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.
We spent today doing an audit by revisiting recent issues reported to abuse@matrix.org, which had already identified and acted on the content in question. We also took the opportunity to explain how Element and Matrix fit together, what decentralisation is, and the steps we take to mitigate abuse on the servers we run.
As a result, it looks like the app has just been reinstated while I was typing this message: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app.
Thanks everyone for your patience and support while we sorted this out (and huge thanks to the overall Element team who spent their Saturdays on the audit).
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.
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.
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.
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.
FluffyChat would be the main contender.
It's definitely not Google style.
But I hope Matrix will get more promotion in result.
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.
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.
> 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.
Incidentally I was always kinda surprised that the upgrade nag links in Riot Android redirected to Play store instead of f-droid
In the meantime, what is the explanation for the F-Droid version lagging behind?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
The second sentence is about matrix.org
- 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?
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.
"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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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"?)
>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.
I have become accustomed to using multiple browsers and OSes simply because of all the issues surrounding video playback.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Is Dendrite ready for use? I don't have a lot of memory available and I heard Synapse is kinda heavy on resources.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
The Parler dudes are just lucky that they haven't been arrested for material support of terrorism yet.
a) happy about this or
b) unhappy about this
I'll give you three guesses.
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.
My largest concern is if Apple follows suit, which could lead to large problems with our employees who use iPhones.
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.
Element (previously Riot.im) (Secure decentralised chat & VoIP. Keep your data safe from third parties.) - https://f-droid.org/packages/im.vector.app
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.
Banning all applications that enable access to non-moderated decentralized content is simply not compatible with a phone being a smart phone.
From https://element.io/
"Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
You forgot to link the Ansible playbook you're talking about :)
Honest question: Why is the F-Droid option a few versions behind?
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?
It's the ever more popular historical revisionism movement.
https://mobile.twitter.com/element_hq/status/135546565011484...
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.
I hope that mobile computing follows the path of desktop computing, and we end up with more viable small-device OS options.
What a joke. Does google remove their own messenger platform and email app too when someone uses them to send something naughty?
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.
Odd that they'd only remove half of the Matrix clients available...
Monopoly power in action. There is little pressure to fix this.
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.)
What I want is true competition and laws that make that happen.
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?
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.
I understand it should use more battery, but my phones still last multiple days even with F-Droid versions of Element and Telegram running 24/7.
One real annoyance is that after upgrading the apps, I need to start them again manually. Otherwise I won't receive any notifications until I do. IIRC with the Google Play versions, the push notifications will arrive and cause the app to start.
If this takedown stands, this effectively means that all distributed message systems are banned from the Play store.
Report them all, if you can't find objectionable content on those, write it to yourself, screenshot it and report the apps.
Basically as a protest. This can have far reaching effects for anyone worried about privacy, walled gardens, competing with social networks, etc...
Alternatively, pull the code from git, and follow the instructions to build the apk.
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?
Naturally, it has the Element app.
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.
I wouldn't give up faith in Matrix yet. Remember, there are other clients, and there is always the Element web client.
Now you're just out of straws, or pulled the trigger on some decision? What's the implication?
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.
So are you going to switch to a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5 or Pinephone?
Whatever shackles are being forged against your worst enemy, do not be surprised if they end up on your wrists at some later date.
Not a friendly experience, but not insanely hard either.
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’.
None of these things take materially more resources from google. Some junior PM should be able to make this better, and it would save google a lot of antitrust concerns. Something like 1M a year would probably do it.
Use your browser.
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.
Element's developers just upload a newer version to Play themselves as part of the release.
AFAIK you can still sign it even if you don't publish it via playstore
I want to mention that Fedilab [1] and Subway Tooter [2], two famous apps used for Mastodon (or ActivityPub), a decentralized social network, had also been taken down by Google Play with the same reason.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- CCCP a cyrillic of SSSR?
- CCP, Chinese Communist Party?
- CCP, the cyclic something peptide, which is a top websearch hit for me?
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.
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.
It's still a big problem that Google isn't even making the effort to investigate big apps on their own platform to get familiar with them (before letting the AI loose on them).
And now a few VPs of Google and Apple dictate who's allowed to bring in their apps into their holy app store.
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).
I mean, you should now have learned that you can't rely on one single distribution channel.
Luckily theres other clients available too. Client diversity is important
You can't change how they operate. But you can change how you operate.
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.
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).
(Edit: I mention mental wellness because those products, and the ads they carry, are designed to be addictive.)
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.
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.
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.
Quitting Facebook will objectively increase your quality of life.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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?
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
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.
There's nowhere to run away to.
You can, by pressuring politicians to create laws and regulations. It’s just something the US hasn’t tried all that much lately.
Sorry for the confusion, throwaway.
*edited - the old name of Element, apparently.
The protocol is essentially decentralized
Apple has earned plenty of criticism themselves, but I do appreciate that they curate the app store with humans.
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.
On Android you just grab an APK or use F-Droid and it's a couple taps.
Like legit it’s like the inverse of wading through the comments section on macrumors.
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".
As for an alternative mobile OS, I would love to get my hands on Sailfish, but it’s not available for the US.
That's correct, but we can still boycott companies that do this.
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.
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.
