5 ms·

It 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

by alex_c 6y ago

It 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 ago
I 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 ago
  They found out if you close it and own it, you can make more money
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Schmidt, 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.
  - comboy 6y ago
    I'm quite confident you can't run a company as big as Google without being evil but it seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Corpo structure seems to have something to do with it, separate things into categories, then teams get categories and optimize locally without taking bigger picture into account (or even knowing what the picture is). Some regulations, maybe some pressures from some agencies about which they are not allowed to talk about. Etc. But at some point I have to wonder about the mind of someone decisive in the company when "are we the baddies" question appears. Do they rationalize and think that "well, we need to do this because security botnets blahblah users have no idea what we are dealing with here and it's for their own good even if they don't understand it yada yada", or do they just don't give a shit. Or maybe it's like with me disliking my government - I definitely don't like it but I don't feel like fighting that giant machine at the moment, I can't do anything on my own, it would require cooperation and a plan and I have some stuff to do.
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      There's a lot of reasons. Building a closed guarden that locks people in feels a lot safer from a competition standpoint than the alternative, if you can make it hard to steal your customers and only a few (always remember that being on and reading HN means you're not much of an average user), it's also just easier than being open, a closed system can make changes much faster than an open one that has to get concensus before adding a new feature for example. In this specific case and most of the time where Google's complete lack of support shows up it's because having manual review costs money and the process that screws the app developer is easier than having a secondary process that needs more people to decide if the first automated or rote manual scan made a mistake.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      It's quite simple: if one not be evil, one won't become or remain as big. It's simple survival of the fittest. The lion who feels compassion for his prey will not pass his genes to the next generation.
    - deckard1 6y ago
      > seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Ooooh. I know this one! Because that's what VCs want. AirBNB, Uber, Postmates, Google, Facebook, Apple. VCs want to invest in winner-takes-all platforms and markets with incredibly strong network effects. But don't say any of that out loud: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc... All these people rushing in to Silicon Valley with hat-in-hand going from VC to VC talking about how they care so much about the user or the product. It's all a giant colossal fucking sham. You're there to become a billionaire. Can we all stop dancing around this fact already? Paul Graham and his fucking essays. The pretentious VC Twitterverse. It's always been about the money. Facebook's earliest slide deck tells the story of how they are going to harvest their users' private data and offer it up to advertisers: https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pitch-deck https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pi... This is back when they were still "The Facebook" and a tiny startup. They didn't suddenly become evil and greedy. Greed and evil was the plan. It's right there. Google is no different.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  They automated everything in order to not have to invest in human labor, in order to profit most greatly from scale while paying the fewest people they can get away with. Their original index was just an algorithm that distilled human labor from webrings and indexes, that supposedly was great on its own (hint: nope, they crawled the entire Internet, and yet they still remain critically dependent on blogs and news sites for the volunteer labor their algorithm depends on).
- rodgerd 6y ago
  > They were the champions of the open web for a long time. What happened? It was a con.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  ChromeOSissfication of the Web happened, with lots of FOSS developers putting Chrome everywhere, including bundling it as "native" application.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  Joseph Stalin was a champion of the poor, before he became very rich.
- rmsaksida 6y ago
  > What happened? People fell for it.
- brookmg 6y ago
  They removed the "don't be evil" motto.
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
I once submitted an update for my app and Google banned it from the Play Store for nearly two weeks. A lot of people were cloning my app at the time and the dumbfuck app reviewers were so accustomed to denying the clones that they assumed my app was a clone of itself. Nearly everyone on this planet is a complete fucking retard.
ffhhj 6y ago
Google uses blacklists of words to demonetize Youtube channels. They have similar blacklists to ban Play apps. I found it the hard way when they removed my video recording app after I simply added "spy cam" in the list of features. Lesson of life learned, so I implemented ways to keep in contact with my users in case of sudden ban and ask them to move to a new app or another channel.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  That's explicitly a violation of Google's Play Store Policies: > Apps must not present themselves as a spying or secret surveillance solution. If your application could be accurately described as a "spy cam", it's likely that you were already in violation of their stalkerware policies.
  - ffhhj 6y ago
    That's correct, but my app didn't have any specific feature that makes it a "spy cam", it's just a funny feature, indeed you can use any video recording app as a "spy cam". So according to Google the difference between one and the other is mentioning those words. That shows how their automatic ban system works.
chedabob 6y ago
Apple at least keep your app up, and it's obvious there's a human on the other end. The responses are usually pretty quick (often within minutes if you reply straight away), and you can pinky-promise to fix the issues in the next release if it's an update.
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Unless you're iSH and have to go to the court of public opinion and shame Apple into doing the right thing. Apple was going to remove the app itself.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
I wonder if you could make a dummy app (a canary), submit it, and use that to test if your metadata is acceptable?
- ncann 6y ago
  You have to be very careful about doing that. Every rejection is a potential strike against your developer account (especially for serious offenses like trademark violation). Get too many strikes and your dev account will get banned.
mchusma 6y ago
We have had this happen twice as well. Maddening.
Yeroc 6y ago
Yeah, this is what doesn't make sense to me. Why not leave the current approved app listing up? Why, during an update would they completely remove the listing for previously approved versions?!? Is the process really that broken?

by alex_c 6y ago

fjabre 6y ago

I 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 ago
They found out if you close it and own it, you can make more money
jacquesm 6y ago
Schmidt, 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.
- comboy 6y ago
  I'm quite confident you can't run a company as big as Google without being evil but it seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Corpo structure seems to have something to do with it, separate things into categories, then teams get categories and optimize locally without taking bigger picture into account (or even knowing what the picture is). Some regulations, maybe some pressures from some agencies about which they are not allowed to talk about. Etc. But at some point I have to wonder about the mind of someone decisive in the company when "are we the baddies" question appears. Do they rationalize and think that "well, we need to do this because security botnets blahblah users have no idea what we are dealing with here and it's for their own good even if they don't understand it yada yada", or do they just don't give a shit. Or maybe it's like with me disliking my government - I definitely don't like it but I don't feel like fighting that giant machine at the moment, I can't do anything on my own, it would require cooperation and a plan and I have some stuff to do.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    There's a lot of reasons. Building a closed guarden that locks people in feels a lot safer from a competition standpoint than the alternative, if you can make it hard to steal your customers and only a few (always remember that being on and reading HN means you're not much of an average user), it's also just easier than being open, a closed system can make changes much faster than an open one that has to get concensus before adding a new feature for example. In this specific case and most of the time where Google's complete lack of support shows up it's because having manual review costs money and the process that screws the app developer is easier than having a secondary process that needs more people to decide if the first automated or rote manual scan made a mistake.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    It's quite simple: if one not be evil, one won't become or remain as big. It's simple survival of the fittest. The lion who feels compassion for his prey will not pass his genes to the next generation.
  - deckard1 6y ago
    > seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Ooooh. I know this one! Because that's what VCs want. AirBNB, Uber, Postmates, Google, Facebook, Apple. VCs want to invest in winner-takes-all platforms and markets with incredibly strong network effects. But don't say any of that out loud: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc... All these people rushing in to Silicon Valley with hat-in-hand going from VC to VC talking about how they care so much about the user or the product. It's all a giant colossal fucking sham. You're there to become a billionaire. Can we all stop dancing around this fact already? Paul Graham and his fucking essays. The pretentious VC Twitterverse. It's always been about the money. Facebook's earliest slide deck tells the story of how they are going to harvest their users' private data and offer it up to advertisers: https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pitch-deck https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pi... This is back when they were still "The Facebook" and a tiny startup. They didn't suddenly become evil and greedy. Greed and evil was the plan. It's right there. Google is no different.
floatingatoll 6y ago
They automated everything in order to not have to invest in human labor, in order to profit most greatly from scale while paying the fewest people they can get away with. Their original index was just an algorithm that distilled human labor from webrings and indexes, that supposedly was great on its own (hint: nope, they crawled the entire Internet, and yet they still remain critically dependent on blogs and news sites for the volunteer labor their algorithm depends on).
rodgerd 6y ago
> They were the champions of the open web for a long time. What happened? It was a con.
pjmlp 6y ago
ChromeOSissfication of the Web happened, with lots of FOSS developers putting Chrome everywhere, including bundling it as "native" application.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Joseph Stalin was a champion of the poor, before he became very rich.
rmsaksida 6y ago
> What happened? People fell for it.
brookmg 6y ago
They removed the "don't be evil" motto.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

I once submitted an update for my app and Google banned it from the Play Store for nearly two weeks. A lot of people were cloning my app at the time and the dumbfuck app reviewers were so accustomed to denying the clones that they assumed my app was a clone of itself. Nearly everyone on this planet is a complete fucking retard.

ffhhj 6y ago

Google uses blacklists of words to demonetize Youtube channels. They have similar blacklists to ban Play apps. I found it the hard way when they removed my video recording app after I simply added "spy cam" in the list of features. Lesson of life learned, so I implemented ways to keep in contact with my users in case of sudden ban and ask them to move to a new app or another channel.

duskwuff 6y ago
That's explicitly a violation of Google's Play Store Policies: > Apps must not present themselves as a spying or secret surveillance solution. If your application could be accurately described as a "spy cam", it's likely that you were already in violation of their stalkerware policies.
- ffhhj 6y ago
  That's correct, but my app didn't have any specific feature that makes it a "spy cam", it's just a funny feature, indeed you can use any video recording app as a "spy cam". So according to Google the difference between one and the other is mentioning those words. That shows how their automatic ban system works.

chedabob 6y ago

Apple at least keep your app up, and it's obvious there's a human on the other end. The responses are usually pretty quick (often within minutes if you reply straight away), and you can pinky-promise to fix the issues in the next release if it's an update.

mmastrac 6y ago
Unless you're iSH and have to go to the court of public opinion and shame Apple into doing the right thing. Apple was going to remove the app itself.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

I wonder if you could make a dummy app (a canary), submit it, and use that to test if your metadata is acceptable?

ncann 6y ago
You have to be very careful about doing that. Every rejection is a potential strike against your developer account (especially for serious offenses like trademark violation). Get too many strikes and your dev account will get banned.

mchusma 6y ago

We have had this happen twice as well. Maddening.

Yeroc 6y ago

Yeah, this is what doesn't make sense to me. Why not leave the current approved app listing up? Why, during an update would they completely remove the listing for previously approved versions?!? Is the process really that broken?