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KDE Connect removed from Google Play store for violating new policy on SMS

434 points by coolgoose 8y ago

tyfon 8y ago
And google is supposed to launch a gaming console today that streams from the cloud. It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will handle that. I also wonder how they deal with the countries that require a publicly listed phone number and address to be able to contact them.
- metildaa 8y ago
  The phone number will go to a recording directing people to use the online support form that routes to /dev/null, while anything mailed to the PO Box listed that isn't a legal notice will go in the trash. These large companies do not care about local laws beyond doing the bare mimimum to appear somewhat compliant.
- DanBC 8y ago
  They'll suggest you use a community forum, and that forum will be full of people who love the product and the company and who have never seen your bug and who will tell you you're holding it wrong or that you're lying about the product and you must be a shil from that other company.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  They'll just spin up more instances of support_agent.py
  - majewsky 8y ago
    So that's what Google Duplex was for.
- _ylmx 8y ago
  I always find it slightly funny that there is a movie [1] about working at Google and a big part of the challenge is how they handle support cases. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/
- muststopmyths 8y ago
  >It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will handle that. They would have to try hard to be worse than Xbox Live Support. Customer service is dead for most consumer electronics.
  - dcole2929 8y ago
    I've actually found that Microsoft has great support. I've had some asshole from Russia actively trying to steal my LIVE.com email for the last year (for whatever reasons). And every time he finds a way to get in I just fire up the chat and they reset my account.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    I've found Live to have great support. Console arrived with a broken disc drive - shipping label seen sent within an hour, and a free (download) game for the trouble; wanted to cancel a transaction and the site was bugging out - sorted in about five minutes in the online chat; controller broke - free shipping label and back in about a week; console developed a fault in use - ditto.
- vernie 8y ago
  I imagine like most of their end-user products they just won't handle that.
vbsteven 8y ago
A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status. I spent the better part of 2 hours just to get everything up and running again and it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  The #1 reason I do not recommend Google to work with for anybody. The users are just accidental for them.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    To be fair, the App Store review process can often be similarly opaque.
    - johnnyfaehell 8y ago
      Yea, but Apple has support. Google doesn't really do support.
  - hajhatten 8y ago
    Youtube is another prime example of this. Just look how they've treated even their biggest content creators when it comes to copystriking and user comments (something they have no control over). Users are just a nuisance.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      I'm sympathetic with regard to Youtube. They have been effectively forced to adopt these policies by (1) major movie studios and (2) recent news coverage. There's too many videos for a manual process, so Youtube has to rely on algorithms and that's always going to be a broad brush.
- 8y ago
enriquto 8y ago
Why do people still use the "play store" when other repositories like f-droid are arguably better and perfectly available? This is beyond me. The terms of service of the google play store are callous and unacceptable.
- crottypeter 8y ago
  Believe it or not, Joe public hasn't heard of f-droid. Google Play is the app store for most android users (at least in the west).
  - wy6psk 8y ago
    This is KDE Connect, not Snapchat. Joe Linuxonthedesktop has definitely heard of F-Droid.
    - Arnt 8y ago
      Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid, then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every day at least. Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS inteceptors that insist on accepting an extra CA. Some people seem to think that F-Droid is obviously preferable to Googleplay. That is, at the very least, not obvious.
      - Iolaum 8y ago
        Fdroid maintainers require shipped apk's to have 0 non-free components. The only way to ensure that is to build the apps themselves (so that they can verify code and control dependencies). This means that they can only use their own keys.
        levosmetalo 8y ago
        Debian is also signing all Debian packages with in their own repositories with their own keys, and nobody takes this as an issue.
Mindwipe 8y ago
Google have completely messed up this SMS policy. Someone senior needs to step in and fix this, it's utterly toxic for developer relations. The process is unreliable and doesn't work, and bluntly this sort of whitelisting of APIs for people "we think really need it" is a bad idea in the first place. Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission, approved (or not) by the end user, not Google.
- rauhl 8y ago
  > Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission, approved (or not) by the end user, not Google. You’re assuming that Google’s desire here is to protect the user. I don’t think that’s the case: I think that their desire is to control the user. Cf. how Android presents the user with a warning if he installs his own trusted HTTPS certificate (and how newer version of Android simply ignore his trusted certificate): Google claim that they are simply concerned about naïve users, but my contention is that they are motivated by a desire to prevent users from viewing the traffic of Google apps.
  - tetromino_ 8y ago
    Try to consider the effect not just on yourself and the tiny number of people exactly like yourself, but on average non-technical users who were getting socially engineered into exposing their passwords and nudes to their bosses, stalkers, criminals, and public morality enforcers.
    - stonogo 8y ago
      Yeah, why think about yourself instead of this handy strawman?
wy6psk 8y ago
It seems to be here so I don't know what the post is about. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdeconnect_tp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdecon...
- quelltext 8y ago
  That version has the SMS feature removed.
  - wy6psk 8y ago
    Yes but the tweet says that Google 1) completely removed the app and 2) is ignoring their calls for support. Which seems to be false.
    - philliphaydon 8y ago
      I’m unsure how what was stated is false?
    - Operyl 8y ago
      Yes, notice that it’s several hours since the tweet. They’ve obviously been able to work around issue after issue, but the problem still exists: they are a companion app and should not have been forced to remove the SMS feature. And as far as I can tell, google is still not supporting them, so how is that false?
    - okmokmz 8y ago
      1) They did, until he removed core functionality and re-uploaded 2) They are, hence the removal of functionality and re-upload >Which seems to be false How...
- Svoka 8y ago
  https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384 https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384 > I'm about to upload a version of KDE Connect to the Play Store with the SMS functionality removed. Google removes app from the app store until you upload new version. Not sure if you know, but for KDE Connect SMS access is part of core functionality, allowed use of the API, and author wanted to call explain it as written in [0] but there is nowhere to call. It's all in a thread.
GlitchMr 8y ago
Google doesn't have support even if you pay them (other than for Google Ads, Google Ads has an actually existing support), pretty much that, everything is done by robots which will tell you everything is fine.
- Aldo_MX 8y ago
  Not even Google Ads when you’re not actually an Ads user, they screw something with your account during a migration and you’re effectively banned from unrelated services like AdMob because they decided to force an integration with Google Ads and creating a new account doesn’t work because “same address policy”. I personally decided that it is easier to integrate a Google competitor to Flutter than to actually contact a human at Google, but I’ve nightmares about Google acquiring whichever advertising provider I integrate.
Svoka 8y ago
I find it extremely scary to make business with Google. Their robot would get your account banned, all cloud, play and every other thing with it. Every hour it is banned would be lost money and lost customers. This is not my problem, really. It is Google's public image as I seen it soulless support for last 10 years, and stories like this pop up time to time. Too sad they pretty much locked in Android app market, and with every version it is harder and harder to sideload apps. I am not using any Google cloud services if I can find alternative. I understand that it may be my perception, but I do not understand why company would build such image of itself.
- jasonvorhe 8y ago
  GCP will no longer just shut down your projects without a human approval.
  - Svoka 8y ago
    What about my google account? Would it run, but I won't be able to access it? I think Google lost trust, which is hard thing to get back. I just speaking how I feel. And I don't get such feel using AWS.
  - aepiepaey 8y ago
    But they will still keep your credit card number forever if you ever give it to them. Once it's been added, it can't be removed. They claim it's for auditing purposes, but those "auditing purposes" shouldn't require keeping it attached to the account as an active payment method (which is what they enforce).
    - stjohnswarts 8y ago
      Yeah they could totally keep it for no more than 2 or 3 months and 99.999% of any problems with "auditing" would also be handled.
- kabacha 8y ago
  Ech at least on android you can easily install apps outside of google play. _I_ find it scary to make business with as you can be pretty much _snapped_ out of existance in a single decision.
forgotmypw3 8y ago
I don't bother with GP anymore, just look on F-Droid for anything I need. Better/faster app store app. Better warnings about undesirable app behavior. Better quality apps in the store. And no nag screen for billing info every time I download a free app. This seems to be a general trend in software, and perhaps life in general: an abusive, lower quality default option for those not "in the know", and better alternatives for anyone who is savvy or has a savvy friend.
- snazz 8y ago
  The app updating process in F-Droid is fairly buggy (I can’t tell if I’ve tapped the button or not from the upgrade page and sometimes it just doesn’t work), but in general it is a big improvement. I’m guessing the “average” person wouldn’t be too happy about losing the Play Store since proprietary apps aren’t available in F-Droid (by design).
  - snaky 8y ago
    An average person doesn't need to remove Play Store to install F-droid. But if that average person want to remove Play Store (and Play Services blobs) completely from his devices, he still can use and update the most of his apps using Yalp. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor...
    - snazz 8y ago
      I had forgotten about Yalp. Wouldn’t you still encounter compatibility issues with apps that require Play Services functionality?
      - snaky 8y ago
        An average person would be amazed by the fact most of apps he is using actually work perfectly without Play Services, despite the fact almost all of them declare Play Services in their manifests as absolutely required. This stay true even for the games, although some functions like in-game purchases and 'social' things may not work.
nukeop 8y ago
Horror stories like this one crop up every now and then. The other time they locked all the G Suite accounts of an entire company just because one of the employees has made a couple of bad chargebacks for some Android apps on his private account that was supplied as a recovery email for his company account. And they didn't even provide a reason, the company had to investigate and find out on their own.
- lima 8y ago
  That particular story was completely made up. It was implausible to begin with, given that G Suite is a business product with contracts that doesn't just get "banned", and Google confirmed that they weren't aware of any such incident and failed to get in touch with the author. This comment is a great example on the effectiveness of spreading unsubstantiated FUD. Last discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643 Google response: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banned_an_entire_company_gsuite_accounts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne... > The original poster on Reddit (OP) did not identify him/herself or the customer account. We have made several attempts to reach out to the OP through PM, but have yet to receive a response. (If the OP or someone from his/her company is reading this, please get in touch with me. We have tried to identify the customer based on the information in the original post, including an extensive review of recent support cases, but have not found any cases resembling the description.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    There are small companies, running on grandfathered free Google Apps for domains accounts. It is still somewhat different product than the current G Suite.
djsumdog 8y ago
My current phone has been falling apart for a while and I've already replaced the back 3 times and the camera. With the battery going out and the back starting to crack again under the case, I decided I'm getting sick of Android. My next device needs to be something I can easily run Plasma on. Maybe I'll pre-order a Purism phone. I want a real open source phone, similar to running a Linux distro on my PC in the late 90s. I'm willing to write applications to fill in the gaps for my needs to get away from the toxic Google ecosystem. I want a phone with real open source software, not some crippled Android minus the Play store.
- westpfelia 8y ago
  Sadly I think the Purism phone just was pushed back wasn't it?
  - kop316 8y ago
    The release was pushed from Summer 2019 to Fall 2019. I was in the same boat as the grandparent. I ended up getting a cheap phone that I could put lineageOS on, I installed F-Droid, and I didn't install any of Googles Apps. Its working out very well actually.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      If you need another cheap phone I can heartily recommend the Nokia 6.1 at 199.99 it was an absolute bargain. I know HMD isn't the original Nokia (though it has a lot of the management) but it's an excellent phone and with AndroidOne you get security updates immediately which was a big thing I wanted after Moto-G's
      - kop316 8y ago
        Nice! I got a Sony xperia XA2, I found it open box for $150
  - y0ghur7_xxx 8y ago
    It will start to ship in Q3 this year.
noobermin 8y ago
Remember this the next time you don't get that job at Google. Somehow the most selective and elite of tech institutions can't bother to do customer service.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Not surprising, all the money is in treating users as cattle, not as customers.
- stevehawk 8y ago
  It's one of the reasons I'm convinced that Google et al don't hire the best engineers/programmers, but really just the best interviewers.
  - blunte 8y ago
    This is not a Google engineer problem - it's a Google management problem. Managers, theoretically from the top down, are deciding how to allocate resources (as in, almost no live customer service people), what automated policies to put in, etc. I think there's a fundamental problem with any company that refuses to provide some human contact for problem resolution (with customers, partners, vendors, etc.)
  - gabbygab 8y ago
    Or maybe they hire the best engineers who interview well? Being a great engineer and being a great interviewer aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You can be both. Also, after 20+ years in business, google engineers are still highly respected and sought after by every company for their tech expertise. If google didn't hire the best, that luster would have faded a long time ago. Google has always been great at tech and poor at customer service. Though that seems to be a industry wide problem, rather than a google specific one.
    - mtnGoat 8y ago
      "sought after by every company" certainly not sought after by my company, and i hate to speak for others, but i can name at least a handful of others where having any of the FANGs will usually get your resume circular filed. :x
pedroaraujo 8y ago
It's kind of ridiculous that Google is very active in shutting down legitimate apps like KDE Connect but paid clones of open source apps, or apps that promise to upgrade Android the version [1], are still happily up for download. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps_on_the_play_store_promise_to/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps...
- Aissen 8y ago
  Do not forget about apps that let you download more RAM: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps See https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032 https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032 and https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392 https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392
  - lucasmullens 8y ago
    That's definitely the impression those apps were going for, but the wording is careful on most of them. They're not technically saying you'll get 4 more GB of ram, just that the app can clean up some of the 4 GB of ram. They're awful, but it's not clear to me that they're violating a rule.
    - philipov 8y ago
      And that's precisely why Smart Contracts and other types of automated moderation are doomed to fail. There will always be loopholes in the letter of the law to exploit, which requires people able to enforce the spirit of the law instead.
- techgeeker 8y ago
  The thinking behind the Google business scenario is just annoying from a user's point of view, like they are shutting down Inbox and Allo for no good reason (http://bit.ly/2ThUGHX http://bit.ly/2ThUGHX). When users are happy with something then why would you go for shutting down that thing?! It's not like you don't have the developers to run the thing.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Why do people still get upset when you can't "talk" to Google. Do you deal with a human when you set up your services? Do you deal with a human when you get all setup to develop for the platform? No, you don't. So why would you expect Google to treat you any differently when something goes wrong. Google is about Google, not you.
jraph 8y ago
So KDE Connect (with all features) joins NewPipe, AdAway and other amazing Android applications that are on F-Droid and not on Google Play.
- _ylmx 8y ago
  Any other great apps on F-Droid? I'm using all of the above except AdAway and: - Orgzly: Org-mode brought to your phone. I use it for capturing TODOs and push notifications for reminders. - Revolution IRC: IRC Client - Syncthing: Syncs files between my computer and phone. Mostly used for .org files - Goodtime: Pomodoro technique time-management - Loop Habit Tracker: Track habits (reading, exercise, etc.) - Slide for Reddit: Reddit client
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jraph 8y ago
    A selection of F-Droid apps: - AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when I still need to enable it) - Amaze (File Manager) - AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive portals that still let DNS queries pass) - Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes) - Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player) - Draw (to write scores when playing games) - Easy xkcd, Simple Dilbert for comics - E numbers, OpenFoodFacts (to know what you eat) - Clip Stack, a Clipboard manager - DAVx⁵ (formerly DAVDroid), to synchronize contacts and calendars with a Nextcloud instance (or any CardDav / CalDav provider) - ForceDoze (to force the phone to really sleep when the screen is off) - Drowser (to kill chosen running apps when the screen goes off) - Document Viewer and PDF Viewer Plus to display PDFs. The former seems to segfault quite frequently but is nice when it works. - Fennec or Icecat (Firefox Mobile) - ForRunners (to keep track of running sessions, offline) - LogCat Reader (to show Android's debugging log) - LibreOffice Viewer (useful when people send office documents by mail) - K-9 Mail (Mail client) - Maps and OsmAnd (for Offline GPS), OpenVegeMap (helps finding places where to eat) - NextCloud (access files from a NextCloud instance, auto upload pictures) - OpenCamera, a nice application for taking pictures. Works better than Lineage's stock app on my phone. - oandbackup: backup data and applications. - QKSMS: a really nice SMS app that is able to synchronize with the default Android SMS app, which is important for me for backups - Riot.im (not using it at the moment though) - Red Moon, which I use to make the screen even darker (and it works well with an AMOLED screen). I don't actually use it to filter blue light. - SMS Backup +: to backup SMS and call logs to an IMAP account. I also copy files from /data/user_de/0/com.android.providers.telephony/ for that, which provide a perfect backup, MMSes included. - SatStat (to debug GPS, and show a compass) - Sky Map, to see the stars and constellations. - Sound Recorder - Termux: provides a GNU/Linux like environment, and a great terminal emulator which can be used with a real GNU/Linux distribution installed in a Chroot or from SSH. - UnicodePad (look for unicode characters / emojis) - VLC (a good music and video player) - 2048, Open Flood, PipePanic (games), DroidFish (chess) XServer XSDL is a good free X11 server for Android that is unfortunately not in F-Droid but now there is an X server in F-Droid (which seems to have less features). Etar looks like a good calendar app. I've come across Wi-Fi Reminders, which can be used to display notes when connecting to a particular Wi-Fi, which seems nice and useful. There are apps to avoid leaks when using Wi-Fi. And also notes / tasks apps that I don't use regularly. TrebleShot looks nice to exchange files between devices. [edit : added oandbackup]
Jedd 8y ago
KDE Connect is one of my top five favourite / essential apps. Sure, I'm on KDE desktop (have been since the late 1990's) so I'm aware I'm in the (tiny) minority, but the functionality is hard, perhaps impossible, to beat. This kind of craziness isn't helping anyone.
- half-kh-hacker 8y ago
  I don't use KDE as a desktop environment, but KDEConnect works just fine outside of KDE in my experience.
  - dingaling 8y ago
    And kdeconnect-cli is very handy in a terminal for sending files back and forth to phones
azorin 8y ago
I just had the same issue last week when my app with SMS permissions for cross-platform syncing was rejected, but after some back and forth with Google I found out what they needed to let our app through. When publishing a new release on the Google Play Console, you need to create a video showing how the permissions are granted as well as the functionality that uses the permissions, making it clear that this functionality is a part of the core functionality of the app. After that, they approved it pretty quickly. You have to take into account that the Google reps that approve or reject the apps don't spend much time checking if the app is compliant, so if they don't see this evidence in the video, the app won't be approved.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Great. I always wanted Google to ban the apps that demand permissions beyond those they obviously need to do the very job I want them to.
  - kuschku 8y ago
    That's why runtime permissions and the ability to revoke permissions exist in the first place.
xhruso00 8y ago
This simply needs more publicity. Up-vote so Google will find a human to do a proper support!
- clebio 8y ago
  Or maybe let's talk about the root issue here and not just try to use social media and HN in the place of formal support paths.
  - xhruso00 8y ago
    I have read many articles where people got ban/reject and no human ever talked to them. No right to defend.
unethical_ban 8y ago
The inability to read SMS is flat-out user-hostile. They could have a permissions UI with red/yellow/green indicators for privacy risk or similar, and let users choose. I want Lightflow and KDE Connect to have access. Why is that so hard to understand? Oh wait, they do. They're just intentionally crippling their product.
monochromatic 8y ago
God help you if you ever need support from a human being at google.
Aissen 8y ago
Albert, the developer says it's now fixed: https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048 https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048

434 points by coolgoose 8y ago

And google is supposed to launch a gaming console today that streams from the cloud. It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will handle that. I also wonder how they deal with the countries that require a publicly listed phone number and address to be able to contact them.

metildaa 8y ago
The phone number will go to a recording directing people to use the online support form that routes to /dev/null, while anything mailed to the PO Box listed that isn't a legal notice will go in the trash. These large companies do not care about local laws beyond doing the bare mimimum to appear somewhat compliant.
DanBC 8y ago
They'll suggest you use a community forum, and that forum will be full of people who love the product and the company and who have never seen your bug and who will tell you you're holding it wrong or that you're lying about the product and you must be a shil from that other company.
lallysingh 8y ago
They'll just spin up more instances of support_agent.py
- majewsky 8y ago
  So that's what Google Duplex was for.
_ylmx 8y ago
I always find it slightly funny that there is a movie [1] about working at Google and a big part of the challenge is how they handle support cases. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/
muststopmyths 8y ago
>It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will handle that. They would have to try hard to be worse than Xbox Live Support. Customer service is dead for most consumer electronics.
- dcole2929 8y ago
  I've actually found that Microsoft has great support. I've had some asshole from Russia actively trying to steal my LIVE.com email for the last year (for whatever reasons). And every time he finds a way to get in I just fire up the chat and they reset my account.
- stordoff 8y ago
  I've found Live to have great support. Console arrived with a broken disc drive - shipping label seen sent within an hour, and a free (download) game for the trouble; wanted to cancel a transaction and the site was bugging out - sorted in about five minutes in the online chat; controller broke - free shipping label and back in about a week; console developed a fault in use - ditto.
vernie 8y ago
I imagine like most of their end-user products they just won't handle that.

vbsteven 8y ago

A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status. I spent the better part of 2 hours just to get everything up and running again and it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help.

StreamBright 8y ago
The #1 reason I do not recommend Google to work with for anybody. The users are just accidental for them.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  To be fair, the App Store review process can often be similarly opaque.
  - johnnyfaehell 8y ago
    Yea, but Apple has support. Google doesn't really do support.
- hajhatten 8y ago
  Youtube is another prime example of this. Just look how they've treated even their biggest content creators when it comes to copystriking and user comments (something they have no control over). Users are just a nuisance.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    I'm sympathetic with regard to Youtube. They have been effectively forced to adopt these policies by (1) major movie studios and (2) recent news coverage. There's too many videos for a manual process, so Youtube has to rely on algorithms and that's always going to be a broad brush.
8y ago

enriquto 8y ago

Why do people still use the "play store" when other repositories like f-droid are arguably better and perfectly available? This is beyond me. The terms of service of the google play store are callous and unacceptable.

crottypeter 8y ago
Believe it or not, Joe public hasn't heard of f-droid. Google Play is the app store for most android users (at least in the west).
- wy6psk 8y ago
  This is KDE Connect, not Snapchat. Joe Linuxonthedesktop has definitely heard of F-Droid.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid, then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every day at least. Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS inteceptors that insist on accepting an extra CA. Some people seem to think that F-Droid is obviously preferable to Googleplay. That is, at the very least, not obvious.
    - Iolaum 8y ago
      Fdroid maintainers require shipped apk's to have 0 non-free components. The only way to ensure that is to build the apps themselves (so that they can verify code and control dependencies). This means that they can only use their own keys.
      - levosmetalo 8y ago
        Debian is also signing all Debian packages with in their own repositories with their own keys, and nobody takes this as an issue.

Mindwipe 8y ago

Google have completely messed up this SMS policy. Someone senior needs to step in and fix this, it's utterly toxic for developer relations. The process is unreliable and doesn't work, and bluntly this sort of whitelisting of APIs for people "we think really need it" is a bad idea in the first place. Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission, approved (or not) by the end user, not Google.

rauhl 8y ago
> Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission, approved (or not) by the end user, not Google. You’re assuming that Google’s desire here is to protect the user. I don’t think that’s the case: I think that their desire is to control the user. Cf. how Android presents the user with a warning if he installs his own trusted HTTPS certificate (and how newer version of Android simply ignore his trusted certificate): Google claim that they are simply concerned about naïve users, but my contention is that they are motivated by a desire to prevent users from viewing the traffic of Google apps.
- tetromino_ 8y ago
  Try to consider the effect not just on yourself and the tiny number of people exactly like yourself, but on average non-technical users who were getting socially engineered into exposing their passwords and nudes to their bosses, stalkers, criminals, and public morality enforcers.
  - stonogo 8y ago
    Yeah, why think about yourself instead of this handy strawman?

wy6psk 8y ago

It seems to be here so I don't know what the post is about. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdeconnect_tp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdecon...

quelltext 8y ago
That version has the SMS feature removed.
- wy6psk 8y ago
  Yes but the tweet says that Google 1) completely removed the app and 2) is ignoring their calls for support. Which seems to be false.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    I’m unsure how what was stated is false?
  - Operyl 8y ago
    Yes, notice that it’s several hours since the tweet. They’ve obviously been able to work around issue after issue, but the problem still exists: they are a companion app and should not have been forced to remove the SMS feature. And as far as I can tell, google is still not supporting them, so how is that false?
  - okmokmz 8y ago
    1) They did, until he removed core functionality and re-uploaded 2) They are, hence the removal of functionality and re-upload >Which seems to be false How...
Svoka 8y ago
https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384 https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384 > I'm about to upload a version of KDE Connect to the Play Store with the SMS functionality removed. Google removes app from the app store until you upload new version. Not sure if you know, but for KDE Connect SMS access is part of core functionality, allowed use of the API, and author wanted to call explain it as written in [0] but there is nowhere to call. It's all in a thread.

GlitchMr 8y ago

Google doesn't have support even if you pay them (other than for Google Ads, Google Ads has an actually existing support), pretty much that, everything is done by robots which will tell you everything is fine.

Aldo_MX 8y ago
Not even Google Ads when you’re not actually an Ads user, they screw something with your account during a migration and you’re effectively banned from unrelated services like AdMob because they decided to force an integration with Google Ads and creating a new account doesn’t work because “same address policy”. I personally decided that it is easier to integrate a Google competitor to Flutter than to actually contact a human at Google, but I’ve nightmares about Google acquiring whichever advertising provider I integrate.

Svoka 8y ago

I find it extremely scary to make business with Google. Their robot would get your account banned, all cloud, play and every other thing with it. Every hour it is banned would be lost money and lost customers. This is not my problem, really. It is Google's public image as I seen it soulless support for last 10 years, and stories like this pop up time to time. Too sad they pretty much locked in Android app market, and with every version it is harder and harder to sideload apps. I am not using any Google cloud services if I can find alternative. I understand that it may be my perception, but I do not understand why company would build such image of itself.

jasonvorhe 8y ago
GCP will no longer just shut down your projects without a human approval.
- Svoka 8y ago
  What about my google account? Would it run, but I won't be able to access it? I think Google lost trust, which is hard thing to get back. I just speaking how I feel. And I don't get such feel using AWS.
- aepiepaey 8y ago
  But they will still keep your credit card number forever if you ever give it to them. Once it's been added, it can't be removed. They claim it's for auditing purposes, but those "auditing purposes" shouldn't require keeping it attached to the account as an active payment method (which is what they enforce).
  - stjohnswarts 8y ago
    Yeah they could totally keep it for no more than 2 or 3 months and 99.999% of any problems with "auditing" would also be handled.
kabacha 8y ago
Ech at least on android you can easily install apps outside of google play. _I_ find it scary to make business with as you can be pretty much _snapped_ out of existance in a single decision.

forgotmypw3 8y ago

I don't bother with GP anymore, just look on F-Droid for anything I need. Better/faster app store app. Better warnings about undesirable app behavior. Better quality apps in the store. And no nag screen for billing info every time I download a free app. This seems to be a general trend in software, and perhaps life in general: an abusive, lower quality default option for those not "in the know", and better alternatives for anyone who is savvy or has a savvy friend.

snazz 8y ago
The app updating process in F-Droid is fairly buggy (I can’t tell if I’ve tapped the button or not from the upgrade page and sometimes it just doesn’t work), but in general it is a big improvement. I’m guessing the “average” person wouldn’t be too happy about losing the Play Store since proprietary apps aren’t available in F-Droid (by design).
- snaky 8y ago
  An average person doesn't need to remove Play Store to install F-droid. But if that average person want to remove Play Store (and Play Services blobs) completely from his devices, he still can use and update the most of his apps using Yalp. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor...
  - snazz 8y ago
    I had forgotten about Yalp. Wouldn’t you still encounter compatibility issues with apps that require Play Services functionality?
    - snaky 8y ago
      An average person would be amazed by the fact most of apps he is using actually work perfectly without Play Services, despite the fact almost all of them declare Play Services in their manifests as absolutely required. This stay true even for the games, although some functions like in-game purchases and 'social' things may not work.

nukeop 8y ago

Horror stories like this one crop up every now and then. The other time they locked all the G Suite accounts of an entire company just because one of the employees has made a couple of bad chargebacks for some Android apps on his private account that was supplied as a recovery email for his company account. And they didn't even provide a reason, the company had to investigate and find out on their own.

lima 8y ago
That particular story was completely made up. It was implausible to begin with, given that G Suite is a business product with contracts that doesn't just get "banned", and Google confirmed that they weren't aware of any such incident and failed to get in touch with the author. This comment is a great example on the effectiveness of spreading unsubstantiated FUD. Last discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643 Google response: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banned_an_entire_company_gsuite_accounts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne... > The original poster on Reddit (OP) did not identify him/herself or the customer account. We have made several attempts to reach out to the OP through PM, but have yet to receive a response. (If the OP or someone from his/her company is reading this, please get in touch with me. We have tried to identify the customer based on the information in the original post, including an extensive review of recent support cases, but have not found any cases resembling the description.
- vetinari 8y ago
  There are small companies, running on grandfathered free Google Apps for domains accounts. It is still somewhat different product than the current G Suite.

djsumdog 8y ago

My current phone has been falling apart for a while and I've already replaced the back 3 times and the camera. With the battery going out and the back starting to crack again under the case, I decided I'm getting sick of Android. My next device needs to be something I can easily run Plasma on. Maybe I'll pre-order a Purism phone. I want a real open source phone, similar to running a Linux distro on my PC in the late 90s. I'm willing to write applications to fill in the gaps for my needs to get away from the toxic Google ecosystem. I want a phone with real open source software, not some crippled Android minus the Play store.

westpfelia 8y ago
Sadly I think the Purism phone just was pushed back wasn't it?
- kop316 8y ago
  The release was pushed from Summer 2019 to Fall 2019. I was in the same boat as the grandparent. I ended up getting a cheap phone that I could put lineageOS on, I installed F-Droid, and I didn't install any of Googles Apps. Its working out very well actually.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    If you need another cheap phone I can heartily recommend the Nokia 6.1 at 199.99 it was an absolute bargain. I know HMD isn't the original Nokia (though it has a lot of the management) but it's an excellent phone and with AndroidOne you get security updates immediately which was a big thing I wanted after Moto-G's
    - kop316 8y ago
      Nice! I got a Sony xperia XA2, I found it open box for $150
- y0ghur7_xxx 8y ago
  It will start to ship in Q3 this year.

noobermin 8y ago

Remember this the next time you don't get that job at Google. Somehow the most selective and elite of tech institutions can't bother to do customer service.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Not surprising, all the money is in treating users as cattle, not as customers.
stevehawk 8y ago
It's one of the reasons I'm convinced that Google et al don't hire the best engineers/programmers, but really just the best interviewers.
- blunte 8y ago
  This is not a Google engineer problem - it's a Google management problem. Managers, theoretically from the top down, are deciding how to allocate resources (as in, almost no live customer service people), what automated policies to put in, etc. I think there's a fundamental problem with any company that refuses to provide some human contact for problem resolution (with customers, partners, vendors, etc.)
- gabbygab 8y ago
  Or maybe they hire the best engineers who interview well? Being a great engineer and being a great interviewer aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You can be both. Also, after 20+ years in business, google engineers are still highly respected and sought after by every company for their tech expertise. If google didn't hire the best, that luster would have faded a long time ago. Google has always been great at tech and poor at customer service. Though that seems to be a industry wide problem, rather than a google specific one.
  - mtnGoat 8y ago
    "sought after by every company" certainly not sought after by my company, and i hate to speak for others, but i can name at least a handful of others where having any of the FANGs will usually get your resume circular filed. :x

pedroaraujo 8y ago

It's kind of ridiculous that Google is very active in shutting down legitimate apps like KDE Connect but paid clones of open source apps, or apps that promise to upgrade Android the version [1], are still happily up for download. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps_on_the_play_store_promise_to/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps...

Aissen 8y ago
Do not forget about apps that let you download more RAM: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps See https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032 https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032 and https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392 https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392
- lucasmullens 8y ago
  That's definitely the impression those apps were going for, but the wording is careful on most of them. They're not technically saying you'll get 4 more GB of ram, just that the app can clean up some of the 4 GB of ram. They're awful, but it's not clear to me that they're violating a rule.
  - philipov 8y ago
    And that's precisely why Smart Contracts and other types of automated moderation are doomed to fail. There will always be loopholes in the letter of the law to exploit, which requires people able to enforce the spirit of the law instead.
techgeeker 8y ago
The thinking behind the Google business scenario is just annoying from a user's point of view, like they are shutting down Inbox and Allo for no good reason (http://bit.ly/2ThUGHX http://bit.ly/2ThUGHX). When users are happy with something then why would you go for shutting down that thing?! It's not like you don't have the developers to run the thing.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

Why do people still get upset when you can't "talk" to Google. Do you deal with a human when you set up your services? Do you deal with a human when you get all setup to develop for the platform? No, you don't. So why would you expect Google to treat you any differently when something goes wrong. Google is about Google, not you.

jraph 8y ago

So KDE Connect (with all features) joins NewPipe, AdAway and other amazing Android applications that are on F-Droid and not on Google Play.

_ylmx 8y ago
Any other great apps on F-Droid? I'm using all of the above except AdAway and: - Orgzly: Org-mode brought to your phone. I use it for capturing TODOs and push notifications for reminders. - Revolution IRC: IRC Client - Syncthing: Syncs files between my computer and phone. Mostly used for .org files - Goodtime: Pomodoro technique time-management - Loop Habit Tracker: Track habits (reading, exercise, etc.) - Slide for Reddit: Reddit client
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jraph 8y ago
  A selection of F-Droid apps: - AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when I still need to enable it) - Amaze (File Manager) - AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive portals that still let DNS queries pass) - Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes) - Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player) - Draw (to write scores when playing games) - Easy xkcd, Simple Dilbert for comics - E numbers, OpenFoodFacts (to know what you eat) - Clip Stack, a Clipboard manager - DAVx⁵ (formerly DAVDroid), to synchronize contacts and calendars with a Nextcloud instance (or any CardDav / CalDav provider) - ForceDoze (to force the phone to really sleep when the screen is off) - Drowser (to kill chosen running apps when the screen goes off) - Document Viewer and PDF Viewer Plus to display PDFs. The former seems to segfault quite frequently but is nice when it works. - Fennec or Icecat (Firefox Mobile) - ForRunners (to keep track of running sessions, offline) - LogCat Reader (to show Android's debugging log) - LibreOffice Viewer (useful when people send office documents by mail) - K-9 Mail (Mail client) - Maps and OsmAnd (for Offline GPS), OpenVegeMap (helps finding places where to eat) - NextCloud (access files from a NextCloud instance, auto upload pictures) - OpenCamera, a nice application for taking pictures. Works better than Lineage's stock app on my phone. - oandbackup: backup data and applications. - QKSMS: a really nice SMS app that is able to synchronize with the default Android SMS app, which is important for me for backups - Riot.im (not using it at the moment though) - Red Moon, which I use to make the screen even darker (and it works well with an AMOLED screen). I don't actually use it to filter blue light. - SMS Backup +: to backup SMS and call logs to an IMAP account. I also copy files from /data/user_de/0/com.android.providers.telephony/ for that, which provide a perfect backup, MMSes included. - SatStat (to debug GPS, and show a compass) - Sky Map, to see the stars and constellations. - Sound Recorder - Termux: provides a GNU/Linux like environment, and a great terminal emulator which can be used with a real GNU/Linux distribution installed in a Chroot or from SSH. - UnicodePad (look for unicode characters / emojis) - VLC (a good music and video player) - 2048, Open Flood, PipePanic (games), DroidFish (chess) XServer XSDL is a good free X11 server for Android that is unfortunately not in F-Droid but now there is an X server in F-Droid (which seems to have less features). Etar looks like a good calendar app. I've come across Wi-Fi Reminders, which can be used to display notes when connecting to a particular Wi-Fi, which seems nice and useful. There are apps to avoid leaks when using Wi-Fi. And also notes / tasks apps that I don't use regularly. TrebleShot looks nice to exchange files between devices. [edit : added oandbackup]

Jedd 8y ago

KDE Connect is one of my top five favourite / essential apps. Sure, I'm on KDE desktop (have been since the late 1990's) so I'm aware I'm in the (tiny) minority, but the functionality is hard, perhaps impossible, to beat. This kind of craziness isn't helping anyone.

half-kh-hacker 8y ago
I don't use KDE as a desktop environment, but KDEConnect works just fine outside of KDE in my experience.
- dingaling 8y ago
  And kdeconnect-cli is very handy in a terminal for sending files back and forth to phones

azorin 8y ago

I just had the same issue last week when my app with SMS permissions for cross-platform syncing was rejected, but after some back and forth with Google I found out what they needed to let our app through. When publishing a new release on the Google Play Console, you need to create a video showing how the permissions are granted as well as the functionality that uses the permissions, making it clear that this functionality is a part of the core functionality of the app. After that, they approved it pretty quickly. You have to take into account that the Google reps that approve or reject the apps don't spend much time checking if the app is compliant, so if they don't see this evidence in the video, the app won't be approved.

qwerty456127 8y ago
Great. I always wanted Google to ban the apps that demand permissions beyond those they obviously need to do the very job I want them to.
- kuschku 8y ago
  That's why runtime permissions and the ability to revoke permissions exist in the first place.

xhruso00 8y ago

This simply needs more publicity. Up-vote so Google will find a human to do a proper support!

clebio 8y ago
Or maybe let's talk about the root issue here and not just try to use social media and HN in the place of formal support paths.
- xhruso00 8y ago
  I have read many articles where people got ban/reject and no human ever talked to them. No right to defend.

unethical_ban 8y ago

The inability to read SMS is flat-out user-hostile. They could have a permissions UI with red/yellow/green indicators for privacy risk or similar, and let users choose. I want Lightflow and KDE Connect to have access. Why is that so hard to understand? Oh wait, they do. They're just intentionally crippling their product.

monochromatic 8y ago

God help you if you ever need support from a human being at google.

Aissen 8y ago

Albert, the developer says it's now fixed: https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048 https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048