14 ms·

We became experts on Google Play Store policy violations

• sprokolopolis 4y ago
  As a long-time Pushbullet user, I would like to thank the developer for their efforts in creating it and in keeping the app available to us!
  • mrsaint 4y ago
    Ditto. As an Android user, I am glad Pushbullet exists, and my whole daily workflow depends on it. Kudos.
• nicoburns 4y ago
  Google’s play store approval process really is a nightmare. Apple’s reviewers might be slow and not always the most competent, but at least they’re real humans you can talk to and reason with. Google as usual is just an automated process that often gives you little to no actionable feedback.
  • dessant 4y ago
    Luckily all of this will be illegal in the EU thanks to the Digital Services Act, developers will have the right to know the exact reason for a rejection, and Google will need to provide real human support.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • therealmarv 4y ago
      oh, I was not aware the Digital Markets Act will change that too. That is a win.
      • dessant 4y ago
        It's actually the Digital Services Act, I have corrected my comment.
    • grogenaut 4y ago
      there are many completely valid and completely unactionable reasons for rejecting people. Yes this might make it a bit better but it's very hard to make someone who doesn't care about helping you help you. Even regulation can just make them do the minimum.
    • professoretc 4y ago
      Someone will need to start an EU-based business where US developers can submit their rejections, and have the EU side get a proper explanation.
      • RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 4y ago
        App [submission] as a service, or AasS. I guess that'll be my YC pitch for '23. Wanna be my co-founder? /s
    • noasaservice 4y ago
      What I'm hearing is there's a hell of a European market to cater to USA and other regions to host apps, and then play hardball in getting real answers.
    • ranger_danger 4y ago
      Google will stop servicing Europe entirely before they offer competent human support.
      • georgebarnett 4y ago
        This is a ridiculous assertion. Google won’t do anything like that. They’ll comply with the law, because they want European money.
        • dvngnt_ 4y ago
          they'll create sentient machines before then
    • klooney 4y ago
      I'm sure they'll manage the process so that it so that it's a powerless human reading an AI's decision back to you. There's no way to legislate wanting to do a good job.
      • janalsncm 4y ago
        If the AI gave actionable advice, fine. If not, it’s a violation of the law.
  • kyle-rb 4y ago
    It's been a couple years since I did mobile dev, but in my experience you don't get to reason much with Apple's reviewers either, but you can change something minor, re-submit, and hope you get a different, better reviewer.
    • djbusby 4y ago
      With Apple, I got to actually talk to a human, on the phone and have a 10 minute conversation to clear things up.
    • mrbombastic 4y ago
      You can reply to app review in app store connect and ask for clarification, in my experience apple is much better at this than google.
    • carstenhag 4y ago
      We currently have an app store issue with one of the 8 apps that we provide (same codebase, mostly same Features, different brands etc). On one of them, we got a very picky reviewer that doesn't like our Account Deletion feature. This & the other apps had it live for months, the others are still fine, just this one app now can't get updates. And we simply can't make it better (due to legalities) - still no cooperation from Apple.
  • saltymimir 4y ago
    Our experience with this has been the complete opposite. Apple's reliance on real human reviewers was precisely the issue for us. Your mileage may vary by a lot depending on the region you operate in. Google's process, while not perfect, made it at least transparent that the process is going to take a while. And at least in our case, the process involved some real people at the end to point out the specific concerns that actually lead to actionables. Apple's process is slow, and seems to be worse in my region; it's clear that they're severely understaffed here. We spent a good 30 days trying to fix a crash, and they were all spent for either submitting a new app version to Apple, waiting for the review to finish, getting it rejected for some very vague reasons, and waiting for a response from them to elaborate their reasons for the rejection.
• pacifika 4y ago
  I think they are getting rejected for not mentioning the url of their api?
  • lillecarl 4y ago
    Seems to me like the common denominator
  • Guzba 4y ago
    Hello, thanks for reading my post. I just wanted to reply here quick and see if I understand your suggestion correctly. Your thought is that mentioning that the necessary data is sent to https://api.pushbullet.com https://api.pushbullet.com instead of just "Pushbullet Servers" might help? I had not considered this but it is an interesting idea.
    • pacifika 4y ago
      Exactly. Probably in the privacy policy not the ui.
      • Alupis 4y ago
        Seems like Google was oddly specific here with exactly what they were wanting from OP. Every single screenshot called out that URL explicitly...
    • return_to_monke 4y ago
      I love the (cat) json response. Rock on!
    • savy91 4y ago
      We tried that, it doesn't work. In our case, Google was claiming we were sending contact information to a URL corresponding to our static landing page. In fact, we didn't even upload contact information anywhere.
      • ncr100 4y ago
• V__ 4y ago
  Sometimes you have to change the code of the privacy policy page, because the AI might have problems parsing it correctly. Here is Luke from LinusTechTips talking about the problems with their Floatplane app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8iy4qYONAc&t=941s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8iy4qYONAc&t=941s
  • Arnavion 4y ago
    The pushbullet article indicates an appeal succeeding doesn't mean the issue was fixed to the reviewer's liking. So I wouldn't assume the correlation that LTT's appeal succeeded because of what they did. Google's review process seemingly does not comply to logical reasoning.
    • V__ 4y ago
      Maybe, but he talks about sending it in a few times and only after changing the page's loading behavior it got accepted. Therefore, I don't think there were human reviewers involved at all, otherwise why not spell out the problem directly? Would save everyone's time and reduce the number of interactions.
      • kmeisthax 4y ago
        "Your app was rejected because our crawlers refused to read it" is more accurate but makes Google look incompetent - even if there's legitimate reasons for crawlers to not follow redirects or execute JavaScript.
    • altfredd 4y ago
      It looks like some types of reviews might be lazy: the app is accepted after an automated scan, then placed in queue to let human reviewers check it at later date. This is actually my biggest takeaway from the article.
• djbusby 4y ago
  One time a project I was on got booted from Google Play. Then we did an appeal, they would let us back in! Yay! And we'd have to pre-appeal our next try. But, we could not use the same Name or Namespace (com.company.project) because those were locked. They are keeping the blocked in, with notes. Our fix was to refactor the namespace in the code, change product & company name. Jk, we just abandoned Google Play, wasn't worth it.
  • tgtweak 4y ago
    Was it due to copyright/trademark hit on the namespace/name? I saw that once before on a very large app 5 years into it's life on google play (I assume they implemented this copyright check job circa early 2018 based on that). Was a simple "we own the domain and here is the proof" reply and it was reinstated without further issue.
    • djbusby 4y ago
      No, we work with deadly deadly cannabis.
      • flutas 4y ago
        Any tips or things to avoid that they called out to you? Working on an app right now that is very close to the industry and we're really worried about a rejection because of that.
        • djbusby 4y ago
          Don't mention anywhere at all that you have any connection to cannabis. Also, if I had known the block would lockout my name/namespace I would have entered with a throwaway, then get the real one in. We moved away from needing an App and now keep it all web.
          • RockRobotRock 4y ago
            I noticed that on iOS, I have to use a weird app to connect to my Pax weed vape. However, the Pax app is happily on the Play store.
• Raed667 4y ago
  I had the unpleasant experience of submitting an extension to Google Chrome Webstore. Here is a summary: 1- Submit an update 2- Wait a week for it to be approved 3- Publish said update 4- Forget about it and move to working on something else for a few days/weeks 5- Get a random rejection email with a bogus claim and 14 days to "fix it" or the extension is removed 6- Drop everything in my sprint so I can handle this. No actual code change was required, just a series of Kafkaesque support forms and email exchanges. After 3 or 4 rounds of this, I created a template response with a history of previous interactions and arguments and sending those became part of the routine ...
  • entropicdrifter 4y ago
    I'm gonna be that guy: Summery means "characteristic of or suitable for summer", as in the season Summary is the word you meant to use
    • Raed667 4y ago
      Thanks! fixed it. I shouldn't be using the spellcheck without reading the actual suggestion.
    • MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      Which one is used in the context of an execution?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • jraph 4y ago
        Summary. "The prisoners were executed in a summary fashion." Also means brief, concise. I guess a summary execution (which means without trial if I understand correctly) is a briefer process than an execution with a trial… Would also properly qualify the rejection of an extension from the Chrome store, I guess, to go back to the main topic. https://www.wordreference.com/fren/sommaire https://www.wordreference.com/fren/sommaire (yes, found out by translating from French :-) - sommaire also means basic, rudimentary, now I wonder what made us use this word for executions - the brevity, or the basic aspect, sounded like the latter to me in history lessons)
• parkingrift 4y ago
  It is really hilarious to me that Google is making PB jump through hoops for this. Google is vacuuming vasts amount of user data without any explicit user consent at all. It's just buried in some encyclopedia length ToS.
  • mysterydip 4y ago
    "but they pressed 'I accept'!" - some lawyer
  • fluidcruft 4y ago
    People should just copy-paste Google's TOS and Privacy Policy as their own. After all, Google's own apps on the Play Store surely comply with the Play Store's policies and the AI gremlins that enforce it will have Google's own apps in the "always approve" training bucket.
  • Beltalowda 4y ago
    Last time I read it, it wasn't actually all that long. It was just full of qualified language like "in some circumstances such and such could be collected" and "Some Google services may do this". At the end of it, it was entirely unclear to me what Google actually did collect, but "services may do this" is really no different from "services can do this" and the result was essentially little more than "we can collect every bit of information you send to us, which we may or may not do". The qualified language was engineered very carefully to make it sound not like that.
• hancholo 4y ago
  As someone that used to work on the Play Store team many many moons ago... a lot of that was outsourced to overseas which resulted in much slower response time. Here stateside we had a lot of metrics in place to fast response. Typically your app would get reviewed the same day. Not sure what it's like now but the managers were incompetent back then even so.
  • nicoburns 4y ago
    My experience has been that the Play Store does have relatively quick review times (usually under a day). But the feedback given upon rejections is often so poor that it doesn't help much. As it can often take several trial and error submissions to resolve the issue.
    • Aulig 4y ago
      Only for app updates in my experience. Publishing new apps takes ~7 days for years now. If I remember right, it started with Covid but it never improved.
      • carstenhag 4y ago
        Only took 2 days for us, 4-6 weeks ago
  • travisgriggs 4y ago
    > the managers were incompetent back then even so. This. So. Much. This. We go round and round about specific policies at corporate or civic levels. We hash it all out and pat ourselves on the back that we’ve at least proposed how whatever the issue of the moment might be improved. But we never come to the basic generic issue. That large swaths of decision makers should not make the decisions they do.
  • ncr100 4y ago
    I suppose this shows how Google prioritizes its $ stream..? Do big-earners on the app store get higher quality service?
• busymom0 4y ago
  I remember there being a case where a developer’s app got banned because they used the word “windows” in the play store description and Google considered this as a third party trademark violation. The developer was referring to house windows, not the operating system…
• bobsmooth 4y ago
  Pushbullet is a great app, been using it for a long time. Hopefully they're able to permanently sort this out (yeah right)
• lordleft 4y ago
  I used pushbullet for years, until they deprecated their iOS app (I think for similar reasons?). I have yet to find an adequate replacement.
  • joshstrange 4y ago
    EDIT: Ignore this comment, I thought I knew what PushBullet was but I was mistaken. Pushover is what I've used for as long as I can remember, I bought the app so long ago that I can't even remember what I paid. It's decent, a little basic though. Recently I've just been using a Discord server since that's trivial to setup and I can get notifications on desktop and mobile easily. I just have 1 channel per "thing" that might want to alert me and then grab the webhook url for that channel and then I'm good to go. I usually drop a "push" binary in the ~/bin folder on my machines (which is in my path) so I can do: ./longRunningCommand.sh && push "Command finished!"
  • binkHN 4y ago
    This is one of the main reasons I stick with Android, both as a user and as a developer. At this time, Google is still slightly more lenient than Apple is on what apps can do, and this allows my phone/tiny computer to be more functional and usable.
    • RockRobotRock 4y ago
      Not to mention side-loading is trivial and doesn't require constant developer certificate validation.
  • fomine3 4y ago
    IIRC they stopped iOS version after Apple enforces Sign in with Apple
• binkHN 4y ago
  I have a somewhat related story regarding the first Android app I ever created. It practically drove me to give up on Android development. https://medium.com/@daniel_11666/331c98270ec4?source=friends_link&sk=d01250707057ed71f2c7af8ed4ac9eea https://medium.com/@daniel_11666/331c98270ec4?source=friends...
• mring33621 4y ago
  What I think, after reading the post: 1) Pushbullet is frequently 'randomly selected' for extra scrutiny (TSA style) because it competes with some offering from Google or a preferred partner. 2) The review algo simply diffs the resubmission with the previous version and if there are changes 'near' any of the keywords from the violation, it gets approved, until the next 'random' scan.
  • themoonisachees 4y ago
    Pushbullet is directly competing against google's "messages" app. They have the exact same use case. Note that Messages does not display such prominent markers that it's uploading stuf to google server yada yada, probably because it is immune to play store verification.
  • meltedcapacitor 4y ago
    Or just because it looks at SMS. Few non-malicious apps have a reason to look at SMS and it's very high value data for malicious ones, no surprise the AI model misclassifies the one app with a perfectly legitimate use. It should be whitelisted but hand tweaks to algo results are probably taboo at Google.
• savy91 4y ago
  Related submission (different company, same issues): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273210 the experience of publishing apps to Google Play is really awful. After developing native apps for years, we'll be publishing our next project as a PWA for this reason alone.
  • anononaut 4y ago
    It's comforting to know I'm not the only one.
• bambax 4y ago
  > Your app did not receive a deliberate analysis by a human leading to the violation notification. There is no one to debate. There is no opinion at all. Your app simply didn’t look enough like the AI’s training data. (...) your goal is to look as much as possible like the training data. Unfortunately, this can be easier said than done since we do not have access to the training data. A solution will be to have an AI submit modifications to the other side's enforcement notifications. Robots talking to robots. What a world.
  • mkmk3 4y ago
    Outside of the implications it might have for the economy built up around SW dev, it's significantly better that AI modifiers deal with AI masters, than human modifiers with AI masters. Scary either way.
  • tbodt 4y ago
    I suspect it is actually an army of underpaid contractors, and that the inconsistency is a result of each flag and update getting looked at by a different contractor.
    • radu_floricica 4y ago
      Ugh, this happened with a Shopify plugin of ours. Got flagged for missing something which the screenshots clearly showed was there. Resubmit enough times and it passes.
  • chias 4y ago
    We already see this from time to time :D https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren/status/1462955101899788294 https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren/status/1462955101899788294
• ransom1538 4y ago
  Eh. This looks like pushbullet just got a different reviewer once that approved it. I imagine (atleast apple does) the reviewers are assigned a submission and any new update - gets you the same reviewer. BUT! IF you submit over and over, you will catch this person on vacation or sick, then Approved!
  • ranger_danger 4y ago
    It's completely automated. Even Google does not have enough money to pay for human support.
    • Beltalowda 4y ago
      With a net income of $76 billion USD in 2021, I beg to differ. Google just has so much money sloshing around they don't notice or care if they lose a bunch of revenue over stuff like this. There's no business pressure to retain customers. Even with the news from the other day that profits dropped: it's still more than what they did a just a few years back. Almost all these tech companies have very high profit/per employee; the idea that they can't afford a small army of human support people is just not the case; they just don't because they don't have to.
• aasasd 4y ago
  People are perpetually wondering why Goog keeps doing this, and the answer is because they can. > I really really need to make Google happy.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
• greysphere 4y ago
  Starting around January, our app (Dominion[1]) has randomly had updates rejected (including one that _delisted the existing app_) because of our app description. We make some irrelevant changes and resubmit and, so far, it's been accepted each time. We've had the same description for over a year/10+ releases before. The latest rejection: >>> The app title or description does not accurately describe the app’s functionality. Issue details We found an issue in the following area(s): Full description (en_US): “▪ Tutorial & Rules ” <<< So we changed this to: ▪ In app Tutorial & Rules And it passed. Every release is just a bucket of stress that we are going to lose N-days of revenue again for no obvious reason. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.templegatesgames.DominionAndroid&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.templegate...
  • dipsyduck 4y ago
    I'm wondering if the & sign is causing the issue. Perhaps the AI reviewers can't parse it well?
    • greysphere 4y ago
      Yeah I wondered that or the bullet character too. The thing is we referenced other apps that used this exact formatting. But yeah, could just be a bug that was introduced at the beginning of the year that hopefully they can figure out and fix.
      • bjano 4y ago
        I've been having the same issue with an app. Random rejections with a single line copy-pasted from the (genuine) feature list in the app description. In this case the lines just start with a regular dash ("-"). This together with the sometimes 10+ day review times makes it impossible to maintain an app on the Play Store now.
  • sneak 4y ago
• stevenkkim 4y ago
  Can someone explain why both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store give opaque explanations for rejections? Why don't they just tell developers what's wrong and what needs to be fixed instead of pointing to some broad rule and forcing an interpretative song and dance?
  • nvrspyx 4y ago
    Probably because giving a clear explanation would demonstrate how often and how badly app reviewers misinterpret their own rules.
    • TheRealPomax 4y ago
      Bots don't really care about that, though.
  • mrmuagi 4y ago
    I think they are using automation in detecting "violations" perhaps, given the other commentors did seemingly no-op updates and resolved things -- and any pushback would show the wizard behind the curtains, so they keep it vague as possible? Unless someone who actually works behind the scenes can chime in.
  • CobrastanJorji 4y ago
    While I think it would benefit Apple or Google as a whole to explain their reasoning clearly, it'd make things harder on the app approving teams, who probably don't want to do this for a number of reasons: it'd take more time, it'd expose inconsistency/mistakes/incompetence (why was this okay last time but not this time?), and worst of all, it'd lead to the organic creation of a binding network of labyrinthine precedents.
  • ivanmontillam 4y ago
    Whilst I don't agree with the opaqueness policy, I understand why it's in place. It's because it leaves them at risk of using previous precise answers to others as precedents for future cases. Being opaque allows them to not be too committed, and outside of situations like "but you accepted XYZ app which does exactly the same, I don't understand" You can still claim XYZ app does what you did and didn't get punished by that, but they can never admit it in paper/words.
• iandanforth 4y ago
  I'm convinced that the only way this situation will improve is via legislation. There are simply no other sufficient incentives since strikes/bans/policy enforcement is uniformly broken across the large players.
  • ncr100 4y ago
    Commercial speech is not subject to free speech laws in the US, so that is sounding like an uphill solution. An alternative power-broker such as F-Droid (for Android app stores) becoming more popular, somehow, and also following a Code of Conduct for App Stores that we in the dev community maintain, could be satisfactory, though also quite an uphill battle.
• derN3rd 4y ago
  From most friends and colleagues I know that most of these rejected updates simply go through if you resubmit it a second time a day or two later. Somewhat frustrating, but most of the times the issue was just that the apps were already compliant, but the reviewer on Apple/Google side was just not carefully checking
• zkirill 4y ago
  We switched to distributing our own APK after Google forced Android App Bundles. Definitely sleep better at night because of that decision.
  • ranger_danger 4y ago
    For most people, this is not an option though, since it bypasses the Play Store (and the majority of the userbase) entirely.
• andwaal 4y ago
  After dealing with booth Google and Apple for a couple of years I cannot express how much better the Apple experience with an actually human you can communicate with on the other end. To whomever thinking about starting a business relying on publishing through the Play Store, please think twice.
• deathanatos 4y ago
  Is there any evidence that there's any causal link here? Like, it seems like to me it could just be the act of changing something — anything — and the output from review is just a roll of the dice. Sometimes you change something, and it's approved, but given the frequency with which these sorts of articles crop up on HN, I don't think I'd assume that the change necessarily meant anything more than "they changed it". … of course, it would help build confidence that there is a causal link if Google would clearly articulate their reasons for rejection.
  • warkdarrior 4y ago
    Of course, we do not hear from the approved apps, so it is hard to tell which part of the review is random and which is deterministic.
• veeti 4y ago
  Fuck Google and fuck anyone who works for them. How do you live with yourself? A $300k paycheck?
  • account42 4y ago
    It doesn't take a paycheck above $0 for people to not care about others unfortunately.
• Eumenes 4y ago
  been using pushbullet for many years, feels like they always got the shaft from google
• meltedcapacitor 4y ago
  Obvious YC startup idea here: build an AI model that analyses app store rejections and automatically modifies and resubmits the app. Fight fire with fire.
• evolve2k 4y ago
  [Ding]. They’d sent me another automated notice. THIRD THIS WEEK. My work had been PATmatched for review, pending cancellation. Drat I was already low on credits to cover food bills this week. Car capsules filled the crimson sky of the small windows in my 10000 story apartment room, day and night the automated vehicles rolled past my window like a raging torrent. Living so high, not much to do but sit at the console. Another automated notice from TECHCORP. Always the same. Never a human. So insanely lacking in logic that often I’d want to scream in rage. But actually, IT WAS LOGICAL. To the billions of learning machines, running at basement level, in windowless buildings, beyond places I’d never know; I was the anomaly.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Multicomp 4y ago
    Just wanted to say I appreciated this nice start to a story and now I have an app idea to create crowdsourced interactive fiction or at least branching fiction, one paragraph at a time. You pay the in-app-token equivalent of $0.25 to post a new paragraph at any given node, then as other users select your node for that branch, your node rises in popularity. Once a month, the most popular branches get paid a prize of in-app-currency for submitting good content.
• gopher_space 4y ago
  How much would a private investigator charge to find someone at Google who'd talk to you about this off the record? This might be a situation you could farm out.
• ohbleek 4y ago
  Chiming in to say I love Pushbullet. I find it invaluable for sending things between my devices. I recently learned that it’s no longer available for iPhone and that if I get a new iPhone I won’t be able to load it onto the new device. It has kept me from upgrading. Eventually I’ll have to but it will be a sad day. I’ve seen a few alternatives but they don’t appear to have the same usability.
• naet 4y ago
  I love Dominion the card /board game. Have played it many times! I'm a little confused why the app version would need to access my SMS message history, send messages on my behalf, and access my contact info though. I don't want that even if you claim to not be sharing it with anyone else...
  • shkkmo 4y ago
    You seem to have missed the fact that the commenter talking about Play Store issues with the Dominion App is different person at a different company, the author of TFA (who works for PushBullet).
• stevage 4y ago
  People complain a lot about developing for the web, but at least we don't have to put up with this kind of thing.
• klabb3 4y ago
  It's really sad that software distribution has deteriorated into this submissive permission-seeking practice of pleasing an opaque moving target, as a sort of disorganized morality police that claim to act on behalf of the users. And not only that, but we still have 0 standardization or agreed-upon APIs so devs generally have waste heaps of time on per-platform idiosyncrasies that has nothing to do with business logic. We do have cooler tech today, but that is despite, not because, this suffocating and unsustainable selection of walled "gardens".
  • jahnu 4y ago
    We developers sure do act like temporarily embarrassed millionaires at times.
  • liotier 4y ago
    Should developers come together with a foundation for software distribution ? An appstore, members are individual or corporations, governance through election of a board by the members (see Debian and Openstreetmap)... And a little help from the European Comission who'll be happy to have a neutral channel to impose on the monopolists !
    • karmelapple 4y ago
      Sounds neat. How will you help ensure malware doesn't show up on there?
      • counttheforks 4y ago
        How does HTTP ensure malware doesn't show up on there?
        • rrix2 4y ago
          all the major browsers ask google if the URL you are trying to visit is "safe" https://safebrowsing.google.com/ https://safebrowsing.google.com/
• joko42 4y ago
  In my experience, apps with too many ads get rejected.
• matthewhartmans 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing your experiences OP. I have gone through the joys and pain of having an app approved and pushed live, to being teared down and removed for not meeting certain guidelines. What frustrates me, is the reasons are very vague or don't have go into detail as to how YOUR app is in violation. It is just a generic statement and you have to go through the hell of trial and error to figure it out. The main ones I have faced are the following. * Not adhering to Families policy requirements policy * Not adhering to Google Play Developer Programme Policies My apps are games built using Trusted Web Applications (TWA) and Google talk about the following... "Your app must not merely provide a webview of a website or have a primary purpose of driving affiliate traffic to a website, regardless of ownership of the website. We are constantly exploring ways to enable new experiences for kids app developers. If you are interested in joining our Trusted Web App pilot for education apps, please submit your interest here" My apps have no ads, no tracking, no analytics, they have a privacy policy, but it still gets rejected. :(
• muppetman 4y ago
  Before this, they become experts on suddenly converting to the subscription model and then just ghosting all/any development. [1][2][3] I didn't mind them converting to subscription, I got value out of them, so I paid for the sub (even though it was one of those that removed features from the free to put them into paid and I felt a bit dirty. All good products deserve some suppporter cash IMHO) I paid for a year. They just totally shut up shop, didn't develop a feature, didn't do a thing. I left after my year's subscription was up, sick of sticking up for them in forums/reddit etc and realising most of the complaints people were leveling and them (him?) were valid. It's a shame to see Google treat anyone like this, but meh, that's how we felt after paying up for Pushbullet Pro which saw zero development/love after the fact and the developers who had, previously, been very vocal and supportive, go to radio silence. I kinda support Google here, put this poor thing out of its misery. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/6wby5b/is_pushbullet_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/6wby5b/is_pushb... 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/7bjvhx/is_this_project_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/7bjvhx/is_this_... 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/77egnz/is_pushbullet_just_completely_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/77egnz/is_pushb...
  • kayxspre 4y ago
    Developer's comment in [1] also doesn't suggest there is any plan for further development than keeping it on life support [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/vv844d/comment/ifkel86/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/vv844d/comment/...
• chucky123 4y ago
  This is basically what Google does on the chrome webstore too. Things got so frustrating that I wrote my own guide on pushing updates to the webstore: https://getsnapfont.com/posts/avoiding-lengthy-review-times-for-chrome-webstore-submissions https://getsnapfont.com/posts/avoiding-lengthy-review-times-... At this point, I can sufficiently say that the author is on point regarding AI training and I know when an extension review has been through an automated process or via a human.
• throwawayplay 4y ago
  Throwaway so the Googlers don’t hunt us down. Whenever we get a violation we just resubmit a new build without any material changes, maybe a bug fix or two. We know our app review will be handled by a different person in country A this time instead of country B, or a different person down the hall, so there’s a strong chance the review passes without issue. Violations are completely arbitrary and not enforced or closely reviewed upon resubmitting, so we put as much effort into them as Google does. Being forced to work under these conditions feels like being in an abusive relationship.
• AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Pushbullet is so awesome. I wish they had an iOS app. It was the worst part of moving to iOS for me.
  • everly 4y ago
    I use the web version on safari on my iPhone and it works surprisingly well - at least for my most common use case of moving photos between devices.
• ranguna 4y ago
  Tbh pushbullet sms privacy policy is pretty vague > We take seriously the security of any information stored on our servers and take all reasonable precautions to protect this information. All reasonable precautions? What's that supposed to mean? You got internal policies in place that not all engineers are able to access these messages according to their contract? This type of data should be e2e encrypted, pushbullet shouldn't even be able to decrypt it and messages should disappear from pushbullet servers as soon as the message is pushed to all devices. I've been using pushbullet for years but now I'm considering disabling the sms sync feature, the privacy policy looks really shady and Google has all the right to call it out.
  • whostolemyhat 4y ago
    Yep, Google's communication was pretty unclear, but the developer is being repeatedly called out for the same underlying problem which they haven't addressed at all.
• steve_john 4y ago
• freedude 4y ago
  This is not customer service. For pushbullet or for the end user. This is not fair or just. This is not artificial intelligence. This is not freedom. This is abusive. This is capricious. This is arrogance on the part of Google developers. This is comparative programming designing a system to meet a standard maintained by an automaton. This is the worst form of tyranny.