Google have declared Droidscript is malware • Hacker News Board

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#581

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #451

pjmlp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because Termux developers refuse to use Java APIs and don't accept Android isn't a POSIX clone.

Android certainly has an acceptable POSIX component when it's not artificially broken.

Where is POSIX listed here?

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

> Starting in Android 7.0, the system prevents apps from dynamically linking against non-NDK libraries, which may cause your app to crash. This change in behavior aims to create a consistent app experience across platform updates and different devices. Even though your code might not be linking against private libraries, it's possible that a third-party static library in your app could be doing so. Therefore, all developers should check to make sure that their apps do not crash on devices running Android 7.0. If your app uses native code, you should only be using public NDK APIs.

Taken from https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-...

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#582

Post by chii » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

dfabulich wrote: post #546

This article is big news, because it shows that Google will permanently yank your Android app if your website violates AdSense's secret fraud detector! If you're running Google AdSense ads and you have an Android app that you care about, take down the ads immediately and switch to another vendor. AdSense is the product where Google pays you for running banner ads; they can and frequently do kick people off of it for…

if you don't interlink your app account and your website's adsense google account, then this _shouldn't_ really be an issue right?

So i say always maintain separate google accounts for individual apps, for individual usages. Separate your personal google account from your business account, from your ad-network account etc. And i would argue that each individual app should own their own account (you pay for this of course, because of the fee per account i guess).

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#583

Post by felipelemos » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

joemi wrote: post #323

sequoia wrote: post #301

> ...after taking into consideration the information that you have provided, we have confirmed that we are unable to reinstate your publisher account. I hate when using euphemism slides into flat out lying like this. They are not "unable" to reinstate the account, in fact they are the only party able to reinstate the account, that's why the account holder was contacting them instead of someone else. They are "unwilli…

It's not lying because there is some implicit information in the "we are unable" statement. What is implied in statements like this is that they're unable due to their policies. If not for implications like this, almost every single use of "unable" (or "can't", for that matter) ever in a sentence would be "lying" unless something is against the laws of physics.

But there lies the lie. When they use 'unable' they are implying that an external factor is blocking them, so arguing further is not possible and unfruitful.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#584

Post by spinny » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #481

spinny wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

picking up copyrighted images is another indicator that user X is a spammer, providing that info would eliminate the signal

Well, this is the essence of discrimination and we wouldn't tolerate it for a whole range of indicators (you're black, gay, if a particular race, etc etc). My guess is the real reason they won't tell people is that they would end up in court pretty quick.

so, in you mind, detecting copyrighted images and using that as a metric to detect spammers is discrimination? Are antivirus programs discriminating too??

I bet you indent your code in an inclusive way

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#585

Post by noduerme » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

> Unfortunately we also have to inform our users that we could no longer support AdMob for use in their own apps either

Does this imply that Google is holding them responsible for apps originating from their platform which might also have been sources of bad traffic ...separately from their own in-app advertising?

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#586

Post by Xylakant » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

szopa wrote: post #100

dtx1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning it first is fine. banning it first, then not giving a reply to the concerns they have is not. Even if they have reasonable believe or proof that droidscript is indeed malware, it looks like at least a chunk of their userbase uses it for legitimate usecases and the devs, who likely invested at least a few hundred hours of work in it, deserve at least some communication.

I used to work at Google, and a friend reached out to me for help – his company's app was in a similar situation, with similar communication from Google. This was a good friend from high school, so I pressed the issue using internal channels. The person handling it on Google's side was very assertive about them violating a policy, and after some back and forth I received a _vague hint_ about what was the supposed vio…

How can google even decide that a copyrighted image was used in an illegitimate way? They’d need to check back with the copyright owner to confirm that there is no license and they’d need to confirm that none of the various exemptions apply. This is also a matter that’s entirely between the copyright holder and the author of the app. I could understand if the problem was that the copyright holder explicitly notified google, but then that complaint could just be forwarded to the app owner with no information about any secret sauce being revealed.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#587

Post by scatters » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #582

dfabulich wrote: post #546

This article is big news, because it shows that Google will permanently yank your Android app if your website violates AdSense's secret fraud detector! If you're running Google AdSense ads and you have an Android app that you care about, take down the ads immediately and switch to another vendor. AdSense is the product where Google pays you for running banner ads; they can and frequently do kick people off of it for…

if you don't interlink your app account and your website's adsense google account, then this _shouldn't_ really be an issue right? So i say always maintain separate google accounts for individual apps, for individual usages. Separate your personal google account from your business account, from your ad-network account etc. And i would argue that each individual app should own their own account (you pay for this of co…

Google are wise to this; they'll hit you with an "associated account" ban. All your company accounts, app accounts, ad accounts, personal accounts, your spouse's, dog's, dentist's account - all banned.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#588

Post by iaml » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

lupire wrote: post #152

nitrogen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Android's JVM supports reflection, you could do it dynamically at runtime, and there are probably already JS+JVM integrations that would work.

Apache Cordova exposes APIs to JS.

Actually, ionic team recently released their native api solution as a library [0]. I think it might fit right in.

[0] https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#589

Post by lelanthran » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #570

lmm wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to say that they won't reinstate your account because you're violating a policy, they should say as much.

The original email is context for the review rejection email by saying > In your case, we have detected invalid traffic or activity on your account The rejection email isn't isolated, so when it says "unable" it's conveying the implied message "unable to reinstate your publisher account ".

You all make good points in favour of both sides of the argument, so I upvoted every post in this thread.

The only takeaway is that there is no obviously correct wording for google to make when wielding the banhammer.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#590

Post by hrktb » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #492

mike_d wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work detecting ad fraud. Publishers would do bad things, call in, and try to get their account rep to get details. Obviously I can't say "of the last 2500 ad clicks zero of them had any mouse movement over the ad before the click event" because then the publisher obviously just fixes their fraud software. This isn't specific to Google or even advertising. Every company has figured out when dealing with abus…

In a case like that, sure. But they don't provide any information even when they want the publisher to make a change. Our Adsense account once got suspended because ads were appearing on pages that contained user-entered search keywords. Occasionally users would enter keywords that google considered 'naughty', and didn't want their ads appearing alongside. If they'd just told us that, we could have added a filter to…

The subtility is they don’t actively _want_ these small publisher to do something.

It could be better if the issue is fixed, but Google’s skin in the game is small enough it doesn’t matter, and they already chose to get rid of the publisher as an efficient solution.