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Taliban App's Publication Points To Holes In Google's App Review Process (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A propaganda app developed by the Taliban was live on the Google Play store for two days before being removed, raising questions about Google's app review process, which includes a combination of human editors and algorithms. According to a Taliban spokesperson speaking with Bloomberg, the app was "part of our advanced technological efforts to make more global audience." Its creation signaled how the group was expanding its use of technology to reach a wider audience. When the app was first removed two days after it went live, the Taliban claimed it was due to "technical issues." In actuality, Google removed the app itself, as it was in violation of its policy that bans apps promoting hate speech, violence and illegal activities. The app's publication is a high-profile example of a failure in Google's app review process, and one that raises questions about how thorough its human reviewers are with the apps they test. The company announced last March that it had actually begun using algorithms along with an internal team of reviewers to analyze apps for policy violations prior to publishing. It said apps would be reviewed by this team, hands-on, before the apps go live on Google Play. Since Google relies heavily on its community of users and developers to flag apps for additional review, some apps are bound to fall through the cracks, leaving Google to reactively ban them instead of prohibit their publication in the first place. It's fair to say Google's review process isn't perfect and could use some tweaking.
Why not instead use it and feed them tons and tons of bogus data?
Let them waste their time responding to spam instead of hurting people.
Last time I looked, the Taliban were a political faction in the war-torn country of Afghanistan. Back when they conquered Kabul - after ~20 years of continous war between local militia - they were welcome by the population as bringers of peace. Sure, their medieval opinions and the the many restrictions they imposed on individual freedom decreased their popularity in the years to follow, but their rule was not really unlike that of "US friends" like Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban are not "Al Quaida" or "ISIS", they actually were supported for years financially and by delivering weapons from the US. I understand that later on, the US disliked them because of differences on the handling of terror suspects based in Afghanistan. But what part of this actually reasoning to remove an App or theirs? If preaching a radical interpretation of Islam is "hate speech", I suppose all Apps published by Saudi Arabia etc. are banned, too? Or if having been an US-opponent in some war is reason enough for App bans, all Japanese, Italian and German Apps are banned, too?
Moron. Do you know what the Taliban would do to a person like you if they had their way? They would cut your head off, literally. They consider you an infidel. It is nice to sit in your suburban house and wax romantically about politics, but the Taliban would literally cut your head off if they were allowed to.
Whether the Taliban actually "tolerated & protected terrorists" while they were in power in Afghanistan is still a matter of dispute. Even western sources wrote that the Taliban indicated willingness to prosecute Osama & friends, but under their jurisdiction. The US insisted that they had to hand over the suspects to the US immediately, long before there was evidence presented connecting Osama to the 9/11 acts of terror. The Taliban standpoint on the terror suspects looked like a welcome pretense to quickly start a war against this "no-longer-our-bad-guys" group - which didn't even result in capturing Osama, who took shelter in yet another of those "friend"-countries ruled by religious fundamentalists.