Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#121

Post by kabacha » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

ksec wrote: post #108

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #64

And Apple is not even an isolated case. Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove youtube videos on a whim. Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in Win 10. Pay…

>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash. Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held ( more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much ) about big b…

At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#122

Post by NullPrefix » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #104

philliphaydon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had about 12 domains once and decided to park them as I was busy, set them all up on adsense, went to all the domains to make sure they all worked, a couple I refreshed a few times as it wasn't working properly. The next day I got an email saying my adsense was closed for 'fake views / clicks', no way to challenge it or anything. That was like 10 years ago. I still can't use adsense to this day.

seems like an easy option for Google would be to set a blocklist of IPs for generating revenue, including the IP used to create the account. Users could add others with the big scary label of "prevent us from banning you, list IPs here that you use" that defaults to your current IP.

You can already do that on your website. Check if client IP matches and then don't print JS that loads ads

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#123

Post by AsyncAwait » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #102

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling software to users? Did you time travel from 1999 or something?

Try doing any of the following to professional level with a web app: - sound editing/musical production - video editing/special effects - CAD/CAM/EDA - Mechanical/physics/electrical simulations - interfacing with custom hardware

At least for:

- interfacing with custom hardware

From experience, that's a lot easier on Linux.

As for CAD, video editing and music production - sure you do have a point, except that in those areas the likes of Autodesk and Adobe dominate anyway and the "pro" segment of macOS/Windows users is a tiny fraction of the overall userbase, so I'd be rather surprised if that's the kind of software you can sell in decent numbers to macOS/Windows users as an indie dev.

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#124

Post by ratel » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

I keep reading these comments on HN of people trying to guess on what the reason is Apple, Google or who else is terminating accounts, apps, videos or monetizing opportunities. Usually accompanied by a tone of voice telling people they should have known better. The point is: Your guess is as good as mine.

The fact is that those companies are not telling people what they did wrong and even more persuasive these days not explaining why their apparent transgression is leading to a particular punishment. Or how that transgression fits the punishment. I for one will not subject myself to such a form of tyranny.

In this case even if having your app in TestFlight too long, why is now (3 years in) the time to revoke the app? Having 200 test users is too much. Why not tell people beforehand they exceeded a limit if that is your rule?

Lets say you are invited into a country as a citizen, but the conditions are: You can be punished arbitrarily, even banished, without recourse, harassed, given arbitrary commands by minions. You pay a 30% tax on all your proceeds, but your proceeds are your sole responsibility. There is no right to have your grievances addressed by the tyrant, not even by one of the lower minions. Would you go? I will not. Now say you already find yourself in such a country. I'm sorry for you. I think I would organize and try to collectively have those rights improved.

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#125

Post by hiq » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:44 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #121

ksec wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash. Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held ( more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much ) about big b…

At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.

Aren't Sweden and China frequently used as counterexamples, to a certain extent?

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#126

Post by rbrtl » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:44 AM UTC

waheoo wrote: post #90

rbrtl wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the same choice the device users have. It's their right to choose their device, and it's your right to choose which provider you use or don't. It is not your right to reach all those people.

No you dont. People with more users have more word of mouth network effects. Thats not much of a choice. Either participate, or be locked out and lag behind the competitors. The problem here is that Apple is both the platform and the distribution network, when we know very well, computers work just fine with a distribution of power its pretty silly to argue anything counter to that. Id love to see mac users round her…

Reaching people is not your right. This is the fallacy that social media has taught a generation.

> Id love to see mac users round here survive on mac os with nothing but the app store.

You're moving the goalposts here... Anyone can publish outside the App Store, I thought this was a conversation about publishing ON the Apple Store?

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#127

Post by ddkto » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #121

ksec wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash. Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held ( more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much ) about big b…

At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.

Central banks are keeping a close eye on it, so I think we’ve crossed the ‘remotely plausible’ line:

“Earlier this year, Deputy Governor Tim Lane spoke about the circumstances when it might make sense for the Bank of Canada to issue our own digital currency. This includes a situation in which most Canadians stopped using bank notes. We don’t believe that a digital currency is required at this time. But we are moving forward with contingency planning so that if we ever judged that we should issue a digital currency, we would be ready.” (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/06/opening-statement-160620...)

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#128

Post by bauerd » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:46 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #121

ksec wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash. Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held ( more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much ) about big b…

At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.

Supermarkets already exist that don't accept cash (in NL at least)

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#129

Post by rbrtl » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #98

rbrtl wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the same choice the device users have. It's their right to choose their device, and it's your right to choose which provider you use or don't. It is not your right to reach all those people.

Sorry but that makes zero sense. Monopolies like these kill the free market, kill competition, kill innovation and by that they hurt the end-users and the whole economy. No one benefits from this current situation except Apple. That's why antitrust laws exist, to prevent exactly this type of behavior.

I agree with you 75%.

> No one benefits from this current situation except Apple.

This isn't true. See top comment, but all the FAANGs and their smaller siblings benefit in the exact same way.

The problem is systemic, and it starts with lobbying and disparity of legal standing between corporations and individuals.

Re: Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason

#130

Post by g_p » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

At this point I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the EU competition/antitrust investigation [1] might go somewhere and get an outcome. The trouble with investigations like these, as we all know from previous cases, is they tend to drag on rather than yield rapid outcomes.

In this case, it seems we've sleepwalked into a situation where there are conflicts of interest like never really seen before - companies with global scale, able to arbitrarily decide which competition they wish to allow to be present on "their" marketplace, and make them either raise their price by 30%, or be 30% less profitable.

Resolving these conflicts, and recognising these aren't simple "creation of a moat", but rather some actual, tangible, anti-competitive practices would be a good starting point. But what is the outcome? Apple's view is "we're protecting users from bad things on the internet", but perhaps this kind of arbitrary decision-making is not one to be getting made arbitrarily?

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...