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The writing style of the piece looks like a political mailer. > The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Frau

by ben509 5y ago

The writing style of the piece looks like a political mailer. > The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation! That kind of hyperbole sets off all my BS detectors. As I go through the back and forth, DroidScript speculates this: > Our main guess was that one of our users was experimenting with our AdMob ID after extracting it from our APK... What I don't see is that they ever went back to the policies to check if that was legit. If it wasn't and you tell Google, "right, that was totally a feature but we've removed it," then, you just indicated that you deliberately implemented a feature that violated the terms of your agreement. > How can they expect people to build organisations or businesses supported by advertising revenue, when they might be subject to this type of summary execution at any moment! I agree that Google's communication with their customers is awful, but this is not a new problem: _you have to read your contract_. And that means get a lawyer to go over it and explain to you what it really means and not what you'd like it to mean.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> What I don't see is that they ever went back to the policies to check if that was legit. If it wasn't and you tell Google, "right, that was totally a feature but we've removed it," then, you just indicated that you deliberately implemented a feature that violated the terms of your agreement. A user reverse-engineering your app to pull out its AdMob ID is neither a feature nor something the app dev can reasonably be faulted for.
- fmajid 5y ago
  It happens a lot more often than people think. By some estimates more than half of all ad clicks are bot-driven fraud.
indymike 5y ago
Perhaps the problem here is the monetization model (ads) is a mismatch? Perhaps try a subscription or just let users buy the app?
- kbelder 5y ago
  Doesn't matter. They're banned from re-uploading any updated version of the app; they're not allowed to fix the problem, even if they knew what the problem was. This non-profit org was highly focused on the educational market. I think they would have gladly stripped _all_ advertising out of the app while they worked on other funding schemes to try to eke out survival. Google is not giving them that option.
veeti 5y ago
Are you serious? It takes a minute to disassemble literally any APK with AdMob SDK and abuse their ID's. These values are not secrets. If a billion dollar company like Google can't detect simple fraudulent activity like this, how are their ads supposed to be worth a single dollar?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > how are their ads supposed to be worth a single dollar? Hard truth: a lot of internet ads is fraud. With paper, radio and TV, any ad buyer can cheaply verify that their ad spending ends up where it should by buying a paper at a random train station or listening to the airwaves. On the Internet, it's worse than the Wild West, with fraud and deception on every part of the chain.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Which is ironic because in the 1990s web-advertising was sold to marketeers' as the best form of advertising because every view is logged and tracked: unlike a magazine ad you can know exactly how many people saw it and interacted with it (...right before middle-school kids realized they could make free money by clicking ads they put up on their geocities webpages) When Facebook launched their ad platform people were saying there would be even less fraud than open web advertising because FB (at the time...) was doing a good job of keeping bots out of Facebook - but I understand right now that Facebook advertising is the worst form of advertising you can spend money on... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26193544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26193544
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      For Facebook ads, I have an interesting story... way back years when some neo-Nazis chartered a ship (the "C Star", for those who want to look it up), cruised in the Mediterranean and ended up in distress, I set up a couple ads for troll posts of mine and targeted them to followers of the German alt-right party... and lo and behold, the people flocked in with angry replies. Best 50$ I ever spent on entertainment, and it was highly effective.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
If someone came along and pulled the rug out from under your ability to earn a paycheck you might be a bit excited and hyperbolic as well especially if all they told you was "you hurt our feelings" but wouldn't tell you why. The situation is ludicrous.
jccalhoun 5y ago
I am not a programmer so I have no idea of the validity of anything they wrote. However, the style absolutely grates on me. It sounds like PR. and the random bold sentences seems like a calculated PR move.
Jfuvjrnfjxje 5y ago
> The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation! How is this a hyperbole? The first sentence is literally and completely true. And the developer seems legitimately upset and shocked. It's not hard to imagine truely being extremely upset that something you probably spent hundreds of hours on got shut down for inscrutable reasons outside your control.

by ben509 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> What I don't see is that they ever went back to the policies to check if that was legit. If it wasn't and you tell Google, "right, that was totally a feature but we've removed it," then, you just indicated that you deliberately implemented a feature that violated the terms of your agreement. A user reverse-engineering your app to pull out its AdMob ID is neither a feature nor something the app dev can reasonably be faulted for.

fmajid 5y ago
It happens a lot more often than people think. By some estimates more than half of all ad clicks are bot-driven fraud.

indymike 5y ago

Perhaps the problem here is the monetization model (ads) is a mismatch? Perhaps try a subscription or just let users buy the app?

kbelder 5y ago
Doesn't matter. They're banned from re-uploading any updated version of the app; they're not allowed to fix the problem, even if they knew what the problem was. This non-profit org was highly focused on the educational market. I think they would have gladly stripped _all_ advertising out of the app while they worked on other funding schemes to try to eke out survival. Google is not giving them that option.

veeti 5y ago

Are you serious? It takes a minute to disassemble literally any APK with AdMob SDK and abuse their ID's. These values are not secrets. If a billion dollar company like Google can't detect simple fraudulent activity like this, how are their ads supposed to be worth a single dollar?

mschuster91 5y ago
> how are their ads supposed to be worth a single dollar? Hard truth: a lot of internet ads is fraud. With paper, radio and TV, any ad buyer can cheaply verify that their ad spending ends up where it should by buying a paper at a random train station or listening to the airwaves. On the Internet, it's worse than the Wild West, with fraud and deception on every part of the chain.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Which is ironic because in the 1990s web-advertising was sold to marketeers' as the best form of advertising because every view is logged and tracked: unlike a magazine ad you can know exactly how many people saw it and interacted with it (...right before middle-school kids realized they could make free money by clicking ads they put up on their geocities webpages) When Facebook launched their ad platform people were saying there would be even less fraud than open web advertising because FB (at the time...) was doing a good job of keeping bots out of Facebook - but I understand right now that Facebook advertising is the worst form of advertising you can spend money on... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26193544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26193544
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    For Facebook ads, I have an interesting story... way back years when some neo-Nazis chartered a ship (the "C Star", for those who want to look it up), cruised in the Mediterranean and ended up in distress, I set up a couple ads for troll posts of mine and targeted them to followers of the German alt-right party... and lo and behold, the people flocked in with angry replies. Best 50$ I ever spent on entertainment, and it was highly effective.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

If someone came along and pulled the rug out from under your ability to earn a paycheck you might be a bit excited and hyperbolic as well especially if all they told you was "you hurt our feelings" but wouldn't tell you why. The situation is ludicrous.

jccalhoun 5y ago

I am not a programmer so I have no idea of the validity of anything they wrote. However, the style absolutely grates on me. It sounds like PR. and the random bold sentences seems like a calculated PR move.

Jfuvjrnfjxje 5y ago

> The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation! How is this a hyperbole? The first sentence is literally and completely true. And the developer seems legitimately upset and shocked. It's not hard to imagine truely being extremely upset that something you probably spent hundreds of hours on got shut down for inscrutable reasons outside your control.