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

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

#51

Post by thinkingemote »

notreallyserio wrote: post #48
justin_oaks wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that people blame the engineers when they're the bottom of the hierarchy. It's their bosses that prioritize their work, decide whether their work is good enough, and decide whether to fix something that's broken. It's not the individual engineers who decide whether the company will have a culture of helping users and/or app developers, or treating them like resources to exploit. It's not the ind…

Engineers at Google can get a job anywhere. They choose to work for Google despite building and maintaining a substandard product. Google engineers have a lot of leverage. I refuse to pretend that they can't influence product quality.

Google and other trendy tech companies have a concept called Human Ops.

Human ops is designed to improve and keep safe the mental health of its engineers. They do this by using machines to do all the dirty stuff as possible. Classic example is evil image flagging problems causing genuine psychological trauma, but it's extended now to everything engineers hate like drudge work, customer support etc.

You'd need to convince the engineers that Human Ops is wrong first. Engineers like the shield and the corporation likes the cost cut.

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

#52

Post by UIUC_06 »

I think you were lucky they told you anything. On Quora they just say "your answer was deleted for violating Quora policies. Click here to read our policies."

This sort of "tell them nothing" approach seems pervasive in the online world. Blame the lawyers.

Their lawyers must caution them "Don't give any details. That just opens us up to more questions & legal actions." The fact that it's completely self-serving and proves they don't give a shit about you is kinda irrelevant. Who are you, after all? There are millions just like you.

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

#53

Post by ascar »

duhast wrote: post #36
buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it really rarely? I feel like I'm hearing about it all the time. The comments in this thread reenforce this feeling. Having to make it to HN frontpage to get support from Google seems also a much too common occurrence.

My assessment would be false positives are way too high and customer support is close to non-existent. And we're hearing only about a tiny fraction of the problems with the majority being stuck in customer support hell.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

duhast wrote: post #36
buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by simion314 »

jeffbee wrote: post #18

The play store review program is there to serve the installing users, not the app authors, so even a high rate of obvious false positives is probably considered acceptable.

>The play store review program is there to serve the installing users, not the app authors, so even a high rate of obvious false positives is probably considered acceptable.

This article should provove that Google incompetence exists and it works in both ways, it blocks good apps and there is no reason why bad apps would get away. I mean code like

if(shity title translation constains an word from illegalWordsInEnglishList) proves there is no super clever AI here but at best a quick workaround , so if quick workaround or shity code is allowed why would you be convinced that the "security" scans are better? (we found that 100% Apple security scans are as bad so I won't be surprised if a Google dev also created a list of illegalAPUIs and does a naive search that clever developers can get around with a bit of clever reflection/dynaimc class or obfuscation)

TL:DR I am not convinced that badly implemented policies and shiutty implemented security scans do not affect the users.

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

#56

Post by foxfluff »

duhast wrote: post #34
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.

I would allow fair competition and let the user choose.

You don't need a monopoly to have curated storefronts. For example, GOG is curated and if I don't like their curation, I can look at Steam or a plethora of other stores.

F-Droid has its own kind of curation, which I prefer to Google's curation; it gives me a decent guarantee that I'm looking at free software, and antifeatures are usually hilighted. However, I don't have to use F-Droid if I don't want to.

So maybe another entity can provide better curation that Google does. And maybe another entity can offer an uncurated store; if users prefer that, it's their choice.

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

#57

Post by Hizonner »

duhast wrote: post #36
buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We hear about problems on here all the time... and that's probably about 0.01 percent of the problems that actually happen.

Given the diversity and sheer boneheaded stupidity of the problems we do hear about, there's no chance that they don't have a ton of false positives... especially among apps developed by people who haven't yet learned how to work around whatever stupidity currently obtains. But you can't learn definitively, because they keep changing the stupidity.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

duhast wrote: post #36
buscoquadnary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by Hizonner »

duhast wrote: post #34
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.

What makes these platforms attractive to the end user is that they're the only things available for sale down at the phone store. And what makes the decision between the two available choices is what your friends have, or what you already have, or what's on sale, or about a trillion other things that are more likely to be "top of mind" for the average buyer.

I bet not one user in 1000 gives any thought to "app curation" before they choose a phone.

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

#60

Post by notreallyserio »

thinkingemote wrote: post #51
notreallyserio wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers at Google can get a job anywhere. They choose to work for Google despite building and maintaining a substandard product. Google engineers have a lot of leverage. I refuse to pretend that they can't influence product quality.

Google and other trendy tech companies have a concept called Human Ops. Human ops is designed to improve and keep safe the mental health of its engineers. They do this by using machines to do all the dirty stuff as possible. Classic example is evil image flagging problems causing genuine psychological trauma, but it's extended now to everything engineers hate like drudge work, customer support etc. You'd need to conv…

They're choosing to use machines to maintain their mental health by creating a product that impacts the mental health of their customers who get to deal with their revenue streams being cut off entirely, arbitrarily, often with no know reason or recourse. This argument makes the engineers look monstrous, not just mildly shitty.
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