
Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads” - jeremydeanlakey
http://www.purpleleafsoftware.com/2019/03/google-removed-mommy-saver-plus-for.html
======
maxencecornet
The exact same thing happened to me last week

My ads-free really simple React Native app was removed from the play store for
“deceptive ads”

I don't care too much as this was just a way to learn React Native for me, but
it's still really weird

To be honest every interaction I have with Google products nowadays are bad:

\- This app kicked from the Play store

\- A bug with the new Adsense Auto-ads where you couldn't disable the giant
ads that were added on your content without removing completely Google Adsense
script, which I did

I'm now moving away from anything Google

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Can apps be decompiled easily?

I'd imagine one could download the app, report it for whatever (eg ads), wait
for the automated system to remove it, then upload your own version (with ads,
and what ever else).

Or if not decompiled, perhaps you got spearphished for access to your apps
code, or it was acquired some other way.

Similar things probably happen as far as malicious reporting for sales
platforms (like Amazon). If you 'steal' the product I imagine Amazon would
even handover the original sellers good product reviews too.

~~~
foxyv
If they are Java, which most are, then yes. Unless you use obfuscation, Java
decompile is trivial.

------
sercand
When you receive that email from Google you can only fill a generic form given
at the bottom of the email. You can't contact a human being to understand why
it is rejected/removed. Problem is not written clearly and it doesn't include
a screenshot as apple does. Google is terrible at support on Play Store (and
some more of its services).

~~~
criddell
I understand that Google wants to handle as much as possible with a support.py
script, but they really should start having people to contact.

Maybe there should be a fee for a support request and if the Google rep finds
that Google's automated system messed up they report the problem internally
and refund the fee to the app developer.

~~~
benologist
If there's going to be a fee it should come out of Google's $100+ billion in
savings that they are accruing in part by evading expenses like customer
support. This person, and all Play store developers, are customers that paid
Google to publish on their app store. They shouldn't have to additionally pay
Google to provide the same support that is standard everywhere else even at
scale, such as AT&T, Comcast, Amazon etc.

~~~
antpls
In the case of Google, neither developers nor end-users are customers. Their
true customers are buyers of space to display ads, and buyers of data from
user tracking.

~~~
benologist
While that was true twenty years ago, it was more like ads were the only
service they had and buying their [only] service made a customer. Purchasing
their goods and services is still what makes you their customer in most
countries where the term is defined by commerce departments or similar, and
now Google offers much more than just ads.

------
echelon
Can we sue Google when they do things like this? No single entity should wield
this much power. And we should rewrite the laws to make this so.

Google and Apple _wanted_ to be in the role of gatekeeper, so they should be
beholden to the apps on their platform. We had a web where developers were in
control of their own deployment. Everything was decentralized and required
responsibility and diligence.

Now the power is out of our hands and its unfair. It isn't our choice.

One might argue this is better for consumers, but I honestly don't think so.
Technology could have fixed discoverability and provided sandboxing, networks
could provide curation. And there would probably be better privacy in the
world where Mozilla won instead of Google.

Edit: I am so happy that GDPR and CDPA have arrived to protect consumers. We
need similar laws to protect startups, small businesses, and sole proprietors
that rely on these platforms to treat us fairly. They owe us that after haven
taken away the nice open web we once had. Maybe laws are how we get back the
web we lost.

~~~
KirinDave
> No single entity should wield this much power. And we should rewrite the
> laws to make this so.

I think in fact a lot of people do want them to do this. Folks complain the
Play store is full of malware and spam, and that there are data leaks and
deceptive ads.

Then Google or Apple goes and removes them, and then folks are mad if that
process has errors.

It seems like a business where you make everyone mad no matter what you do.

[edit: Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of the practice. But an awful lot of
folks seem to think Apple and Google SHOULD wield editorial power, if only to
stop outright malware. And of course, certain politicians want to make sure
that the internet refuses to show content unflattering to people in power]

~~~
echelon
> I think in fact a lot of people do want them to do this.

 _I, the engineer,_ do not want them to do this. Before Google and Apple, I
didn't have this problem. I didn't have to pay their tax or march to their
beat.

You might argue that it's their platform and that's the cost for us to pay.
But it wasn't always this way! These companies leveraged their advantages to
steal eyeballs away from an open web and lock them in their own platform.

They could have spent money making the open web work better on mobile. Or
designing a portable app framework and runtime for all devices. But we know
why they didn't and what the outcome has been.

I want them to pay back the negative externalities they've leveraged onto us.

~~~
hug
> Before Google and Apple, I didn't have this problem. I didn't have to pay
> their tax or march to their beat.

You still don't! You don't have the play by their rules, and you can still
target everyone who has a non-Google or non-Apple phone, which as a target
market is appreciably no one, much as it was before Google and Apple entered
the phone market.

You can target them if they have phones produced by your hated manufacturers
_anyway_ by making your app a webapp instead of a native app.

You don't want to do those things, and that's fine, but you're yearning to go
back to a time that never existed.

~~~
echelon
> back to a time that never existed

Personal PCs were just this back in the 90's and 00's. Microsoft tried to
create a walled garden, but it failed due to the _world wide web_.

Google and Apple saw how Microsoft failed and decided that the app store would
be a first class citizen on day one and that the mobile web [1] would be an
afterthought. They learned from Microsoft's mistake and used their positions
to make app stores the new status quo.

It could have easily gone a different way, but I understand how the business
interests got us to where we are.

[1] the mobile web wouldn't have been nice without more money and research
poured into it. The web stack could have been supplemented or a new one could
have been developed. These companies obviously had other priorities than to
pay for something that netted them nothing, but individual developers wound
out worse for it.

~~~
kyralis
Actually, you've got that history a little backward. The original iPhone had
no App Store and had _only_ web apps; that was the promoted way to develop for
the platform. It was only after the phone's release and the mad clamor from
developers to be allowed to develop native applications that an SDK was
released and the App Store created.

~~~
echelon
My mistake. Thank you for correcting me.

------
renholder
> _Felkod: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE_

Couldn't access it. Found Web Archive link[0].

Mistaken identity for an app with the same name (it seems). More specifically,
it seems like someone at Google was looking to disable the app, yours was the
first to return in their search, so that must've been it. You'd think there'd
be correlatable identifiers to specifically prevent this?

[0] -
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190325230133/https://www.purpl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190325230133/https://www.purpleleafsoftware.com/2019/03/google-
removed-mommy-saver-plus-for.html)

~~~
jeremydeanlakey
Sorry about the error. I noticed and flicked the "enable https" shortly after
posting. I flicked it off again for now.

~~~
godelski
I am still experiencing an error in FF65 (Secure connection failed)

~~~
floatingatoll
Perhaps you need to disable HTTPS Everywhere — the link in this post is HTTP,
not HTTPS.

~~~
auscompgeek
I have HTTPS Everywhere and didn't have any problems accessing the link (it
loaded over cleartext HTTP as intended).

------
quickthrower2
From the blog comments:

> Good luck man. I had an app removed because someone did a review of it and
> their review had screenshots of my app and Google banned the app for
> copyright infringement siting them as the source. No appeal, one strike,
> never got through to a human.

If true that’s laughablly insane.

~~~
antocv
You, still using google for anything, is insane. OK, harsh word, but really,
your behaviour is modified by the search results/ads/suggestions you see.
Every search you do, leans you to continue using Google in the future, and
looking at the web through their eyes.

~~~
golergka
If you're a mobile app developer, what choice do you have?

~~~
Tsubasachan
On Android you can easily sideload apps. So there is a choice.

I understand that 90% of people get their apps exclusively from the Play Store
but that is not because Google is evil. Its because people prefer one store
were they can find everything: the supermarket model.

~~~
phillc73
And not just the consumers, but it would seem the producers too.

By choice, I do not have a Play Store account and wherever possible install
apps only from F-Droid. However, there are (rare) times where I want to
install a free (as in beer) closed source app. However, the publisher only
chooses to make the app available via the Play Store. I would really, really
like a direct apk download. I appreciate this approach is not for every end
user and some people are scared of the "warning" messages Android displays
when installing apps directly. Nonetheless, it would be really nice to have
the choice and I don't see it as so much extra effort on the publisher's side.

~~~
Tsubasachan
Absolutely. If developers don't want one app store to dominate the marketplace
they have to publish in multiple places. Otherwise what can they expect is
going to happen? Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

------
megous
If Google can't be bothered to give a fuck, can't this be mittigated by
splitting the responsibilities?

Have a company that takes care of building, uploading and distributing apps
from developers to the app store, and fixing all the distribution issues (via
Google/Apple contacts in cofee shops in SV, that could push for resolution of
issues internally).

And developers would work with this comapny, and would not need to care about
Google/Apple at all.

Why do we need to see all these "Google did this to us" articles on HN? This
should be a solvable problem, via some intermediary that would have more
options/human contacts/power wrt Google, than a single developers.

~~~
wgoodall01
Basically, that sounds like a union for app developers. That might end up
being a positive thing.

------
z3t4
I hear a lot of people complain they got falsely banned by some automated
process. But automatic processes are easy to game, so just do what the
spammers likely do, slightly edit the app, re-upload using another account and
IP, etc, repeat. I'm sad every time I install an Android app, thinking how
much crap/spyware it will install on my device ...

Android should allow other "app stores", just like you can have different
browsers, you should also be able to have different "app stores". Just like
there is not just one "store" in the physical world. Then there could be niche
stores that focus on some category, or quality.

~~~
pmx
There is nothing stopping you from using other app stores on android. Amazon
has their own (amazon underground) and samsung have their own (galaxy store).
There are others out there, too!

~~~
Svoka
Google is de-facto monopolist if you want to make money off your apps/games.
Company was publishing same game on basically all android stores, and returns
were less than one hundredth comparing to the Play Store; even if it was
featured in other stores.

~~~
Faark
Its sad so few people can acknowledge strong network effects is all it needs
to create a de-facto monopolist.

Can you say what resources company invested to get listed on other stores? I'd
expect it to be rather simple and would hope the tiny earnings would still pay
for itself. But even for strategical reasons, I don't understand why even
Google-competitors like Microsoft Office don't offer an optional PlayStore
free download. At least for those not integrating Google services... and most
of the apk's i got from "other" source did indeed work fine. But maybe there
is just no way to avoid a tragedy of the commons without regulation.

------
anigionuio
Why is it that software repositories work so much better than these app
stores? Every app store on every platform is a wasteland of adware and
malware, but I have never found such a program in, say, the Debian repos.

App stores manage to be simultaneously more restrictive than a repository and
less trustworthy than downloading executables through a web browser.

~~~
dTal
There's an element of curation - any rando can't just upload something to
Debian, there's a web of trust.

But mainly I think it's that repositories are invariably built from source.
Everything in a distro repository is open source software, guranteed to have
been built from source from scratch. F-Droid does this, and its repositories
are as clean as any Linux distro's as far as I can tell.

(This is why Moxie's claim that F-Droid is somehow less secure than Google
Play because it signs its own .apks is weapons-grade baloneyum. On Google
Play, that .apk could have _anything_ in it. On F-Droid, that signature is a
guarantee that that app has been downloaded and built from public sources,
just like any Linux distribution. If F-Droid allowed developers to sign their
own apps, then F-Droid couldn't _build_ the apps, unless every app supported
reproducible builds.)

~~~
bilkow
Actually, F-Droid supports using the upstream developer signature for quite
some time now if the build is actually reproducible.

[https://staging.f-droid.org/en/docs/Reproducible_Builds/](https://staging.f-droid.org/en/docs/Reproducible_Builds/)

[https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/commit/8568805866dadb...](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/commit/8568805866dadbdcc6c07449ca6b84b80d0ab03c)

------
ggm
I do think that the redress model is broken. It might require money, but there
should be a path, to put up a stake for a good-faith review. If they judge you
not a spammer or time waster, you should get to talk to a person with an
advocate or adjudicator.

------
alohahacker
I had a similar situation where I contacted google and asked permission about
having a certain app made. Got the green light from several google teams.
Pushed and marketed the app and app brought in 7+ figures of revenue
throughout the years. Got shut down after about 2 years randomly with no
feedback etc. Even my personal consultants from google that they assign to you
had no clue and I was left to fend for myself and just eat the lost/work I put
into the app.

------
0gz
"Games" part considered advertising because you are advertising your own
games. You should rename it to like "Our Other Games", "Check Other Games" or
just add "ADS" label to pictures and update your new APK.

~~~
Dylan16807
That screenshot is the _wrong app_.

------
User23
When are we going to admit that Stallman was right?

~~~
pasiaj
When the benefits stop out-weighting the disadvantages.

~~~
User23
That’s the point. They already had when Stallman started GNU, which is why he
did. We just didn’t see it then.

------
eddieone
Similar happened to us, they want to keep the traffic in their platform so
they want for tricky behavior, confusing buttons, ect. Pretty anal about
getting constant updates to games, makes it impossible for small companies to
survive.

~~~
point78
Did you get reinstated eventually?

------
ParanoidShroom
Advertising your own apps/games in a different app of yours is still an ad.

If you click it, it will probably point to the play store to install it like
any other ad.

Change the copy to "install more of my apps" and they will allow it.

Yes since they employed lots of manual labor, many false positive have hit me
as well. And it's very frustrating.

But this is just another empty "Lets hate on Google". Following the guidelines
this IS a deceptive ad.

Simple reply them in the policy form and they'll get back to you why within 2
days.

------
vortico
I refuse to port my desktop application to Android and iOS because of stories
like these. If I wanted to gamble my salary, I'd go to Vegas.

------
megy
I got that too. I had no ads, but I did have a link to other apps that I made
that were similar (It was a city travel guide app). That counted as an ad
apparently. Yeah, I can see there point, so I changed the link text.

~~~
point78
A popup link or just sitting on a page onside the app somewhere?

Did you get reinstated once removed?

------
foxyv
I kind of wish that you could pay a monthly fee to Google for app developers
that entitled you to some basic customer support.

------
jeremydeanlakey
Update: I looked up the app in the screenshots attached to Google's email. It
appears to have been removed as well.

------
lnanek2
In case it helps - they recently forced me to remove all "upgrade to pro" UI
affordances that led from a free app to a paid app in the app store claiming
they were ads as well. So their definition of ads is pretty strange.

------
SonicSoul
it seems that in such cases easiest approach is to contact someone at Google
to forward your case to the right person. I met Goog people at my coffee shop
and had cases where weird behavior happened (when i tried to leave a review
for example) and i just emailed them and they said "oh @#$ that looks like a
bug I've forwarded this to PM at xxx. here's interim solution.." I couldn't
believe it was that easy.. in the end network is probably the best path

~~~
splatcollision
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a network that includes google engineers.
And it's laughable to suggest this as a remedy for "developer as platform
customer service"...

~~~
SonicSoul
point well taken.

i just wanted to share what worked for me, and assumed there are other ways to
network with people. i don't live or ever visited SV. I do see how this is a
low feasibility path

------
thinkingemote
Looking at this from another lense, think the reason why so much moderation is
automated is that these companies do Human Ops (might be the wrong term) where
essentially it's important to employees mental health not to be working on
menial moderation duties. So to improve the quality of employees working life
they use bots to do the same job.

Now moderation seems to be automateable but could a bot do customer service?

~~~
nightfly
It's to save money. Don't kid yourself into thinking they're trying to look
out for people by doing this in an automated manner.

------
mrschwabe
Why anyone would develop apps for Apple/Google duopoly is beyond me.

Right, I get that you may need the money - but if your livelihood depends on
money earned from making this world a worser place perhaps it is time to gut
check and determine what really is your purpose and best use of time; maybe
(easy) money is not all it's cut out to be in that context.

~~~
hombre_fatal
> making this world a worser place

The reality is that we're here and it's now and everyone already owns a
smartphone and you can enrich people's world with an app that helps them find
love, participate in community, develop a hobby, find a new podcast, expand
their mind, discover their creativity, track their ambitions, and more.

There's a lot of crap, too, but there's no sense throwing the baby out with
the bathwater and then sitting around hoping things change. There's a world
you can engage right now, and it's indifferent to your ideals.

