Google sends ‘24 hour warning’ to free-speech ‘anti-Facebook’ platform, Minds | Hacker News Reader

Google sends ‘24 hour warning’ to free-speech ‘anti-Facebook’ platform, Minds

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37 pointsdrummer34 comments

Something is very wrong here. Now the platforms are being de-platformed.

Google, Apple, Amazon and Twilio all felt the need to de-platform Parler. Now it looks like Google is starting down the same path with Minds.

Incitement to violence is a crime and should not be broadcast but to what degree should we hold the platforms responsible and who should be allowed to?

Facebook recently had a live stream of the Christchurch shooter, probably one of the most horrific things to go on their platform. But people kept doing business with them. We understand that it's not possible to moderate perfectly and that sometimes it takes time to remove posts.

But for some reason these smaller right leaning platforms are not given the same immunity from their users content. Why? This is all too arbitrary, there is no due process. There isn't even any public information on the exact lines that were crossed. This is largely because it's private companies that have the power to pull the rug out from these platforms without any oversight.

If all of the major players in an industry refuse to do business with you and you haven't broken any laws shouldn't there be some protection by the government to ensure you can do business?

I can't help but say it, but I fear Democrats will tolerate this deplatforming, and even call for it (look at AOC), only to entrench Big Tech further down. In the end, they'll conclude that BigTech is so huge that only they are the rightful arbiters of an app store, hence we'll not see a breakup or any disciplinary action on them soon.

It's already too late for a competing app store to develop, but now is the time for government to actually hold its nose and protect the small players. Else why bother with the charade of Free Speech and governmental sovereignty, when both of those will be controlled by tech platforms in proxy?

This pattern is unfortunately non partisan and goes much deeper than the current culture wars. In the past we were not doing business with people due to the color of their skin, we've done it due to their sexuality and now we are doing it due to their political views.

Well this probably isn't the first time people have been sanctioned like this for political reasons. I think in every totalitarian government that has ever exists, left or right this sort of thing has happened.

There is something about human societies that is tricky to get right. We want freedom for everyone to live life as they choose, to do with business with whom they choose. But we also have to have a society where everyone is free to have access to the same basic services.

Online services are new and uncharted territory but they are becoming increasingly important.

Nobody is obligated to loan you their computers, no. If we were seeing a refusal to peer or route traffic, then maybe it would be a different story.

No they are not. But if every restaurant in town refuses to serve a group of society does that warrant government intervention. It appeared to during the civil rights movement. I'd like to know what is different about this?

> It appeared to during the civil rights movement. I'd like to know what is different about this?

Support for a political group is a choice, skin colour isn't

I'd argue that many on the right now find them selves outcasts in the world of social media as they are now lumped in with Neo Nazis, insurrectionists and all sorts of other nasties.

I'd also argue that it's not so cut and dry that you can choose your political leanings so freely. It seems there may be evidence that we are influenced by our genetics https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-genes-of-left...

If this is the case it's not so different.

In 2018, Masterpiece Cakeshop [0] opened the door for religious beliefs and other First Amendment-protected expression to be used as a pretext to deny service to folks even if they would be otherwise protected.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Actually it might be the reverse of that. Not a lawyer, but that Wikipedia link says The Supreme Court did not address the basic issue of religious freedom. They kinda just threw out the case because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted in a hostile/non-neutral way in regards to the shop owners' religious beliefs.

BUT, Kennedy's opinion (in the majority) "noted that he may have been inclined to rule in favor of the Commission if they had remained religiously neutral in their evaluation".

So it was sort of a nullified ruling, with a hint that they might rule against the shop owner the next time around...IF the state could refrain from acting like jackasses and comparing the shop owner to nazis and racists.

Look, anyone should be able to see that this kind of de-platforming is way out of hand. As if tensions weren't high enough as they were in society already? It turns out, that building your own platform isn't good enough for the megacorps that set the tone nowadays, so if you build a competitive alternative, they send their digital mafia-torpedo to take you out.

Do these people think history will be kind to them when the pendulum swings back against their favor, or what? In my opinion, the people behind these decisions have a lot of bad stuff coming their way, and for good measure.

Perhaps after all, the game was rigged from the start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAAlEoLRuTA

"These people" intend to write that history, and ensure the pendulum never swings back against their favour.

Consider how few communist governments were destroyed by counter-revolutions. That (almost?) never happens. Instead once the hard left seizes control of a society, it stays in control unless the society completely collapses. We tend to think that sort of takeover couldn't happen to us in the Anglo-sphere, but why not? It has in plenty of other places.

Who is actually surprised by this? They(as in Big Tech) just deplatformed the US President. Even the official POTUS twitter account was not safe from having its tweets deleted. You think you're safe? You thought they couldn't use this power against anyone else? So many people have shown themselves to be bootlickers in the last few years and they will get what's coming to them.

Sigh at least people can sideload on android, but I do not like what I am seeing from google.

-side comment- “blockchain-based community-owned“ lol, sorry could not help but laugh. Why does this app need a block chain? Was it a choice based off all the insane hype or is there an actual technical reason?

-edit- from a quick look at their website you are paid for your posts. okay using a block chain makes a little more sense, but still.

This was never just about Parler - they were just the test run. Free speech on the internet cannot be tolerated by these techno-fascists.

If google bans you create your own google.

If Facebook bans you, create your own Facebook.

If Delta airlines bans you...

From time to time I have this ridiculously fantasy that some day a guy like Zuckerberg or Dorsey will live a day like this one:

" I am sorry sir, but we cannot serve you lunch here, the owner does not share your ideology, please leave"

" Sir your car wont get any gas in all of our affiliated stations unless you moderate all the problematic content in your platform in the next 24h"

"Sir, Rosa wont clean your house because she is a republican now"

Parlor / Gab / Minds "created their own Facebook" competitor. That couldn't be tolerated by those who must censor and control the passes: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Google.

Facebook and Twitter are having all competitors blocked, so everyone is trapped on their MSNBC-skewed Facebook / Twitter.

Why? What is the complaint? What needed to change?

Lots of fear mongering here without any actual detail of changes requested or made, and the reasons.

From Mind's FAQ, this app appears to allow pornography, hate speech, and discussion of sensitive events (as long as it's tagged). All of these individually are against Play Terms of Service. Moreover, their content moderation team is a volunteer random selection of users, which is not compliant with the Google Play requirements for User-Generated Content.

Ah so it's a discussion forum a la Reddit.

Google fights "discussion of sensitive events". Why is this a problem?

For example, you aren't allowed to discuss the science behind lockdowns or epidemics unless you are parroting the official narrative.

This has been par for the course on Youtube recently. They also have been banning unofficial Covid-related apps.

Google Chrome is also offered via their Play Store and you can find even more ... interesting things with it. Maybe users should start reporting Chrome for making such sites accessible.

Don't give them any ideas. At some point people will notice that the same company that considers it reasonable to wipe out entire services because of the actions of a few of its users controls a global blacklist of websites that can't be worked around as well.

I'm waiting for the comments here on HN .... "Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge are private browsers, nothing stops you creating your own browser if you want to view conservative websites".

The goal is to trap the moderate right in Facebook & Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are becoming the MSNBC of social media.

This is about controlling the political moderate right.

From what I see, it just seems to be increasing non-Trumpist libertarian calls for breaking up BigTech.

> This forced them to submit an updated version of the app, based on “interim solution and ninja developers,” which removed the search, discovery and comments functionality.

Wut?

Pretty bad article. Lot of editorialising about why this is "chilling" and allusions to Twitter's CEO revealing "his true intentions on social media", but barely any actual details.

For all we know, given they say they allow hate speech in their FAQs, the warning could have been about incredibly illegal discussions happening. Would be good for some actual reporting to happen here.

In a weird way, all this cancel madness could end up in a good thing. People who are still capable of critical thinking, they will seek alternatives to Big Tech and hopefully, these alternatives would come up. Telegram is growing like crazy, Signal is getting "slashdotted". Another round of the distributed social media is coming?

At least their website is still up https://www.minds.com/

I've never heard of it but the idea of getting paid (and paying for?) content does sound worth trying.

Does anyone know why more people are not being pushed into the dark web? I don’t know what to call that, but using Tor and other functionality to bypass main stream censorship.

It isn't necessary yet. In this case they can still keep their website up or even ask users to sideload their app.

> Ottman advised users to download the app from Minds directly if possible. “If you are on Apple, leave if you’re smart,” he said.

Quoted for importance.

Another Friday evening 24 hour notice takedown. Despicable.

Convincing your manager to build cloud-agnostic solutions got a lot easier if that's what you like.

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