10 ms·

The question I always have with this stuff is this: To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process for supposed violations of TO

• dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  The review money is ridiculously small when compared to the investment they made.
  • noonespecial 8y ago
    I would assume if they could show that they depended on the promise made by the "supplier (google)" when they purchased the fraudulent good, the supplier would be liable for damages as well. Sort of like if I sold someone "aircraft grade aluminum" and then delivered compacted used soda cans and they actually did try to build a plane from it resulting in a crash.
    • dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      That's assuming that someone associated with the developers actually did something wrong. For all we know, it could have been a mistake, a misinterpretation of some activity by Google's algorithms etc. - we'll never know because the lack of transparency gives Google advantage, and they're not legally required to provide any information on that. That's why I think it's in the best interests of everyone to support alternatives like Librem, so that no single entity can make such kind of decisions.
• lovich 8y ago
  >Isn't this legally actionable fraud? Does it matter if it is? B2B lawsuits only get down to the actual law if the parties have a relatively equal amount of money. A small or medium business going after google _after google has shut off their revenue_ is not going to ever win
  • gambiting 8y ago
    Why not? If you take them to court over this they would have to at least send a representative and that costs money - in a case like this they would almost definitely tell the engineering team to fix this specific case. Especially since this is in the UK so if Google lost they would be liable for the process fees. Maybe even small claims court would be enough, and that's 100% not worth sending a lawyer for.
    • noonespecial 8y ago
      I'm nowhere close to a lawyer and law is always a head-scratcher for me, but I'd hope that if that theory held even the slightest amount of legal water, a letter for your lawyer to their legal team might be enough to nudge them to fix your account and that'd be the end of it.
      • gambiting 8y ago
        That's basically how it works. It costs you very little(couple hundred £ at most) to ask a lawyer to craft a letter to send to Google legal team saying they have to resolve the issue for you within 14 days or you will be taking them to court. And if there's one thing that's absolutely certain is that Google's law team's time is way more expensive than whatever lawyer you found to write a letter or two is going to charge you . So yes, they can write back telling you to fuck off. But they will know that if you do file a case against them, they will have to send someone to court - and that's going to cost them a lot more than just fixing the stupid issue.
        • ben_jones 8y ago
          Or Google might realize acquiescing to every small legal request might become untenable and create a policy of only giving in to well-funded threats.
• detaro 8y ago
  Where does Google promise that review process? The sign-up flow for a developer account doesn't appear to mention anything like it. Even if they did, fraud is a high barrier, it sometimes producing "bad" results that are reversed for PR reasons isn't enough. Given the case here, "A human has looked at the account and has confirmed that the only developer that has ever used it has been banned, this matches the criteria for banning the account" would be a review. (If they really gave the app developers the credentials to the account, that alone might be a violation of the rules? But I don't know how the Play Store backend works in detail) Businesses treating businesses badly aren't that easy to reign in.
  • noonespecial 8y ago
    avip actually responded similarly below actually citing the relevant section of the TOS but got downvoted? Don't know why, this is perfectly valid. I'd simply ask, can they very publicly offer a review process which is essentially a functionless placebo button or is that misleading enough to subject them to any liability at all?
    • detaro 8y ago
      I doubt it's actually functionless, but it's not a "please reconsider your decision", but only "please check you haven't made an error" they probably expect everyone to hit, and treat it as such.
      • noonespecial 8y ago
        I guess it boils down to if anything is actually checked, ever, or if its just a glorified autoresponder. The always super-vague nature of the responses does not fill me with confidence as to the former.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
• avip 8y ago
  So says you. This is what the ToS say: Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30) days' prior written notice. In addition, Google may, at any time, immediately suspend or terminate this Agreement with You if: (a) You have breached any provision of this Agreement, any non-disclosure agreement or other agreement relating to Google Play or the Android platform; (b) Google is required to do so by law; (c) You cease to be an authorised developer, a developer in good standing, or are barred from using Android software; or (d) Google decides to no longer provide Google Play. https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribu...
  • noonespecial 8y ago
    You are quite right about that. I guess the question is, can they very publicly offer a review process which is essentially a functionless placebo button or is that misleading enough to subject them to any liability at all?
  • yayr 8y ago
    There are varios ways a ToS may be not applicable depending on the jurisdiction. In this case considering the monopoly position of Google here I doubt they can terminate an account that is equivalent to market access for any reason in the EU
    • TheForumTroll 8y ago
      >monopoly Apple has a bigger market share
  • NoblePublius 8y ago
    Disclaiming liability is not an excuse for treating your customers poorly.
    • confounded 8y ago
      Google’s customers are advertisers, not app developers.
• skybrian 8y ago
  The problem here is lack of evidence and availability bias makes the decision process look terrible, without giving us enough evidence to be confident about that conclusion. If a decision is appealed and reversed, would we hear about it? If the employee did a proper review and concluded that, yeah, it's legit, for reasons we would agree with, how would we know from only hearing the other side of the story? This is why actual judicial systems are more transparent. Cases are tried mostly in public. Judges write justifications for their decisions. This allows us on the outside to review what they're doing and understand how it works. But, the downside is that it's slow, expensive, and there is rarely any privacy.
• tptacek 8y ago
  No, it's not fraud. A key element of fraud (civil and criminal) is that the accused knowingly misled, and to prove that you'd need to prove that there is no reasonable interpretation of what they said that they could have believed was true.
  • Pharmakon 8y ago
    With Google they offer enough data points to analyze for just such intent. In the absence of intent fraud is out of the question, but a jury might be convinced that a persistent pattern of incompetence which is brought to Google’s attention again and again without change meets the bar of fraud, especially in a civil court with the mere preponderance of the evidence standard. The post-banning behavior of automated responses and refusal to escalate customer service calls won’t help them either. As in the case of MS back in the day, it can seem like the law is just disinterested, but the law is merely unbelievably slow and equally inevitable. The day some prosecutors can make a career out of taking on Google, they will, and by then Google will be fully on the wrong side of public opinion.
    • tptacek 8y ago
      Prosecutors don't make civil cases. I mean, all this is silly, but start there.
      • Pharmakon 8y ago
        That second half of my post was not in relation to a civil case, which I think was painfully obvious given the reference to MS. Did you really misunderstand? As in the case of MS back in the day, it can seem like the law is just disinterested, but the law is merely unbelievably slow and equally inevitable. The day some prosecutors can make a career out of taking on Google, they will, and by then Google will be fully on the wrong side of public opinion. That is pretty damned unambiguous, unless you found as in the case of MS... confusing. If you want to explain what you found “silly” I’m open to reading your perspective of course.
• roenxi 8y ago
  When dealing with a bureaucracy (ie, not Google specific) a "review" might not mean "reconsider the issue" instead meaning "check the process was followed". In an extreme example, lets say that a bureaucrat takes an action because they have an unreasonable personal dislike of something. A bureaucratic review of the situation will confirm that the person had authority to act as they did then close the case. The reasoning behind the decision may not be examined at all in the review. A symptom of things getting bad is that reviews will never seem to achieve anything, because a bureaucracy won't take unauthorised action, so any action is by definition going to pass a review. Very frustrating to deal with that sort of system. This sort of thinking is so screwy that it makes sense for the reviewer to report directly to the original decision maker, because the reviewer isn't supposed to challenge the decision, they are supposed to make sure that the decision was made by the person they report to!
  • noonespecial 8y ago
    I like it. roenxi's law: "In any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy, all oversight degrades to tautology". We did it therefore it was right otherwise we wouldn't have done it. Case closed.
  • DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    There's also a riff on Arthur C. Clarke's law. Any sufficiently complex or opaque system of control is indistinguishable from tyranny. What we see over and over with tech cases like this is 1) We can't tell you exactly how we figure stuff out because then you'd game it, 2) Things happen based on actions and associations you don't realize are important This is effectively having somebody show up at your house at random times and punch you in the face. But, we are told, it's all for the greater good. I don't doubt that the averages work out -- more good is done than evil. I do, however, doubt that such over-generalizing is so much for the greater good as it is for the bottom lines of the tech companies involved.
• amelius 8y ago
  > How is this any different than selling a counterfeit product? Isn't this legally actionable fraud? They are just selling you a low-quality product. You are free not to buy it.
• cft 8y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "attract developers". Attract implies competition, but when a startup releases an app, there's no choice but submit it to the Play Store, due to its 80% smartphone market share.
• 75dvtwin 8y ago
  I think recourse to Google's behavior, has to be through appeal to mobile operators. it is not just google that makes promises or benefits from positive user experience, availability of options to end users and so on.
• mjrbrennan 8y ago
  Same thing happened to me on PayPal when I reported a fraudulent transaction. Automated process said nope it’s not fraudulent and I was unable to appeal this. It wasn’t until a few times contacting them and DMing their support team on twitter that I was able to force an actual person to look at the obviously fraudulent transaction and fix it up instantly. The algorithms suck, if I say someone took money from my account with an email and name that I’ve never seen before then you can’t just say nope not fraudulent!
• interpol_p 8y ago
  I don’t know about the Google Play process but the App Store review process has been worthwhile. I’ve had many phone calls with them over the years detailing specific changes which need to be made to conform to policy. They are definitely not “low-level” employees but they are also not technically proficient. They are policy enforcers. I’ve also had reviewers push for internal change on my behalf when policy seems poorly applied. One specific example I can give is I had a link to my website in a game made for kids. They asked me to put a parental lock on tapping the link (e.g “ask your parents to enter the code” type thing). That was a really good addition.
  • bouke 8y ago
    That’s actually good advice, bur doesn’t appear to be applied to mist kids apps. All apps that I’ve come across have been litterd with ads placed in such a way to increase the possibility of the kid accidentally clicking on them. A dark grey UX pattern.
    • interpol_p 8y ago
      Yeah it disgusts me. My oldest is going through apps almost entirely by jumping through ads which force you to install the next "free" game. The reason Apple applied extra scrutiny to my app is because I checked the box indicating "Made for kids."
• KorematsuFred 8y ago
  There is a very simple solution to this mess which both Apple and Google have created through they duopoly. Any business that is profitable and employing many people but has single point of failure with Play Store can solve this problem by giving Google some money for a more detailed review with an option to submit additional evidence. Say company X gives Google $10K to do this extended review. If the party wins, Google returns the money and reinstates the account else Google keeps the money. Secondly, a private arbitrage company which may be setup by all big players in the game that can further review the whole process and provide a neutral view of the whether the ban was warranted or not. I have advocated with most of these large companies to come together and form an open Privacy Working Group which will advice all companies to adopt privacy standards and also help evolve those standards by a widespread industry participation. If we could do it for HTML, Javascript and Web Standards we can do it for Privacy as well. This will also pre-empt government's heavy handed approach to force these giants to adopt standards that might be completely arbitrary like GDPR.
• jon-wood 8y ago
  I had an app attached to a service which required sign in to do anything on the Apple store for 4 years, and according to our metrics no one ever signed into the App Store review account you’re required to set up, which definitely backs up your theory that they’re at least sometimes just doing an automated scan of your app and hitting a button.
• mcv 8y ago
  It really seems publicly shaming corporations is the only way to get justice in this new digital world. That's not the way justice is supposed to work.