How do you formulate a reasonable appeal without knowing anymore details. I've been formulating an appeal texts the whole day, but don't know what my argument should be. Saying "my app isn't Stalkerware" probably doesn't cut it. I fear this is my first and only step.
Some similar apps also got banned, but others didn't. I don't see a pattern yet.
If Google thinks a certain type of app is no longer welcome in the store, then that's their choice. But then they should communicate that instead of banning me without warning, and banning me for LIFE from selling my own apps...
Do you live in the EU? Even if you don't, the Digital Markets Act will probably be implemented everywhere by Google et, al.
A key provision there stipulates that apps offered by third-party developers must be afforded the same level of access to features and abilities as the gatekeeper (in this case, Google)
Since Google uses that tracking technology for their own apps, they would be obligated to offer it in the same fashion to developers.
And even if your app does not do anything of the sort, the law states that the store must operate in FRAND conditions, so you should get a reprive from the ban when it goes into effect.
Google is the company that flags parents sharing medical pictures to doctors as pedos, calls the police, and doubles down on it when their screwup is publicized by the media. Even after the police cleared their names, Google continued to make defamatory statements.
I don't think they have any problem at all calling random people stalkers for no reason.
I've used SD-Maid and it's really good software and not ad-bloated to the brim like most android utility apps are today. I hope your appeal gets through
> You always read about these stories and think "they probably deserved it" and then it hits you.
Really? I sure don't think that. In fact, that attitude's a real sympathy killer, to be honest. How can people be so naive about the power these companies have to destroy your livelihood, in a single stroke, often due to an entirely humanless-process?
I don't wish this on anyone. It's more of a coping mechanism. You "hope" it's not undeserved because the alternative is nightmarish and means it could hit everyone at random, like now.
Then if you are USA based, phone and letter contacts with your elected representatives. Ask them for help. Contact the FTC, and any federal administration that might be able to help.
Would still mean that I'd have to seek other employment. It's not possible to live of your own apps without Google Play. I tried other app stores. 95% of traffic comes from Google Play.
Oh hey, thank you for SD Maid, my whole family has the Pro version and I really enjoy using it from time to time to clean up space. Thanks for this neat application, hope this will get sorted out!
You have been tending someone else's garden. You knew these things happen and you knew there was a risk of it. Stop tending other peoples' gardens. Build on the web.
Wow, yeah let's build a tool for freeing storage on the device on the web. And even if it was a apk distributed by yourself, good luck doing that successfully.
How about instead we get a system that doesn't just flag livelihoods of other people with ML and if so, at least provides some meaningful way to appeal?
"Stop tending someone else's garden" doesn't mean "build exactly what you were building before, but on the web". It means, stop adding value to Google's platform when they don't care about you, and start building something you control.
We have been hearing this exact story for well over a decade now. I have absolutely no time or sympathy for people who continue to tend Google's (or Apple's or Microsoft's or Slack's or Stripe's etc) garden and get bitten.
The value of the playstore or appstore doesn't come from the apps on it. It comes from the fact that it is bundled with every single device running the corresponding OS. Any app that wants to be successful has to be on them. Even OEM app stores aren't that widely used. And web apps are often not a choice since some functionality are not exposed to them. So the other comment is still valid.
If we want these companies from abusing their dominance, they have to be either penalized heavily and forced to compensate the victims, or it should be mandated that these devices bundle a trustworthy 3rd party store.
> How about instead we get a system that doesn't just flag livelihoods of other people with ML and if so, at least provides some meaningful way to appeal?
I think this is what they were suggesting. It isn’t clear to me how this level of mistakes with basically no recourse to appeal is at all sustainable. The only way out is to literally build the alternative, which means, building outside the current…blob.
"I had got the same stalkerware policy. The problem was not the app itself but the description. In my case 'friend' and 'monitor' keyword can’t be used together."
"If your app description includes 'monitor' or 'track', don’t include any person related keywords such as 'friend', 'people', 'human'. If not, google considers your app can monitor the somebody’s activity."*
If this ends up being the cause, that is absolutely absurd and would make me embarrassed to work for Google.
I wonder how many incredible apps will never be built because of how terrible the environment is. For me personally, I will never invest any of my time building software that has to go through anything like the current Apple or Google process, where you can be banned at any point for any reason, even no reason at all, with no recourse. I would bet that plenty of others feel the same and just nope out of developing smartphone apps.
Why would they cancel your entire account for something like that? I was once rejected for a typo but at least I could fix it and my update went through. Banned someone out right after 12 years is absolutely insane and anyone withe an account that old should at least have a human look at it.
Because for one banned app dozens with the same functionality will replace it. Google still earns money, the banning process is extremely cheap to put in place since it doesn't involve humans, all is fine. A few false positives won't hurt profits... Unless backlash becomes too big
I am currently trying to release a new app in both app stores. The shit you have to jump through now is just ridiculous. I can't wait for the EU to force alternatives and make both of them clean up their act.
I still find Google to be "friendlier" towards the development process but the amount of legal garbage has gotten out of hand.
At Apple things have gotten way worse. Trying to automate release building is practically impossible and will require hours or CI pipeline debugging with error messages that don't mean what they say. At least Googles process is quite simple and can be dockerized.
Apple has also still not managed to get UTF8 right l. Every second Mail I get from them has my name fkdup. At least I can get into the development portal which a few years ago broke due to the umlaut in my name.
Also why do I have to pay Apple $125 a year when it costs $100 in the US? The exchange rate from CHF to USD should be in my favor.
Google is “friendlier”, because they run some automated scans on the apk and you’re good. Apple has humans run your app to confirm it does what you claim, as well as a battery of automated scans and since they are using the app I’d imagine they look at network traffic as much as possible. I know iOS isn’t shielded from malicious apps, but there’s malware and viruses all over the play store. That’s because it’s free and “friendlier”.
> At Apple things have gotten way worse. Trying to automate release building is practically impossible and will require hours or CI pipeline debugging with error messages that don't mean what they say.
This isn’t Apple’s fault… every build system sucks up a decent amount of time during initial setup. You can cut down massive amounts of time between iterations by adding some common optimizations:
1. Cache artifacts when that step or job succeeds, so if a subsequent step/job fails, you can adjust it and start up where you left off, using the caches artifact to restore the workspace state. This complicates debugging efforts and I personally don’t do any optimization until the pipeline is reliably green each time. I just deal with slow builds and switch to other stuff or work ahead while they run.
2. Fail fast. The CI run should bail out if any critical steps don’t pass, so anything further down doesn’t run for no reason, burning compute time and delaying queued jobs waiting for a runner. While developing the pipeline, watch the logs and when you see something you don’t like, slap the cancel button, or collect a couple things you need to change and iterate with passes with 2-3 changes.
3. Use adequately spec’s hardware. Xcode is resource heavy and compiles need plenty of memory and cpu cores. Play around with what is a good compromise between power and cost. See if your project builds faster with more cpu cores, or faster cpu cores, etc.
4. Cache build dependencies. Mac builds have cocoapods or something close to that, and whatever that package system pulls down can be reused between builds, just remember that cache issues are a pita to spot, reproduce, and regression test, so I’d again not add this in until you’re green.
5. Write your pipeline steps in a regular bash script. Then make your CI jobs and steps just execute the shell scripts. This allows you to develop them all locally, executing the script/step you need and then CI becomes just a wrapper to glue it all together and do some caching and optimization. The more of the process you can work on locally the less you have to run on CI and wait for. Once the scripts are all working locally, wire them into CI and see what breaks. ProTip: whatever breaks on CI due to missing software, deps, configurations, is going to break for any new hire engineer trying to get up and running, so document those things and make sure your getting started readme has them, and you’ll make new hires onboarding suck less :)
As for useful error messages, or lacktherof, I’d like to introduce you to programming, we’ve been waiting for you ;) but for real, useful error messages are the rare exception, and many apis are this way. That’s not to say it’s ok, but you kinda gotta learn to work around it. I’m sure there is enough context to point you in the right direction. Also, the errors might be from random pieces in your build pipeline and not necessarily from the actual Xcode build, so make sure you know what is erroring in addition to what the error is trying to say.
> At least Googles process is quite simple and can be dockerized.
One man’s simple is another man’s “practically impossible”. Simple comes from familiarity/exposure which builds knowledge and confidence. Anyway, you can totally run your builds in docker if you want to, and many do, but I’d personally not introduce more complexity until you have your pipelines running the slow way with the least amount of mental modeling to do. Once you know it all works, then have a go at running the build you know is good, inside a docker container (which in this case is just packing up kvm/qemu/libvirt to facilitate the running of a vm back on the host, but it means you can run mac containers on Linux runners, which will be much cheaper than Mac runners since those are usually Mac hardware)
> Also why do I have to pay Apple $125 a year when it costs $100 in the US? The exchange rate from CHF to USD should be in my favor.
Couple theories. 1. They have additional processing or tax expenses when dealing with your currency which they aren’t going to eat the cost of. 2. The higher price could be to deter abuse if for some reason there is an abnormal amount originating from accounts who pay with that currency.
> As for useful error messages, or lacktherof, I’d like to introduce you to programming, we’ve been waiting for you ;) but for real, useful error messages are the rare exception, and many apis are this way.
This has been my experience with vitest lately - not sure if it’s the project, the build, or who knows what, but when a unit test fails I get an error that would be enough to work on with the given offending line of code displayed, except it is never any relevant LoC It sometimes highlights a line in a different test function all together, but usually just N lines down or up from where it should be.
As for other useful error messages… “what the fuck does PC load letter even mean??”
I’ve built a blogger client and published it on Google play store. One time my updates got rejected, the reason was, I was using an asset without proof of having permission to use it. After much head scratching, the asset was the keyword “Blogger” , so I removed the word from the store description and every place the word was found. Obviously this affected the app, but what can I do ?
You always read about these stories and think "they probably deserved it" and then it hits you.
I have no idea why Google thinks my app is "Stalkerware". This is like a bad dream I'm hoping to wake up from.
I think this is "automation gone wrong".
My apps are privacy friendly, have no ads, and most are even open-source, e.g.: https://github.com/d4rken-org/sdmaid-se
How do you formulate a reasonable appeal without knowing anymore details. I've been formulating an appeal texts the whole day, but don't know what my argument should be. Saying "my app isn't Stalkerware" probably doesn't cut it. I fear this is my first and only step.
Some similar apps also got banned, but others didn't. I don't see a pattern yet.
If Google thinks a certain type of app is no longer welcome in the store, then that's their choice. But then they should communicate that instead of banning me without warning, and banning me for LIFE from selling my own apps...
Any advice? I feel so lost :(