[anonacct38]

If wal-mart stops selling a brand of ice cream, is that censorship? Is it censorship that wal-mart doesn't sell playboy in their store?

If not, then why is the removal of an app from the app store censorship? The world wide web still exists. Parler is still on the internet.

Seems like there should be some acknowledgement that there's a difference between refusing to actively participate in distributing content and censorship.

[dilap]

I think a better analogy is saying, oh, you've banned newspapers, but who cares, you can still talk to people in person.

Which is to say, it's true, & that's a good thing, but that doesn't mean that the censorship itself isn't bad.

The most effective, most powerful communication medium that exists right now is native apps for social networks on smartphones. If 100% of that medium is controlled and censored by two companies, that means those two companies exert a massive influence on what kinds of communication society as a whole will have.

If you believe in the general principle of free speech (not just strict legal interpretations of say the 1A), that's not a good thing.

[chrispeel]

Nonsense.

The better analogy is that the newspaper has banned certain people who have written articles inciting violence.

Or maybe an even better analogy: the movie theater has taken the microphone away from the person telling those in the crowded movie theater to start punching each other.

[freedomben]

Do you think only Trump himself has been affected by this? Even just on topic for this forum they're talking about an app used by thousands (or more, I honestly have no idea since I don't use Parler) of people. Do you think all of those people have incited violence? What about Parler itself? All inciting violence?

[chrispeel]

They can side load Parler. All the stupid violence-inciting peeps can still talk to each other and incite violence, just not so easily

[valuearb]

I think you mean to say that if you aren’t allowed to walk into anyone else’s home or business, and yell your opinions into their face, your rights to free speech have somehow been infringed.

My analogy is far more accurate than your tortured newspaper analogy. Parlour still gets to publish unrestricted as a web site and as web apps, it just doesn’t get free distribution, marketing and hosting from Google or Apple.

[ibejoeb]

> you can still talk to people in person

That's practically illegal now, too. What a time to be alive...

[russianbandit]

Evil genius! Move to ban in person communication, control all the virtual communication mediums.

[amanaplanacanal]

Can’t tell if you are joking or if you really believe this.

[stjohnswarts]

If a newspaper is promoting killing and owning the libs and overthrowing the government it has gone from reporting the news to promoting death and violence which has never been acceptable for the free press.

[throwaway314158]

> If 100% of that medium is controlled and censored by two companies

Except you can sideload on Android.

[dilap]

That's a good point actually. I'm on iPhone; is distributing software via side-loading on Android actually practicle, or is it such a pain that it becomes non-workable in practice?

[nyuszika7h]

Yeah, on Android it's much simpler. On iOS it's still doable using AltStore, it just requires you to be on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer at least once a week to keep sideloaded apps active.

[Can_Not]

It is practical actually, it's like downloading an exe or dmg with maybe an extra security hurdle (settings -> enable installing apps from $X). Plus you could make your own play store clone like F-droid and I think amazon made their own, too.

[dilap]

OK, that actually makes me much more sympathetic to Google exercising a lot of editorial control of the Play store.

[russianbandit]

We did this to ourselves by integrating Google/Apple products into our every day life. 20-15 years ago we didn’t have any of it and still led mighty fine lives. Yes, private companies are free to do this stuff to us, but we only have ourselves to blame.

[JW_00000]

This is more akin to Walmart not selling certain magazines or books because they don't like their (political) content. You could also compare it to when the Catholic Church had a black list of "heretical" books and pressured their removal. Both are legal, but maybe not desirable?

[valuearb]

Both are desirable. Walmart curates content for its customers, if it didn’t their sales experience would be far worse.

And as much as I dislike the Catholic Church, not allowing it to list books it finds heretical is outright restrictions of its freedom of speech. It’s only a problem when the church has the power to have governments also ban those lists, but that’s quite a different thing.

[3adawi]

There are tens (hundrends?) of alternative ways of selling ice-cream other than walmart, there are 2 ways to to get access to Parler for most people, either through the browser or an app - you're cutting off the easiest way for most people to gain access to that content through a phone - do you see the difference between what's happening and your analogy?

This is assuming services like Cloudflare and hosting services won't cut Parler - they've done this before

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Give me an ability to buy ice cream in a different store, and I would have no problem with that. However, on Apple devices you are locked to AppStore, and modern Android devices, while still giving you an ability to sideload apps, have severe limitations on their functionality without access to google play services (chiefly, push notifications are a must for any communication app)

[cubano]

I think a much better, much older, and much more philosophical argument is...

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

And actually, the more I think about it, this is a more apt analogue to what's happening with Paler then first engages the mind...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest#:~....

[jessedhillon]

Suppose Google releases an update to Chrome that prevents it from loading problematic websites. What really is the difference, in your mind, between removal from the app store and what I described? Or would you also find that scenario acceptable?

[3np]

The difference would be that in the Play Store, Google hosts the app. They haven't blocked anything per se, just removed it from the server. It'd be more like them kicking problematic we sites off GCP and Firebase, which I don't like but can totally see happening.

[rayiner]

When Hollywood voluntarily removed certain movies and ideas during the black list it was justified for the same reason these bans are justified: these ideas are harmful to society. And it was deemed censorship. In fact it’s an archetypal example of censorship. Government action isn’t required unless you’re talking about the 1A.

And this is yet another escalation on the road that started with “we’re just going to censor tweets that literally say the sky is green.” Google has banned an entire social network.

It’s exactly what social conservatives did back when they controlled the levers of government and industry in the mid-20th century. They prevented liberals from spreading their ideas, because that could cause social unrest, violence, etc. (And there was violence, such as anarchist leftist bombings.)

[valuearb]

Hollywood isn’t a monolith, and it didn’t “remove movies or ideas”. Hollywood production companies and theatre chains agree to set standards for film ratings in order to access large audiences. Artists almost always have had the ability to release unrated films, at the costs of access to large funding sources and theatre chains.

That’s freedom in both directions.

At its worst Hollywood created a black list for alleged communist sympathizers. That was a very specific kind of rating system for the same benefits. Most Americans were justly terrified of the Soviet Union and its genocidal leadership at the time, and distributing a film written by or starring someone who publicly endorsed communism would have killed box office and likely had the studio boycotted by large anti-communist groups.

That said, the black list unfairly included lots of people who were at most interested in social justice.

Today the same thing has happened to Mel Gibson and us happening to Johnny Depp. Don’t expect your employers to invest their millions into help you promote repugnant behavior or beliefs to their customers.

[rayiner]

I’m talking about something quite different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

[claw_howitzer]

"Hitler liked dogs too!"

[abernard1]

> If wal-mart stops selling a brand of ice cream, is that censorship?

If WalMart sold ice cream to white people, but not to black people, that would be pretty awful both morally and it would be illegal.

The thing with speech is it is inherently attached to a person. There is no speech in a vacuum. Google has basically said that certain people shouldn't be able to speak. As politics is a personal belief like religion, it is sad it is not a protected civil right. But that's what this is--saying certain people can express their beliefs, but others can't.

[JRainey]

tech monopolies are effectively info utilities.

censorship of viewpoints you disagree with means you don’t understand the point of freedom of speech.

[djsumdog]

You have Wal-Mart, Target, Wal-greens, CVS, BestBuy, MicroCenter, tons of mom-and-pop stores (until all the world leaders drove all of them to bankruptcy due to COVID)

Say you had two stores: Walmarket and Toget. That's it. That's all you got. Toget stops telling a brand of ice cream and you literally cannot sell it anywhere else other than Toget and Walmarket because someone would have to drive 2 hours out of their way each time to buy your Ice Cream.

You have Android, iOS and PinePhones.

[Pils]

> You have Android, iOS and PinePhones.

I mean, Parler is a CRUD app. You are posting a comment on another CRUD app that doesn't even have an official mobile app client!

[djsumdog]

How do you do notifications from a CRUD app on a mobile device if you can't have a native app on the device?

Let's not kid ourselves. People rarely use the browser for something they really like on mobile if there is a native app. The experience is very different.

[Pils]

> How do you do notifications from a CRUD app on a mobile device if you can't have a native app on the device?

Facebook and Twitter are older than push notifications. SMS and email are pretty obvious replacements with little functional difference.

> Let's not kid ourselves. People rarely use the browser for something they really like on mobile if there is a native app. The experience is very different.

Sure, but you are pretty clearly moving the goalposts. Is it any more difficult to enter "news.ycombinator.com" into a mobile web browser than it is to download a mobile client?

[TheAceOfHearts]

You can use SMS or email.

There is also ongoing work to add Push API [0] support on the web as well. No Safari support though.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API

[camel_Snake]

> How do you do notifications from a CRUD app on a mobile device if you can't have a native app on the device?

Can't service workers/PWAs handle this? While the UI may be subpar, they still have total access to it.

[nyuszika7h]

On Android yes, on iOS it's not supported yet.

[kats]

IMO it's worse than that, because there's a duopoly where both the stores coordinate to do this at the same time. And the intent of it is political, they're trying to end someone else's business because the owner is on the other political team. And that's not even where it ends, next they'll come after their web hosting and credit cards.

[colmvp]

To be honest I really dislike this analogy.

Where I live there is indeed no importer of certain brands of products that I could easily get in the US. Not even an equivalent alternative.

But life goes on and aside from me complaining about it on the internet every now and then I don’t let it bother me.

Social media and communication are a different beast.