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Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

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Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#91

Post by heavyset_go »

nyuszika7h wrote: post #71
nonbirithm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few days ago Google announced that you could use Spotify's payment method as an alternative to Google play. The top-rated HN comment for that article was: "As a user, why would I choose this?"[0] Competition only works if the competition is effective enough to change user habits. For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify in…

> For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify instead? If it's 30% cheaper, that may be enough of an incentive. Though I don't know if that's the case here or if Spotify just eats the fee when you pay through Google.

I'm not sure of Google's policy, but with Apple, after the court order, dating apps using alternative payment methods must give Apple a 27% commission on all purchases made using the method[1], so that there is little to no difference in cost to users choosing to use the non-Apple payment method.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/04/apple-to-charge-27-fee-for...

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#92

Post by dboreham »

fredgrott wrote: post #64
protomyth wrote: post #11

I still think some congress person needs to pass a consumer rights bill that forces companies like this to disclose the exact reason and data relating the account termination. The excuse of security practices should not come before consumer rights. Frankly, we would ALL also be safer if the decision had to be made based on conduct on that specific service and could not include anything outside that service. There is…

problems: 1. How exactly do propose a bill to limit a company in how they use their property and enforce use of that property by an end user? 2. Bad actors out number good actors with honest accidents at over 1 million to one and obviously disclosing gives unequal advantage to the bad actors and harms the one accident good actor.

1. Isn't that the typical purpose of a law?

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#94

Post by glitchc »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #70
aaomidi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it should go one more step further. Companies making over a certain amount should be banned from outright removing your access to your account. At most it should be making the account read only. People have a right to their photos, emails, conversations, and data they have safeguarded to these companies.

I think I agree with you, but I will say I don’t envy Google’s position on this one. They have massive amounts of fraud and spam to contend with. Coming up with a system that allows them to retain legit uses but prevents them from shutting down naughty people doesn’t sound good. There need to be a mechanism that allows account recovery in a way that is actually sustainable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#96

Post by heavyset_go »

grujicd wrote: post #79

Google recently flagged downloads of my app as a malware for no reason whatsoever. It's a B2B software used in companies worldwide since 2005, digitally signed, virus checked, not a freeware with some stange business model. Nothing even remotely shady. As good as it gets when we're talking about downloadable stuff. When download gets flagged Chrome will block the download, but that's not all - Firefox is using Google…

This also happens with websites that distribute application downloads. If one system flags your application download as malware and puts it on a list, those lists are shared to, and aggregated by, organizations that exist up and down the software and network stack. At no point does anyone actually verify if what is on those lists is actually malware.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#98

Post by DoctorOW »

fredgrott wrote: post #64
protomyth wrote: post #11

I still think some congress person needs to pass a consumer rights bill that forces companies like this to disclose the exact reason and data relating the account termination. The excuse of security practices should not come before consumer rights. Frankly, we would ALL also be safer if the decision had to be made based on conduct on that specific service and could not include anything outside that service. There is…

problems: 1. How exactly do propose a bill to limit a company in how they use their property and enforce use of that property by an end user? 2. Bad actors out number good actors with honest accidents at over 1 million to one and obviously disclosing gives unequal advantage to the bad actors and harms the one accident good actor.

I feel like the answer to 1 is that it shouldn't be any more difficult than the GDPR. It's just asking for a publicly available reason and evidence for bans, not actually forbidding them?

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#99

Post by laurent92 »

someotherperson wrote: post #17
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful (for business) content to spr…

> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive Let people pay for a manual review (say $300) with Google refunding the amount if it's found to be erroneous.

That would incentivize Google not to find it erroneous.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#100

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

A good reminder to everyone who ever works on a software product. Architects, Developers, QA, Security, Product Owners, Managers, Marketing, Sales, etc. Don't make your decisions based on what "the business" wants. Make your decisions based on the human lives that are impacted by your work. People are more important than money.
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