Google bans apps that facilitate sale of marijuana
reuters.com
reuters.com
But then again, I haven't seen a Google booze ad. Do they allow alcohol ads?
Or, have they silently permitted it on their App Store but never openly said “this is fine”?
It maybe starts to get a bit more hairy since some of them now also sell tobacco and CBD products alongside the alcohol.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6012382
Surprisingly, the answer is "yes". But alcohol ads can only be shown on sites which have explicitly opted in to alcohol ads, which most sites don't.
I don't see why it'd be different to, for example, Starbucks vs your local quality coffee shop, both co-existing.
The way legalization happened here is incompetent. There are even output limits: for one friends little grow op, where he is not allowed to overproduce.
Not you specifically, but most people on HN have probably been the overwhelming beneficiaries of this approach.
That doesn't make it right.
Just curious.
Not really, for most of humanity's history people could barely even figure out what happened on the other side of the mountain or the sea.
The extreme degree of globalisation that carries these policies and attitudes across the globe is pretty new. It wasn't even the case in the 60s or 70s say. It's predominantly online markets that are dominated by individual companies, control used to be significantly more national.
And yet, for around 30,000 years people have been going off to battle to impose ideals, take stuff, or stop other folks imposing ideals and taking stuff. The average mook in those battles may not have known what was going on, nor did the folks who stayed home in relative safety, but make no mistake, the wealthy and powerful have been imposing their morality as long as there has been a threat to wealth and power... it just happens much more quickly and broadly these days.
This also came with the imposition of Victorian morals everywhere (bans on homosexuality, mandatory opium).
In this case it isn't. Marijuana is federally illegal in the United States, if they profit at all from apps that help connect buyers and sellers of an illicit (in the U.S>) substance, they suddenly expose themselves. They could lose government contracts, they could face criminal investigation, could have funds seized, could have payment processors and banks drop them as customers, etc.
The end result is, global companies can't do business that is legal on some countries, but illegal on majority of coutries.
On some illegal activities such as endorsing the woman's right, freedom of speech, democracy, alcohol(There are countries which prohibit these), they ignore it since it has established its place or not dealing with are also serious crime, or the countries which prohibit such act is minority. But for totally new topic like marijuana, It's safer to not dealing with.
Can't they make the apps available in certain countries but not others? I.e. do something that's legal in the country in question? I don't know the legal specifics but it's seem silly to me if they weren't able to.
Marijuana is federally illegal in the United States, helping people buy it could easily be argued as a crime which exposes/risks Google's EVERYTHING - financial holdings, records, government contracts etc.
Let's take a relatively trivial example: TV "appropriateness." Mainland western Europe have different standards to the US. They are more tolerant of bad language and nudity in daytime programming, less tolerant of violence. Other places have different tolerances (political & religious taboos, often).
YouTube's policies are clearly of the US flavour.
It's not quite the same thing but a company like netflix offers different shows in different countries, spotify's the same for songs. This is more down to licensing than censorship and the scale is quite different from social media but it's a demonstration on how a company can provide different content per region.
Of course, if you flip the argument on it's head, we're annoyed that a company like Google is censoring things which are allowed or common place in society outside of the US. we wouldn't want google censoring content that we consider "enlightened" into countries which we consider backwards (which they no doubt do) and that's always the hypocrisy of these positions.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJX8EALqb4PzmhYdnK6Ax...
It's the same backwards situation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhrSKOiFawg/
I don't think that's the reason. Episode 1 has full female nudity and a scene with menstrual blood running down a leg. Episode 6 has a close up of a very cleanly waxed vagina from a skinny woman. That probably tripped child porn filters (automated or manual).
Did not expect my day to include watching Norweigan puberty videos.
I didn't see the bloody one. Just as well, because the last time I saw that was in a horror movie.
PS: Your last sentence made me laugh.
Even if it is, an automated filter being more sensitive to detecting female child porn than male is a lot more innocuous then banning a video because it talks about female puberty.
They should dub that to English. If parents want that sort of "there's no shame here" approach.. there's probably no English equivalents.
I do hope that "America's norms" aren't those of Trump and if you haven't noticed. Both democrates and liberals have agreed on the trade war.
China's adherence to the Paris Accord despite agreeing to far greater cuts in emissions than most of the developed world is globally recognised. Trump pulled out of the worldwide agreement a few years ago and regardless the States wasn't even on track to meet it's paltry targets.
The hypocrisy is front and center on the world stage.
Trump pulled out and a lot of companies objected and states added local laws to object to him. Companies did extra efforts, without subsidies, because they can.
Trump ( luckily) isn't a generalisation of America.
As ofc XI isn't, but XI ( more the communist party) is the absolute boss of every Chinese company. If he really says no, it's done.
And of course, he wants everyone to buy solar and all other tech of the Chinese. So there is money involved ;)
Trump seems to be just a puppet for some game-over companies, extending their EOL.
The EU is launching emissions monitoring satellites soon and unless you discredit them too the reality will come out soon enough.
There's a very real reason the US pulled out of an international agreement that everyone else agrees too and it's an ugly truth why.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/05/29/no-chill-google-jus...
The apps are legal as long as google isn't the one processing money from drug related transactions.
Which, while disappointing, does make sense.
[1]: https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/07/05/canadian-cannab...
For example - going from say California - an 18 age of consent state to sleep with a 16 year old in Nevada is illegal sex tourism. Likewise bringing a 16 year old from California to Nevada to try to evade the age of consent is illegal.
But going to Nevada from California and sleeping with a 16 year old while not there for that purpose (say on a business trip) would be legal.
And regardless, plenty of large tech companies have blanket policies of avoiding controversial markets. Amazon does not sell ammo and many gun accessories (e.g. magazines). They don't sell porn either as far as I know.
Do you not see the contradiction in this statement?
> Medical marijuana is effectively legal at the federal level in states where it is legal. The federal government, via the appropriations bill has not allocated any funding to prosecuting these crime. More recent case law has clarified the meaning of this, it explicitly forbids prosecuting these crimes in states where medical marijuana is legal. In a number of cases where the accused was charged and plead guilty, prosecution was later stopped(and hundreds of thousands in cash, and precious metals that were seized, were all returned) because of this.
Which completely agrees with the point I'm making. It's still against the law, it's just that some states are refusing to enforce it. This is not the same thing as something being legal. This is not just pedantic quibbling, it has real consequences. The constitution forbids persecution for illegal actions so long as they were legal at the time they were committed. But cannabis isn't legal. Which means that if the attitude towards cannabis changes, it is possible for a future administration to persecute everyone that bought or sold pot. Individuals like you an I may not care very much about this possibility, but the shareholders and executives of multi billion dollar companies unsurprisingly have a different mindset.
Unless you're a federal employee. If you're a federal employee, marijuana use is prohibited, even if it is legal in the state where you reside, since it remains a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substance Act (CSA). As I understand it, under the CSA, doctors cannot issue prescriptions for marijuana use
That said, I'm glad that Steam took a permissive approach to its marketplace in allowing controversial games like Postal and Hatred on its platform. I think saying "fuck it" and allowing porn gives them a decent amount of leeway to keep the rest of their platform permissive.
Somehow I don't think Google is scared of getting into trouble for allowing an app that has a web browser with a reference to marijuana. It is a moral stance, nothing else.
These may be apps for legal dispensaries, but that's by state. Obviously there is no use for the app outside of the legal zone, but does thet really look good?
Yes, a lot of modern apps are turning into embedded blink and v8 solutions that port existing websites. Regardless these "apps" are still directly related to marijuana. I dont think it's a moral stance, I think Google doesn't want to be visibly apart of it. Financial institutions are a lot more private and ambiguous in their weed assistance.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/push-for-legislation-allow...
The closest I have seen is a provider that will let you buy bitcoin (and then immediately use the bitcoin to buy the pot, in the same POS terminal transaction).
You could say "just use another app store", but that's really not a viable option. When a company's store policies becomes a limiting factor for your (fully legal and ethical) personal choices,I think we have a problem.
And this is the problem with large corporations.
If the industry was more competitive they wouldn't be able to turn away money.
This is the stupid libertarian answer for everything, not so different from communism in its arrogance and over-simplification of human motives and behaviors. If the XX century taught us anything, it's that there are no simple answers.
It the industry was perfectly competitive, nobody would be able to turn away money. We would have the perfect whip, making us all labor for all of our waking hours, no holidays, no weekends. Consumers would have perfect choice at the lowest possible prices. They would, however, have zero free time to exercise this "freedom".
Too much competition is cruel and wasteful, leading to a dystopia where, if you take 1 second of rest, someone else might not. Too little competition kills motivation to do the things that are hard but essential, leading to mass starvation and social system collapse.
The answer is democracy, which is not a simple answer nor a silver bullet. But it's the best game in town. When things go too far in one direction, it is the citizen's right and duty to push them in another one. Sometimes the government interferes too little, sometimes too much. Bureaucracies and technocrats might be unsexy, but they lead to a more pleasant and humane world than slogans.
Tech companies should not have the final say on what you can are not use markets for. In a democracy, rules of society > rules of companies.
The problem in question is actually something that competition (capitalism) would very effectively solve. The reason it's not being solved is a failure of the government to break up clear anti-competitive behavior which I think GP was getting at.
Google has exploited their dominance in the OS market to in order to completely control the phone app market. Nobody except for invidual governments should have control over any market because it gives companies the power to favor their product over others.
Google controls the app market: they will eventually favor their apps
X controls the tellcom market: they favor their media at the expense of others
Just because a company isn't being anti-competitive YET doesn't mean they won't in the future.
How old are you again
What is the real world small business alternative to the play Store - progressive web apps? Fdroid?
The federal marijuana laws are — mostly — blatantly unconstitutional, of course, but they are still on the books. I don't blame Google for not wanting to litigate the issue; their lawyers are probably acutely aware of the Backpage case.
This article is a bit thin on details. is this just black market? All sales? something else?
Or are they seriously going after stuff like Weedmaps that just offers references to places that sell.
“At Google Play, we’re committed to providing a positive, safe environment for children and families,” the blog post read. “…After taking input from users and developers we are evolving our Google Play policies to provide additional protections for children and families.”
We google should not be in a position of power to decide what is allowable and what is not. That is for elected officials. If they have more than reasonable influence, break them up.
Same for any group of people anywhere. Get elected.
Still, yes, citizens could attempt to effect government intervention.
But probably the average person has more leverage as a consumer than as a political actor.
If there's 30 equivalent services to choose from and using none is also a viable option there's no market power and no issue. I hope they get rich without market power but it's of no significance to me.
As soon as they (for all values of they) have market power and can have a huge effect over what you can and can't do - they need to be bound by law and regulation. This is the textbook definition of market failure. Libertarians and Bernie should see it much the same way. I personally believe you keep regulation the hell out it until you have market failure (so I'm not with bernie) - which this is, they're enacting defacto laws and taxes on the population here for an agenda not agreed to by that population. Same as if standard oil could tell you where you could drive your car. Same as if your electricity company could tell you what you are allowed to read with your electric lights. Same as if your phone company dropped your call for saying "fk" out loud.
Market failure is a thing that happens often (public goods, property rights enforcement, industries that tend to monopoly) and we bring in regulation when it does and watch those regulators closely(!!) We have elections to make sure the regulation is done in a way that we can live with.
Our favorite code word was "programmer's fuel."