Illegal markets? It is legal in all of Canada, in pretty much the way alcohol is. Are the apps unavailable in Canada where the legal pot (which is in some cases far superior to the shaggy bits one would get on the streets) comes from government certified sources?
But then again, I haven't seen a Google booze ad. Do they allow alcohol ads?
It's the danger that we're getting as these global companies have more influence over the entire planet. The morality of the home country is pushed on those who want to use the service. Same thing with the whole Google / Huawei stoush. US priorities have an impact on users all over the world.
The morality of the largest economies (generally backed by the largest military) has always been pushed onto others. Isn't this the way the world has worked since the dawn of the first civilizations?
Not you specifically, but most people on HN have probably been the overwhelming beneficiaries of this approach.
>Isn't this the way the world has worked since the dawn of the first civilizations?
Not really, for most of humanity's history people could barely even figure out what happened on the other side of the mountain or the sea.
The extreme degree of globalisation that carries these policies and attitudes across the globe is pretty new. It wasn't even the case in the 60s or 70s say. It's predominantly online markets that are dominated by individual companies, control used to be significantly more national.
> Not really, for most of humanity's history people could barely even figure out what happened on the other side of the mountain or the sea.
And yet, for around 30,000 years people have been going off to battle to impose ideals, take stuff, or stop other folks imposing ideals and taking stuff. The average mook in those battles may not have known what was going on, nor did the folks who stayed home in relative safety, but make no mistake, the wealthy and powerful have been imposing their morality as long as there has been a threat to wealth and power... it just happens much more quickly and broadly these days.
British imperialism managed this over a century ago, although the globalised culture wasn't present throughout the colonised societies, only in the upper level. Telegrams could pass the most important news all the way to Capetown, before the radio took over.
This also came with the imposition of Victorian morals everywhere (bans on homosexuality, mandatory opium).
Let's take a relatively trivial example: TV "appropriateness." Mainland western Europe have different standards to the US. They are more tolerant of bad language and nudity in daytime programming, less tolerant of violence. Other places have different tolerances (political & religious taboos, often).
Yeah. To watch a Norwegian educational series for kids to prepare them for puberty, you first have to confirm that you're above 18 on Youtube... They've outright removed episode 6, since it covers female puberty, while the episodes about males is allowed.
>They've outright removed episode 6, since it covers female puberty, while the episodes about males is allowed.
I don't think that's the reason. Episode 1 has full female nudity and a scene with menstrual blood running down a leg. Episode 6 has a close up of a very cleanly waxed vagina from a skinny woman. That probably tripped child porn filters (automated or manual).
Did not expect my day to include watching Norweigan puberty videos.
The video in the link has a prepubescent and mid-pubescent penis that didn't trip any kiddy porn filter. So the question remains valid. It seems conspicuous and one-sided for a filter like that.
I didn't see the bloody one. Just as well, because the last time I saw that was in a horror movie.
>The video in the link has a prepubescent and mid-pubescent penis that didn't trip any kiddy porn filter. So the question remains valid. It seems conspicuous and one-sided for a filter like that.
Even if it is, an automated filter being more sensitive to detecting female child porn than male is a lot more innocuous then banning a video because it talks about female puberty.
Yep, and facebook too, yet it's very clearly within the ability of both companies to have their algorithms and people categorise non universally mainstream content and only censor what's appropriate to the society that's viewing it.
It's not quite the same thing but a company like netflix offers different shows in different countries, spotify's the same for songs. This is more down to licensing than censorship and the scale is quite different from social media but it's a demonstration on how a company can provide different content per region.
Of course, if you flip the argument on it's head, we're annoyed that a company like Google is censoring things which are allowed or common place in society outside of the US. we wouldn't want google censoring content that we consider "enlightened" into countries which we consider backwards (which they no doubt do) and that's always the hypocrisy of these positions.
This is a good argument in favor of federation. Allow local nodes with local users to define their own content policies. Other nodes can choose to federate with them or not. Cultural distinctions are thus preserved.
In many countries, marijuana is an illegal drug. In such countries, dealing with the illegal drugs is a serious crime. Also, dealing with the person/company/organization who deal with the illegal drugs are also illegal.
The end result is, global companies can't do business that is legal on some countries, but illegal on majority of coutries.
On some illegal activities such as endorsing the woman's right, freedom of speech, democracy, alcohol(There are countries which prohibit these), they ignore it since it has established its place or not dealing with are also serious crime, or the countries which prohibit such act is minority. But for totally new topic like marijuana, It's safer to not dealing with.
> global companies can't do business that is legal on some countries, but illegal on majority of coutries.
Can't they make the apps available in certain countries but not others? I.e. do something that's legal in the country in question? I don't know the legal specifics but it's seem silly to me if they weren't able to.
They would have to break off a separate company that never passes a cent of profit back to the original company.
Marijuana is federally illegal in the United States, helping people buy it could easily be argued as a crime which exposes/risks Google's EVERYTHING - financial holdings, records, government contracts etc.
China's adherence to the Paris Accord despite agreeing to far greater cuts in emissions than most of the developed world is globally recognised.
Trump pulled out of the worldwide agreement a few years ago and regardless the States wasn't even on track to meet it's paltry targets.
The hypocrisy is front and center on the world stage.
How do you know China does this? I haven't seen any proof of them listening to "rules", WTO or any other. They say yes, but they seem to do: "meh". A plethora of examples exist.
Trump pulled out and a lot of companies objected and states added local laws to object to him. Companies did extra efforts, without subsidies, because they can.
Trump ( luckily) isn't a generalisation of America.
As ofc XI isn't, but XI ( more the communist party) is the absolute boss of every Chinese company. If he really says no, it's done.
And of course, he wants everyone to buy solar and all other tech of the Chinese. So there is money involved ;)
Trump seems to be just a puppet for some game-over companies, extending their EOL.
This got me thinking, this is kind of encouraged from an engineering perspective. It's a lot easier to not have to maintain all these different versions, and just have one. Not necessarily the reason they're doing it because google already has this working at scale for search, but still intriguing at least for smaller companies that operate globally.
In this case it isn't. Marijuana is federally illegal in the United States, if they profit at all from apps that help connect buyers and sellers of an illicit (in the U.S>) substance, they suddenly expose themselves. They could lose government contracts, they could face criminal investigation, could have funds seized, could have payment processors and banks drop them as customers, etc.
Yeah, although I work in the fintech industry and we have to do a lot of work to comply with local regulations and data sovereignty laws in most countries. It's daunting but you can still engineer to have the same versions of applications deployed globally with different configurations per region.
Which demonstrates the benefit of having decentralized websites deciding which ads are okay rather than one centralized global distribution platform deciding what's "acceptable content" for every app uploaded there.
I'm not sure this demonstrates anything of the sort. Google delegates this specific decision to AdSense partners, but there are plenty of other categories of ads which Google prohibits outright (like guns, pornography, or profanity).
Sounds like they're actually only banning delivery apps, even in Canada most (if not all?) of the delivery services being offered by Weedmaps for example are illegal. In most provinces you'd need to order from a provincially run store or go through the medical system where you can order from a specific licensed producer to get it legally by mail.
The highest end concentrates are only available on the black/grey market currently, and if you have some skilled growers in your relationship circle you can access some much better stuff (more potent and/or grown with less chemical additives, not to mention a much fresher curing process and a more thorough trimming job) than whatever is the highest end stuff they sell in the stores. They have put a limit on potency and their regulations mean that the weed they sell in stores in way too dry once it reaches costumers. It's not the biggest deal to most people and better than putting people behind bars, but there could also be a much better craft cannabis culture that could be promoted by small businesses rather than the corporate consolidation the liberal party is currently encouraging. In my opinion it would make users build a healthier rapport to this drug, in the same way that getting into fancy wine as well as craft beers and spirits can lead to a more gastronomic approach to alcohol than drinking coors light and vodka.
Other than the potency limit, what limits legal stores from fixing all the other issues (bad trimming job, dry, chemical additives, craft cannabis, etc). It just seems like since it's new and everyone's jumping to buy it, there's more focus on quantity right now, but maybe as the market gets more competitive that'll change.
I don't see why it'd be different to, for example, Starbucks vs your local quality coffee shop, both co-existing.
Again, other than the potency, I'm asking, what stops the "local coffee shop" to legally be allowed to operate? What stops from a local place charging more to do a better job at quality? If there's demand for it, I'm sure it'll eventually pop up.
There are limited numbers of licenses granted in Canada, awarded by lottery I am told. When some big companies set a bad trend via race to the bottom, many who would like to do better are prohibited from growing due to the licenses issue.
The way legalization happened here is incompetent. There are even output limits: for one friends little grow op, where he is not allowed to overproduce.
Considering they have actively featured some of alcohol delivery apps in the store at some point (either at the Food and Drink category level, or in a "Plan that Memorial Day BBQ" type curation), then I assume that it is fine?
It maybe starts to get a bit more hairy since some of them now also sell tobacco and CBD products alongside the alcohol.
There's a big difference between "An official Google blog post said it's okay", to the same level of certainty as the pot post linked above, and "An app store curator selected an app". App store curators are likely independent contractors hired by a third-party management firm, for one. They're not quite clear about whether "featured apps" are endorsed by Google or merely selected by "staff" (a term that usually includes contractors), but I imagine if you made a fuss about "Google promotes XYZ evil app", they would quietly update the legalese to say that "featured" does not imply "endorsed" or similar.
More than likely, Google's lawyers were worried about DA's in various US states, cities or feds going after them. This has little or nothing to do with "morality" or "ethics." This is CYA, not a moral panic.
It has become a real problem for Canadians visiting the States[1]. The US government doesn't seem to care whether it's legal in Canada or not. Presumably that's because the law is written such that foreign legality is irrelevant.
I'd hope they would apply this rule to people who engage in sex tourism with children, legal in that nation or not for example. At the federal level the crime of cannabis distribution is on the same level as that.
It does already - I looked it up. It even applies to interstate lines with varied age of consent - although it is a bit more intent based and grayer.
For example - going from say California - an 18 age of consent state to sleep with a 16 year old in Nevada is illegal sex tourism. Likewise bringing a 16 year old from California to Nevada to try to evade the age of consent is illegal.
But going to Nevada from California and sleeping with a 16 year old while not there for that purpose (say on a business trip) would be legal.
And yet a large chunk of Google employees and executives enjoy all of the freedoms provided to them in the state of California, including legal marijuana.
"Legal marijuana" is a bit of a misrepresentation. In the eyes of the law, cannabis remains illegal nation-wide. Federal law supersedes state laws on controlled substances. States like California and Washington has not so much legalized cannabis so much as they have repealed all their state laws and deliberately refuse to enforce federal law on cannabis. For everyday people, this effectively legalizes it. We can go to a store, buy a pack of joints, and walk home with zero threat of legal repercussion. But for large organizations, they still have good reason to be afraid of being subject to repercussions if they monetize or facilitate the sale of marijuana.
And regardless, plenty of large tech companies have blanket policies of avoiding controversial markets. Amazon does not sell ammo and many gun accessories (e.g. magazines). They don't sell porn either as far as I know.
This is not an accurate representation of the current status quo. Medical marijuana is effectively legal at the federal level in states where it is legal. The federal government, via the appropriations bill has not allocated any funding to prosecuting these crime. More recent case law has clarified the meaning of this, it explicitly forbids prosecuting these crimes in states where medical marijuana is legal. In a number of cases where the accused was charged and plead guilty, prosecution was later stopped(and hundreds of thousands in cash, and precious metals that were seized, were all returned) because of this.
> Medical marijuana is effectively legal at the federal level in states where it is legal.
Do you not see the contradiction in this statement?
> Medical marijuana is effectively legal at the federal level in states where it is legal. The federal government, via the appropriations bill has not allocated any funding to prosecuting these crime. More recent case law has clarified the meaning of this, it explicitly forbids prosecuting these crimes in states where medical marijuana is legal. In a number of cases where the accused was charged and plead guilty, prosecution was later stopped(and hundreds of thousands in cash, and precious metals that were seized, were all returned) because of this.
Which completely agrees with the point I'm making. It's still against the law, it's just that some states are refusing to enforce it. This is not the same thing as something being legal. This is not just pedantic quibbling, it has real consequences. The constitution forbids persecution for illegal actions so long as they were legal at the time they were committed. But cannabis isn't legal. Which means that if the attitude towards cannabis changes, it is possible for a future administration to persecute everyone that bought or sold pot. Individuals like you an I may not care very much about this possibility, but the shareholders and executives of multi billion dollar companies unsurprisingly have a different mindset.
It is not states that are refusing, but that the federal government is barred from enforcing it. Legal marijuana spending in the US and Canada totaled $12 billion last year and is expected to hit $18 billion this year, in large part because of the current status of the law.
> Medical marijuana is effectively legal at the federal level in states where it is legal.
Unless you're a federal employee. If you're a federal employee, marijuana use is prohibited, even if it is legal in the state where you reside, since it remains a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substance Act (CSA). As I understand it, under the CSA, doctors cannot issue prescriptions for marijuana use
I bought the first season of RE: Zero on Steam when Steam first started offering streaming services . I think it counted all 25 episodes as distinct purchases. This seems to have made their recommendation algorithm think that I am a very big fan of anime games. So for the next several months, my recommended feed was filled with anime games. A surprising number of them... suggestive.
That said, I'm glad that Steam took a permissive approach to its marketplace in allowing controversial games like Postal and Hatred on its platform. I think saying "fuck it" and allowing porn gives them a decent amount of leeway to keep the rest of their platform permissive.
But what does that have to do with anything? I'm sure they also enjoy porn on their free time too, but that doesn't mean they have to allow it in their ads and apps.
Last time I checked Google didn't sell weed, didn't produce porn and didn't write books. You wouldn't, but I would, thanks to your moral standards I can't do business, because US with your legacy regulations on Internet allowed Google became sheriff of the internet.
I believe marijuana (and many other intoxicants) should be legal. But I wouldn't sell it because I'm afraid of legal repercussions. That's not hypocrisy, it's self-preservation.
Someone I know started a b2b business in the marijuana industry. Tried doing google ads and got all their ads blocked. Every time they reached out to support they gave them a different reason for blocking the ad. And every time after complying and re-submitting, the ads would get blocked again. Finally they gave up on Google ads.
I bought and sold stock from a Marijuana ETF when they first got introduced. And 3 days later my bank called me and told me I cannot do it again. Of course I immediately tried doing it again after the call, but the online brokerage system would return an error. So, if I can't trade stock from weed-related business, but those tickers are listed and valid on NASDAQ (which is an american index), who can?
Has anyone opposing this action thought maybe an aggressively competitive tech corporation doesn't want to be held liable for assisting in distribution of a drug that isn't nationwide legal? They have way larger concerns than worrying about this.
Which nation? Not mine. And that's the problem, now we're having foreign morality imposed upon a populace (where it is entirely legal) based upon the preferences of another nation (or really the whims of this particular corporation).
You could say "just use another app store", but that's really not a viable option. When a company's store policies becomes a limiting factor for your (fully legal and ethical) personal choices,I think we have a problem.
It's not really morality at all. Most recent U.S. presidents have partaken in at least one illegal drug. It's just the law as it stands now. They have their reasons (whatever they may be) and that propagates to entities with legal exposure. Unfortunately, sometimes that's just the way it is until it changes.
Big national banks and credit card providers now openly take and store payments for marijuana dispensaries. Companies happily provide them with insurance and mortgages. There are mutual funds and ETFs on national exchanges that invest in such businesses (and you can buy into them as well, from anywhere in the country).
Somehow I don't think Google is scared of getting into trouble for allowing an app that has a web browser with a reference to marijuana. It is a moral stance, nothing else.
These may be apps for legal dispensaries, but that's by state. Obviously there is no use for the app outside of the legal zone, but does thet really look good?
Yes, a lot of modern apps are turning into embedded blink and v8 solutions that port existing websites. Regardless these "apps" are still directly related to marijuana. I dont think it's a moral stance, I think Google doesn't want to be visibly apart of it. Financial institutions are a lot more private and ambiguous in their weed assistance.
I've sampled plenty of wares and yet to see a vendor that isn't cash only. Is this very recent news? Hasn't trickled into my neck of the woods yet. Those ETFs and stocks are for canadian companies too I believe, even though they are on the NYSE.
Which credit card providers openly take payments from dispensaries?
The closest I have seen is a provider that will let you buy bitcoin (and then immediately use the bitcoin to buy the pot, in the same POS terminal transaction).
> If the industry was more competitive they wouldn't be able to turn away money.
This is the stupid libertarian answer for everything, not so different from communism in its arrogance and over-simplification of human motives and behaviors. If the XX century taught us anything, it's that there are no simple answers.
It the industry was perfectly competitive, nobody would be able to turn away money. We would have the perfect whip, making us all labor for all of our waking hours, no holidays, no weekends. Consumers would have perfect choice at the lowest possible prices. They would, however, have zero free time to exercise this "freedom".
Too much competition is cruel and wasteful, leading to a dystopia where, if you take 1 second of rest, someone else might not. Too little competition kills motivation to do the things that are hard but essential, leading to mass starvation and social system collapse.
The answer is democracy, which is not a simple answer nor a silver bullet. But it's the best game in town. When things go too far in one direction, it is the citizen's right and duty to push them in another one. Sometimes the government interferes too little, sometimes too much. Bureaucracies and technocrats might be unsexy, but they lead to a more pleasant and humane world than slogans.
Tech companies should not have the final say on what you can are not use markets for. In a democracy, rules of society > rules of companies.
Just because someone talks about "free market" and "competition" doesn't even mean they're a libraterian.
The problem in question is actually something that competition (capitalism) would very effectively solve. The reason it's not being solved is a failure of the government to break up clear anti-competitive behavior which I think GP was getting at.
Google has exploited their dominance in the OS market to in order to completely control the phone app market. Nobody except for invidual governments should have control over any market because it gives companies the power to favor their product over others.
Google controls the app market: they will eventually favor their apps
X controls the tellcom market: they favor their media at the expense of others
Just because a company isn't being anti-competitive YET doesn't mean they won't in the future.
For the love of god can we please make weed legal here in the US? Anyone, anywhere can buy weed at anytime, and its been that way for like 50 fuckin years now. Can we all agree that the war on weed is over, and the US Gov't lost. WTF!!
I've been spending some time in California and I noticed a worrying trend that it gets harder and harder to purchase marijuana. ID requirements are getting more onerous, MasterCard no longer accepted, etc. Things are going backwards!
Dispensaries cannot accept credit cards because the federal banking system is off limits to them. But as far as id requirements go, you can walk into any dispensary with a valid California drivers license (haven't really tried with out of state ones), and cash purchase anything they have in stock.
ID requirements more onerous? Not sure what you mean. You simply need to show a State ID verifying you are 21 or older. I've sure noticed many more dispensaries requiring ID instead of just..."forgetting to check", but that's not the same thing.
Thank goodness they shut this down quick. It's not like this was just a straightforward app designed to keep tabs on your chattel, I mean female family members. Marijuana actually hurts people!
A key difference between Android and iOS: on Android, there are alternatives to Google’s app store; on iOS there are not. So it would be entirely possible for someone who lives in a country where marijuana is legal and wishes to facilitate the legal industry there to set up an app store (cloning F-Droid could be a quick start) which offered such apps. He'd be out of luck on iOS.
The federal marijuana laws are — mostly — blatantly unconstitutional, of course, but they are still on the books. I don't blame Google for not wanting to litigate the issue; their lawyers are probably acutely aware of the Backpage case.
But yet they have booze delivery apps all throughout the Play Store. They said no cannabis because the Play Store is for kids. But I suppose quick booze delivery is fine for "their" kids.
“At Google Play, we’re committed to providing a positive, safe environment for children and families,” the blog post read. “…After taking input from users and developers we are evolving our Google Play policies to provide additional protections for children and families.”
Better ban signal. Do you want that wrapped in "fighting terrorism", "war on drugs" or "think of the children".
We google should not be in a position of power to decide what is allowable and what is not. That is for elected officials. If they have more than reasonable influence, break them up.
Same for any group of people anywhere. Get elected.
Elected officials in Google's home country have made the decision. They decided to make marijuana illegal at the national level, they decided to make facilitating financial transactions supporting sales of illegal drugs also illegal and they have repeatedly choosen not to change those laws. More recently elected officials have decided to appoint law enforcement officials that are less willing to overlook violation of federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana at a state level. It is this later move which has most likely made Google decide to make the changes in their content policy. So in effect Google is doing exactly as you suggested, allowing elected officials to make this decision.
If there's 30 equivalent services to choose from and using none is also a viable option there's no market power and no issue. I hope they get rich without market power but it's of no significance to me.
As soon as they (for all values of they) have market power and can have a huge effect over what you can and can't do - they need to be bound by law and regulation. This is the textbook definition of market failure. Libertarians and Bernie should see it much the same way. I personally believe you keep regulation the hell out it until you have market failure (so I'm not with bernie) - which this is, they're enacting defacto laws and taxes on the population here for an agenda not agreed to by that population. Same as if standard oil could tell you where you could drive your car. Same as if your electricity company could tell you what you are allowed to read with your electric lights. Same as if your phone company dropped your call for saying "fk" out loud.
Market failure is a thing that happens often (public goods, property rights enforcement, industries that tend to monopoly) and we bring in regulation when it does and watch those regulators closely(!!) We have elections to make sure the regulation is done in a way that we can live with.
This is a matter of geographic laws conflicting with worldwide applicability and something we're seeing more and more of, both with things like GDPR but also certain states having much tighter regulations around things like biometrics. In that light, it's interesting to see what Google has done with things like their Arts and Culture app, which has a "take a selfie and see what artwork you most resemble" feature. That feature (but not the whole app) is disabled if they detect that you're within the bounds of Illinois which has some of the strictest regulations about personal data.
We've already asked you not to do personal attacks here. Regardless of how misinformed someone else is, please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
This isn't a personal attack. It is about the propaganda that was posted around the same time as this that said Google was blocking ad-block extensions, and then like 5+ other frontpage articles popped up telling everyone to switch to Firefox. I find it creepy that you follow me around looking for things to warn me about.
"You're just parroting propaganda" counts as a personal attack here, and we ban users who repeatedly do this.
I am not following you around or even remembering you. If you keep getting moderation replies, it's because you keep breaking the guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them from now on, so we don't have to ban you?
My guess is it's less about a moral issue with marijuana and more about a fear of upsetting people displaying the adds. Many of whom won't want to be associated with something federally illegal. The alternative headline being "Google displays illegal drug adds on school site" (or some other page that probably should not be showing ads)
But then again, I haven't seen a Google booze ad. Do they allow alcohol ads?