
Keeping spam off the Chrome Web Store - joeyespo
https://blog.chromium.org/2020/04/keeping-spam-off-chrome-web-store.html
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bjornstar
Here's the text from the post:

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Since the introduction of the Chrome Web Store in 2011, it has become the
largest catalog of browser extensions with over 200,000 available to all of
our users. This has helped millions of users to customize their browsing
experience on Chrome in ways we could have never imagined, from niche
utilities to companies building businesses around the platform’s capabilities.

In response, our abuse systems and review teams have been hard at work
ensuring that the Chrome Web Store is free from abuse, as many of our
developers have noticed an increase in review times lately. However, the
increase in adoption of the extension platform has also attracted spammers and
fraudsters introducing low-quality and misleading extensions in an attempt to
deceive and trick our users into installing them to make a quick profit. We
want to ensure that the path of a user discovering an extension from the
Chrome Web Store is clear and informative and not muddled with copycats,
misleading functionalities or fake reviews and ratings. Therefore, in order to
keep the quality of our inventory high and help users find what they want,
we’re introducing some updates to our spam policy:

\- Developers or their affiliates should not publish multiple extensions that
provide duplicate experiences or functionality on the Chrome Web Store.
Extensions should not have misleading, improperly formatted, non-descriptive,
irrelevant, excessive, or inappropriate metadata, including but not limited to
the extension’s description, developer name, title, icon, screenshots, and
promotional images. Developers must provide a clear and well-written
description. Unattributed or anonymous user testimonials in the app's
description are also not allowed.

\- Developers must not attempt to manipulate the placement of any extensions
in the Chrome Web Store. This includes, but is not limited to, inflating
product ratings, reviews, or install counts by illegitimate means, such as
fraudulent or incentivized downloads, reviews and ratings.

\- Extensions with a single purpose of installing or launching another app,
theme, webpage, or extension are not allowed.

\- Extensions that abuse, or are associated with the abuse of, notifications
by sending spam, ads, promotions, phishing attempts, or unwanted messages that
harm the user’s browsing experience are not allowed. Extensions that send
messages on behalf of the user without giving the user the ability to confirm
the content and intended recipients are also not allowed.

The new policy can be found in our updated Developer Program Policies.
Developers must comply with this policy by August 27th 2020. After that date,
extensions that violate the updated policy may be taken down and disabled. You
can learn more about these changes and how they may apply to you in our Spam
policy FAQ.

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As an extension author, I have been struggling a lot with the Chrome Web Store
lately. The review times are measured in days and the rejection notices are
designed to frustrate you. I have one extension that I have been unable to
update for the past 2 months, they keep rejecting it for violating their "Spam
and Placement in the Store" policies. The same extension is published on the
Mozilla Add-On and Opera Add-On sites without a hitch.

With the Chrome Web Store in this dismal state and Manifest v3 on the horizon,
I'm afraid I will have to stop distributing my extensions on the Chrome Web
Store.

~~~
gabrielsroka
I was struggling a while ago, too. A couple of Google searches later and I
found the issue. I updated twice in the last few weeks -- they were published
within 5 minutes.

