Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #14

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #4

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. Nothing you can do but work around them sadly.

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML…

I see this and think of all the millions of apps that the code controls. I don't know how many do fail validation, but it's clearly not a vast number, definitely under 1%.

Given that they're also clearly training a model for this, based on a large number of inputs and rules, then this is pretty good.

Their end goal is clearly to be able to remove humans from this process completely. Which is good - it's shitty work.

From my point of view as an app customer, this is fine. I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good.

From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve. Clearly they can live with a certain level of false negatives, and that makes sense from a business point of view as they save so much in the validation process.

From my point of view as a developer, however, it's a dumpster fire and I'm not going anywhere near it.

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

#32

Post by billynomates » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #13

Meanwhile, lots of other apps with 'Free' in the title, description, etc. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=free&c=apps Including some Google owned ones like YouTubeTV.

Yeah they only review when you make a new release, so maybe these apps just haven't been updated in a while

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

#33

Post by buu700 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

Obligatory reminder that a backdoor was added to the Play Store last summer: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-play-apk-replacement-p...

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find out that "Android App Bundles" were the ultimate result of a secret FISA ruling.

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

#34

Post by duhast » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

ComradePhil wrote: post #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 f…

How would you realistically solve this problem? Part of what makes these platforms so attractive to the end user is in fact app curation. Strict control over APIs and power usage, all sorts of minimum standards and mandatory integrations are contributing enormous value to these ecosystems.

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

#35

Post by onion2k » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML…

I see this and think of all the millions of apps that the code controls. I don't know how many do fail validation, but it's clearly not a vast number, definitely under 1%. Given that they're also clearly training a model for this, based on a large number of inputs and rules, then this is pretty good. Their end goal is clearly to be able to remove humans from this process completely. Which is good - it's shitty work.…

I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good.

You've failed to understand your own problem. You're seeing lots of shitty apps. That means the validation isn't working because part of the validation process is supposed to make sure apps are of sufficient quality. So no, you don't see apps that fail validation, you see apps that should have failed validation. That's worse, especially when the same validation is apparently rejecting good apps.

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

#36

Post by duhast » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

cocoflunchy wrote: post #7

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.

What is astonishing is that despite the scale at which they operate we rarely hear about the problems. False positives seem to be ridiculously low.

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

#37

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

nopakos wrote: post #22

I once got a warning for sexual content. The offensive phrase was "Virgin Mary".

So the right hand built machine translation and the left hand falls for naive Scunthorp problems like it's an intern writing a PHP app? (Or worse, a human with zero critical thinking)

Why am I not surprised...

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

#38

Post by erhk » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

cocoflunchy wrote: post #7

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.

Dont worry, google is working hard to make sure that even employees are unable to do anything of that sort. Gather the world's information and make it uniformally unsupported.

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

#39

Post by notreallyserio » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML…

I see this and think of all the millions of apps that the code controls. I don't know how many do fail validation, but it's clearly not a vast number, definitely under 1%. Given that they're also clearly training a model for this, based on a large number of inputs and rules, then this is pretty good. Their end goal is clearly to be able to remove humans from this process completely. Which is good - it's shitty work.…

> From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve.

Sorry, I don't believe you here. If you were trying to get, say, a loan from the bank you've done business with for years but would only ever get vague replies and could never speak with a human, you'd be rightfully angry. There's nothing special about being an "entrepreneur" that makes this less problematic.

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

#40

Post by foxfluff » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

Some Google engineer probably thought they were very clever when they applied "the algorithm" to translated titles.

Pretty fucking draconian some of those rules, if you ask me. In games and works of art it's not uncommon to have a title longer than 30 characters. Nevermind when you have different editions or things that are related to the main title.

So how does this actually work? Why is 'Life is Strange: Before the Storm' (33 characters) on Google Play? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareenix...