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> IANAL, could you explain how one can distinguish between optional guidelines, and requirements that absolutely have to be met? (I am also not a lawyer.) Cert
by lutusp 13y ago
> IANAL, could you explain how one can distinguish between optional guidelines, and requirements that absolutely have to be met?
(I am also not a lawyer.) Certainly. Violating a requirement might result in your app being expelled from the Play Store. Violating a guideline might result in a warning or a a strongly worded message to clean it up.
> You must make it easy for users to understand what ads will be shown in your app, where they will be shown, and what the associated behaviors are, if any.
Yes, but this doesn't require an opt-in dialog as the title suggests. The opt-in reference is a guideline.
> Further, you should ask for user consent and provide options for managing ads or opt-out.
There's that word "should", as in "people should avoid walking on the grass."
> So the first one is a hard requirement ("you must"), but it doesn't really explain what's acceptable to meet it.
You've raised an interesting point, one that lawyers are at pains to express if they can. A requirement that's ambiguous loses its authority. A requirement must be unambiguous in its meaning.
> The whole section is really unclear to me.
Yes, in which case it can't really be described as a requirement. These are suggestions, guidelines, not strict rules.
- smartician 13y agoSo, in your opinion, do you think opt-in wouldn't be necessary if the app just shows "vanilla" banner and interstitial ads? Is it sufficient to disclose the use of ads in the app description in the Google Play store, and mention them in the privacy policy? Why mention this opt-in dialog at all if it's optional? I can't think of an instance where a developer would choose to implement this voluntarily.
- lutusp 13y ago> Why mention this opt-in dialog at all if it's optional? But you might ask why mention anything that isn't required. I suspect that Google is trying to get voluntary compliance for behaviors it can't require. The reason it can't require them might be that there are practices that violate the guidelines in Google's own advertisement activities. I don't know this for a fact, but it might be a reason to be less than demanding toward the Google Play app submitters. For me, this is academic -- I have a number of Android apps at the Google Play store, but they're free and they don't show ads. Which means everybody else hates me. :) https://play.google.com/store/search?q=paul%20lutus&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/search?q=paul%20lutus&hl=en