, but I'm not going to install Google's
| closed source crap on a device that I carry almost
| everywhere. If that means I become a social pariah, then so
| be it.
| cft wrote:
| I think they should be forced to allow apps running in the
| background to connect to an arbitrary server, to subscribe
| to notifications
| dathinab wrote:
| Its kinda is possible (on some android setups) but
| unreliable.
|
| Most importantly your app (and server) needs to be build
| to be able to fall back to a 3rd party message broker.
| But the common fallback is to just sync messages from
| time to time in background if the app runs as it's "good
| enough" for the case Google is temporary down or not
| available or you are one of the (from the App POV) view
| people which de-googled their phone.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "If that means I become a social pariah, then so be it."
|
| Sounds heroic, but maybe does not help anyone? And if you
| really cannot tolerate closed source, than what kind of
| hardware do you use? As far as I know, they are allmost all
| closed and locked.
|
| Pine64 is a fresh breeze, but they are also not free(nor
| stable) yet.
|
| My workaround is simply, that I have a mobile, where I can
| remove the batterie, then I know, it is turned off.
| hiq wrote:
| Both Signal and WhatsApp work fine. It requires workarounds
| from the app developers, but it's not impossible to
| implement.
| emayljames wrote:
| Signal gets round it by sending an empty notification
| through Google's mandatory firebase service, then sending
| the actual message from its own service.
| dathinab wrote:
| Through non-google message brokers.
|
| The problem is that this requires a long running background
| connection.
|
| And guess what Google tried to kill for battery saving
| purpose since a long time (long running mostly sleeping
| background processes). But then on Google in difference to
| Apple it's still possible (but less reliable) with the right
| setup and fully possible with a "proper" de-googled phone.
|
| So depending on your setup you might either:
|
| - not get notifications
|
| - get them unreliable
|
| - only get them if the app is open
|
| - get them just fine
|
| Also this might change from app to app, there clearly will be
| apps which will not have any 3rd party notification broker
| fallback, but given how Google doesn't have 100% delivicery
| guarantees they still should have (potential delayed) message
| syncing when the app is open.
| onethought wrote:
| Is there a standard that could verify an apk against a
| certificate? ... or an I just describing building an
| alternative play store?
| young_unixer wrote:
| Signal, for instance, does this:
| https://signal.org/android/apk/
| sp1rit wrote:
| Signal doesn't. They give you a hash not a signature. I.e.
| if you have control iver their site, you can push a
| malicious signal application and change the hash.
| Sephr wrote:
| This is false. The Signal APK is signed with the same
| signature as the APK on Google Play. If the signature was
| different then Android would not allow me to
| overwrite/update my Google Play Signal installation with
| the APK that I just downloaded from that site.
|
| On Android, APKs are almost always signed by default
| (even if they're only self-signed).
| AWildC182 wrote:
| This is a (mostly) solved problem in linux. Your package
| manager has a central repo, but also can have 3rd party repos
| added. You'd add the matrix repo and it would automatically
| update it with everything else. It means everything still
| gets updated and verified against the keyring.
| colordrops wrote:
| Fdroid supports 3rd party repos.
| canofbars wrote:
| You can use fdroid which builds everything and signs it with
| their own keys.
| JJJollyjim wrote:
| Android's has an app signing system which isn't dependent on
| Google Play. Updates to a given app have to be signed with
| the same certificate as previous versions.
| hiq wrote:
| Where do you get the certificate from? If you get the APK and
| certificate from the same source, there's no security benefit
| of verifying the certificate on top of having a proper TLS
| connection.
|
| If you update the application, Android will check that the
| certificate of the current version matches the one from the
| update before allowing you to install it.
| acatsdream wrote:
| You can use fdroid to install it. Maintained there by Matrix
| itself as it is free software.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "Meanwhile, if it's urgent and you're comfortable
| installing unsigned APKs, you can grab the latest build from our
| CI at..."
|
| AFAIK you can still sign it even if you don't publish it via
| playstore
| ksec wrote:
| Every Single Day I am leaning more towards non-App Store
| distribution model.
| zupreme wrote:
| This is an unfortunate example of a core danger of the app store
| (or Play Store, in this case) business model.
|
| With devices, by default, configured to make it difficult to
| install apps directly, the store becomes the single point of
| failure.
|
| And we engineers know, all too well, the dangers of single points
| of failure in any business-critical solution.
|
| What well-run fortune 500 company, or government agency, would
| fully embrace and build a key business process around apps which
| can be made to vanish on the whim of an Apple or Google employee
| who takes issue with how someone fully disconnected from your
| organization (and maybe even in a different country) uses the
| same app you have rolled out to thousands of staff members?
|
| In my opinion, the next logical step in "decentralization" of
| technology is to give mobile device users the same application
| control, logging, and monitoring powers over their devices that
| desktop, server, and notebook users have always enjoyed.
|
| Does anyone else here see another logical path?
| quyleanh wrote:
| Let people decides what is wrong and what is correct. Not big
| tech, not platform creator.
| Proven wrote:
| That's already in the US Constitution but these are private
| platforms, they ought to be able excessively moderate if they
| want to.
|
| The problem is no one wants to pay for ad-free services that
| focus on delivering shit they're paid to deliver, rather than
| optimize their "free" services for the advertisers and the
| government.
| monadic3 wrote:
| Who cares if we can't dictate what the terms of phone usage are.
| pimeys wrote:
| Oh wow, this chat has blown up with messages and I doubt anybody
| will see this message at this point, but here we go.
|
| During these weeks of being at home and having lots of free time
| after work, I've been doing _projects_. For a while, I've been
| reading how people rant about Matrix always on HN, and I finally
| decided to suck it, install my own home server and try it out by
| myself.
|
| The installation for sure requires a bit of understanding about
| DNS and you kind of (if you want things to be simpler) need two
| servers: one for your root domain and other for your matrix
| server. If you nail these two things correctly, can wait a bit
| for the DNS records to spread out in the network, you'll get the
| matrix federation working quite nicely.
|
| I highly recommend using some of the automated tools, such as the
| ansible playbook[0] to help you out maintaining the server. It
| makes setting up the bridges for other chat platforms very easy.
|
| I have to say, having one application for all my chats. The same
| interface, no need to install five apps to talk with people, this
| all is so nice. It's definitely worth the trouble, even when with
| Synapse you need a bit more powerful server, like four gigs of
| RAM is a good minimum for a server and all the bridges. Now we
| only need to have an easy way to install the clients, so we can
| help our not so technologically advanced friends to join. I think
| Google knows this; how in 2021 people are forming their own
| communities, outside of the power of the big corporations. Now
| Matrix is quite technology oriented, it feels like IRC back in
| the 90s which I really enjoy!
| afkqs wrote:
| > I highly recommend using some of the automated tools, such as
| the ansible playbook[0] to help you out maintaining the server
|
| You forgot to link the Ansible playbook you're talking about :)
| pimeys wrote:
| Of course I did https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-
| ansible-deploy
| dvt wrote:
| It's becoming more and more clear that there's a problem with
| these corporately-controlled "free markets" that are neither free
| nor are they markets. It's time for Congress to do more than just
| write strongly-worded letters to large tech conglomerates hoping
| that these kinds of anti-consumer practices stop. It's funny (or
| sad) that the _meme du jour_ is "build your own app store, bro."
| We need: (1) transparency and (2) accountability.
|
| First of all, we can't have stuff getting arbitrarily censored or
| kicked off stores, because even though it may start with alt-
| right QAnon nonsense, it will lead to things like Hey, Epic,
| Fortnite, Robinhood ratings being scrubbed, WSB being banned, or
| now Element. The slippery slope is not hypothetical. It's _here_.
|
| Secondly, we can't just have AAPL, GOOG, FB, etc. merely say
| "oops, our bad" when the shit hits the fan. People get mad, they
| say "oops" -- even though the app may have lost thousands of
| customers and reputation -- and everyone forgets the snafu ever
| happened. This is not okay, and as consumers we should not be
| okay with it. I promise you Google will release a statement
| saying "certain groups" on Element "used some poopoo language"
| and the apologists will, yet again, be totally cool with it.
|
| (I don't feel my comment is particularly controversial, yet I'm
| being mass downvoted with no counter-arguments.. weird.)
| TechnoTimeStop wrote:
| The Digital Citizen has rights. And its time to draft them.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's a shame nobody saw this coming fourty years ago and
| devoted his life to the cause.
| mangamadaiyan wrote:
| Nobody named Stallman did. Shame indeed.
| sova wrote:
| The infrastructure is run by private parties -- but since
| the advent of encryption it ought be possible to lay down
| some basic principles or precepts of the online denizen.
| "The Right to be Forgotten" is a strong step in the right
| direction, but anonymity sometimes makes people act rashly
| -- which reminds me of the need for Nettiquette. I believe
| the difficulty comes in guaranteeing backdoors for law-
| enforcement and crime-deterrence while still affording a
| strong level of privacy. It's unlikely that law enforcement
| will simply "get used to" the fact that encryption works
| and is difficult [and in the case of ECC likely
| intractable] to decipher. The alternative is state-run
| applications and tech-companies with cross-sectional
| presence of politically inclined people, or some weird
| tryst of tech companies, lobbying, legislation, and law-
| enforcement that effectively elevates tech companies to
| governance level without the primary oversight of elections
| to place them there. If there is a third option I'd love to
| hear it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Free software. Guaranteeing backdoors is a terrible
| strategy that should not even be considered.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Parent is concerned what will happen in the world where
| we actually exist.
| sova wrote:
| Merely outlining the main antagonistic forces to actual
| free speech -- I'm more concerned with the weird
| oligarchic relationship between tech giants and law
| enforcement that cookie-cuts the electoral process out of
| the equation ... is that what you were getting at?
| sova wrote:
| I believe it was Franklin who said "The man who
| sacrifices liberty for security will get neither"
| (paraphrasing) ... however, it's not a common sentiment
| among law-enforcement officials who prefer quiet over
| creativity. You are right that it ought not be considered
| by sane citizens in a free country, but what do you tell
| the appointed officials that try so desperately to make
| it so?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Nothing. If they try to pressure it's inclusion we remove
| it, if they sneak it in we'll find it. That's the beauty
| of free software.
| userbinator wrote:
| _" The Right to be Forgotten" is a strong step in the
| right direction_
|
| You mean "The Right to Rewrite History"?
| sova wrote:
| Uh, yeah, as if youtube or any digital screen-based media
| cannot be instantaneously rewritten or shuffled between
| visits. Hello "memoryhole" (if you're familiar with 1984)
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| Hear, hear!
|
| For the people who see no issues with any of this, shall we
| shut off their water and electricity too while we're at it?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| They can build their own water and electricity!
| Grimm1 wrote:
| It's a mistake to enshrine these companies though. Break out
| their app store and android division and make them a utility,
| but don't make google a permanent part of our lives by making
| them a necessity. I don't want to live in a world where these
| centralized platforms have a government mandate.
|
| What I want is true competition and laws that make that happen.
| GlitchMr wrote:
| I believe that removal of Element from Google Play Store is a
| violation of EU regulation 2019/1150. Element has legal entities
| in Britain (which is affected by Brexit but has similar law) and
| France. Google is LEGALLY required to provide a justification for
| removal 30 days before application removal.
|
| Anyway, you may try contacting Google using EU regulation
| 2019/1150 violation procedure, see
| https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/9969397 for more
| information. This may be more effective than using a regular
| contact procedure, as it would show Google that you are aware of
| this regulation and they are unlikely to win.
|
| Note that I'm not a lawyer.
| yorwba wrote:
| > Google is LEGALLY required to provide a justification for
| removal 30 days before application removal.
|
| You mean this?
|
| _2. Where a provider of online intermediation services decides
| to terminate the provision of the whole of its online
| intermediation services to a given business user, it shall
| provide the business user concerned, at least 30 days prior to
| the termination taking effect, with a statement of reasons for
| that decision on a durable medium._
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
|
| Firstly, I'm not sure whether they really terminated "the
| provision of _the whole_ of its online intermediation services
| " or just suspended the one app store listing.
|
| Secondly, there are exceptions:
|
| _4. The notice period in paragraph 2 shall not apply where a
| provider of online intermediation services:_
|
| _(a) is subject to a legal or regulatory obligation which
| requires it to terminate the provision of the whole of its
| online intermediation services to a given business user in a
| manner which does not allow it to respect that notice period;
| or_
|
| _(b) exercises a right of termination under an imperative
| reason pursuant to national law which is in compliance with
| Union law;_
|
| _(c) can demonstrate that the business user concerned has
| repeatedly infringed the applicable terms and conditions,
| resulting in the termination of the provision of the whole of
| the online intermediation services in question._
|
| _In cases where the notice period in paragraph 2 does not
| apply, the provider of online intermediation services shall
| provide the business user concerned, without undue delay, with
| a statement of reasons for that decision on a durable medium._
|
| So it all comes down to what their reasons for the suspension
| were.
|
| EDIT: Just saw this update:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/element_hq/status/135546565011484...
| So they revealed their reasons within 12 hours, which I'm going
| to file under "without undue delay". (But did they use a
| "durable medium"?)
| GlitchMr wrote:
| Hm, yeah, I think you are right here.
|
| That said, the reason for removal provided by Google seems to
| be nonsensical ("abusive content somewhere on Matrix",
| really?), so mediation should be effective here. This
| particular reason easily applies to an application like
| Google Chrome, and EU regulation 2019/1150 requires
| differential treatment to be documented, which I don't think
| it is in this case.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Chrome has "malicious website" feature to censor any
| website they want. Does Element have anything similar?
| pferde wrote:
| Yes, any Element user can report abusive or offensive
| content to admin of the Matrix server they connect to,
| and admin can remove the content locally and/or block
| remote Matrix servers from which the content originates.
| At their discretion.
| megous wrote:
| That's optional. User can turn it off.
| TimMeade wrote:
| I have never used element, but i just went to the apple app store
| and downloaded it before they strike it also. it was on my "when
| i get around to it" list. Well seems like now is the time to get
| around to it. Seem that i do that more and more often these days.
| aabbcc1241 wrote:
| I feel like the "App Stores" are kinna on war with the minority
| recently
| alvatar wrote:
| This just made me install Element right away and finally get away
| from Signal (and of course Whatssap) and bring as many people
| with me as possible
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Mattermost next? Or is Element different somehow?
| SahAssar wrote:
| Not sure if it makes a difference in this case, but mattermost
| isn't federated.
| diragon wrote:
| It actually stands a chance, perhaps.
| okso wrote:
| Doing this just a week before FOSDEM [1], a very large conference
| that will run online using Matrix, is scandalous.
|
| https://fosdem.org/2021/
| young_unixer wrote:
| And Google is a sponsor.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| https://fosdem.org/2021/about/sponsors/#google
|
| Uh oh
| dest wrote:
| The irony is high
| ath92 wrote:
| It's almost as if Google is not one person but consists of
| many people with different opinions/interests
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| It's almost as if these people didn't coordinate at all in
| spite of operating as part of the same corporation,
| enjoying protections such as limited liability. Google is
| not a subreddit.
| monadic3 wrote:
| Google is just Larry and Moe pullin' a fast one on Curly.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| This is far from ideal, but someone attending FOSDEM is surely
| able to download an .apk from official site of Element and
| install it?
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| People always mention a workaround when this kind of stuff
| happens, but censorship can be heavily effective just by
| reducing access.
|
| If a medium sized business is looking at communication
| platforms, and element is suddenly not available on the play
| store, maybe they'll just Google's offering instead.
| im3w1l wrote:
| While I agree in general, if you are going to fosdem, you
| are part of a self-selected group that will jump this
| hurdle without second thought.
| est31 wrote:
| Or from F-Droid:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/im.vector.app/
| bsd44 wrote:
| I think all this App banning stuff will fuel the interest of open
| source platforms like Pinephone.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Quit taking part in monopoly stores
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