So we got notified by the developer console at 21:45 UTC that the app had been suspended, but still haven’t had an email to explain why - it’s 02:24 now.
Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame — although this is currently speculation.
To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to view abusive material via Chrome, the same is true of Element.
UPDATE: I just got a call from a VP at Google who apologised for the bad communication around this and explained the situation, which related to some extremely abusive content which was accessible on the default matrix.org homeserver. We don't want to go into specifics, but suffice it to say that it's not related to WallStreet Bets or anything like that, but instead is the sort of thing that causes you to get locked up for life.
We spent today doing an audit by revisiting recent issues reported to abuse@matrix.org, which had already identified and acted on the content in question. We also took the opportunity to explain how Element and Matrix fit together, what decentralisation is, and the steps we take to mitigate abuse on the servers we run.
Thanks everyone for your patience and support while we sorted this out (and huge thanks to the overall Element team who spent their Saturdays on the audit).
Thank you for all your efforts. The way you appear to have handled google's unjustifiable action is really impressive. Clearly that's one of the main reasons to be optimistic that matrix has a bright future - if I was in charge it certainly wouldn't. Due to incidents like this I simply ditched google completely. (OK, to be honest I sometimes watch videos on yt but without having an account.)
Challenges - like this google fiasco - really test the merit of a person and org...and you @Arathorn and the rest of the Element team as well as the Matrix org/Foundation team have shown to be really great stewards and leaders for Matrix, as well as great actors for open source and internet-at-large software. Kudos to you and the teams for the great job at managing this challenge (that never should have been created by Google in the first place)!! I've been a fanboy of matrix since the beginning (both the protocol and the teams building it), and it is behavior like yours and the related teams (incljuding all contributors!) that keep me as a fanboy for both the protocol stack and the software. Keep on truckin'!!! :-)
Very happy for you guys. But do take this as a shot across the bow, if and when it serves Google's agenda to shut you down they will. You have a great service, don't let Google control you and be beholden to them.
this is still a joke you have to post on hn and hope to get high enough up to nastygram someone over 'my app connectsto the internet like yours' level of shit
This kind of language is very wishy-washy and leaves everything to the imagination. 9/10 times the issue is terrorism or CP. So which of the two was it? And why aren't you comfortable enough to share that reason with your prospective users?
This phrasing suggests it was probably not even illegal to publish.
What if this content had been something that Google finds politically or commercially disfavorable to its interests, rather than something we would all think is intolerable? What if it _is_ like that?
I'm really upset that this happened to you folks, and it's scary, because incident could just as easily have happened to us at Zulip (or any other OSS app that connects to self-hosted servers!).
I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams, are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune their tactics and so tend to never explain anything.
But the details of how Google screwed up here also don't matter. A sudden Friday night suspension of a popular, legitimate app is insane! That possibility shouldn't be in the flowchart.
I get that for malware/spam/etc., it's important to immediately suspend, but I don't understand why Google doesn't take more seriously the very negative harm caused by doing that to a legitimate app. Some notice and appeal opportunity should be required before suspending a popular app by a legitimate publisher.
I'm upset, and a bit scared, but I can't say I'm surprised. This sort of random/erroneous/arbitrary punishment without explanation happens all the time with Google and other major tech companies. And every app developer I've met has experienced _significant_ disruption to their app publishing efforts due arbitrary/random rejections by an Apple app store reviewer, and this has been the case for years, so we can pretty confident that the vendors won't improve unless they are forced to do so.
There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores and the negative consequences for everyone else of their error-prone and ruthless enforcement processes.
> There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores
The regularity oversight needs to address a different aspect: google is world-wide de-facto monopoly for people not owning an iPhone. At least for the most part of the freer world, China is different story.
Until Google is broken up or fair competition is not achieved, content regulation does not help. As a European I want to care about US regulation as much as about US tax laws: not at all. The US is not the world-regulator. We elect governments in Europe that have no power to do anything in this sector. I don't say Google should be forbidden in Europe, we are not China. But competition and more choice for users needs to be guaranteed by effective legislation, in practice that against Google and Apple.
They didn't "screw up". Or rather, that's not the main problem. The problem is that Google has the power to block the main channel of distribution of a piece of software.
Now, it's true that you can "just" get Element elsewhere, but the effective user lock-in into a single-corporation-controlled download hub ("app store") - that's the problem. And Google has gotten that quite right... for itself.
Legitimate app yes, but was it actually popular? The cached copy of the Element store page says 100k installs, <2k reviews. Compare to e.g. Signal at 50M installs and 1.2M reviews. Or WhatsApp with 5B installs and 130M reviews.
If you accept that (1) there is a substantial amount of mal-content that Google should censor, and (2) a key use case for federated messaging platforms is to evade censorship, and that (3) client applications can be functionally part of a federated messaging platform while legally separate from it, then those client applications are fair game to be censored when they deliver mal-content.
Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just because the client application is legally but not functionally separate from the federated network.
I'm testing Element and Matrix at American Airlines.
There are big players with clout that take issue to instability such as this. How can I rely on my company using Element when it gets pulled? Not cool Google...
To the element team, reach out to me if you can't get the support you are looking for.
Google may be able to control the Element app on the play store, but at least for the server side there's no way to do that with synapse (the official matrix protocol server side implementation), which is fully open source and distributed directly from the developers.
Click on "Assemble GPlay Debug version" (or "Assemble FDroid Debug version" if you don't have Google Play Services), then click on "Artifacts" and then choose your apk from there.
We received a generic update at 05:31 UTC confirming that the app had been suspended due to abusive content (Sexual Content and Profanity: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... ); we're following up to explain how Matrix and Element works and get this resolved.
This is probably not a coincidence or an oversight, but rather a "what can we get away with" attempt, similar to previous efforts to remove UBlock Origin.
But why? Matrix is tiny and no threat to Google services.
I'd personally expect three letter agencies to be involved here. The US government has been aggressively going after encrypted communication for years, with extreme tactics like personal intimidation and secret courts. Read this story about a secure email provider if you doubt it. [1]
This doesn't work so well with EU based companies, even though they have been pushing EU governments to do the same. (There recently was a leak that the encryption ban currently discussed in the EU parliament has some roots in Five Eyes efforts and that governments were pressured by the US to support it. Published by FAZ or Sueddeutsche, I'm trying to find the article...)
I also doubt that iMessage and What's App gaining "backdoors" to their encryption is purely motivated by user experience.
At a time where a lot of people want to switch communication platforms, nipping any such efforts early might well be viewed as important.
"Abusive content" is a convenient excuse that can be arbitrarily applied.
I on the other hand hope that they won't just say "oops, our bad!", reinstate it and sweep the entire thing under the rug like nothing happened, without explaining anything.
There are people here who work on mobile applications. If they depend on Google and Apple delivering their app to their clients, it's still unacceptable that they can potentially put you out of business, just like that. I already saw a couple of people here that claimed it happened to them too. Without any reason, without the ability to appeal, nothing.
My comment elsewhere got buried but it might be useful to you.
Pattle also appears to have been removed. Ditto and FluffyChat at the moment appear to still be up on the store though. For those unaware, these are all Matrix clients.
> Morning all. We've had contact from Google confirming that the suspension is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix; we're working with them to explain how Element works and get the situation resolved.
I think it’s funny that they think Google cares at all about the implementation details of your service. The only thing that matters to app reviewers is what the user sees when they use it. If you make your app technically unmoderatable, impossible to remove illegal content, or impossible to
respond to DMCA requests you don’t get to just throw your hands up.
F-Droid publish their own builds; part of their mission is to independently build and package the upstream from source to avoid risk of the upstream doing anything unpleasant.
Lack of resources, plain and simple. The f-droid folks are operating on a shoestring budget last time I checked, which is shocking for a project of such significance.
Parler curated the content on their platform for months including shadowbanning new accounts until they had been approved by volunteer moderators. Accounts on Parler called for and planned violence against elected officials for months. Executives at the company spoke often and publicly supporting that content.
If your going to argue with a straight face the this new situation is the same as Parler, your putting Element side by side with some very bad company.
People will surely point out the obvious differences between the takedown of Parler and Element and I'd agree that it's not exactly the same thing, since Parler is its own platform and Element is just a client.
However, when looking on a bigger picture of the recent takedowns and trying to make sense of it, it does indeed seem to be connected. The only conclusion that seems rational to me is as follows:
Everyone tries to push their burden of moderation on people below them, because no one can actually keep up with it. And if the moderation is not enforced, they risk being taken down by someone above them. That would explain why everyone is so trigger happy when it comes to censorship. When the WallStreetBets people were taken down by Facebook and Discord, they didn't ban the individuals who were actually violating the policy, but the entire community.
It's also worth to note, that the takedowns can be enforced selectively, as we see here - Google obviously won't take down their own browser or email client, that also allows to access abusive content - assuming that's what Element was taken down for. It's probably selectively enforced on the social media too, but I'm out of the loop on what actually goes on there, so to be fair, I cannot prove it.
If this is actually what is happening, the only solution as far as I see it, is to extend the First Amendment to social media. Another solution could be to convince the people and the media to stop pressuring companies into deplatforming other people, but that's in my opinion definitely not going to happen. So it's either applying the protections of 1A to the internet or the censorship will get worse and worse.
I don't agree with OP here but I've found a lot of people from the Parler/Gab crowd have found Matrix lack of content moderation appealing and have been in channels on the Matrix directory that have all the same content as Parler/Gab. I would recommend the Matrix team start taking content moderation more seriously as my experience is they do not take it seriously. They may want to disable room creation on matrix.org in the meantime.
Element is a chat client. It's an empty piece of software for use with your own choice of server. Element is to a chat server, as Thunderbird is to an email server. It's basically a glorified IRC client. It contains no content of its own.
Parler was basically a curated, centrally run, Facebook-message-board-replacement for neonazis, antisemites, qanon conspiracy theorists, and the lunatic fringe of the alt-right.
What is your policy surrounding your push notifications for your apps in the stores, when those notifications are originating from end servers on which people are saying things that you don't like?
That's good. I switched away from IRC to Discord back around 2016 because it was tedious to use with mobile networks. Discord has served the community I moderate pretty well, but I am always concerned that the company will go under some day. I've been eyeing Matrix for a while as an alternative and it'd be a blow to have one of its largest clients removed. Here's hoping it gets back soon.
I wonder if this is some sort of an organised thing. I think there are services that sell a take down service so that they upload questionable content on the competitors apps or websites and then report it.
There are a LOT of channels unmoderated in the matrix directory that could have been reported, so this isn't surprising. I have abuse complaints emailed to your abuse address that have gone unanswered, so I don't believe that you're taking your terms of use seriously.
You can find my complaints in your inbox. It's good to know Google is taking action - will send the same complaints to them in the future since that seems to get more of a response from the devs.
sorry this is happening to you guys. i hope this situation gets sorted out.
not saying i agree with the decision here, but hn is sometimes so quick to blame google.
what surprised me though, is that you guys are aware of abusive content on the network and even put a "moderation" guide in place. so much good faith in people here...
> Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to view abusive material via Chrome, the same is true of Element.
> However, we abhor abuse, and on the default matrix.org server (...) we have a fairly strict terms of use (...) which we proactively enforce.
These two sentences are contradictory. Either you are a road or a road restaurant. You can't have it both ways.
Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like? (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.) I might of course be exaggerating a bit here, keep that in mind.
- Element and Matrix are growing but still not equipped to fight back at large against this, so it is unlikely to create too much negative press
- If Google starts to catch too much critique for this decision they can put it back and always blame $error
I believe Element will be back soon, the problem I see here is that it will be framed as an "honest mistake" and then become forgotten until they pull another stunt like this.
Even if these removals are temporary, they can still hurt growth. Let's assume a bit more malice: Couldn't Google just monitor and analyze metrics of an undesirable app (downloads, usage, hype), pick a critical point in its growth then "accidentaly" remove it for a few days, causing damage that isn't immediately apparent, but nonetheless long lasting?
>Is this google starting to test the waters when it comes to arbitrarily kicking out software they personally don't like? (open source, decentralized, privacy oriented etc.)
Absolutely. They've done similar things with similar apps. You just have to pay some attention to see the pattern.
Let's take video for example. They Kicked LBRY client off Play store not so long ago. (It eventually got reinstated.) They permanently banned BitChute app. Not app-related, but currently Rumble is suing Google for manipulating video search results in favor of YouTube. Look up the details, they are quite interesting.
Meanwhile, Google has an agreement with all Android hardware providers that forces them to pre-install YouTube and make it non-removable.
And then you occasionally see more subtle stuff like this:
"Since Android 8.0 Oreo, Google doesn't allow apps to run in the background anymore, requiring all apps which were previously keeping background connection to exclusively use its Firebase push messaging service."
I think the situation is probably more interesting than deliberate anticompetitive evil. I bet that there was indeed some policy violation, and some minor bureaucrat is reasonably applying the policy, but in a way that misses the big-picture impact of doing so, for example threads of outrage high on Hacker News. The policies back them into being a monopolistic heavy whether they mean to or not, because they're so big that they basically have to rule the world and there's no mechanism for outsiders to have a say.
The real problem is that the policies are not adapting to rapidly changing conditions (i.e. yet another takedown, howls of outrage, calls for regulation), and the big tech companies have become too sclerotic to cope with that. Worse (for them), they're vulnerable to being gamed. Once people figure out that saying "Jehovah" triggers the policy, some will keep saying "Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah" just to fuck with them and grow the popular outrage.
> The policies back them into being a monopolistic heavy whether they mean to or not
That only happens because they deliberately put themselves in a position of market power. If they didn't have such crazy amounts of power nobody would care about their "policies" misfiring. None of this is accidental in the big picture, we're well past any window of plausible deniability with Google. They can't perpetually claim incompetence.
I don't think this is the case. But in my opinion, the fact that we have no way of knowing and have to rely on Google not to do that is the real issue.
Say you demonstrate it in a fullproof way, what are you seeking damages for? A store kicking your product out according to the agreement?
I.e. the thing you need to show in court isnt that Google stopped selling your app in its store because it didn't like it rather that it's a monopolistic marketplace or the terms are somehow invalid or so on. These are much higher bars, especially with 3rd party stores and side loading being available and used on the platform. It's considered a battle to prove these things in the Apple ecosystem I can't imagine trying to prove them in Play first.
Yes, I'm convinced the YouTube algos did this to my channel during summer 2020. Their algos wait in silence until triggered.
Big tech platform who participate in anti-competitive practices (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) know the optimal time to pull the plug to flatten the curve and prevent competition from going exponential.
I believe that removal of Element from Google Play Store is a violation of EU regulation 2019/1150. Element has legal entities in Britain (which is affected by Brexit but has similar law) and France. Google is LEGALLY required to provide a justification for removal 30 days before application removal.
Anyway, you may try contacting Google using EU regulation 2019/1150 violation procedure, see https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/9969397 for more information. This may be more effective than using a regular contact procedure, as it would show Google that you are aware of this regulation and they are unlikely to win.
> Google is LEGALLY required to provide a justification for removal 30 days before application removal.
You mean this?
2. Where a provider of online intermediation services decides to terminate the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services to a given business user, it shall provide the business user concerned, at least 30 days prior to the termination taking effect, with a statement of reasons for that decision on a durable medium.
Firstly, I'm not sure whether they really terminated "the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services" or just suspended the one app store listing.
Secondly, there are exceptions:
4. The notice period in paragraph 2 shall not apply where a provider of online intermediation services:
(a) is subject to a legal or regulatory obligation which requires it to terminate the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services to a given business user in a manner which does not allow it to respect that notice period; or
(b) exercises a right of termination under an imperative reason pursuant to national law which is in compliance with Union law;
(c) can demonstrate that the business user concerned has repeatedly infringed the applicable terms and conditions, resulting in the termination of the provision of the whole of the online intermediation services in question.
In cases where the notice period in paragraph 2 does not apply, the provider of online intermediation services shall provide the business user concerned, without undue delay, with a statement of reasons for that decision on a durable medium.
So it all comes down to what their reasons for the suspension were.
That said, the reason for removal provided by Google seems to be nonsensical ("abusive content somewhere on Matrix", really?), so mediation should be effective here. This particular reason easily applies to an application like Google Chrome, and EU regulation 2019/1150 requires differential treatment to be documented, which I don't think it is in this case.
>In a thread on Twitter, Mozilla's Technical Program Manager has stated that YouTube's Polymer redesign relies heavily on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API, which is only available in Chrome. This in turn makes the site around five times slower on competing browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Mozila Firefox. He went on to say that:
>>YouTube serves a Shadow DOM polyfill to Firefox and Edge that is, unsurprisingly, slower than Chrome's native implementation. On my laptop, initial page load takes 5 seconds with the polyfill vs 1 without. Subsequent page navigation perf is comparable.
I worked around this problem in Firefox by changing the browser useragent for the YouTube site to an older version # though the fix won't last forever.
I have become accustomed to using multiple browsers and OSes simply because of all the issues surrounding video playback.
I have no idea whether this is correlated with the other recent de-platforming events, but the rapidly growing list of examples is now getting ridiculous. It’s crazy to imagine that the rug could get pulled out from beneath any of us, any time, under any pretext (or no pretext at all!). I don’t know whether a more apt metaphor alludes to serfs on feudal land, or The Trial by Kafka.
If it turns out this is because of specific discussions/channels then banning the Element app for that makes about as much sense as banning Facebook/Twitter for what some people said, or Google because of what some website says.
This is the upside down crazy we are faced with when a tiny number of giant companies make decisions on whims of ever changing policy.
We need to fight back with things like PWAs to bypass the app stores, web socket chats, distributed social platforms, and plain old web pages to publicly document these attacks on free speech. Call/email Congress too. Get friends and neighbors to do the same. They are already alerted to this growing abuse by these monopolistic giants.
Banning Element because of channels created on a decentralised network makes as much sense as banning a web-browser because of websites created on a decentralised network (i.e., the Internet). Looking forward to Chrome's imminent removal from the Play Store.
OEMs and software vendors have been pushing hard towards locking-down and controlling people's computing devices and people have largely been indifferent.
It genuinely seemed all was going to be lost until the tech industry went crazy exercising their control. Their recent (and imo unjustifiable) actions have clearly demonstrated to everyone what it means to hand over control. It remains to be seen whether people will grasp this chance to reverse the course that this rotten industry has charted and is adamant on following.
Stallman was right all along. The Google and Apple play to lock down your devices in order to "keep you safe" was not about malware or data privacy, it's about keeping away what THEY classify as thoughtcrime. It's about keeping you under their shoe. Now feed them your data or else!
People on here think that most "normal" people are going to figure out how to sideload apps.
No.
I visited my parents church at the beginning of this year and very few people were talking about that. What they were talking about is giving up on smartphones and social media altogether which is probably not a bad idea.
> What they were talking about is giving up on smartphones and social media altogether
That's incredibly encouraging to hear. It seems to be a common feature of "I quit Facebook/Twitter/whatever" accounts that once you break the immediate addiction there's no real urge to go back, so if this does happen it should have a decent chance of sticking.
(And as a mobile refusenik I sometimes feel like the last holdout left, so a bit of company would be nice.)
A lot of people already know that you can get apps directly as .apks, but the majority of them have been conditioned by corporate "propaganda" that they'll be almost certainly getting malware that way. The term "sideloading" was invented to ostracise and discourage the practice of acquiring software independently --- which was the norm up until Apple and its walled garden appeared.
But now, perhaps when sufficiently large numbers of people realise that what "malware" means to the big corporations is different from what it means to users, we'll have another mini-revolution back to the independent sharing and community trust model that the industry tried to eliminate because it would subvert their control.
I don't want to get too political here, but after seeing the outcome of the US election, and the events from then until now, I knew that stuff like this was going to happen.
Ok, that's some historical revisionism I've not see before. The term sideloading was invented by an internet storage service company to refer to copying files between remote storage buckets without having to do an upload or download. The term then got adopted by the community for copying MP3 files to a player from your computer.
People always mention a workaround when this kind of stuff happens, but censorship can be heavily effective just by reducing access.
If a medium sized business is looking at communication platforms, and element is suddenly not available on the play store, maybe they’ll just Google’s offering instead.
Ironically this move finally made me to consider Matrix. I'm thinking about spinning a server on a non FAANG provider like Vultr or Linode and setting IM services bridges from there. Nowadays I use lots of different communicators to talk to different people and most of these apps track me. If I setup a Matrix server somewhere that allows me to use those networks without having their software installed on my devices that will not only be convenient but also improve my privacy. Not to mention the Matrix network and protocol that can be used to do fun stuff.
Is Dendrite ready for use? I don't have a lot of memory available and I heard Synapse is kinda heavy on resources.
Dendrite is okay for personal use (a few users), matrix-native, using the better-tested clients. IIRC some bridges work with it, but it doesn't implement the whole appservice API, which blocks you from using some of the better bridges.
I do not recommend synapse if you don't have a lot of memory. I put an extra 8 GB stick in my server for it, bringing it to 14 GB.
It routinely likes to take more than 4GB to itself, though it has become a lot leaner lately.
On the other hand, I was expecting the bridges to me more like Bitlbee which maps personal accounts to IRC rooms. Matrix bridges seem to be more like syncing the content of a room to another.
I'm in the process of setting up a Matrix homeserver myself.
It seems like there are some missing features.
From their github:
> Is Dendrite stable?
Mostly, although there are still bugs and missing features. If you are a confident power user and you are happy to spend some time debugging things when they go wrong, then please try out Dendrite. If you are a community, organisation or business that demands stability and uptime, then Dendrite is not for you yet - please install Synapse instead.
> Does Dendrite support push notifications?
No, not yet. This is a planned feature.
> Does Dendrite support application services/bridges?
Possibly - Dendrite does have some application service support but it is not well tested. Please let us know by raising a GitHub issue if you try it and run into problems.
I got it running relatively easy. Lots of client functionality from Element do not work and the shared secret request between devices timeouts.
I also find hard to debug because of all the errors related to broken federated servers. One thing that I recommend is to set "disable_federation: true" until you get some acceptable functionality before enabling it again.
Readit News
Our assumption that this is due to someone reporting abusive content in Matrix to Google, and Element catching the blame — although this is currently speculation.
To be clear: Element is a Matrix client just as Chrome is a Web browser, and just as it’s possible to view abusive material via Chrome, the same is true of Element.
However, we abhor abuse, and on the default matrix.org server (and other Matrix servers the core team maintains) we have a fairly strict terms of use at https://matrix.org/legal/terms-and-conditions#6-play-nice-cl... which we proactively enforce. Meanwhile we have a comprehensive toolset at https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation to help folks moderate, and are making good process with decentralised reputation to empower users and admins to filter out stuff they don’t want to see, as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix....
So, it’s very unfortunate and frustrating that we’re in this position - hopefully Google will explain what’s going on shortly.
We spent today doing an audit by revisiting recent issues reported to abuse@matrix.org, which had already identified and acted on the content in question. We also took the opportunity to explain how Element and Matrix fit together, what decentralisation is, and the steps we take to mitigate abuse on the servers we run.
As a result, it looks like the app has just been reinstated while I was typing this message: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app.
Thanks everyone for your patience and support while we sorted this out (and huge thanks to the overall Element team who spent their Saturdays on the audit).
Did the VP offer any explanation as to why you had not received any communcation from Google?
This kind of language is very wishy-washy and leaves everything to the imagination. 9/10 times the issue is terrorism or CP. So which of the two was it? And why aren't you comfortable enough to share that reason with your prospective users?
This phrasing suggests it was probably not even illegal to publish.
What if this content had been something that Google finds politically or commercially disfavorable to its interests, rather than something we would all think is intolerable? What if it _is_ like that?
I expect we'll never get a useful explanation from Google for why this incident happened -- abuse teams, like fraud teams, are worried about the bad guys using the explanations to tune their tactics and so tend to never explain anything.
But the details of how Google screwed up here also don't matter. A sudden Friday night suspension of a popular, legitimate app is insane! That possibility shouldn't be in the flowchart.
I get that for malware/spam/etc., it's important to immediately suspend, but I don't understand why Google doesn't take more seriously the very negative harm caused by doing that to a legitimate app. Some notice and appeal opportunity should be required before suspending a popular app by a legitimate publisher.
I'm upset, and a bit scared, but I can't say I'm surprised. This sort of random/erroneous/arbitrary punishment without explanation happens all the time with Google and other major tech companies. And every app developer I've met has experienced _significant_ disruption to their app publishing efforts due arbitrary/random rejections by an Apple app store reviewer, and this has been the case for years, so we can pretty confident that the vendors won't improve unless they are forced to do so.
There needs to be regulatory oversight of the Google/Apple app stores and the negative consequences for everyone else of their error-prone and ruthless enforcement processes.
The regularity oversight needs to address a different aspect: google is world-wide de-facto monopoly for people not owning an iPhone. At least for the most part of the freer world, China is different story.
Until Google is broken up or fair competition is not achieved, content regulation does not help. As a European I want to care about US regulation as much as about US tax laws: not at all. The US is not the world-regulator. We elect governments in Europe that have no power to do anything in this sector. I don't say Google should be forbidden in Europe, we are not China. But competition and more choice for users needs to be guaranteed by effective legislation, in practice that against Google and Apple.
They didn't "screw up". Or rather, that's not the main problem. The problem is that Google has the power to block the main channel of distribution of a piece of software.
Now, it's true that you can "just" get Element elsewhere, but the effective user lock-in into a single-corporation-controlled download hub ("app store") - that's the problem. And Google has gotten that quite right... for itself.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Now I may disagree with parts those precepts in stronger or weaker forms, but it is disingenuous to claim that the client application is exactly as legitimate as a web browser just because the client application is legally but not functionally separate from the federated network.
There are big players with clout that take issue to instability such as this. How can I rely on my company using Element when it gets pulled? Not cool Google...
To the element team, reach out to me if you can't get the support you are looking for.
If Google were to "ban" slack from their store, their browsers, etc. then you would be quite in trouble.
But with matrix, just pick a different client and move on.
Click on "Assemble GPlay Debug version" (or "Assemble FDroid Debug version" if you don't have Google Play Services), then click on "Artifacts" and then choose your apk from there.
FluffyChat would be the main contender.
But why? Matrix is tiny and no threat to Google services.
I'd personally expect three letter agencies to be involved here. The US government has been aggressively going after encrypted communication for years, with extreme tactics like personal intimidation and secret courts. Read this story about a secure email provider if you doubt it. [1]
This doesn't work so well with EU based companies, even though they have been pushing EU governments to do the same. (There recently was a leak that the encryption ban currently discussed in the EU parliament has some roots in Five Eyes efforts and that governments were pressured by the US to support it. Published by FAZ or Sueddeutsche, I'm trying to find the article...)
I also doubt that iMessage and What's App gaining "backdoors" to their encryption is purely motivated by user experience.
At a time where a lot of people want to switch communication platforms, nipping any such efforts early might well be viewed as important.
"Abusive content" is a convenient excuse that can be arbitrarily applied.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-the-...
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
It's definitely not Google style.
But I hope Matrix will get more promotion in result.
There are people here who work on mobile applications. If they depend on Google and Apple delivering their app to their clients, it's still unacceptable that they can potentially put you out of business, just like that. I already saw a couple of people here that claimed it happened to them too. Without any reason, without the ability to appeal, nothing.
Pattle also appears to have been removed. Ditto and FluffyChat at the moment appear to still be up on the store though. For those unaware, these are all Matrix clients.
> Morning all. We've had contact from Google confirming that the suspension is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix; we're working with them to explain how Element works and get the situation resolved.
Incidentally I was always kinda surprised that the upgrade nag links in Riot Android redirected to Play store instead of f-droid
In the meantime, what is the explanation for the F-Droid version lagging behind?
If your going to argue with a straight face the this new situation is the same as Parler, your putting Element side by side with some very bad company.
However, when looking on a bigger picture of the recent takedowns and trying to make sense of it, it does indeed seem to be connected. The only conclusion that seems rational to me is as follows:
Everyone tries to push their burden of moderation on people below them, because no one can actually keep up with it. And if the moderation is not enforced, they risk being taken down by someone above them. That would explain why everyone is so trigger happy when it comes to censorship. When the WallStreetBets people were taken down by Facebook and Discord, they didn't ban the individuals who were actually violating the policy, but the entire community.
It's also worth to note, that the takedowns can be enforced selectively, as we see here - Google obviously won't take down their own browser or email client, that also allows to access abusive content - assuming that's what Element was taken down for. It's probably selectively enforced on the social media too, but I'm out of the loop on what actually goes on there, so to be fair, I cannot prove it.
If this is actually what is happening, the only solution as far as I see it, is to extend the First Amendment to social media. Another solution could be to convince the people and the media to stop pressuring companies into deplatforming other people, but that's in my opinion definitely not going to happen. So it's either applying the protections of 1A to the internet or the censorship will get worse and worse.
Element is a chat client. It's an empty piece of software for use with your own choice of server. Element is to a chat server, as Thunderbird is to an email server. It's basically a glorified IRC client. It contains no content of its own.
Parler was basically a curated, centrally run, Facebook-message-board-replacement for neonazis, antisemites, qanon conspiracy theorists, and the lunatic fringe of the alt-right.
You can find my complaints in your inbox. It's good to know Google is taking action - will send the same complaints to them in the future since that seems to get more of a response from the devs.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
not saying i agree with the decision here, but hn is sometimes so quick to blame google.
what surprised me though, is that you guys are aware of abusive content on the network and even put a "moderation" guide in place. so much good faith in people here...
> However, we abhor abuse, and on the default matrix.org server (...) we have a fairly strict terms of use (...) which we proactively enforce.
These two sentences are contradictory. Either you are a road or a road restaurant. You can't have it both ways.
The second sentence is about matrix.org
- Element and Matrix are growing but still not equipped to fight back at large against this, so it is unlikely to create too much negative press
- If Google starts to catch too much critique for this decision they can put it back and always blame $error
I believe Element will be back soon, the problem I see here is that it will be framed as an "honest mistake" and then become forgotten until they pull another stunt like this.
Even if these removals are temporary, they can still hurt growth. Let's assume a bit more malice: Couldn't Google just monitor and analyze metrics of an undesirable app (downloads, usage, hype), pick a critical point in its growth then "accidentaly" remove it for a few days, causing damage that isn't immediately apparent, but nonetheless long lasting?
Absolutely. They've done similar things with similar apps. You just have to pay some attention to see the pattern.
Let's take video for example. They Kicked LBRY client off Play store not so long ago. (It eventually got reinstated.) They permanently banned BitChute app. Not app-related, but currently Rumble is suing Google for manipulating video search results in favor of YouTube. Look up the details, they are quite interesting.
Meanwhile, Google has an agreement with all Android hardware providers that forces them to pre-install YouTube and make it non-removable.
"Since Android 8.0 Oreo, Google doesn't allow apps to run in the background anymore, requiring all apps which were previously keeping background connection to exclusively use its Firebase push messaging service."
https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas...
The real problem is that the policies are not adapting to rapidly changing conditions (i.e. yet another takedown, howls of outrage, calls for regulation), and the big tech companies have become too sclerotic to cope with that. Worse (for them), they're vulnerable to being gamed. Once people figure out that saying "Jehovah" triggers the policy, some will keep saying "Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah" just to fuck with them and grow the popular outrage.
That only happens because they deliberately put themselves in a position of market power. If they didn't have such crazy amounts of power nobody would care about their "policies" misfiring. None of this is accidental in the big picture, we're well past any window of plausible deniability with Google. They can't perpetually claim incompetence.
I don't think so. A lot of people were not aware of Matrix even, it's geek tech.
Now, just watch how this Streisand effect unfolds over the weekend.
And if this is actually a pattern with the Google Play Store, couldn’t someone design an elaborate set of traps to demonstrate this in Court?
I.e. the thing you need to show in court isnt that Google stopped selling your app in its store because it didn't like it rather that it's a monopolistic marketplace or the terms are somehow invalid or so on. These are much higher bars, especially with 3rd party stores and side loading being available and used on the platform. It's considered a battle to prove these things in the Apple ecosystem I can't imagine trying to prove them in Play first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon
Deleted Comment
Big tech platform who participate in anti-competitive practices (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) know the optimal time to pull the plug to flatten the curve and prevent competition from going exponential.
Anyway, you may try contacting Google using EU regulation 2019/1150 violation procedure, see https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/9969397 for more information. This may be more effective than using a regular contact procedure, as it would show Google that you are aware of this regulation and they are unlikely to win.
Note that I'm not a lawyer.
You mean this?
2. Where a provider of online intermediation services decides to terminate the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services to a given business user, it shall provide the business user concerned, at least 30 days prior to the termination taking effect, with a statement of reasons for that decision on a durable medium.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
Firstly, I'm not sure whether they really terminated "the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services" or just suspended the one app store listing.
Secondly, there are exceptions:
4. The notice period in paragraph 2 shall not apply where a provider of online intermediation services:
(a) is subject to a legal or regulatory obligation which requires it to terminate the provision of the whole of its online intermediation services to a given business user in a manner which does not allow it to respect that notice period; or
(b) exercises a right of termination under an imperative reason pursuant to national law which is in compliance with Union law;
(c) can demonstrate that the business user concerned has repeatedly infringed the applicable terms and conditions, resulting in the termination of the provision of the whole of the online intermediation services in question.
In cases where the notice period in paragraph 2 does not apply, the provider of online intermediation services shall provide the business user concerned, without undue delay, with a statement of reasons for that decision on a durable medium.
So it all comes down to what their reasons for the suspension were.
EDIT: Just saw this update: https://mobile.twitter.com/element_hq/status/135546565011484... So they revealed their reasons within 12 hours, which I'm going to file under "without undue delay". (But did they use a "durable medium"?)
That said, the reason for removal provided by Google seems to be nonsensical ("abusive content somewhere on Matrix", really?), so mediation should be effective here. This particular reason easily applies to an application like Google Chrome, and EU regulation 2019/1150 requires differential treatment to be documented, which I don't think it is in this case.
>https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-executive-claims-that-go...
>In a thread on Twitter, Mozilla's Technical Program Manager has stated that YouTube's Polymer redesign relies heavily on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API, which is only available in Chrome. This in turn makes the site around five times slower on competing browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Mozila Firefox. He went on to say that:
>>YouTube serves a Shadow DOM polyfill to Firefox and Edge that is, unsurprisingly, slower than Chrome's native implementation. On my laptop, initial page load takes 5 seconds with the polyfill vs 1 without. Subsequent page navigation perf is comparable.
I have become accustomed to using multiple browsers and OSes simply because of all the issues surrounding video playback.
If it turns out this is because of specific discussions/channels then banning the Element app for that makes about as much sense as banning Facebook/Twitter for what some people said, or Google because of what some website says.
We need to fight back with things like PWAs to bypass the app stores, web socket chats, distributed social platforms, and plain old web pages to publicly document these attacks on free speech. Call/email Congress too. Get friends and neighbors to do the same. They are already alerted to this growing abuse by these monopolistic giants.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
It genuinely seemed all was going to be lost until the tech industry went crazy exercising their control. Their recent (and imo unjustifiable) actions have clearly demonstrated to everyone what it means to hand over control. It remains to be seen whether people will grasp this chance to reverse the course that this rotten industry has charted and is adamant on following.
No.
I visited my parents church at the beginning of this year and very few people were talking about that. What they were talking about is giving up on smartphones and social media altogether which is probably not a bad idea.
That's incredibly encouraging to hear. It seems to be a common feature of "I quit Facebook/Twitter/whatever" accounts that once you break the immediate addiction there's no real urge to go back, so if this does happen it should have a decent chance of sticking.
(And as a mobile refusenik I sometimes feel like the last holdout left, so a bit of company would be nice.)
But now, perhaps when sufficiently large numbers of people realise that what "malware" means to the big corporations is different from what it means to users, we'll have another mini-revolution back to the independent sharing and community trust model that the industry tried to eliminate because it would subvert their control.
I don't want to get too political here, but after seeing the outcome of the US election, and the events from then until now, I knew that stuff like this was going to happen.
https://fosdem.org/2021/
Uh oh
If a medium sized business is looking at communication platforms, and element is suddenly not available on the play store, maybe they’ll just Google’s offering instead.
Is Dendrite ready for use? I don't have a lot of memory available and I heard Synapse is kinda heavy on resources.
I do not recommend synapse if you don't have a lot of memory. I put an extra 8 GB stick in my server for it, bringing it to 14 GB.
It routinely likes to take more than 4GB to itself, though it has become a lot leaner lately.
On the other hand, I was expecting the bridges to me more like Bitlbee which maps personal accounts to IRC rooms. Matrix bridges seem to be more like syncing the content of a room to another.
From their github:
> Is Dendrite stable?
Mostly, although there are still bugs and missing features. If you are a confident power user and you are happy to spend some time debugging things when they go wrong, then please try out Dendrite. If you are a community, organisation or business that demands stability and uptime, then Dendrite is not for you yet - please install Synapse instead.
> Does Dendrite support push notifications?
No, not yet. This is a planned feature.
> Does Dendrite support application services/bridges?
Possibly - Dendrite does have some application service support but it is not well tested. Please let us know by raising a GitHub issue if you try it and run into problems.
I also find hard to debug because of all the errors related to broken federated servers. One thing that I recommend is to set "disable_federation: true" until you get some acceptable functionality before enabling it again.