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Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats
- Kim_Bruning 6y agoI guess the Scunthorpe problem is still a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- 015a 6y agoReminiscent to me of Call of Duty Warzone; it has loadouts which you can give custom names (that only you see!) which are protected with a profanity filter. Comically, some of the literal names of the guns are banned as being profane, like "MP5".
- tschwimmer 6y agoSee also Dark Souls multiplayer, in which you can see many “K***hts” running around.
- hatsunearu 6y agoOh my god that's fucking hilarious.
- mikestew 6y agoMy CoD group of friends still occasionally calls the assault rifle "analsault". Stupid, huh? Not as stupid as an earlier version of CoD (Black Ops 1, IIRC) that wouldn't let you name a load out "assault $WHATEVER", 'cuz you know, "ass". But "anal" is so much better so that was allowed. They fixed it in later versions, but I still have a "penetration" class because I'm immature that way.
- vaduz 6y agoIsn't it just to double-plus-ensure that no one "accidentally" uses a name that ActivisionBlizzard did not license from the appropriate gun manufacturer? I.e. It has little to do with profanity but a lot to prevent someone from making screnshot of a loadout with a gun that looks like MP5, is named by them as "MP5 whatever" and behaves like an MP5 in some type of legal action?
- sli 6y agoI cannot imagine horror of the precedent it would be set if H&K successfully sued AB over copyright infringement for names that are visible only to the player who entered them. Those names are not shown publicly.
- vaduz 6y agoWhilst I agree - and fervently hope we won't have to live in such a world - I thought the same about the API copyrightability and that one is not exactly going the reasonable way at the moment. H&K has an US trademark consisting of just "MP5" in relation to a ton of things (though not video games!) so they could at least try make a case out of it not being purely nominative use and tie AB in court, if they wished. It would be PR suicide, but still, not the most stupid thing they have done.
- ufmace 6y agoIt feels like it would be pretty bizarre if a court somewhere actually ruled in favor of a gun manufacturer for lost revenue in a trademark suit because somebody was genuinely confused between a weapon in a video game and ordering an actual physical weapon, that can only be legally ordered by licensed firearm dealers and government organizations.
- 015a 6y agoUnclear. They do absolutely refer to their gun as, say, the "MP5" in-game. Though, interestingly, in Modern Warfare (2019), many guns have two names; for example, the MP5 is also called SMG Charlie (as in, NATO phonetic alphabet for C). I kind of got the impression that it was laying groundwork for a long-term goal of removing the actual names of the guns; possibly due to licensing fees, or maybe to divorce the ugly reality of killing with video game killing, I don't know.
- wheybags 6y agoMaybe I'm being dense here, but what possible profane meaning is there in MP5?
- CamperBob2 6y agoThe RIAA is trying to get ahead of various up-and-coming formats that will be used to pirate their content.
- 015a 6y agoYou're not being dense. Its inexplicable. The only thing I can come up with is that "5" looks like "S", so maybe its banning "MPS", but even that is nearly meaningless; urbandictionary has some explicit things it stands for, though they're not well-upvoted.
- floatboth 6y agoNeed for Speed Heat doesn't allow you to put "69" or "420" on your car. But "6 9" and "4 2 0" are fine :D Best filter ever, completely defeated by just spaces
- ubermonkey 6y agoI'm just agog that people are still doing dumb pattern matching for profanity filters. I just assumed that YEARS AGO people realized how dumb it is, but apparently: No.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoA great many places do this and automatically refuse content based on arbitrary “bad words” regardless the context. I remember being denied to post a forum post containing the phrase “tardive dyskinesia”, as it appears that it rejected anything with the string “tard” in it. I'm not sure as to whom they think to be helping with that, but it's entirely possible that their advertisement revenue will actually suffer, if the string “tard” be found on their pages.
- Majromax 6y agoThis is Google. It's probably very smart pattern matching for profanity. The neural network may have taken millions of core-hours to learn to be as dumb (here) as a blind keyword search.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- boring_twenties 6y agoNot super relevant or anything but I just can't help but share my favorite profanity filter story, so here you go. I worked at a place that had a profanity filter in two parts. The first part was in C, several pages of if (!strcmp(x, a)) return 0; After all that, it then invokes popen() to ssh to another machine and run a shell script there, which contains several more pages of string comparisons, this time in shell.
- tyingq 6y agoMy particular favorite is this one: "In October 2020 a profanity filter banned the word bone at a paleontology conference." https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyzamj/a-profanity-filter-banned-the-word-bone-at-a-paleontology-conference https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyzamj/a-profanity-filter-ba...
- koheripbal 6y agoWhy are we letting tech companies treat us like children? Once I confirm to them I'm an adult, I should be able to choose to see everything.
- int_19h 6y agoA long time ago, I saw a guy unable to post on a corporate blog of his own team. Turned out that his name was flagged by a filter. What made this particularly egregious is that the name in question: "Hui" - wasn't even a swear word in either his own native language - Chinese - nor in English. But it closely resembles a Russian profanity. Turned out that the filter was "multilingual", and applied rules for all languages to all posts...
- grishka 6y agoWhy the hell would it even apply Russian filters to something that isn't written in Cyrillic? And this isn't the best English transliteration of that word either... That's really some dedication.
- emayljames 6y agoYeah, they would have to do literal translation based on phonetics. That is just insane.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> they would have to do literal translation based on phonetics. That seems pretty unlikely to have happened here; I don't know the Russian word in question, but the Chinese "hui" rhymes with English "clay". (It also rhymes with the more sensibly spelled Chinese "wei"; the 'e' is only omitted when the syllable begins with a consonant. Compare "feng shui".) I'd be surprised if that were a possible reading of any Russian that might be transliterated "hui".
- int_19h 6y agoA native Russian speaker who is familiar with how Russian is usually transliterated, but unfamiliar with Chinese, would read it very similar to the Russian word in question ("khoo-y"). As to why the filter was applied to Latin characters - I'm not sure, but I'm assuming that's to prevent people from using translit to sneak in profanities. Of course, this ends up being a pointless game of whack-a-mole - there's so many possible ways to spell something like that with Unicode...
- ourcat 6y agoAnd the Arsenal pocketwatch.
- emayljames 6y agoThe example where the AFA filtered a news article about Tyson Gay, to replace any instance of his surname to 'homosexual' is an hilarious example of why you need context.
- chovybizzass 6y agoTime for a p2p app store that works on all devices.
- bzb6 6y agoYes, federated and decentralised which can run Windows and SPARC applications.
- kevincox 6y agoSo HTTP or IPFS? We just need a standardized update mechanism.
- tw04 6y agoWhat you're actually saying is: time for government intervention. There's no planet on which Apple or Google will voluntarily give up the revenue stream produced by their respective app stores. *If you're going to downvote me, at least provide some evidence that I'm off base. Google and Apple both refuse to allow other app stores and there's absolutely 0 recourse that doesn't involve the government stepping in. F-droid and the rest don't cover anything approaching "all devices".
- int_19h 6y agoThis kind of thing is exactly what anti-trust laws are for.
- Thaxll 6y agoRight so when you have some childporn showing up, illegal material what are you going to do?
- falcolas 6y agoContact the police so they can arrest the poster? Also, maintain a public denylist of packages with an transparent process for overriding or correcting the list?
- 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- monadic3 6y agoYup, that's about how much effort I expected them to put into their app store: absolutely nothing beyond cheap, automated heuristics. Why invest in a decent ecosystem when you're one of the two options in town? I'm about an inch away from throwing my phone in the river and switching to a GPS-only device for navigating in my car. All the convenience a mobile device offers can't make up for the crap software experience you're forced into—literally ransoming the use of your phone through their company store.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoSo is this born from plain old moralfaggotry, or is there actually a commercial reason behind this policy? They say sex sells, so I wonder if there actually is a reason to deny content that is “sexually gratifying”? I find this to exist in many commercial endeavors and I wonder if there are actually sound financial reasons behind it, or whether it was similar to the strange culture shock tourists in the U.S.A. faced in the 70s, being denied a shared hotel room because they did not have the same surname. Or perhaps that too was actually for commercial reasons rather than being moral guardians?
- thomasz 6y agoIt's really breathtaking. They take an astonishing amount of your revenue. And they do not even try.
- heavyset_go 6y agoThe mobile app distribution market really needs some disruption.
- thomasz 6y agoIt needs regulation. There is no way a functioning market is going to grow out of the current ecosystem.
- asudosandwich 6y agoThis showed up here six minutes after the issue was opened. Kudos for being proactive I guess.
- Phillips126 6y agoSadly, sometimes this is the only way to get a human review on issues like this. Go public and be heard or face the ceaseless automated rejections.
- Macha 6y agoWell, this is the closest to an actual app review support forum that Googlers actually read, sadly.
- Fordec 6y agoDoes a single soul believe the Google review process is fair and reasonable any more? Only the social media option gets results because it causes them enough PR pain. And there's no sign, at all, of that changing.
- LocalH 6y agoSoon as I saw this headline I was like "I bet this is about ASS subtitles". Sad, really. Would have figured the Scunthorpe problem was well enough known that it wouldn't exist in a project of this scale.
- smsm42 6y agoIt's because of their scale they can afford not to care. So, some app gets kicked out, who cares, they have literally millions more, most of them (like the abovementioned sex game that is all over the ads) actually bringing in the sweet $$$$s. So they can afford to both pretend they are pure guardians of morality and make money, and given their size they don't need to have any customer service, because what you gonna do - go to a different store?
- stretchcat 6y agoSo this is the power of machine learning, huh? Just as shit as the old keyword blacklists of old.
- ksec 6y agoWell luckily this is Google. Which means there are no real human behind the suspension, most likely just an Automated response before some one steps in. ( Or not ) I would be furious if this was coming from Apple. And judging from the current Apple I would not be surprised if they will tell you to not use the "ASS" label in your support format.
- ttt0 6y agoIsn't their support service automated too? Isn't making a stink on the internet the only way to deal with issues like this, because it generates bad press for them?
- Hamuko 6y agoASS subtitles are particularly popular in anime fansubbing as it allows for advanced typesetting. You can take it pretty far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9AgMlHJe7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9AgMlHJe7Y
- fastball 6y agoPotentially NSFW (heh this is kinda pointless atm). Also wow, I'm guessing you need to adjust the subtitle with every frame, old-school animation style?
- Hamuko 6y agoThe subtitles are basically adjusted every frame but you don't necessarily have to do it by hand. You can for example generate motion data with Blender or Mocha and import that into Aegisub (the software that is used to create the subtitle files). https://unanimated.github.io/ts/ts-mocha.htm https://unanimated.github.io/ts/ts-mocha.htm https://github.com/TypesettingTools/Aegisub-Motion/wiki/Applying-Data https://github.com/TypesettingTools/Aegisub-Motion/wiki/Appl...
- throwaway314158 6y agoBefore newer tools automated the process by tracking motion of a target, folks wouldn't have to adjust them frame by frame per se but would instead annotate the subtitle script with keyframe times and positions. The video player would know to interpolate between those annotations.
- veddan 6y agoThe ASS format has some basic animation with the \move command (moving subtitles using linear interpolation) and the \t command (changing various properties of a line with the possibility of quadric interpolation). This takes care of some cases, but is often insufficient for complex stuff. Aegisub however has good automation support, and has (had?) a pretty active scripting community. Scripts can do a lot of stuff and often has simple dialog-box UIs. The base scripting support is in Lua, but a lot of scripts are written in a Lua variant called Moonscript. I've never seen it used anywhere else. And, as was mentioned in a sibling comment, there are scripts for importing motion-tracking files into Aegisub. The ASS format lacks support for a bunch of stuff that people want to do, or the native support is deficient in some manner, so scripting is very important for Aegisub. For example, a line can be given a color gradient by make a one copy of the line for each shade in the gradient (this can be 100+ times). Each copy is then given a different color according to the gradient, and a \clip command is used on each line to only show a 1-2 pixel wide slice of each line. If all those slices are lined up properly and the lines are displayed simultaneously, it gives the impression of being a single line with a color gradient. Tricks like this can actually cause performance problems in rendering the subtitles! I think this is an interesting little programming niche, but there isn't much complex typesetting being done these days. Tastes have changed, and due to licensed releases there's less need for fansubbing on all but the most niche titles.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MFogleman 6y agoJust wanna make sure I got this right. "ASS", automatic instant suspension with 0 human review. "King's Throne: Game of Lust.", with advertised gameplay content such as "I, [the King], shall interrogate this female prisoner privately in my bed chambers", is one of the top advertised games on google play. Got it.
- falcolas 6y agoApproved since it doesn't have a naughty word in it. /s
- extrememacaroni 6y agoehehe, sex
- grawprog 6y agoThe world we live in is strange. On one hand, it's trivial to find and consume content full of profanity, violence, sex and other things deemed 'inappropriate' yet on the other hand we live in a world where this old George Carlin classic still applies https://youtu.be/5ssJtD08vCc https://youtu.be/5ssJtD08vCc
- pwdisswordfish6 6y agoIt’s not just Google, though. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7291 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7291
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hatsunearu 6y agoI hate the ads for that game so much when I'm watching random crap on Youtube...
- ttt0 6y agoI wonder, why people suddenly forgot that adblockers are a thing?
- h_anna_h 6y agoI do wonder what the justification for banning apps that "contain or promote sexually explicit content or profanity, including pornography".
- worik 6y agoMe too. Where I am from prostitution is not illegal. On line tools are a real boon for the workers. Pornography is entirely normal, and pornographers need all the protection other workers have, attitudes like this make that hard. I really thought we were over prurience! Silly me. Silly Google. If you are going to be Evil (TM) at least be grown up about it!
- username90 6y agoAmerican companies will enforce American cultural norms, simple as that.
- mbg721 6y agoAmerica is in the midst of a weird struggle to decide what those are; the companies are just trying to minimize local reputation risk.
- alex_c 6y agoIt is infuriating that Google's default action for these automated takedowns is to remove the app and ask the developer to upload a new build with a new package name, which means not keeping any of the existing users. It's happened to two of my clients in the past 6 months based on small infractions in the app metadata, but no issue with the app itself. In both cases the app was taken down with no advance notice, and eventually reinstated after an appeal and several very stressful days of waiting. Apple seems to be very selective during the approval process, and is often inconsistent so a minor update can get rejected for something that was approved many times before. I guess different people review and interpret the rules differently so maybe this is unavoidable. Google (from what I can tell) seems to take a very different approach and relies much more on automated enforcement. The process is on average much lower friction for the developer, but getting previously approved app listings removed at any time without warning is not a good experience. Edit: I forgot to mention that you can't actually edit the metadata while the app is suspended and re-submit it for review. The only two choices are to appeal and edit the description after the app is reinstated, or create a completely new app listing.
- fjabre 6y agoI don't understand Google's App store play. Just another walled garden where things like this can happen. They were the champions of the open web for a long time. What happened?
- cgb223 6y agoThey found out if you close it and own it, you can make more money
- jacquesm 6y agoSchmidt, greed.
- _jal 6y ago> They were the champions of the open web for a long time. Because that's what you say when you're the underdog. Remember Apple's 1984 ad? Microsoft's "a computer on every desk"? The tech industry seems to support a rotating cast of monopolists riding atop whatever gate-keeping function emerges, each one holding on as long as it can until replaced by something that ends up looking a lot like the last top dog.
- smartties 6y agoGoogle's bots strike again.
- fastball 6y agoCan we just, forget about profanity being a thing and pretend it isn't?
- jonas21 6y agoAt least you got a reason from Google. I have an update to an iOS app that's been stuck in review for two weeks now with zero feedback from Apple other than boilerplate responses from support. This is causing me serious stress as I have no idea how long it's going to be in this state and I rely on this and another app for 100% of my income.
- smartties 6y agoWould you rather have your whole app suspended indefinitely from a random google's bot decision or have a human reviewing your update and possibly rejecting it ? From my last 3 rejections on iOS, they always provided me screenshots and I could discuss with the Apple reviewers. Same story for youtube (bots everywhere...), the only Google service where I could talk to human was Google Ads.
- jonas21 6y agoIn this case it's not an indefinite suspension. The email said exactly what he needs to do to resolve the issue. I'd rather be in that situation because there would be something I could do to make progress, even if I didn't agree with the decision. In my case, I have no idea how long this is going to take - and I've seen horror stories on the Apple Developer forums of people being in review for months. It's also clear that a person hasn't actually been reviewing my app for 2 weeks straight, even though its been in the "In Review" state for that long. There's just not enough functionality in the app -- and previous updates to this app have only spent an hour or two in review. Maybe it's just my personality, but waiting in limbo with no end in sight really drives me nuts. EDIT: to be clear, neither situation is good, but if I had to pick one, I'd pick the former.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoGoing by another comment, it is not just a suspension, but a removal of the app identifier, which means all existing users are gone.
- smartties 6y ago
- kazinator 6y agoI used this before. Some seven years ago I needed to hard-sub something, and the way to do the rendering from my .srt file involved some libass plugin to ffmpeg, or something like that.
- mumblemumble 6y agoThis tracks. One of the things that always gets me about US media is that gratuitous rape - even fairly graphic rape scenes on TV - is just fine as long it doesn't involve visible nipples.
- coldtea 6y agoAny kind of violence is fine. Sex is a sin though.
- sneak 6y agoI was actually thinking about writing a blog post about one of the more culturally transgressive things Google has done lately: they stopped banning naked yoga videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=naked+yoga https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=naked+yoga There's absolutely nothing wrong with videos showing the human form, but people doing yoga without wearing a single thing—on YouTube—is definitely going to surprise some people. I'm honestly quite surprised that Google permits it, but I'm glad that they do. Someone has to challenge the ridiculous American cultural taboos surrounding the human form. I think YouTube is a terrible dangerous tarpit of censorship, a sort of societal "attractive nuisance", but they should be credited with challenging ridiculous unnecessary censorship norms when they take steps in the right direction for once.
- alufers 6y agoSomebody recently sent me a link to a video on YouTube about the infamous prickasso [1]. I was very surprised to see YouTube hosting a video of him, well, painting on camera. [1] https://youtu.be/4oDT99KKvdE https://youtu.be/4oDT99KKvdE
- Lammy 6y agoSex that a woman enjoys is a sin. That's why rape scenes are fine.
- Veen 6y ago
- mxfh 6y agoWith german word `Ass` for ace, among others. Could as well just be - playing card name, - tennis rule - or some medical advice on acetylsalicylic acid (Acetylsalicylsäure/ASS) and derived tradenames that also leave german language context as tradenames and the likes. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass
- gokhan 6y agoGot some pages on my site banned from displaying Google ads because the user generated content on the pages includes a discussion on "Penisilin" (Penicillin in Turkish). Never appealed since it's mostly a time sink with Google when you're nobody.
- worik 6y agoSome one said, and was downvoted into oblivion (?)... " Yup, that's about how much effort I expected them to put into their app store: absolutely nothing beyond cheap, automated heuristics. Why invest in a decent ecosystem when you're one of the two options in town? I'm about an inch away from throwing my phone in the river and switching to a GPS-only device for navigating in my car. All the convenience a mobile device offers can't make up for the crap software experience you're forced into—literally ransoming the use of your phone through their company store. " Me too! I have ordered and am awaiting my Pine Phone for this exact reason.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI literally own a pinephone so dont misunderstand me as disagreeing, but you could always just stay on Android and use F-Droid.
- heavyset_go 6y agoGoogle put limits in Android such that the Play Store is the only app distribution method that can implement background installation of apps, batch installations of apps and automatic upgrading. F-Droid provides those features only if you're able to root your phone, which manufacturers actively try to stop users from doing. Also, rooting your phone opens it up to vulnerabilities and exploits.
- grishka 6y agoIf you have root and/or install an alternative store as a privileged system app, it will be able to install apps in the background just like Play Store.
- worik 6y agoPossibly. But there are (a) services I cannot turn off and (b) apps I really need on android. Perhaps F-Droid would help with (a) but not (b) SO I plan to have a cheep android for the one app I cannot do without and the Pine phone for everything else... But time will tell
- 6y ago
- jennyyang 6y agoOnce companies become monopolies like Google, Facebook etc, I believe the government should impose regulations like mandatory SLAs for customer support. Right now, companies like Google can completely ignore customer service because they are a monopoly. And they do this, because it saves them billions of dollars. If they had actual competition, they would spend more on customer support because it would be a point of contention, but since they have no competition, they just let bots handle everything and they completely ignore their customers who have no choice but to continue to use their products. This is a form or monopolistic behavior that needs to be addressed by regulations. Monopolies should be forced to spend money on real humans or some form of effective customer support, with a regulated SLA. It's the only way to keep these companies in check once they have completely starved any form of competition away from them.
- franczesko 6y agoRight to appeal should be essential
- WesolyKubeczek 6y agoYou've really got to enjoy the walled garden experience which at least half of the HackerNews commenters claims to be ultra-supremely-superior for the end user. I imagine whoever is in charge of the review machine, though, reads Kafka for enjoyment and inspiration.
- BnotABotHQ 6y agoOnce an appeal is submitted I would expect actual humans to intervene and check the content out. But no, it seems like bots took over.
- vander_elst 6y agoI feel lots of the comments are polarized and don't take into the account the magnitude and difficulty of the problem at hand. Additionally, I wonder what the comments would be, if the opposite would have happened, an app with explicit content lands on the playstore. Are there any data available about the false positives false negatives etc. ?
- dessant 6y agoIt should have been flagged for human review. People are taking issue with the automated takedown, not that automated detection can produce false positives.
- phjesusthatguy3 6y agoI have a hunch that if Google actually wanted to fix the issue, they could afford to pay enough people enough money to find a solution. In the meantime, they're doing this.
- spideymans 6y agoI mean... even Apple uses manual reviewers. If Google wanted to address this problem, they would have. (And no saying that App Store reviews are perfect by any stretch)
- ttt0 6y agoThey're simply being put up to their own standards. They shut down anyone for a slightest mistake, so I'm just not going to feel sorry for them for their own incompetence or because it's hard. If they fuck up, the government will bail them out. If smaller companies they often destroy fuck up, no one will bat an eye. Split them up if necessary, maybe that will fix at least some of the problems.
- fortran77 6y agoAre bible apps banned? https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.22.3?ven=Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&lang=bi&aliyot=0 https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.22.3?ven=Tanakh:_The_Holy_Sc... Some of the asses in the bible talk! https://www.sefaria.org/Numbers.22.30?lang=bi&aliyot=0 https://www.sefaria.org/Numbers.22.30?lang=bi&aliyot=0
- robomartin 6y agoHow long until people just stop relying on these platforms as the foundation...sorry, no, the single unstable column, that supports their entire business? Same issue with third party sellers on Amazon getting destroyed when Amazon irrationally shuts down their products or entire account. It's crazy. This has been screaming for government regulation for years.
- LatteLazy 6y agoWhile I think it's BS that Google just delete things like this (YouTube is the other classic example). I also wonder what anyone expects when the DCMA exists and people demand Google start censoring apps? At the very least, incorrect (frivolous) DCMAs need to lead to huge payouts for the victims.
- avipars 6y agoThe automated system has too much control
- newbie578 6y agoOh how I long for the app stores to get regulated by the government. Or even better, to make Apple and Google allow full integration with PWAs, so that anyone anywhere can use it, without downloading APKs.
- black3r 6y agoWhat's up with this American obsession with censoring profanities? Who gets to decide what's a bad word? And why are people suddenly okay with "censored" versions of "swearwords" like heck vs. hell, or bleeping out the middle of f*ck while you can still hear both F and K...? The intent is still there... If there is enough of other people who are annoyed by this, can we please start doing something about this?
- chmod600 6y agoArbitrary rules like that are a way to teach children impulse control, restraint, and patience. I can't easily find the exact passage, but The Better Angels of Our Natue talks about how it's improper in English culture to use a knife to help eat peas. He credits these kind of arbitrary rules for helping reduce violent impulses. (Note: I read the book a while back so I'm probably misrepresenting the author's point in some way, but I think that's the general idea.)
- interestica 6y agoNetflix just release a series of episodes on the history of curse words. Hosted by Nicholas Cage of all people. The jokes are kinda weak and don't land enough... but there are a couple interesting spots. I think just the fact that a show like this can now exist on a medium like this says a lot about how far we've come. And I think it speaks to where we're going --- where we collectively just care less and less about 'profanity'.
- rzz3 6y agoLegitimate large corporations are actively putting in effort to make sure apps don’t contain the word “ass” in their descriptions? What the actual fuck. What parent cares if their kid sees the word “ass”?
- heavyset_go 6y agoGoogle and Apple have kept a stranglehold on the mobile application distribution market for over a decade now. It's time to break them up, or require them to allow other mobile app distributors on their platforms. Surely other companies can be more efficient with the 30% cut or less that Google takes, without forcing users to put up with the poor service that's exemplified by the article in the OP.
- pottedplant 6y agoHow do you break them up when they control the device hardware?
- nickysielicki 6y agoHow do you suggest they recoup the losses that come with developing and maintaining entire ecosystems of power-efficient operating systems and mobile devices?
- heavyset_go 6y agoNot my problem, Google already makes a ton of money off of me through their mobile ad platforms and tracking, and they can charge the OEMs to use Android. That might even incentivize the much needed competition in the mobile OS market, given Apple and Google's monopoly in that space, too. How does Apple do it with macOS? What about Microsoft with Windows?
- smartties 6y agoApple now takes a 15% fee and has a really good review process (updates are reviewed by humans within a day or two)
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Apple now takes a 15% fee Surely if there was real competition in the mobile app distribution market, we could see how efficient competitors can be with that 15% or less cut compared to Apple. > and has a really good review process (updates are reviewed by humans within a day or two) In this very thread, an iOS developer is lamenting the fact that their iOS app has been held in limbo for weeks by Apple reviewers[1]. It's responsible for 100% of their income, and Apple's arbitrary rules and reviewers are cutting into that. That doesn't instill confidence in me that Apple has a really good review process at all. To me, it shows that we need real competition in the mobile app distribution space. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907375
- darkwater 6y agoSo, the masters of machine learning, where most of.human work is automates, who employ the finest brains in the CS world use... a stop words list to flag an app as indecent? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really surprised.
- tpmx 6y agoIt means the Google Play store is something they don't care that much about.
- bambax 6y ago> Your app contains content that doesn't comply with the Sexual Content and Profanity policy. What the fuck is "profanity"? Are we a religious society? Why shouldn't we able to say "ass" (!) or show nipples?? The ban on porn is defensible outside of any moral framework because once you allow porn then all what's left is porn (although it would be useful to think about why that is). But "profanity"? Come on.
- ironmagma 6y agoYes we are a religious society. Our roots are in puritanism, in fact that's one of the main differentiators from the (Catholic-based) European countries from which we sprang.
- tpmx 6y ago"We"? Google is booking less than 50% of its revenue in the US.
- ironmagma 6y agoIs this about Google's revenue as a whole (mostly ads) or a particular market (Android play store in the USA)?
- tpmx 6y agoThat level of granularity isn't provided by Google in their financial reports, so Google as a whole. That said, Android seems to be doing better outside the US than in the US. I wouldn't be very surprised if US revenue was dominant within the Android BU (or whatever they call it today). Last time I heard (probably outdated) there were at least 2 billion non-US Google Play devices active; compared to the 120 million US Google Play devices figure that's widely available. Also: Wouldn't surprise me if Google makes more from licensing the Google Play store to non-US markets than they do from the Google Play sales revenue globally.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
- TrianguloY 6y agoDon't worry, this is just the Google way: "act first, fix later". It's better to ban at the first sign of a problem, and then if something bad happened review and fix it. Nothing to worry about, they also expect this from you, simply act first and if you are doing it wrong they will act...and ban...and disable your account...wait. (They are the big, you are the small, they can, you don't)
- hawkesnest 6y agoObligatory TheDailyWTF reference: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake- http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-
- userbinator 6y agoGoogle is sure making a donkey of itself... a clbuttic problem indeed. Seriously, "ass" is probably one of the mildest of vulgar words.
- dgregd 6y agoI run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates. 10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App updates are disabled until you log in. So I had to educate my customer employees how to log in to Play Store and install my app. The additional benefit was that people had security updates of Chrome and other apps. Two months ago my app was suspended after I made all necessary changes to support Android 10. The Gbot claims that background location updates aren't essential for my app. As you may guess I wrote appeal without success. My customers pay mainly for that time report feature but Gbot knows better what my paying customers want. And I just do not care about securing my customer devices and Play Store any longer. Now I distribute apk files again and train people how to install apk files from unknown sources.
- horsawlarway 6y agoGood - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ of total mobile revenue), and for basically all but the largest of customers - this consent is machine based and you will never be able to get a living person to so much as glance at any content you put into the process. --- Fuck em both.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sa1 6y agoMe, a customer, is very happy that they play a regulatory role and are taking steps to prevent surveillance of the form GP is proposing. I’m glad that I don’t have a direct relationship with shady 3rd party developers.
- malinens 6y agoRelated from my native language (Latvian): ass nazis means sharp knife: https://translate.google.com/?sl=lv&tl=en&text=ass%20nazis&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=lv&tl=en&text=ass%20nazis&o...
- sub7 6y agolol they'll fix this tomorrow
- m-p-3 6y agoAnd Google AI made another victim to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- alisonkisk 6y agoGoogle's ML-based ad optimizer was literally called "SmartASS". You may also know the name because the team of the same name was a perennial winner of the ICFP Programming Contest. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-our-40-billion-secret-sauce-is-called-smartass-2012-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-our-40-billion-s...
- blacklight 6y agoTime to go back to distributing direct apk files and setting up self-hosted stores to manage updates. The Play Store was supposed to be only an interface for searching and installing packages, like aptitude or yum. Then it started taking arbitrary decisions "for the benefit of the users" (of course, Google always knows what's best for its users, even more than the users themselves). Then, like the guy who loves the smells of his own farts even when everybody around him disagrees, they decided that their process was indeed so good that it could have been completely automated, with almost no human touch and no possibility for developers and users to appeal. And now it ended up being this Kafka novel where you're stuck in the gears of the process and you don't know why, nor when a real human will actually take a look at your case. And, in the meantime, you lose traffic and users, but Google doesn't seem to care. Time to start boycotting the Play Store. There's plenty of alternative stores, it's easy to set up one yourself for your apps, and you can always distribute your apk files through your website.
- imaginenore 6y agoOr use an actually free (as in freedom) app store. https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- jimmaswell 6y agoWhy is the comment suggesting f-droid killed? So many comments are [dead] on here for no good reason lately. F-Droid seems like a decent idea to me.
- monocasa 6y agoThat user appears to be shadowbanned; all of their comments start off as dead until someone vouches for them.
- phasnox 6y agoWhy not use PWAs?
- justaguy88 6y agoAI is still terrible, news at 11. I wish they'd just employ human filters instead.
- kwdc 6y agoActual Linux on mobiles can't come soon enough. Google aren't running AI on these listings. Its just a regex and perhaps some graph queries to pick up suspicious activity. I doubt any appeal will work unless the social media angle gets large enough. Maybe they should try twitter as well. Think yourself lucky in these circumstances that you even know the actual reason for the suspension and not just some generic message like "it violates our T&Cs".
- ta1234567890 6y agoJust got my Google Ads account suspended for supposedly violating their “circumventing systems” policy. But I hadn’t even touched the account in months, and before that I ran it for years without issues. Never did anything remotely fishy or against the guidelines, never got any warnings either. The only time I can even remember having issues with an ad was because we inadvertently changed the url of a landing page, hence producing a 404 on the link in the ad, which we quickly corrected after being notified. And of course Google won’t even tell me the exact reason why they made a decision, so I can’t do anything about it. Their policies are super vague and broad, so in some sense almost anything could be interpreted to be against their guidelines as well. And they told me to not even try creating another account with either another name or email, because they’ll find them and block them as well. Given there isn’t really a true alternative to google ads (no other company is allowed to run ads on Google results), and they dominate 80%+ of the search market. Actions like what happened to me, especially without a clear explanation, definitely feels like an abuse. Being a bit cynic, if I had to guess the real reason behind the suspension of my account, I would say it’s because I didn’t implement almost any of their BS “enhancement” recommendations, which really were just thinly disguised efforts to get me to increase my spend.