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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

#101

Post by shadowgovt »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #80
throwaway684936 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal to ban users? So a neo-nazi account spams, harasses, doxxes hundreds of users and spreads gore all over your platform, and you aren't allowed to shut them down unless you go through the court system first? This is one of the most absurd ideas I've ever heard.

Harassment is against the law. Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse? They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody. I'm just brainstorming here.

> They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody.

How? You can't preemptively determine the output of a Turing-complete program without solving the halting problem, so while Google will always try to do their damnedest to predict a bad actor before they get to the store, they will definitely always fail to find some.

If they can't ban them when they find them, what should the alternative be?

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

#102

Post by butz »

If you are a business in EU you can request mediation (https://support.google.com/legal/answer/9792937#zippy=%2Creq...). In some cases filling an appeal might work. We usually get only "Google canceled account" part of the story, but no follow up how it ended. Recently was a similar case with Simple Keyboard app, where developer got account terminated, but it was re-instated after few weeks: https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard/issues/333 . Makes me wonder how many incorrectly terminated accounts are actually recovered?

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

#103

Post by cowpig »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
emptyparadise wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved.

> Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved Flip side of this is compromised accounts, or those doing illegal or dangerous things would run far longer.

Or they could invest in enough humans that it doesn't

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

#105

Post by andybak »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #80
throwaway684936 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal to ban users? So a neo-nazi account spams, harasses, doxxes hundreds of users and spreads gore all over your platform, and you aren't allowed to shut them down unless you go through the court system first? This is one of the most absurd ideas I've ever heard.

Harassment is against the law. Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse? They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody. I'm just brainstorming here.

> Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse? They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody.

This feels more like handwaving than brainstorming ;-)

It's a tricky problem and I think your suggestions should try and reflect that as much as possible.

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

#106

Post by shadowgovt »

LinAGKar wrote: post #60
davidg109 wrote: post #9

Unfortunately, anytime you depend on a third party whether it be Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., this is the exact risk you take. Don’t feed the dragon.

What's the alternative? Google essentially has a monopoly on distributing Android apps.

The alternative is don't feed the dragon. There are already enough Android apps in the world; don't incentivize the ecosystem by building more.

Build for another platform or build for something other than mobile devices.

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

#108

Post by shadowgovt »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25

Forcing App Stores to have more clarity behind terminations is a missed opportunity for the EU’s Digital Markets Act. This is absurd. #PlayFairGoogle #GoogleScrewsDevs

Public disclosure of the reasoning behind the decision and an appeals process through an independent third party would be expensive but worth it.

These are, hypothetically, things that could be demanded by law.

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

#110

Post by alex-yark »

abeppu wrote: post #90

The post author is from Spain. Does GDPR not give the author some rights? I'm in no way an expert in this area, but multiple seem to apply to this situation, but the most important ones here seems would seem to be the "right to explanation" to know how such a decision was made, a "right to rectification" to correct any data which is incorrect, and (given the magnitude of the impact) a right to avoid automated decisio…

GDPR should help but if the apps were hosted on a developer account registered to a business entity, the majority of data will relate to the business rather than the individual, in which case GDPR may not throw up a huge amount. I don't believe the automated decision making parts of GDPR apply to businesses either.

In the UK at least, if it wasn't a registered business (limited company) then there is no legal distinction between you and the trading name and hence all the rights under GDPR would be available to you.

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