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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

There are no easy ways to get 3rd party apps onto a device. You can't import your own repo easily like you can with apt/yum/etc. Google/Apple/Amazon stores are bastardizations of the idea of a package repository.

Because of this, these companies have a monopoly on types of content. They literally control big parts of the medium for the general public.

Honestly, I think it's unfair to pull these apps. You might disagree with the ideas behind them, but individuals should have the choice and options if that is the route and those are the choices they want to make with their own lives. So long as they don't openly advocate violence, ideas should be free.

At what point do these type of restrictions affect peoples' freedom of religion?

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>There are no easy ways to get 3rd party apps onto a device.

FWIW, on Android, it's as simple as downloading a package and allowing installation from 'unknown sources'. It's a trivial and common process.

>FWIW, on Android, it's as simple as downloading a package and allowing installation from 'unknown sources'. It's a trivial and common process.

Indeed, and there are apps (F-Droid) that'll handle automatic update checks, searching and downloading of APKs etc for you.

Conversion Therapy seems a lot like violence to me...

Although I do agree with you on locked down app stores being a bad idea.

Edit: also conversion therapy isn't really what this thing was anyway it seems.

> Conversion Therapy seems a lot like violence to me...

It doesn't to me. Who is right?

It has severe consequences for the victim. While it's not physical violence, it does far more harm than a punch.

Are you really that confident that LGBT is not simply a less-common, totally healthy form of the human experience?

The victims are right.

Conversation Therapy is associated with increased suicide risks[1]. People are literally killing themselves as a result of going through that experience. I suggest you think more about it.

You are free to have your own definition of "violence", so let's instead settle on the more specific "psychological abuse"[2] and agree that it's not something we, as a society, should accept.

[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/2018...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_abuse

I think you misunderstand the now expanded definition of conversion therapy. In this instance we're not talking about electric shock or anything like that. Conversion therapy here just means "read these scriptures and testimonials and then you'll be straight".

I think LGBT deconversion programs are a form of violence.

Imagine being forced to go through a "introvert deconversion" program where you have to read essays and do exercises that are designed to "help" you become an extrovert and shed your "shameful" and "perverted" introvert ways. LGBT deconversion is a far worse version of this.

Many programs could be seen as a form of violence if you're forced to go through with them.

Ok, imagine your introvert friend was somehow persuaded to voluntarily go through said program. How would feel about that?

Not good, nor would I feel good about them going through this LGBT 'conversion' app. But I'd feel even worse about helping further normalize corporate censorship.

Fair enough, that is entirely different question. I didn't intend to make any implications about that. I should have made that more clear.

People do this all the time. Look at Toastmasters. Now, forcing someone that was highly introverted to go to Toastmasters would not be a nice thing to do. Strongly pressuring them to go when they didn't want to would also not be very nice, but that doesn't mean that Google should ban the Toastmasters app.

Living in a free society means that not everyone has the same ideas about values or psychology or religion. These things will be debated long after we're all dead. Until every disagreement is resolved, the best solution we've come up with is tolerance. If someone is doing something voluntarily that's not significantly hurting you, even if you don't think it's a good idea for them, you're usually better off shutting up and ignoring it.

The last people I want making these decisions is the company that makes my mobile phone operating system for god's sake.

I think your definition would make the word violence less useful. Your definition removes what makes violence a unique and useful word, i.e. that it involves physical force with the intent to hurt someone.

There are better, more accurate, words to use than violence.

Quick note: I'm reading your post in the most charitable light and giving you the benefit of the doubt, a less charitable reading would be that you're ok knowingly coopting a word because along with it comes a whole host of legal and ethical implications that you want to bring to bear on something that you don't like and you know that it isn't violence. I don't think you are doing this but noting it for others that may be.

Yes, for example, abuse.

I can see where you are coming from. I went along with that word choice because it does a good job of capturing the severity of the harm, which I think is important. I'm sure there is a better word. Perhaps my sibling comment's suggestion of "abusive" is a good one. Something like "very harmful", while potentially suitable, feels rather vague and uninspiring.

> Imagine being forced to go through a "introvert deconversion" program where you have to read essays and do exercises that are designed to "help" you become an extrovert

There are such programs and exercises. They are just not called that.

You snipped out the part about treating the introversion as a shameful, perverted thing.

You've never seen an introvert get bullied just because they were introverted?

Yes, I have. I'm not sure how that is relevant? I was pointing out how the commenter was ignoring a very key part of my argument.

Do any of those scriptures tell the person they will endure torture in hell for the way they are? I think telling that to a kid is pretty damn close to violence

[deleted]

When those words are directed at someone who hasn't had the time or experience to develop psychological defenses against them, then yes. Of course verbal abuse is violence when directed at a child.

>Do any of those scriptures tell the person they will endure torture in hell for the way they are?

Surprisingly, not really. They'll endure torture in hell for the gay sex, but not being gay per se (note that but so will everyone who masturbates, or marries a foreigner, or wears clothing with mixed fabrics, or, according to Revelations, most Christians.

...sorry this comment is so awkwardly worded, but I lost the edit window for it almost immediately, I don't know why.

My underlying point would have been that the Bible considers the act of gay sex a sin, but sex between people of the same gender wasn't necessarily considered deviant in many ancient cultures (such as the Greeks.) The concepts of "heterosexual" and "homosexual" identity, or of "being gay" would have been alien.

That is equally true (or false) of many other kinds religious teaching. I haven't reconfirmed it just now, but I'm pretty sure the bible and the quran promise similar punishments for something as heinous as murdering an innocent or as harmless as blasphemy.

If there wre plenty of apps that helps you accepting yourself being gay, why can’t there be apps helping you accepting yourself being straight?

The underlying assumption here, that being gay is a delusion which can be corrected through therapy and scripture, is incorrect.

Straight people don't need help accepting their straightness anyway... heteronormativity is already the universal cultural norm.

On iPhone this is true, but it's easy as heck on Android. You can just download an APK from the Web and install it, or you can install a secondary repository like APKPure if you want a centralized source. Having done both several times, I'd say it is generally harder to install an app that isn't in your distro's standard repo on Linux than it is to install an app outside the Play Store on Android.

>At what point do these type of restrictions affect peoples' freedom of religion?

At the point they don't have any other options. They can teach their conversion therapy in person if they want. They can make websites. They can send out newsletters. They can write books. Why should Google, Apple, MS, or anyone else be forced to host this app? It's clear that the "community standards" don't allow for apps like this, because 139k people want it out and ~20 want the app to stay.

> They literally control big parts of the medium for the general public

Conversion therapy is not for the "general public." It's an anti-science and extremist form of homophobia with potentially serious consequences for the victims. And honestly, that's a charitable interpretation.

Honestly this is the exact sort of shit that should be pulled by any company with a backbone.

At the point that someone tries to block them from being distributed across public infrastructure like the internet.

As long as we're talking about Google's app store, we're limited to talking about Google's terms of service and the relative pressure from the outside groups to force them to either keep/remove the app or suffer bad PR from said groups.

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