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 don't see how that makes Element responsible for matrix.org content. Thunderbird offers getting an email address via gandi.net in their new account page. Does that mean that Mozilla is suddenly responsible for all emails (like spam) coming out of gandi?
You're suggesting the challenge was created by Google and that so and so managed to navigate it successfully by obeying Google.
But we don't even know what the issue was. And if the issue isn't available to the general public through transparency or something like an FOIA request what is really being celebrated is the power of a corporation to control free speech over a protocol intended to wrest control of free speech back into the hands of people in the first place.
Limiting access to information such that it cannot be independently verified is far more sinister and nefarious — not to mention consitutionally unsound — than the threat of the bad actor sharing the info in the first place.
In the wake of the temporary Parler shutdown all of us need to be paying close attention to how we receive information. These things cannot be left up to anecdotal stories which delve into little to no detail.
Did the VP offer any explanation as to why you had not received any communcation from Google?
This kind of language is very wishy-washy and leaves everything to the imagination. 9/10 times the issue is terrorism or CP. So which of the two was it? And why aren't you comfortable enough to share that reason with your prospective users?
Anyway, Matrix.org is hosted by a foundation with an independent board. You can ask them if you want but given your post you already know full well why they are not sharing. No one is going to do a press release to say they were involuntary hosting CP or helping terrorists. What good would come out of it?
This is what truly destroyed the open, federated web: humans being disgusting animals.
CP should be removed at the source, by doing everything we can to take care of kids and preventing abuse and related photography. And CP trading rings should be busted.
But individual pedophiles should be helped with their mental health issues before they act and become pederasts. The subject is so toxic that nobody dares go to a therapist with their issues. There was a recent documentary about it: https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/bb3cd43c-169a-48db-9fd6-e4cbae0d...
Coming back to crypto. Who cares if the images are shared using crypto or on paper or on usb sticks? Once you find a pederast, law enforcement should convince (without torture or similar tricks, offering therapy and help will probably be more effective) them to help expose their network. Same with any activity that is using encrypted communications: https://edri.org/files/encryption/workarounds_edriposition_2...
This phrasing suggests it was probably not even illegal to publish.
What if this content had been something that Google finds politically or commercially disfavorable to its interests, rather than something we would all think is intolerable? What if it _is_ like that?
Oh, wait. We’re still a decade away from that particular dystopia, so I’ll guess kiddie porn or actual planning of terrorist attacks.
It seems you guess wrong. The Element guy did not mention any illegality, which is what makes me suspicious.
