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Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

sylviavanos.nl

21–30 of 197 posts

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#21
I have a similar story about the App Store. I wanted to move my app to another owner, but Apple has detected it's a plagiarism of my original app. Now I have neither the original app on the App Store, and the new owners app is stuck. It seems to be automated rejection without a human taking an actual look at the problem.

My app is open source https://github.com/triangledraw/TriangleDraw-iOS

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#23

which one is more incompetent as a service company - Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple? I think my ranking would be Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, but that is not so much decided via any sort of logical evaluation but only due to my feeling on the matter.

For all the problems Amazon has and causes I will say I've always found their support to be pretty excellent. From what I understand Amazon's foundibg philosophy is focused on just serving the customer at the cost of any other externality and that's where most of the conterversy surrounding them comes from is placing whatever is needed to please the customer above every other concern. But that means when working with…

I've personally never contacted Facebook or Google support, seems like a futile effort. I do agree out of all the companies, Amazon seems to have support figured out the most, at least they make it easy for the customer. I had a package that was not delivered, actually pretty sure it was delivered but then stolen (apartment had a package locker so it was the delivery drivers fault).

When I contacted Amazon I was expecting them to talk for a while to determine what happened but no, immediate no questions asked refund. Amazon I'm sure has issues around delivery, but as a customer I could care less if a package gets lost once in a while if the company is immediately going to correct the issue.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#24
post #3

ugh, that's annoying.. At least you made it onto HackerNews, so your problem might get silently resolved in the shadows It really sucks that Google can't be bothered to provide 5 minutes of human support despite taking such an enormous cut of all revenue from these apps

1. It wouldn’t be 5 minutes. This could easily take hours to resolve.

2. Even with human support, companies like this would continue to be incentivised not to share what exactly triggered the ban in order to protect their systems from spam and abuse. You can’t provide services to billions of people without automation.

3. Human reviews would be performed by humans. Have you ever met humans? You’re replacing an imperfect system with another imperfect system except now things are slower and cost more.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#25
I'm genuinely interested in hearing from people who believe that Apple and Google should have a monopoly on deciding what apps people can run on their phones.

In case of Google's Android, one can still install third party App Stores, even they take away auto-updates and such. Apple is a much worse offender.

In either case, why does anyone think that they should have a monopoly there and why is nothing being done to fight it? Many years ago the EU forced Microsoft to release Windows versions without a default media player or a default browser. Yet, nothing has been done to Apple and Google. Why?

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#26
post #24
post #3

ugh, that's annoying.. At least you made it onto HackerNews, so your problem might get silently resolved in the shadows It really sucks that Google can't be bothered to provide 5 minutes of human support despite taking such an enormous cut of all revenue from these apps

1. It wouldn’t be 5 minutes. This could easily take hours to resolve. 2. Even with human support, companies like this would continue to be incentivised not to share what exactly triggered the ban in order to protect their systems from spam and abuse. You can’t provide services to billions of people without automation. 3. Human reviews would be performed by humans. Have you ever met humans? You’re replacing an imperfe…

> in order to protect their systems from spam and abuse

Spam and abuse would fall afoul of the CFAA in the US and similar laws in the EU.

Outside of the US? Well maybe those apps shouldn't even be available in the US or EU.

Spam and abuse only happens because the criminals perpetuating it do it without real consequence.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#27

I have the same experience with the Google Play Store. For all the complaints people have about the Apple App Store, at least their reviewers are human and you can discuss things with them. And they block updates but don't remove the app without warning! My experience with the Google Play store: I get an email on a friday night after working hours stating that the app of my company was removed after a routine check a…

The number of times I've heard of people only getting support from Google because they know someone on the inside is quite astonishing.

If I were an Google employee looking to make a few extra bucks I'd definitely start offering to help "nudge" account issues for a few extra bucks under the table.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#28
Clearly this was a fuck-up with machine learning, and while it is worrying, what's more worrying is the consequences when this goes beyond just developer app reviews.

I'm worried we will have another British Post Office Scandal[1] but on a much worse scale. Bad technology coupled with everyone in charge thinking the technology is infallible.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#29
This kind of incompetence makes me seriously doubt that Google is doing anything to more substantially review apps for deeper security issues, either statically or at runtime.

The asymmetry of effort in this situation is profound: consider that you spend all your time and effort writing a, long, complex, thoughtful message by hand (the app), taking hundreds or thousands of hours, but then they respond with machine generated message that cost them 10ms of computer time.

The solution, I think, is obvious: Google needs a "zone defense" with the play store, a much larger (and expensive) staff, to do in-depth app reviews and be a stable, stateful relationship with the developer over time. This person would, in fact, become a 3rd party "expert" on a small set of apks and their contents, with a "feel" for what is changing over time, with the core mission of protecting users from malice, but working with devs, as a human being.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#30
post #3

ugh, that's annoying.. At least you made it onto HackerNews, so your problem might get silently resolved in the shadows It really sucks that Google can't be bothered to provide 5 minutes of human support despite taking such an enormous cut of all revenue from these apps

Right, my history of suffering went on for 11 months.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone at Google and I didn't made it to HN.

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