Social Media Site Gab Sues Google For Antitrust Violations Following Ban From Play Store (washingtonpost.com)

The social media site Gab.ai is accusing Google of violating federal antitrust laws when the tech giant booted Gab from the Google Play Store, according to lawsuit filed this week. From a report: The legal action is the latest salvo in an escalating battle between right-leaning technologists and leaders against Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Google. Gab alleges in the lawsuit that "Google deprives competitors, on a discriminatory basis, of access to the App Store, which an essential facility or resource." "Google is the biggest threat to the free flow of information," Gab chief executive Andrew Torba said in a statement. "Gab started to fight against the big tech companies in the marketplace, and their monopolistic conduct has forced us to bring the fight to the courtroom." Alternative source.

Comments

Oreo is less monopolistic

[tepples]

Apart from a few very early devices sold by U.S. carrier AT&T, essentially all Android phones and tablets have an option to allow installation of applications from outside Google Play Store. This means that Gab can use any or all of three options:

• Submit its app to Amazon Appstore.
• Make its app available for unknown sources.
• Publish an API so that the developer of a microblogging application can make a client as free software and submit its source code to F-Droid.

In fact, Android 8 "Oreo" makes this less monopolistic by letting the user designate any app as a store rather than using the system-wide, all-or-nothing "Unknown sources" setting of previous versions.

Who is Gab?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the post doesn't mention it, I had to look it up. Gab.ai is claiming to be a "Free Speech" competitor to Twitter. Google banned them for "Hate Speech". A lot of users on that site seem to be Alt-Right types.

More information
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-app-store-gab-ban-hate-speech-2017-8

Re: Who is Gab?

[bradley13]

No, it's legit. Their app was in the play store, until some SJW in Google got offended at some post or other. iirc, Google demanded that Gab delete the post, Gab refused, since the only thing wrong with the post was the politics. So Google banned their app.

For those saying that Google's app store isn't a monopoly: tell us, please, what percentage of Android apps are installed from anywhere else.

Re:Who is Gab?

[spacepimp]

This is the same as it has always been. People need to endure the idiots or give up free speech. you can't have both.

Re: Who is Gab?

[AmiMoJo]

Why make up bullshit when we can just google (or bing) the real reason?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

It was removed for ToS violations, specifically not having moderation in place to deal with content that advocates violence or hatred against groups of people.

tell us, please, what percentage of Android apps are installed from anywhere else.

Sadly I can't find any stats, but both Amazon's Appstore and F-Droid have been going for years and seem to be reasonably popular. And there is nothing stopping Gab simply offering the app on their own web site too, or are they complaining that they are not popular enough and need free advertising on Play to survive?

Re:Who is Gab?

[AmiMoJo]

People need to endure the idiots or give up free speech. you can't have both.

Spam/troll filters are not anti-free-speech. They are pro-freedom-not-to-listen.

More over, no-one owes you a soap box.

Re:Who is Gab?

[Kielistic]

You were called out for that exact falsehood 8 days ago and shown to be completely fabricating your "facts" (here). Yet here you are making the exact same lie again.

Do you honestly wonder why people consider you a troll? This is a common pattern of behaviour from you. Make bullshit claim, get proved wrong, disappear, show up elsewhere making the exact same claim. If Gab bans left leaning people then you can prove it or at the very least find a non made-up claim about it.

I don't know anything about Gab nor do I care to and I assume a lot of other people don't either. I assume that is why you feel safe making such brazen lies.

Re: Who is Gab?

[UnknowingFool]

And there is nothing stopping Gab simply offering the app on their own web site too, or are they complaining that they are not popular enough and need free advertising on Play to survive?

I often find that people who complain that other people are "too sensitive" are the first to cry and whine when something doesn't go their way. I believe it's called projection.

Re: Who is Gab?

[spacepimp]

This is very simple stuff. Most people can figure it out by grade school:

Defending free speech is not defending the asshat on the other end, but their right to say their asshat things.

If you can't understand why that is different, then please go sit at the kids table until you are ready for the adult world. I don't agree with your simplistic nickelodeon logic, but I will defend to the death your right to spit out ignorant comments like the one I found childishly naive.

Re:Who is Gab?

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair to Gab, they have not been banning people since opening the sign up process. Back when it was invite only, when well known left leaving Twitter users asked them for invites they just blocked them.

So fair enough to Gab, they do seem to have reformed and stuck to their principles since leaving beta.

Re: Who is Gab?

[Applehu Akbar]

Ami, the problem with toadying up to Google as a monopolist because it suppressed speech that you don't like is that if they get away with it, inevitably speech on your side will get suppressed too.

It's time to require that major Internet infrastructure companies that handle traffic, domain registration, and search behave as common carriers. This is the only way to implement Net neutrality.

Where's the Constitution when you need it?

[bill.pev]

Oh the irony..

Re:Monopoly

[Luthair]

Android, unlike Apple has always allowed installation of third party APKs and adding third party stores. Since Amazon operates one its hard to see how Google would be considered a monopoly.

I'm not a lawyer, but isn't anti-trust typically about attempting to use your monopoly in one market to enter another? Doesn't appear to be the case here.

Very smart

[Kohath]

If they lose, they are no worse off than before. But the news coverage gives them lots of publicity to promote their business.

Google is clearly just blacklisting them because Google wants to shut them up. The cult leaders at Google are committed to persecuting nonbelievers and heretics.

Re:Monopoly

[Derekloffin]

Well, the Internet Explorer case shows that having the technical ability to install other products does not negate the anti-trust issues. Also, Google is already in the social media biz so this could easily be argued to be them using their Android position to push out competition in the social media sphere. I'm sure Google will counter argue they carry many other competitors in their store in their defense though. Whether that will hold up though is questionable.

Re:Monopoly

[AmiMoJo]

Indeed, it's odd that they are not suing Apple since Apple also banned their app. Maybe the far right prefers Android.

Re:There's more than the google play store..

[Kohath]

Then, what will you say if Google removed Reddit from it's search results?

You think this is about ideas when it's actually about power. If Google can't use it's power to bully nonbelievers and heretics, then what's that power good for at all?

Reddit is different because Reddit follows the cult rules to some extent. No need to bully them when they're on the same team.

Re:gab.io

[DNS-and-BIND]

The word "nazi" today more often indicates the presence of a radical leftist (or left-wing propagandist) than it does actual nazis.

Re:Sauce for the goose

[DNS-and-BIND]

Negative. Christian bakers refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding because it's against their religion: fined $130,000.

Muslim truck driver refused to deliver alcohol because it's against his religion: awarded $240,000.

Not in this case

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

Didn't the Supreme Court just rule that you can refuse to do business with someone for any reason you want?

Sorta, but here's the kicker. Their specific reasons were "Gab allows hate" and then a lot of images showing Twitter openly tolerating hate speech came up. So now Google has to explain why they hold a startup to a MUCH higher standard than Twitter, particularly in light of a lot of people noticing that Twitter doesn't even bother to apply its rules fairly.

So TL;DR this is now a potential case of collusion under anti-trust law to suppress competition to Twitter which puts it in a far more serious, long term possibly criminal, light.

Re:Monopoly

[Marisaze]

Most people cannot remove Play though, as it's completely unremovable without modifying the device to allow root access. You may be able to disable it, I've never tried, but that leads to further issues as it has positioned itself as the supplier of GPS location information. Many map apps won't work without Play installed as a result.

I'm hopeful that "you technically can operate the device without this, if you're willing to jump through hoops and void your warranty" doesn't hold up in court. In the same breath, I also know that the average public is computer stupid and Google might be able to convice a jury.

Re:Monopoly

[AuMatar]

Look at sales numbers. The world prefers Android.

Re:Monopoly

[Marisaze]

Default is king. It could be argued that this is an abuse of Google's power as the default app provider. IE got in trouble because it couldn't be removed and was the default available option. You can even use IE to get an alternative to IE, while I don't see Amazon's store or F-Droid in Google Play's listings. Even if they were, it would bank on people knowing that alternatives are possible (which most don't, unlike browsers).

It's entirely possible that Gab could make this argument, it's not wholly unreasonable and it's not that dissimilar to the IE case. The thing most in Google's favor is that people don't hate Google like they did Microsoft, and even then they're getting a reputation for being creepy even among the tech illiterate.

Re:Monopoly

[AmiMoJo]

Default is king.

Tell that to Bing/MSN, or Internet Explorer.

Fighting words only exist face-to-face

[Xenographic]

Three points:

• Fighting words must be "face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation."
• Online speech isn't face-to-face.
• There's serious doubt about whether the exemption itself is still valid.

Here's a more complete explanation written by an actual first amendment lawyer:

Trope Seven: "Fighting words"

Example: "There are two exceptions from the constitutional right to free speech – defamation and the doctrine of “fighting words” or “incitement,” said John Szmer, an associate professor of political science and a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte." McClatchy.com, May 4, 2015.

No discussion of controversial speech is complete without some idiot suggesting that it may be "fighting words."

In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. If the "fighting words" doctrine survives — that's in serious doubt — it's limited to face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation. The Supreme Court has rejected every opportunity to use the doctrine to support restrictions on speech. The "which by their very utterance inflict injury" language the Supreme Court dropped in passing finds no support whatsoever in modern law — the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence.

That's almost always irrelevant to the sort of speech at issue when the media invokes the trope.

Source: https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/

Re:Alternate Title

[Baron_Yam]

I know Bing and other search engines exist, but at least in the West we're pretty much at a place where Google is the gateway to knowledge on the Internet. There's a reason 'google' is an English verb now.

I'd be perfectly fine with them developing data mining tools for law enforcement to look for links to items that are actionable at a local level, but when Google drops something from search results, they're acting as a state censor.

I'm not entirely comfortable with Google doing something other than more-or-less blind indexing based on general parameters. It might be their right in the legal sense but that doesn't necessarily make it right in the philosophical sense, even if I dislike and disagree with the people they're currently affecting.

Re:Sauce for the goose

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are trying to quote Snopes while being deliberately deceptive about what the article actually says, and what the facts of the two cases were.

The only "false" part in the Snopes article is that Sharia was not imposed on the trucking company; rather the diver exercised his religious views. The company could have had someone else drive - there were alternatives available - but chose not to do so, despite the fact that it was no undue burden. So the driver won the lawsuit.

In the Christian Baker case, the bakery was punished for exercising their religious views. There were alternate bakers available locally, so going to a different baker would have presented no undue hardship upon the customer. The obvious logical conclusion, following from the first case, would be that the party that had an alternative that was not an "undue burden" would lose.
However, a very vocal Left-leaning judge in Left-leaning Oregon found that being denied a cake was a personal trauma so harmful that it deserved more than $100,000 in compensation.

That's two contradictory outcomes. That's bias against Christians.

Re:Monopoly

[thegarbz]

but isn't anti-trust typically about attempting to use your monopoly in one market to enter another?

Anti-trust is about abusing market share to your own gain, nothing more fine grained than that. It can be used for entering another market, it can be used for blocking or ruining a competitor in your own market, it can be used to simply screw your customers.