GAB.ai social network app removed from google play store for violating "hate speech" policy

[typographie]

1 hour ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

So in conclusion we should ban all text messaging apps, email apps, and browser apps because the users violate the policy.

The wording is that the entire social network is "alt-right," so to me that sounds like it wasn't just individual users that were the problem, but the app's entire focus and [lack of] moderation. There would probably be no reason for Google to get involved if it was just users posting things that would eventually be deleted (or in the case of text messaging or e-mails, permanently private). But if the app's mod team had no will or interest in policing hate speech on a publicly viewable forum, I could see why Google would need to act.

[TacoSenpai]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

This topic is already doomed for closure...

 

Anyway I have a serious question/theory to pose, do you guys believe the large internet social media platforms are scared of government legislation against internet free speech? I reckon the likes of Google, Facebook & Twitter have seen the recent spaight of terror attacks across Europe and heard the backlash from the UK government and the EU assembly and they're now over reacting to try and make it look like they're actually doing something so when the shit hits the fan they have their lists of banned groups ready.

 

I genuinely think this is more about self preservation than it is about protecting the public from hate speech and terrorism.

 

Thoughts?

Certainly would not surprise me. 

[HisEvilness]

Gab.ai does not censor anything basically, more of a twitter platform than a content creation platform.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, LordTaco42 said:

Yes Google and all these other "social media"  (which I use the term loosely as they seem to be more like political propaganda tools now in days) have every right to decide what to have on their stores and sites.  That being said, if their aim is to denounce and get rid of hate speech and extremism this has the exact opposite effect.  You cannot claim to be open-minded and for freedom of speech when the minute something you disagree with workers get fired, apps get taken off, and censoring out the ass occurs.  Worse yet when the extremism on the left occurs it seems like its hardly condemned, banned, or censored.  At best case this gives validity to your opposition and at worst case it adds to the perceived validity that neo-nazis are pushing.   

 

The worst part about all this is that terms like racist, sexist, nazi, and whatever ist or phobic term you want to throw out there have become nothing more than dime a dozen words that carry no weight what so ever.  They've been used so much to just describe anyone who disagrees with "progressives" and "open mindedness" that when there are people or ideologies that actually do embody them no one takes it seriously or worse people join those movements out of spite regardless of the obvious flaws in the ideology.   

The words actually never had meaning. They were designed to exploit high-trust societal tendencies to not be offensive. This is what devious moral relativists do: destroy cultures. Trump was the best-case example of an anti-discrimination public figure until he ran as part of the Republicans. Once you understand the Left has no actual moral values beyond "don't piss off the mob", it makes a lot more sense.

 

As to the business angle, the argument doesn't work anymore. The ToS that companies have is always limited to the person's actions *on* the service. While they do have the right to remove people for most any reason (not denying that), coordinating across Silicon Valley to deplatform groups of people runs into clear Collusion & Anti-Competitive Practices Law. (The fact these laws exist from the "Robber Baron" era is a hilarious sort of repeat.) If it was just 1 company, there's no big issue, as it's a 1 vs 1 issue. All of SV? There's a clear Blacklist floating around. That's Criminal.

[typographie]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I genuinely think this is more about self preservation than it is about protecting the public from hate speech and terrorism.

 

Thoughts?

I don't think Google is trying to "protect the public," and I don't think it's self-preservation in the sense that you suggest. I think it's a simple case of a corporation realizing that their most visible public image is formed by the people that use their service, and making the choice to be associated/not associated with certain toxic viewpoints. They don't want to carry an alt-right public forum for the same reason Pepsi wouldn't want to advertise their product during a porn broadcast.

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

This topic is already doomed for closure...

 

Anyway I have a serious question/theory to pose, do you guys believe the large internet social media platforms are scared of government legislation against internet free speech? I reckon the likes of Google, Facebook & Twitter have seen the recent spaight of terror attacks across Europe and heard the backlash from the UK government and the EU assembly and they're now over reacting to try and make it look like they're actually doing something so when the shit hits the fan they have their lists of banned groups ready.

 

I genuinely think this is more about self preservation than it is about protecting the public from hate speech and terrorism.

 

Thoughts?

Silicon Valley is ideologically aligned with most EU governments. Davos attendees, all of them.

 

However, there's a growing issue between the American-based Social Media companies, which have a lot of non-American ownership stakes, and Germany. Very specifically. That's the one to watch for.

[Master Disaster]

5 minutes ago, typographie said:

I don't think Google is trying to "protect the public," and I don't think it's self-preservation in the sense that you suggest. I think it's a simple case of a corporation realizing that their most visible public image is formed by the people that use their service, and making the choice to be associated/not associated with certain toxic viewpoints. They don't want to carry an alt-right public forum for the same reason Pepsi wouldn't want to advertise their product during a porn broadcast.

And yet they've been OK with it up to this point. There must have been a catalyst that's triggered this sudden reaction from Google.

 

Its Terrorism in Europe and Racism in the US that are the current big issues and suddenly Google are not OK hosting right wing content anymore?

 

Also by self preservation I'm not suggesting they're going to disappear or anything, more resistance to a change that's going to be forced onto them by Government if they're seen to be not acting.

[rn8686]

inb4 this gets locked for political discussion. 

 

They cant expect them to fully police its users, they should only really be taking it down if if the app its self promotes hate. Regardless, they own the platform so taking apps down is at their discretion. 

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, Liltrekkie said:

You're literally telling people how to think. 

 

That doesn't work. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied – chains us all, irrevocably."

 

You cannot tell people how to act, you can't tell people what to think. Extremists are that, extreme ways of thinking. Sure, we may not, and should not agree with them, but you do not dismiss them. You do not dismiss anyone like that. By doing that you only spread hate. 

 

You must debate them, you always debate them, but you never dismiss them. 

People will argue that:

 

'I don't have time for that, I just want to live my life'

 

The thing people forget is, that the price of living in freedom has always been eternal vigilance.  If we want freedom, we must always be willing to fight to maintain it.  Whether it means combating the ideas of extremists, that want to ban other people for no logical reason than the color of their skin; or combating extremists who want to silence the voices of those whom they disagree with, simply because they don't like what they say.

1 hour ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

I think it's been divide and conquer since sometime in the late 2000's/early 2010's

It's been a lot longer than that, this was just when they started to become really bold.

34 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

But, remember, No8, you have to bake the cake. Everyone is going to love the New Rules.

[typographie]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Its Terrorism in Europe and Racism in the US that are the current big issues and suddenly Google are not OK hosting right wing content anymore?

But was it mainstream right-wing content that Google had an issue with, or was it hate speech? I know we've forgotten this in 2017, but it's really not that hard to tell the difference. You make it sound like Google flew off the handle about someone making a post about tax reform, but my gut feeling is that it was probably took something a lot less morally grey to get the attention of Google.

[PlayStation 2]

You wanna know the irony of all this?

You know the net neutrality bullshit you guys were pushing? Yeah, this makes that issue entirely irrelevant when shitty corporations in Northern California have control. This is the end goal of it, to silence those they disagree with in the name of "hate speech".

[AshleyAshes]

Not In This Thread: Anyone doing anything beyond crying on the internet, like boycotting all Google services.

[Jito463]

11 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Not In This Thread: Anyone doing anything beyond crying on the internet, like boycotting all Google services.

So, unless we completely and utterly boycott Google, we shouldn't say anything at all?  That's a pretty extreme view to take.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Jito463 said:

So, unless we completely and utterly boycott Google, we shouldn't say anything at all?  That's a pretty extreme view to take.

Oh no, I'm just saying that without that, or some other kind of meaningful action, all you're doing is crying in the internet.

[Misanthrope]

They keep denying any connection but I mean come on: We're talking about a company with a frog as their avatar being pushed by most of the Kekistani Nazi-apologist crowd: bound to happen.

[Misanthrope]

5 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Private companies will not allow users to communicate all political views.

They were never required to. 

 

As I said on another thread, dictating what a private company can and cannot allow on their services is a worst infringement on freedom of speech: Yes saying "We will not do business with you because of your politics" it's still protected speech and rights private entities have.

 

So in the end conservatives just want to appeal to censorship instead of actually defending well, pretty damn indefensible ideas like those put forward by Richard Spencer and the alt right, they want to dictate what private companies can and cannot do.

 

And guess what? Dictating what private companies can and cannot do is basically asking for at the very least the legal system and more likely the government to intervene. That's right: the traditional advocates of smaller government actually want to suggest this is addressed by the government? Suddenly not too big and too powerful when you have the Orange Clown as the POTUS? Was any of the libertarian and conservative ideas true at all or was it just a lust for power to try and advance the true agenda of White Nationalism?

 

Anyways yes I'd be for the regulation of certain internet services by the government, but that's because I actually am internally consistent in my Socialist Democracy believes and understand the implications of what people ask for, beyond their crocodile tears of "Leave conservative voices aloooooneee!!"

[AlwaysFSX]

14 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Oh no, I'm just saying that without that, or some other kind of meaningful action, all you're doing is crying in the internet.

I dunno about you but I know I'll be attending the book burning hosted by Google next year.

[DildorTheDecent]

7 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

They keep denying any connection but I mean come on: We're talking about a company with a frog as their avatar being pushed by most of the Kekistani Nazi-apologist crowd: bound to happen.

Pepe is a harmless meme though. Nothing wrong with it. 

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, DildorTheDecent said:

Pepe is a harmless meme though. Nothing wrong with it. 

Pictured: The precise moment your meme stopped being harmless. Maybe don't try to make ironic jokes about Nazis that actual Nazis can adopt as their own:

 

[Prysin]

5 hours ago, TheBeastPC said:

If apple didnt approve the app on their app store, they must have a stricter policy as to what apps are approved or disapproved. Apple must be big on security in terms of the approval of different apps. 

Apple has very strict functionality quality requirements. If the app had security or functionality issues it would be denied. 

[dexT]

45 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Not In This Thread: Anyone doing anything beyond crying on the internet, like boycotting all Google services.

We're cisgender males.. we don't do that crap.

 

32 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Oh no, I'm just saying that without that, or some other kind of meaningful action, all you're doing is crying in the internet.

We're having a conversation, not trying to be activists. On other sites I've brought up the idea of instead of censoring "HATE!!" to censor near-porn child exploitation, and the huge problem it is in say the UK(massive pedo population) and nobody cares lol.. not a single bleeding heart lib.

[Prysin]

9 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Pictured: The precise moment your meme stopped being harmless. Maybe don't try to make ironic jokes about Nazis that actual Nazis can adopt as their own:

 

Kekistan flag. Gj you found a 4chan troll irl. You found that one shitposting lord willing to crawl out of his mommas basement to continue spreading his shit irl

[Misanthrope]

7 minutes ago, Prysin said:

Kekistan flag. Gj you found a 4chan troll irl. You found that one shitposting lord willing to crawl out of his mommas basement to continue spreading his shit irl

That's actually not true: There's more than just isolated cases of "Momma's basement Shitlords" pushing the Kekistani stuff hard: 

 

 

See this pic (Minus a few guys that have since tried to distance themselves since of course)? I know that you might be thinking "Well thanks for proving my momma's basement dwelling point Misanthrope!" and seemingly you might be right.

 

You wanna guess how many views and subscribers just one of the guys in the picture have? Try close to 700k with 6 million views on the last month alone. So no the Kekistani meme isn't a small, isolated thing being pushed by small, irrelevant geeks anymore. It's a multi-million dollar business in Adsense money alone with a lot more than that counting in Patreon accounts.

 

You can't really paint these guys as small and irrelevant anymore. Sure they're not Jake Pauls but they are also far reaching. And the audience they reach the most? White nationalists that just come in for the "SJW pwnage!" videos which they're all happy to provide with minimal to NO criticism of Trump or conservatives in general and actually defending the Nazis of Charlottesville and blaming the murder victim. 

[DildorTheDecent]

17 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Pictured: The precise moment your meme stopped being harmless. Maybe don't try to make ironic jokes about Nazis that actual Nazis can adopt as their own:

That's the flag of kekistan, not pepe

 

Jesus Christ dude. Can't even get your memes right. log off. 

[Misanthrope]

Just now, DildorTheDecent said:

That's the flag of kekistan, not pepe

 

Jesus Christ dude. Can't even get your memes right. log off. 

Because there's no massive overlap right? Sorry: Pepe is a stormfag now. Maybe one day you'll take back pepe and remove his brown shirt, but I wouldn't get my hopes up anytime soon.