
Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app - lladnar
https://medium.com/@mmathieum/google-just-deleted-my-nearly-10-year-old-free-open-source-android-app-7fbc52edc50a
======
dollar
The easiest way to identify a monopoly is to look at how badly a company can
treat its customers and still get away with it. My company has a half dozen
stories like this about Google in the last year alone.

Know what Google is doing to its AdSense partners on a massive scale? They
wait until your site has just under the earnings when they have to write you a
check, then they terminate your AdSense account for “policy violations”.

I’m taking about AdSense sites that have been running for years with very
little traffic, accumulating a few pennies a day.

They suspended a client of ours who was spending $40k a month on Google Ads
with a two word explanation of “policy violations”, and steadfastly refused to
explain any reason why. Our client was perfectly reputable, ran multi million
dollar ad campaigns on television and radio, and was FDA approved.

When what Google has been getting away with finally comes to light... well,
let’s hope it does come to light and they pay the consequences.

~~~
cbanek
This also makes me feel even more strongly that the FTC should really clamp
down on these very strict app stores.

[https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/amicus_briefs/app...](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/amicus_briefs/apple-
inc-v-robert-pepper-et-al/17-204_apple_v_pepper_ac_pet.pdf)

Both the App Store and Google Play stores I think are basically illegal
monopolies. I should be able to install whatever app I want, without having to
jailbreak my phone and deal with warranty nonsense from the manufacturer. Just
like my computer, which I can also install whatever software I want on it.

Both the mandatory fees, and the review policy are terrible. Both Apple and
Google could just as easily "recommend" an app as "safe and following best
practices" rather than banning them from the app store. And still, many apps
get through the nonsense, which has been real joy for scammers and possibly
illegal money laundering:

[https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-
month-o...](https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-on-the-
apple-app-store-bdb943862e88)

I get that they want to protect their brand, but really, I think that horse is
out of the barn.

~~~
laingc
Personally, as an iOS user, I do not want the App Store opened up at all.

Currently, I can go to the App Store, install any app, and be about 99.9%
confident that the app will do me (or my technologically illiterate mother)
absolutely no harm.

This is something I value highly, and am happy to pay the “Apple premium” for.

~~~
echelon
I don't want to live in your locked-down _Disney with the death sentence_
world.

That's fine for you to want it, but don't impose it on me.

I want freedom and liberty to do what I want with the devices I own. I want to
develop without fear that these two megacorps can shut me down on a whim for
developing something against their ideology.

The web isn't like that. Windows wasn't like that.

Today we live in a Fischer-Price future land where everybody has to wear
gloves because we might get burned. I hate what we've become. I want to go
back to the world before smartphones and Apple and app stores. The open web.
Before Facebook and Google became big brother surveillance operations.

~~~
GhettoMaestro
Your ideal state of Internet / Tech companies is definitely in the minority
contrasted to overall expectations the broader population has put on these
devices and services.

Yeah, we get it, you're smart. I'm smart. Most people here are smart. But
protections still matter.

What you're saying is I don't want to wear a seatbelt when driving my car.
Sure that is your choice - but I think it is a very foolish one.

~~~
throwaway_law
>What you're saying is I don't want to wear a seatbelt when driving my car.

As others have said there may be more apt analogies...sticking with the car
theme, it may be closer to a market where you buy a Ford and then you can only
fill your Ford up with Ford gas from a Ford gas station.

That market doesn't exist for clear cut reasons, but if it did you can bet
Ford and other car manufacturers would claim the same thing, that limiting
Ford owners to using Ford gas is for their safety, if Ford owners started
putting gas into their Ford from a 3rd party, there could be all kinds of
harmful additives or other quality issues with the gas that will damage the
Ford. Of course Ford won't mention on their tax to "Ford gas suppliers" (of
33%) for access to the Ford car market.

~~~
jimmydddd
I worked in the computer printer industry a ways back. The printer companies
tried to make this argument with respect to blocking generic ink cartridges
from being used on their printers. They argued that they needed to limit to
the manufactuerer's cartridges to guarantee a good user experience.

~~~
mindslight
The scary thing is that these companies aren't simply being disingenuous -
they earnestly believe this.

A company takes for granted that they are good actors, and that their
customers' interests are perfectly aligned with their own. With those
assertions, increasing their control can only mean a better ability to make
things good/safe/simple for their customers.

But that is an authoritarian delusion. Because real difficulty arises out of
cross-party emergent complexity - illegible and unmanageable by any single
entity. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is blatantly
obvious when you, as an individual actor, eventually end up at odds with
whatever authoritarian scheme they've implemented - wishing to do something
simple that you've personally judged as good/safe, but it's impossible to
convince that centralized controller to understand / approve it.

In the real (multi-actor) world, we acknowledge that interests diverge on
either side of a transaction. Someone who has bought a printer is then an
individual participant in the ink market. Someone who buys a pocket computer
wants that computer to act for _their own_ interest - not for it to be
beholden to the whims of the company who made it.

Unfortunately, always-on communication, the difficulty of reverse engineering,
and overbearing copyright law have allowed these companies to double down on
overarching control rather than allowing reasonable demarcation points. Apple
could straightforwardly create an app sandbox that would allow running fully
untrusted code with fine-grained capabilities, unilaterally design it to not
have the vulnerabilities that the Web continues to have (eg fingerprinting),
and allow sideloading after appropriate warnings. And lest you think I'm being
partisan here, the same exact thing applies to Google's general insistence
that sideloaded apps are less safe.

But it's much simpler and more lucrative to double down on authoritarian
control until they're forced to create those demarc points, either by direct
legislation or by consumer demand - eg if this recent censorship trend
eventually pushes them to prohibit secure communication apps in their central
stores.

~~~
inimino
Well put!

Bad intentions are not necessary to build an authoritarian system. All it
takes is enough good-intentioned people being unaware of the system they are
building and their role in it.

~~~
mindslight
Being aware of the system itself doesn't even capture it. People need to be
aware of the system's effects, _from the marginalized perspective_.

~~~
inimino
Right. It's not enough to be aware that there _is_ a system if you remain
unaware of its shape, who it excludes, etc.

------
aurbano
I ran a website that I first coded when I was 14-15, then kept improving over
the years. It was for amateur electronic music producers to upload their
tracks and after a few years there were several thousand active users,
generating ~$400/month in AdSense.

One day a relatively famous DJ tweeted a link to a song on the website, and
that day alone generated close to $300, so 19 year old me thought he was about
to earn his first $1000 in one month from a website! But Google decided to
block the account because I guess that spike in traffic was too much, even
though it all came from Twitter...

So suddenly I was left with this website I had invested hundreds of hours in,
and no way to monetise it. I tried a few other ad networks but they all seemed
really dodgy and in the end decided to leave it with no ads.

There really needs to be more regulation in this space.

~~~
Phillips126
I also developed a website young (mid teens), which was essentially a
"beautiful/unique website ranking" based on visitor submissions and
upvote/downvote system. I had the essential pieces done and launched the
website, super excited as my first real project.

I decided to toss on Google AdSense to see if I could potentially monetize the
website by putting a single picture advertisement on the right side of the
website. I was starting to generate some money (small, but exciting for a
young developer). I was talking to my high school friend about what I was
doing and how AdSense worked. Unbeknownst to me, he later visited my website
and clicked the ads repeatedly expecting to make me hundreds of dollars...
well, my account was shut down.

I tried to plead my case, Google didn't care at all. I was "banned" and a
small fish. Years later (in my early 20's) I considered revisiting the idea of
monetizing a site I had for an online community. I tried to appeal to Google
again lifting the ban and was denied.

I was effectively banned for life from using Google AdSense as a young teen
because of a friend "trying to make me rich" without him knowing the
repercussions. I know there are alternatives to Google AdSense, however,
Google was the one that payed the best. Still irks me to this day when I think
about it...

~~~
vortico
How is this system immune to me clicking on an _enemy website 's_ ads 100's of
times to get them banned from AdWords?

~~~
segmondy
Nothing. If anything, I'm feeling like we should create bots, browser
extensions that repeatedly do this and cause massive havoc on their system
until they listen and start figuring out better ways to fix their system.
Folks are not fighting back. I'm not into ads and have never cared about using
them to monetize, but if I did and they took my money. It's war.

~~~
seany
Related idea: [https://adnauseam.io](https://adnauseam.io)

------
StanAngeloff
We were banned from the Play Store for violation of their Impersonation policy
in mid July after publishing an update. We just got reinstated last week.
During the course of the lengthy appeal I had an unshakable feeling I was up
against The System™. I still believe I was communicating with a bot and not an
actual human being — I refuse to accept a rational human being will behave the
way Bob from Google did.

It's such a stark contrast to developing a web app which you can _freely_
publish. When did thing go so horribly wrong?

~~~
Havoc
>When did thing go so horribly wrong?

When every company and their dog decided their content needs an app. Instead
of using the nicely standardized thing called http and web browsers.

That moved us from http straight to corporate technical fiefdoms with no
control.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
I’ve been building apps for Windows for over a decade (we used to call them
programs or software) and this isn’t exactly a problem there. The problem is
strong centralized App Store control, not native app development.

~~~
Havoc
>I’ve been building apps for Windows for over a decade and this isn’t exactly
a problem there.

You 300% completely miss my point. Apps ARE the problem. Especially in the
"for Windows" context. Now I need to install 30 different apps to access 20
different sites, and another 40 different apps on my other device that's in a
different app eco system.

...versus standardized http and browsers. The entire app eco system in their
specific walled incompatible gardens is top to bottom is toxic.

And that's not me pulling a stallman. Every fuckin website and company on
every device wants me to install their own app. It's tedious AF at best

------
abrookewood
Hey Google! Want to know why your cloud service is trailing behind AWS &
Azure? This is why ...

When you erode trust in your consumer and developer services, don't expect us
to sign up for your enterprise services.

~~~
deepsun
Well, I did try to fix my Amazon packages being delivered to wrong address.
There's simply no way to give that feedback, yet alone receive a response.

~~~
ertemplin
You can call customer service and talk to a person at Amazon

~~~
dmoy
Yea amazon support on the phone has always helped me out when there were
shipping issues. Even when someone literally just ripped open a package and
stole the contents, the lady on the phone at amazon was courteous and helped
me out.

------
forcer
We were suspended once for serving deceptive ads. Yet the only ad network we
use is Google Adsense. We had to remove Google Ads to be allowed back in.

~~~
i_feel_great
Ah, the ol' "Do as we say and not as we do" clause by Google, huh.

~~~
Macha
Pretty sure the latest iteration of mobile search result ads on google.com
would get banned by google

------
rock_artist
The nasty part with those sudden removal/bans from AppStore’s/ services is
that they say: You’ve violated something. You’re blocked. You know why!

Imagine going with that approach to a child...

Without explaining or suggesting the rationale it’s closer to very dark
dictatorship instead of providing something closer to a decent legal system
where you can appeal and a system that should make justice.

With those companies it’s more like a field trial.

~~~
_carl_jung
It reminds me of The Trial by Kafka.

~~~
reallydontask
Who would've thought that one day we'd be thinking about the likes of Apple
and Google in the same way as Kafka, and one has to imagine many others,
thought about the bureaucracy of the Dual Monarchy.

------
mirimir
The Google and Apple app stores and support services ought to be regulated as
public utilities. Because they effectively constitute a duopoly regarding apps
for mobile devices.

That would prevent them from arbitrarily refusing to provide services and list
apps in their stores. They could refuse, but only for permitted reasons, and
with a clear appeal process.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas has a pretty clear explanation.[0] The
top DDG hit was an ancient law review.[1] It's probably outdated, but makes an
interesting read.

0)
[https://www.puc.texas.gov/consumer/complaint/Rights.aspx](https://www.puc.texas.gov/consumer/complaint/Rights.aspx)

1)
[https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...](https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4595&context=law_lawreview)

Edit: I mean, whether you're a residential customer or a business, public
utilities (electricity, water, sewer, garbage, police, ...) can't arbitrarily
refuse service.

~~~
zaroth
The Google and Apple App Stores generate ~$100 billion in annual revenue
combined, and growing at about 25% per year. The App Stores are the greatest
software distribution and monetization platforms ever created, second perhaps
only to “The Internet” as a whole.

Regulating the App Stores as some sort of utility sounds like the perfect way
to stifle growth and make it _more_ difficult and expensive to publish on the
App Store, which would hit small developers in particular.

Every percentage point reduction in the growth of these stores at this point
is basically $1 billion taken out of developers’ pockets.

~~~
mcguire
...until it's your app that has been removed, your company that is going out
of business, and the response from the rest of the technological world is,
"Eh, collateral damage. Too bad."

~~~
zaroth
You’re right, some businesses have probably gone under because of a bad wrap
in the App Store review.

How many billions in revenue would you estimate?

The world is very rarely perfect. The proposed “common carrier” cure in this
case is orders of magnitude worse than the disease.

~~~
mcguire
I've been reading naval history lately. The thing that strikes me most is that
the benefits, such as they are, of war (or in this case, app store review non-
support) are collective, but the costs are paid individually.

------
harrisonjackson
I'd suspect a competitor flagged your app somehow. This seems to be a trending
dark pattern. Across a lot of competitive platforms - Amazon Sellers, App
Store, Play Store - even social media people are flagging content as abusive
to hurt competing brands.

Since normal support channels don't work, maybe report this to a bug bounty -
this would be considered a type of social hack, right? Someone or something
convinced their app review system to flag your apps and eventually have them
removed.

~~~
philpem
From my experience with bug bounties, if it's not on the OWASP TOP10, they'll
kick, stamp, scream and fight -- even if you say "I don't want the bounty, I
just want this bug fixed".

(backstory: found a bug in Twitter which disclosed DMs. Reported it, Twitter
engineer had a raging tantrum on Hackerone, H1 (I assume) mistook his messages
for mine and banned me from the site. Found out a mutual was a Twitter
engineer, sent him the POC. A few days later, fixed)

~~~
IggleSniggle
Please don’t abbreviate as H1. It messes up my pronunciation of the Hackerone
program. Hackerone rhymes with macaroni.

~~~
zifnab06
Much like CoreOS rhymes with Oreos.

------
fouric
I propose a new heuristic called "The HN PR Law" or something to that effect:
no response from a company on a negative PR incident should be taken seriously
after an article on said incident hits the front page of HN.

Given Google's track record and the ranking of this post, they'll probably
reinstate the app within a few hours, and I propose that we act as if they had
not - only acting on issues after they have been exposed to a massive audience
signals a desire for public positive perception without any actual care for
users, and users shouldn't have to go to social media to get their problems
solved.

Edit: a bit late, but I called it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20829484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20829484)

Edit^2: technically, Google hasn't reinstated the app yet, but I think that
the idea still stands

~~~
povertyworld
I like Apple's approach. When some scammy dev ran to the press with a sob
story, Apple would expose all the shady shit the dev was doing. Sorry, but 99%
of these whiney stories are the developer's fault. Don't violate the terms of
service, and don't be shady. It's not that hard.

~~~
GFischer
Maybe Google can´t do that because they are the ones doing the scummy thing.

I personally know 2 cases of people banned from Google, in one case they were
actually infringement (they made an app using copyrighted characters), and in
the other it was the same case stated elsewhere - grandmother clicked
repeatedly on the ads thinking she was helping her grandson, and he got banned
from AdSense forever.

------
gonmad
Only 12 hours between an email and the account termination, with no real
interaction and no way to change what seems not to be a serious problem.

That would change the time gap during responsible disclosure, Alphabet/Google
is changing its metrics. I mean why only small developers would have to be
mistreated.

If they play it that way, Android developers community can also report
platform bugs to them - and go full disclosure (report the bug publicly)
within 12 hours.

~~~
Aeolun
12:34 - I have found a security vulnerability

12:47 - I noticed you haven’t fixed it yet, if you don’t do it soon I’ll go
public

14:13 - I noticed you still haven’t fixed it, please hurry, if you don’t do it
soon I’ll go public

14:15 - I noticed you haven’t fixed the bug yet, if you don’t do it soon I’ll
go public

16:55 - Since you still haven’t fixed this. I’ve made this public on my blog.
Enjoy the consequences!

~~~
cube00
Based on the article even if Google replied you'd still be in line to disclose
regardless, this poor developer's appeals were rejected, I'm not convinced a
human ever read them on the way down.

------
blauditore
Everyone in this thread is bashing Google for their evil-ness, but I had the
exact same experience with the iOS AppStore: Apple just claimed I broke some
policy without further details, but I was pretty sure this was not the case.
Upon asking for clarification, they basically sent the same paragraph again. I
ended up sending an "update" with some random changes on things related to
said policy (without actually changing functionality) and it somehow got
approved.

If you think about it, it's impossible to fully check an app for compliance.
That's probably why the enforcement appears so aimless and fuzzy from the
outside.

~~~
cube00
The enforcement may not appear so aimless and fuzzy if they could be bothered
to put more effort into the justification then a canned RTFM reply.

------
euph0ria
The company I work for has banned the use of Google Cloud due to how they
treat their Play Store developers, in particular that there never seems to be
any human being that you can talk to and find out what you need to do to fix
the situation. We do not want the same to occur to our servers or if there is
an overflow from Play Store ban to GCP etc.

~~~
blunte
This is why I moved my clients off G-Suite and onto Zoho. And it's why where
possible, I advise people to build clean web-based mobile apps which do not
require a "store".

Since we have no practical alternative to Play Store and Apple Store for
native phone apps, we'll just have to settle for slightly fewer features and
slightly less performance with non-native apps. (And no, sideloading isn't an
option. Most users are barely able to install a native app via a link directly
to their store.)

For Google, it's simply not worth their time to maintain a staff of humans to
prevent these false negatives. They are not committed to the app developers
just as they are not committed to their non-government G-Suite clients. They
are committed to their primary revenue streams. And the reason they can simply
not care about some human losses (stories like TFA) is because they are a
monopoly when it comes to Android apps. And while Amazon is not an admirable
company at all (based on how it treats its sellers or low level employees),
their cloud business seems to have more human oversight - or at least a less
heavy-handed automated banning system.

Google's behavior will continue to be profitable enough that they won't change
it... for many years, or until the regulators come at them. Since the US
regulators are now almost entirely corporate lobbyists themselves, we'll have
to depend on the EU to fight it. (And since the EU is becoming corporatized as
well, the window of opportunity is shrinking.)

------
lpellis
Wow the same thing happened to me[1], luckily I was awake by chance and took
action after the first email, scary to think that if I was just offline for a
few days my whole account could have been banned with no recourse..

[1]My app
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lpellis.se...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lpellis.sensorlab)
was on the store for several years at the time, it was called 'Android
Sensors'. (Google had issue with the name, I had to rename it)

@lladnar does your app maybe have 'Android' in the name? I believe that was
the issue they had with mine, I dont even think humans are in the loop at all
here to give feedback.

~~~
jrochkind1
If they told you what you had done to violate policies and what you had to do
to be in compliance again, you were a huge step ahead of this guy!

------
jfim
Wow, I can't believe they suspended Mon transit! It's been a while since I
lived in Montreal, but it was super helpful back then, showing the next bus
times and the number of available public bike system bikes at nearby stations.

Sorry to hear that, Mathieu, and best of luck!

------
jedberg
Seems like a good time to bring it up again -- 18 years ago my Google ads
account was locked for reasons unknown to me. I'm still waiting for an answer
on my appeal. Yes, I was one of their first few thousand advertisers. Even
back then they treated us like crap when they could have easily had a human
review every decision.

------
tommilukkarinen
We has a small niche product in Google Play, worked 100% offline, so quite
secure for the user privacy and so on, had ratings of about 3.7. The service
had generated about $30.000 and would have generated another $30.000 in it's
lifetime, unless Google had, quite unjustly, taken it out spring 2019. When we
tried to discuss about it, we got what we understood was a threat to close our
account. Obviously we talked to some person, I wonder if he had been told to
treat us like sh __or if there was some other reason. Obviously, for the next
apps, we are thinking furiously on how to not be dependent on app stores.

------
kennydude
Looking at this app, it's an absolute hidden gem of how amazing Android is as
well.

The main app can have third party extensions provided just by installing more
APKs. This is something I tried to explore quite a few years ago when I last
had an Android phone, but seeing such a polished app which achieves it is
nice.

------
NKCSS
My game (
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nkcss.shad...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nkcss.shadesandhues_agameofcolorgradients)
) was suspended because I did not have a link to my privacy policy in the app
(required when you serve ads for some reason). My game only shows an ad every
other time you abort a game or ask for a hint, if you just play without
hints/aborting games, you'll never see an ad. It was up for about 6 months,
~1000 installs, then it was taken offline. I was busy for another 6-9 months,
after digging into the reason why it was taken down, I created a privacy
policy page, added a link in the app to the page and re-submitted it, then
appealed/asked for another review on the play store and admob and after a few
days, everything was restored again.

It can be a pain to find out the exact reason, by in my case, after fixing
what they wanted to have changed, it was all ok.

~~~
izacus
Meanwhile your ad network library was mining data in the background (they do
that even if you don't show the ad) of users without telling them in privacy
policy. You're not the victim in your case.

~~~
codedokode
Would not it be better to make it difficult to collect data (e.g. show a popup
asking access to those data every time) instead of just requiring a privacy
policy that nobody reads?

~~~
izacus
Both is being done of course.

However, I'd love to hear your solution on how to prevent data collection by
the very app you're running on your pocket computer.

------
jeremydeanlakey
It looks like @GooglePlayDev responded on Twitter 4h ago.

[https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096](https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096)

Good luck to the developer!

------
sandos
I have a strong feeling that this will soon happen to my Play Store account. I
did some very lax hobby development many years ago (my biggest app was also
transit related!), and my account has basically been inactive with just a few
apps. I guess its enough that 1 human somewhere reports my apps for anything
and Im gone from the Play Store, which would be a bit sad. I still remember
thinking it was so awesome that developing for android was so simple, and
free!

That seems to be disappearing.

------
huffmsa
Seems to me that Google is turning on a lot of deep learning models in
production which aren't production ready.

Search has gone to shit recently.

Image search is hot garbage for anything but images with well known people /
places / things.

You can't reliably filter or sort news results by date.

YouTube is filtering pro LGBT content but allowing weird Eastern European pedo
videos.

The play store is apparently moderated by bots and doesn't have rules or
policies in place about giving devs time to respond.

Something has changed dramatically at the company in the last 5 years. Would
be interesting to zero in on it.

~~~
gargravarr
I searched for an error message yesterday and Search removed 18 of the 20
keywords (they are all scratched out as 'missing'). The only remaining
keywords were for the platform I had the error on. Thousands of results that
were all completely irrelevant. I was completely stunned how something I rely
on could suddenly do that. What is the point?

Google's monopoly has gotten to the point where they do not care how their
products perform, just so long as the money continues to rain in.

~~~
pdkl95
> (they are all scratched out as 'missing')

The 'missing' notes are incredibly condescending. Not only are the results
irrelevant/incorrect, they also had to arrogantly point out exactly how they
are choosing to ignore the user's request.

~~~
gargravarr
Amen to that. I got to where I am as a sysadmin by knowing how to filter out
keywords to make my search specific. Then Google throw all that away and
decide for me what I want to search for. No Google, you don't tell me what to
do.

~~~
pdkl95
Animaniacs Episode 7, "Piano Rag":

    
    
        [The Warners try to hide form Dr, Scratchandsniff in
         a piano recital, where Tymannini is about to perform]
      
        TYMP: Franz Schubert intended the scherzo
              to reflect the struggle between intellect
              and the creative process.
        TYMP: However, Schubert was simply incapable
              of expressing such delicate nuance.
              But, thanks to *my* genius,
              I will perform this great work,
              *not* as the composer wrote it,
              but as he *intended*.
    

DWIM ("Do What I Mean")[1] has always been impossible; it's a fallacious
belief that what a user _intended_ is different from what they actually said,
and that this intent can somehow be divined form a few words, typos, etc.

> as a sysadmin

It doesn't even require any advanced technical knowledge. Most people
understand basic keyword searching. Over the last ~6-12 months, I've seen a
wide variety of people complain about Google ignoring their search terms.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628014)

------
einpoklum
We should all make a concerted effort to get people to stop using Google Play.
There are multiple websites which offer apps, including ones where search can
be automated. The default "app management app" should be something which is
based on multiple source, independent of each others and not Google
controlled.

I realize that might be very hard; and if you're logged into a Google account
on your phone (which you really shouldn't be!) it's very tempting to use
Google Play, so what I suggested requires either self-discipline or rooting
devices to make them not default to Google Play. On the other hand, maybe the
US sanctions against Huawei might actually make that a viable option? Time
will tell.

Personally, I use APKPure instead of Google Play; they have an app of their
own. Not the best solution - and certainly doesn't solve the article author's
problem - but at least I don't have worry about Google's heavy-handed tactics
so much.

------
eps
Perhaps a sneaky competitor exploited some flaw in the app reporting process
to knock the app off the store?

~~~
pnw_hazor
That explains Goog's two word explanation to shutting them down.

------
wetpaws
This is my personal nightmare as a android developer, and knowing google it's
not a matter of "if" but rather "when".

(Google did remove my app from store once for not providing a link to a
privacy policy document, abruptly, with no warning and notifying me post-
factum, reading other horror stories I consider myself lucky)

~~~
sundvor
Google has lost any connection to their once oh so brightly glowing halo. As a
developer I am steering clear of Google Cloud partly because of all their
crappy way of dealing with humans. AWS and Azure just make more sense down
here in Melbourne as well.

------
rogerdoger123
I have a very similar story. I had an AdMod ad running on my free app, and all
of a sudden the account was deleted in a few hours just before it was time to
get my earnings. Google had no responses and were unreachable and I just gave
up.

After this I found this has happened to 1000s of people and I realize how
massively powerful this company is and they're using AI/bots to make
decisions. I've now moved away from Google as much as I can and I warn others
of their monopolistic practices and lack of care toward customers.

------
DrScientist
What we have is a giant GAN - google's AI trying to spot the real bad actors
from not, against the bad actors AI trying to fool the google AI.

I suspect your experience is a sign that the bad actors are getting the upper
hand and one of the problems in this space is human intervention can't really
scale against machines.

It could be a fight for survival for these companies whose huge market cap is
based on the enormous scaling benefits of automation - however if it turns out
that the automation processes can't successfully scale once automated fraud is
taken into account then the only solution might be to descale the operation -
making them vulnerable to traditional companies.

------
giancarlostoro
> Sun, Aug 25, 05:21 PM EDT: Google Play Team > After reviewing your appeal,
> we have confirmed our initial decision and will not be able to reinstate
> your developer account.

I think I might of missed it but, did they _even_ appeal? The hell is Google
doing saying they did if they didn't? I would sure hope this is some sort of
grounds of defamation or some related law, claiming someone said something
they didn't even say is pretty awful. I wish people would start suing the hell
out of Google for their obviously ridiculous hostile behavior, looks like we
have dozens upon dozens of companies that could band together too.

------
dreamcompiler
Google's App Store is failing miserably with both Type 1 (false negative) and
Type 2 (false positive) errors. As a result, malware gets allowed in while
reputable developers get kicked off.

And there's apparently no (real) appeal process. Once the robot decides it
doesn't like you, you can't change its mind and it won't tell you why.

These problems are eminently fixable. But Google's app store desperately needs
competition, some antitrust investigations, and probably some hefty class
action judgments. Without those, Google has absolutely no motivation to fix
the mess. With those motivations, Google could fix this overnight.

~~~
xtacy
I think you meant to say -- Type 1 is a false positive, and type 2 is a false
negative.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Yes. Thanks.

------
techntoke
I don't really see any mention of it, but do you at least have some idea of
what may have triggered this issue? I see that your open-source Android app is
serving ads. I'm also curious why your app isn't on F-Droid?

~~~
icebraining
Seems it wasn't on F-Droid because it uses some Google Play Services (for
maps, ads, location, etc), and nobody took the time to make a fork without
those non-free dependencies.

[https://github.com/mtransitapps/mtransit-for-
android/issues/...](https://github.com/mtransitapps/mtransit-for-
android/issues/2)

------
soyiuz
We need something like "tenant rights" for online marketplaces in addition to
legal protections similar to what happens with evictions. This will not be
solved voluntarily by the "landlords."

------
acd10j
Earlier after certain amount of backlash Google employee reading HN used to
help. Now I think this is also banned/discouraged by Google. Google New
policy: Let's just ignore these type of posts and let it disappear from front
page in few hours. What option developers or user's have ? Shun Android or
Google services. I think for vast majority of developers and Users this not an
option.

------
segmondy
Okay, what if I can bribe someone that works for Google reviewing apps to
terminate a competing app? Folks were bribing T mobile employees to steal
phone numbers so they can empty bank/crypto accounts. Folks were bribing
employees that worked for background checking services to pull data so they
can perform identity theft. I imagine folks that review apps for Google are
not highly paid and since they rarely reply to you. Most app developers just
quietly go away when such things happen.

------
tomohawk
Guilty until you prove yourself innocent. It's efficient, but unethical and
immoral.

Requiring large entities such as government or monopolies to consider you
innocent until proven guilty in a 3rd party controlled system, such as a
court, is a fundamentally important check on power.

------
emmelaich
> 4 of my apps were reviewed and suspended on Friday ..

What were the other three?

------
ajnin
I'm guessing some lawyer at the Montreal transit authority decided to report
that app for violating some kind of intellectual property. And, due to
Google's consistent cover-their-asses policy (of Youtube fame), they decided
to shut down that app.

------
Naga
For what it's worth, I use this app on a daily basis and haven't found any
deceptive behaviour. It's pretty annoying that now I have to download the APK
from his website instead of the Play Store, so thanks for that Google.

------
skinnyasianboi
Mobile developer myself and I'm scared that this will happen to me, too. I
have a >600k downloads open source app on the Play Store and I got 2 warnings
for other apps within the last 8 years on the store without any explanation or
what so ever. The non existent communication from Google really stinks.

------
shawkinaw
These "Google suspended my account" stories are all similar in that Google
always refuses to provide any details about the supposed violation. Is there a
good reason for this reticence, or are they intentionally vague just so you
have no way to defend yourself?

------
FairKing
F-Droid becomes more and more popular.

~~~
Fnoord
Came here to suggest publishing the app on F-Droid as it is FOSS. An
alternative is make a PWA instead of an app. Those cannot be banned by an 'App
Store' (read: walled garden with one lunatic dictator being the gardener).

~~~
omaranto
PWA = Progressive Web App ---"progressive" seems to mean it uses some
relatively recent additions to browsers to make the app feel more like a
native app.

(In case others didn't know either.)

~~~
amyjess
"Progressive" in this case means it uses progressive enhancement: it'll work
even if your browser doesn't have those additions (though QoL won't be as
nice), and it also uses responsive design such that it's just as useful on
desktop as on mobile.

The new Twitter is a good example of a PWA.

~~~
jrochkind1
Viewing mostly on desktop, I hate the new twitter and wish the old one was
back. It's a bunch of javascript moving things around instead of a plain old
web page (how is twitter's content complex enough that it can't just be static
html?), and due probably to some combination of privacy settings i have
usually says "There has been an error try again" when i follow a link to a
tweet, requiring me to hard-refresh the page (at which point it works).

So if that's a good example...

------
andrewfelix
"I don’t _think_ my app is deceiving Google Play Store". I feel like there's
more to this story.

~~~
mathw
If Google had provided details of what the violation was, he might be able to
tell us about that part. One of the big problems is that they don't.

~~~
hnick
I wonder if the GDPR covers this under the right of explanation (if it happens
to someone in the EU), or was the decision made against a non-human app who
has no rights to violate?

------
jakeogh
Google: Where we dont just close _our_ services.

------
dragonwriter
Low friction and no support ejection from app markets seems to be a necessary
cost of the low-cost, low-friction entry that they allow, and the fact that
action against app developers to recover costs due to abuses isn't easy. If we
had more upfront costs (both directly to market operators and in surety bond)
it would be practical to have a lot friendlier process in the event of
apparent violation. But then, we'd have a lot fewer devs even able to get into
app stores, and the vast majority of non-abusive developers would experience
this as a pure burden. The few that get caught up incorrectly in policy
violation scans would benefit (assuming they weren't kept off the market in
the first place), and it would be more abstractly fair, but I'm not sure it
would be a win for consumers _or_ developers on the whole

Which isn't to say it shouldn't be done: fairness is important, too. But there
is a cost.

~~~
cube00
I'd be more then happy to pay a fee if it means an actual human, who actually
had access to all the case information, would actually review the appeal and
provide a detailed personalized account of my crimes.

As a bonus, if my appeal is found to be genuine and my account reinstated I'd
like that fee refunded.

~~~
zaroth
That’s an interesting approach - not only do you not want to pay if you get
the best possible result, you want to financially incentivize them to find
something wrong!

~~~
dragonwriter
Yeah, the perverse incentives of it is “pay if you want to challenge a
violation” that get even worse if it is “get a refund if we agree with your
challenge” are why it pretty much had to be “pay up front to get into the
store”.

Even were the store owner perfectly honorable in performing initial and appeal
reviews, the perverse incentives would lead to a perception of unfairness.

------
vzaliva
I have a very similar problem with Google's Chrome store. I have a small open-
source extension. Recently they started to send me notices that it is in
violation of their policies. All my attempts to figure out what exactly I am
doing wrong failed. I emailed multiple times. Finally, they just removed it
from the store.

------
arh68
So where does this stuff place Google in the moral spectrum?

    
    
        Obviously Good stuff: Firefighting, EMTs..
        working on cancer research, Doctors without Borders..
        NASA, Nat'l Park Service..
        EFF, Mozilla..
        the electric company
        $genericStartup, $genericFortune500
        drone programs
        Google (?)
        telemarketing
        patent trolling
        being Chapo's IT guy (voluntarily)
        running phone scams targeting old folks
        Obviously Bad stuff: running ransomware on hospitals
    

I mean, it's a big company, but stories like these are hardly _unusual_. I
feel like bad customer service is maybe a feature by design.

------
vinceguidry
Automated ban-bots are probably unavoidable. What's evil is automated appeals,
they almost invariably deny them. On Quora anybody can report anyone for
harassment. And anyone does. You get a BNBR notification (Be Nice, Be
respectful) and a little link to appeal.

Recently someone posted pretty clear proof of Quora employing an automated
appeal denial process when they got denied an appeal for a comment _praising_
another user.

I don't know what the answer is here. I'm sure the EU or California will take
the lead on the issue when it finally hits their Overton window.

------
bamboozled
Our company had ~15 Google accounts shut down the other day due to apparently
the content of our emails being flagged by some kind of automated curation
system.

This happened without any warning.

The problem was rectified within 30 minutes of the incident occurring because
we contacted support immediately. As soon as they looked over it, we were back
online, so it can't have been too serious.

It feels like Google take internal company policies and apply it to all their
customers.

Anyway, I'm glad I don't have my personal stuff hosted there anymore.

------
HeavyStorm
A very cool thing to reflect on:

Valve held a tight leash on Steam for years. Games and apps had to be approved
by Valve, and what they allowed was, at the very least, subjective.

After a while it began to gradually let go of control. Nowadays, there are
just a few things that might get blocked and I haven't heard any more stories
about developers who got blocked.

Funny thing is: Valve is privately owned, and Google is a public company. One
should expect it to be the other way around.

------
S_A_P
While I'm sure that buried in the TOS you can be banned at any time for any
reason, and the sheer volume of apps they referee makes things difficult to
have humans manage. The "right" thing to do here would be to at least provide
some sort of substantiation of your assertion that it violates policy.

-App is asking for more permissions than it needs -App is violating privacy -App is direct copy of/ mimicking Core OS functionality -App is using non opensource code

etc.

They obfuscation of the reasons for the ban seem to me to be one of the
following 1) laziness 2) malice 3) fear that it would somehow expose the
methodology for finding the policy violations and create a cat and mouse game.

It seems like mobile development is becoming less and less an attractive
platform to spend my cycles. There are basically 2 markets with millions of
apps that already implement your idea in some form or fashion that are free or
cheap. Meanwhile being a Luddite and writing enterprise code for business has
consistently paid more each year I've done it.

------
samcrawford
I'm developing a consumer facing service right now, and it's stories like this
that steer me away from expending the effort to develop as an Android and iOS
app. At least on the web we're not (entirely) beholden to a single company
that can unilaterally remove you with no recourse.

------
Havoc
My money is on the gaming battery life thing triggering some automated test

Sorry to hear mate. Seems quite unreasonable

~~~
pnw_hazor
That does not explain why Goog doesn't treat people like humans.

If the app developer has been in good standing for years, and has a popular
app, why not send them more information as to why they are in violation? And
give them some time to fix it.

~~~
huffmsa
Because they're not using humans to do the reviews anymore. They're putting
bots on the frontlines, then using humans to (maybe) handle appeals.

But those humans are probably undertrained, underpaid and have zero context
for each of their 1k cases, so they default to accepting the bots judgement.
Which in turn feedback to the bot, justifying it's actions.

~~~
segmondy
Does matter, even if they used bots, The bot would detect something. The bot
would go through some rules to determine what it would flag. The bot should
report on it.

We detected something suspicious about your ads. We detected that you're
abusing the battery life. We detected adult contect.

Give them something! Even a clue!

~~~
huffmsa
The code is probably in place to do that, but it probably errors out and no
one who needs access to those logs has access or knowledge of them, and the
humans handling appeals are probably siloed off from the bots and devs, so
they think things are fine, and the devs think things are fine, since no one
is complaining.

------
iicc
IMHO the title should say ad-supported instead of free.

------
tinus_hn
Surprisingly he never mentioned what the actual violation was, nor of him
asking what it was.

~~~
bwooceli
Yeah, there's a bit of a fog around this. He sets it up very nicely and gets
the sympathetic emotions going and kind of sneaks in "4 similar apps" were the
cause of the account suspension. I have no doubts that MonTransit is above
board, it looks great, but about those other "similar apps"... no detail
provided

~~~
mda
He also doesn't mention where and how he gets the data from. But pitchforks
are already out so who cares.

------
deepsun
As far as I understand, author's account was blocked, but not necessarily
related to app in question. Author said that there were other apps, one "not
being in production", and didn't mention what those apps did.

------
smsm42
That's why I don't want to even go into mobile development - pretty much the
whole market is gated by two oligopolists who have random capricious policies
and can - and do! - destroy thousands of hours of your work without even
properly stating a reason and without any recourse. You work for years, you
put your thought and love into something, you release it, people are happy to
use it - and then some (probably severely underpaid and overworked) anonymous,
or ever worse, a mindless misconfigured ML routine, pushes a button and poof!
- it's all gone. That's an insane world to live in.

------
mmathieum
Hi all, I'm the developer of the app in question. I have regained access to
the Google Play Console. Working on publishing the new apps. More details in
updated Medium article. Thanks

~~~
hasseio
Can you give us more details? Which icon was hidden? And how?

------
anewguy9000
am i the only one skeptical here? the guy put 5000 hours and is paying for
advertising but the app is totally free? he doesnt say anything about what
could have been flagged as deceptive.

------
Paul-ish
Perhaps there is room for new companies that provide quasi-legal services that
vet apps before they are sent to the play store, to make sure their customers
apps are in compliance. Ideally their experience seeing many apps would help
them understand what gets removed and what doesn't. In cases like this, where
the developer gets a notification about non-compliance, they would also take
the app down ASAP so the developer can work things out before Google removes
them from the store.

------
jaakl
One golden rule of businesses (or any investments) is that you should not put
your eggs to single basket. With development of mobile apps you just do it,
you are totally in mercy of a couple of gatekeepers, like it or not. I would
rather focus on recognising and mitigating these risks, and make sure that you
do have alternatives. Do not buy into some corporation's promises of not to be
evil. They all are. Sorry you had to learn it in hard way, but better late
than never.

------
auslander
Was there Facebook Audience Network SDK in this open source app?

~~~
floatingatoll
It's on GitHub in case you'd like to answer that question by source
inspection. I'm not familiar with Android so I can't do so for you, sorry:

[https://mtransitapps.github.io/](https://mtransitapps.github.io/)

------
jshowa3
It honestly amazes me that people didn't think this wouldn't happen. When you
have a company own a market, they simply dictate on a whim who gets access to
it.

It's the same with Steam. The more you move to the cloud, the more you give
companies control over your goods and services.

Phones should've remained open the day they were made. You should never been
banned from administrative control of your device.

------
BogdanPetre
In a few weeks, an app offering the exact service as the removed one of yours
will appear on Google Play, except now there will be a fee

------
HillaryBriss
This kind of story makes me favor a blend of the policy proposals of Andrew
Yang and Elizabeth Warren. We recognize that the current automated economy has
hurt the little person (Yang), but, at the same time, recognize that a few
super large corporations have created this situation (Warren).

So, I propose that all US residents receive $1000 a month directly from
Google.

------
on_and_off
The timing is pretty brutal and outrageous but other than that, unless there
are indeed no violations of the policies, I have no issues with an app getting
kicked out.

It is hard to have any opinion on the accuracy of these strikes though, since
almost all the times devs believe that whatever they do is legit.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
It's pretty easy for the developer to believe "whatever they do is legit" when
they aren't shown an example of how they violated the policy.

Could you imagine a world where a traffic cop pulled you over, issued you a
ticket, and when you asked what you did wrong they said "You violated the
policies regarding safe driving and expected behaviors".

Your license is now revoked. All the information required has been provided to
you.

So maybe you are a terrible driver who deserves to lose a license, or maybe
you just did something like parking in front of a mail box, a behavior you
would adjust if you realized it was against the rules.

No one should be expected to have a perfect mental map of the extremely long
terms and conditions agreements and how they map to every real word situation.

~~~
on_and_off
I agree that they should do a better job at explaining issues.

My understanding is that at first the number of apps where the violation is
unclear was so low that it was not worth it.

IIRC Google has announced that they are going to provide more info in the
future on what the issues are.

however

the link in the article is pretty clear :
[https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-
deception/dec...](https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-
deception/deceptive-behavior/#!?zippy_activeEl=dishonest-behavior#dishonest-
behavior)

(even though it does not mention which part of the app exactly violates these
rules)

And I disagree on the fact that the TOS are unreadable :
[https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-
policy/#!?mo...](https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-
policy/#!?modal_active=none)

Google could improve devs relationships for sure, but these are pretty clear.

FWIW, I had several strikes as well, because of a permission used by an
unpublished app on a beta channel :/. The whole process of getting the account
reinstated was pretty easy in that case.

I am kinda curious to scrape the op app and look at what might have got them
in trouble, I might give it a go if I have enough time.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Thank you, that's good info. Please report back if you have time to scrape the
app and give us that perspective.

Is it easy to scrape the app now that it isn't in the store anymore?

I have a hunch the violation will be something to do with him trying to cut
costs on the Google Places API.

~~~
on_and_off
By scrape I meant that there are some sites allowing to download apks from
Google play They usually cache the apks for a couple of days so that would
have been a way to download it.

And after that, I would have looked at the app manifest (it contains all the
permissions that the app might want to use, so there might be some interesting
stuff there) and maybe use it.

I don't plan to look at the bytecode for shady behavior .. that's not my forte
and I am not interested enough to spend one week looking at bytecode.

edit : I have just opened the article again to get the app package name ..
looks like it got reinstated. But no comment of the author as of why it was
removed.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Ya, looks like it got updated again and he doesn't have to make any changes.

Google thinking he was in violation was an error on their part.

------
e12e
So, with the US tradewar on China, the big Chinese companies are forced to
roll out an os and app store. They cater to a large internal market augmented
by a large market in India.

The sanctions could potentially kill Android, I'm thinking. At least with how
Alphabet is "curating" it.

------
totaldude87
The problem is multi fold, its completely ridiculous on them banning this app
and letting thousands of piracy apps (free movies, live streaming ) etc etc..
Guess there is a genuine bias from AI to scrap out the actual apps that
actually helps people legally than the illegal ones..

~~~
r3drock
I think, they are already banning many of the malicious apps. As nobody cares
about those apps, these removals don't make any news and therefore it seems
google is not punishing malicious apps.

------
nithi2023
All apps are still hosted here if any have interest:
[https://www.apkturbo.com/apps/montransit/org.mtransit.androi...](https://www.apkturbo.com/apps/montransit/org.mtransit.android/)

~~~
speps
Or by the author himself at the end of TFA:
[https://mtransitapps.github.io/apk/](https://mtransitapps.github.io/apk/)

------
paulcole
Wonder what's going to happen to this blog post when Medium goes out of
business?

------
tempodox
You ensure service by signing a mutual contract where breaking the contract
hurts the party that broke it. Expecting the same from the one-sided agreement
you sign with Google is like believing in the Easter Bunny.

------
nvahalik
I know there are several people in this discussion advocating for
regulation... but surely there are legal remedies for this? Why not just find
a way to make them liable for this?

------
seanwilson
I run a paid Google Chrome extension - I'm terrified there's going to be
similar stories for Chrome extensions since this year Google introduced a
review process.

------
jokoon
I'm starting to wonder, is google play better for app security since it helps
to authenticate apps?

Microsoft can sign windows "apps" without an app store.

------
ineedasername
Someone at google must have really liked their Kafka, but accidentally took it
as a guide rather than a warning. Oops!

------
ChrisArchitect
good pitch post, nice to see google dev account responding on twitter and
maybe some escalation, but reading the post -- did you even consider what the
deceptive behaviour might be even if barely a case for it? Mimicing
functionality from other apps? Does STM or whatever transit in Montreal have
an official app? While it's good to have competition and variety in the market
for transit apps etc, seems like a lot of municipalities would tend to have an
'official' app these days or recommend preferred ones, so maybe there's a push
as far as app store etc to go towards the official ones and maybe the STM
reported you or someone downloaded and was mad it wasn't the real one etc etc.
Sorry I didn't see your app before it got taken down/am not familiar with it
but reading your post and started to wonder. No offense. Transit apps and
public service sort of space for apps is a tricky space in modern day

~~~
jerf
The real problem isn't that Google may have an opinion that the app is
deceptive or not, one that we may even share if we knew all the details. The
real problem is that the app developer doesn't even _know_ , and had what
appears to have been roughly a two-hour window to nominally fix the problem
before being booted off the service.

------
hotgeart
That's why i'm full for PWA. I never had a ban, but I got apps disabled too.

------
blazespin
Yeah, there's definitely a headache to running a marketplace like these.

------
pnw_hazor
Shutup! I heard they pay well. /s

Programmers here at HN could stop this behavior in a minute. They do not care
about you.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Downvotes incoming!

Other explanations from Google programmers: "the work is interesting"

~~~
ddalex
Not having worked at Google yet, but having plenty of experience with other
big companies: things are not black and white. There is no "evil" per se, it's
just a shit load of conflicting interests, different priorities and different
pressures at play: nobody wakes up in the morning and decides "I'm gonna fuck
up this webmasters day today for the sake of it". It just happens that some
innocent people end up in an unfortunate corner case of a tool trying to
protect against scammers.

I can totally understand how in a flagging tool with a false positive rate of
0.01% some innocent publisher got caught by mistake, and got its app banned.
Is that publisher important enough so it's worth manual review time? What's
the risk to expose the internal heuristics to make EVERYBODY happy? Oh, wait,
you can't make EVERYBODY Happy.

I can tell you this shit happens EVERYWHERE. It's just the way the law of
large numbers works against you. If you want to make ALL your customers happy,
your only choice is a bespoke dev type of thing, because you then to deeply
cater to your each customer.

It's the same shit everywhere, and you're interested in working on large bits,
it doesn't really matter where you go. Google, FB, Amazon, everywhere you're
going to have people that are unhappy with your product/service/decisions. So
if it's the same, why not go to the ones that pay better/got more perks/look
best on your CV?

~~~
onli
This is not about making everybody happy. This is about completely wrong
behaviour: You can suspend scammers fast, but if you also catch legitimate
developers with your scam protection you have to have processes in place to
give 1. valid explanations why 2. time to react, at least retroactively 3. a
legitimate possibility to appeal. Google does none of that, fixing that
process is possible and has nothing to do with a law of big numbers or the
difficulty of making everybody happy. The adsense scam Google is running, if
the description provided here is correct, is just fraud.

Both is just Google being evil.

> _nobody wakes up in the morning and decides "I'm gonna fuck up this
> webmasters day today for the sake of it"_

You can be sure that happens as well in every organization of that size. It's
just another reason you have to have a proper appeal process in place, not the
automatic dismissal system Google has.

~~~
ddalex
How do you know who is a legitimate dev and who is a scammer posing as a
legitimate dev, to know when to work with someone, or to withhold information
that would expose secret filters that you use?

Mind, it's not that this dev got one app banned, he got ALL of them banned.
There is an appeal process when you gone one banned, but he got multiple
violations. He got all the violations in a span of hours, so he got unlucky to
be a corner case that the regular appeal process no longer works for him. So
you might argue that the appeal process is not flexible enough, but then the
question is what would be flexible enough? So no matter for how long you're
tweaking it, you're gonna have corner cases that will make people unhappy.

On the adsense scam, I hear the reports, but I've not seen Google lose in a
small-claims court yet. Given the amount of money Google makes on there, I
doubt that the revenue from running such a scam would even register as a blip,
never mind the reputation hit they would take should it be ever proved true.

~~~
feanaro
> [...] to withhold information that would expose _secret filters_ that you
> use?

It makes no sense to me that these filters are such a secret. Either you are
doing something to deceive your users or you are not. Are you advising that we
should just blindly trust an opaque set of rules that a giant corporation,
whose interests are not aligned with our own, can use to ban anyone with no
oversight at all?

~~~
ddalex
Play Store developers are not users - they are customers for the Play Store
product. Nobody is forcing them to develop for Play Store; or to use Ad Sense
or any other Google product.

When you're starting your relationship, it's very clear (in the ToS) that they
can reject your apps or terminate the relationship however they choose. If
they would start quitting developing for Play Store because of these opaque
rules, perhaps Google will listen to them. But reality shows that this problem
doesn't happen often enough, so the opaque filters work as intended.

So yes, I advise that, if you don't like the rules of Google, don't go play
with them. It's the only thing that can change the rules of Google. (and FB,
Amazon, etc).

~~~
feanaro
When I said "users", I was referring to their rationale for killing off this
developer's account and applications. One of the cited policies was Violation
of Deceptive Behavior, which referred to users.

> So yes, I advise that, if you don't like the rules of Google, don't go play
> with them. It's the only thing that can change the rules of Google. (and FB,
> Amazon, etc).

If you don't like the rules (or their behaviour when supposedly applying
them), you can also:

1\. Criticize, explain why the behaviour is bad and spread the word about it.
This is what we are doing now.

2\. Regulate this kind of behaviour out of existence.

------
fredgrott
both Google Play Store and Apple App Store use automated app review systems.

Translation: ITs your fault for not keeping abreast of policy changes.

Same is true for desktop app stores as well and browser plugins.

devs and designers stop whining and being irresponsible the users come first
not your feelings!

------
Gorgor
To be exact, Google did not “delete” the app. It cannot even do that. It
removed the app from its own app store. The fundamental problem is that
Google’s own app store is perceived by many users to be the only way to
install Android apps.

Are there any ideas about how to convince users to use other app stores?

