<story><title>Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store</title><url>https://qoto.org/@freemo/104765288863293481</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rvz</author><text>Exactly. This is Google drawing the line on where this &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; is from and they believe that such &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; can be accessed via the Fediverse.&lt;p&gt;To see how ridiculous this sounds, Google might as well completely take down the entire social media and internet browsing category on the Play Store since I keep seeing the same content from both extremes on all these platforms.&lt;p&gt;Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser since you can find this &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; with a simple search. They will soon realise that &amp;quot;drawing the line on hate speech&amp;quot; is more tougher than solving leetcode CS questions.</text></item><item><author>humanistbot</author><text>The rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these apps, because some of the microblogging sites that can be accessed via Fediverse have this kind of content. Based on this rationale, I look forward to Google Play removing Chrome, Firefox, and all other web browsers from the store as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>core-questions</author><text>&amp;gt; Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser&lt;p&gt;Well, they&amp;#x27;re taking the address bar away, bit by bit; they have SafeSearch; and they have AMP. It&amp;#x27;s a very slow erosion, but there will come a point at which going outside of the list of officially acceptable sites will become more difficult - first with mandatory warnings, then maybe with mandatory reporting to law enforcement or whomever, and eventually not at all.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it sounds like a &amp;quot;slippery slope&amp;quot; argument, but we&amp;#x27;re a few steps down the slope now, and any argument that encourages us to climb back up has to point out where things may go if we don&amp;#x27;t resist.&lt;p&gt;It sucks that this requires us to defend the rights of people to speak whom we may intensely disagree with, but that&amp;#x27;s the crux of the matter. Either we become mature enough to understand that people will have discourse we dislike, and avoid it or engage with it as we see fit, or we continue to hide behind authority figures who will purport to keep us safe by controlling what we can say and think.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store</title><url>https://qoto.org/@freemo/104765288863293481</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rvz</author><text>Exactly. This is Google drawing the line on where this &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; is from and they believe that such &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; can be accessed via the Fediverse.&lt;p&gt;To see how ridiculous this sounds, Google might as well completely take down the entire social media and internet browsing category on the Play Store since I keep seeing the same content from both extremes on all these platforms.&lt;p&gt;Just wait until you tell them to take down their own browser since you can find this &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; with a simple search. They will soon realise that &amp;quot;drawing the line on hate speech&amp;quot; is more tougher than solving leetcode CS questions.</text></item><item><author>humanistbot</author><text>The rationale they gave is that hate speech appears on these apps, because some of the microblogging sites that can be accessed via Fediverse have this kind of content. Based on this rationale, I look forward to Google Play removing Chrome, Firefox, and all other web browsers from the store as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noworriesnate</author><text>I get what you&amp;#x27;re saying, but I don&amp;#x27;t think this is because Google cares about hate speech. Google is simply using hate speech as an excuse to get rid of apps that it doesn&amp;#x27;t like. Deciding which apps you like and which you don&amp;#x27;t isn&amp;#x27;t that hard of a line to draw.</text></comment>