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Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

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Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#121

Post by Dissley »

andreynering wrote: post #94
Dissley wrote: post #81

After reading this, I think Signal is also violating this policy. I was not able to find a way to report messages or users. In comparison on WhatsApp I can report a user or group and the "most recent messages" will be forwarded to moderation. I think it is kind of strange that even a private messenger needs to implement a report system for messages.

> In comparison on WhatsApp I can report a user or group and the "most recent messages" will be forwarded to moderation. Really? So if a random person decide to report me, plain text uncrypted messages will be sent to WhatsApp? Even if this does not happen regularly, this means that WhatsApp have means to read my messages, which is scary enough.

I dont think this confirms that WhatsApp can ready our messages. In theory it could be implemented as a simple message forward, just as any message can be forwarded in Whatsapp.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#122

Post by dariusj18 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #107

A more fundamental question is why it is Google’s business at all to police apps or the content users generate on them. If someone finds content “objectionable”, they should just move on, and not complain or try to shut down that content. What an utterly unnecessary fiasco. We need decentralized platforms and alternatives to the hegemony of Google, Apple, and other big tech companies.

Imagine what it would be like if the section 230 protections were eliminated.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#124

Post by CivBase »

> We don't allow apps whose primary purpose is featuring or hosting objectionable [User Generated Content]. [...] your app currently only includes feature to flag inappropriate users. [...] the app must provide a user-friendly, in-app system for reporting objectionable UCG.

It's user generated content. How is reporting a user functionally different from reporting content?

This makes me even more driven to switch to F-Droid for everything I possibly can. Hopefully we'll see a daily-drivable Linux smartphone before too long so I can ditch Android all together.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#125

Post by josephcsible »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #58
tommilukkarinen wrote: post #16

This is the other side of the Play-store problem. The other side is the tax. Play store employee can ban your app = destroy your business at any time. The reason can be 'new policy', 'misunderstanding' or something more problematic, such as influence from your competitor to the employee. A 'power to destroy business', should not be a click away from some random employee.

> A 'power to destroy business', should not be a click away from some random employee. It exists everywhere, it is called monopoly and this is only an example thereof. Businesses could also, for instance, be destroyed by ARM Holdings refusing to license the ARM architecture to them, or Valve deciding to pull a game from Steam . Especially with technology, there are a great deal of monopolies that exist.

ARM can't unilaterally revoke a contract (and even if they tried, it'd end up in court; your production lines wouldn't just suddenly stop working one day), and there's plenty of ways to distribute games to users on PCs other than Steam.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#126

Post by house9-2 »

ryan29 wrote: post #82
euph0ria wrote: post #53

The company I work for has forbidden the use of Google and their services such as GCP etc. due to how they treat their Play Store developers and other customer, in particular that there never seems to be any human being that you can talk to and find out what you need to do to fix the situation. We do not want the same to occur to our servers or if there is an overflow from Play Store ban to GCP etc. The business risk…

Another good example of an awful implementation can be seen in Google Workspace. Sometimes the crappy ML algorithms will generate a false positive and suspend an account for a suspicious login. Fine. I get it. It’s hard to do at scale and nothing’s perfect. The thing I’d like to have Google explain to me is why they think it’s a good idea to bounce incoming mail for a user that’s been auto-suspended by an algorithm.…

Same thing happened to me yesterday, I had to switch my MX records over to fastmail as that was easier than trying to figure out how to resolve the issue with Google directly.

I had been forwarding all of my email from my domain to my personal Gmail (the irony) so haven't lost anything except a Sundays worth of incoming emails which bounced.

In my case I was still using a free account for my custom domain, grandfathered in. I guess I get what I paid for...

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#128

Post by wheresmycraisin »

throwawaysea wrote: post #120
wheresmycraisin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not go into hypotheticals about what might happen if google started... what, inserting spyware, basically, into their own open source browser engine?

Chrome and even Firefox have already begun political policing of their browsers ( https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse... ). The next step seems like it’ll be forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses, since they’re already knocking on that door.

They banned a sleazy-looking extension from their extension stores. That's a far cry from "forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses". And, if that happens? Someone will just fork the browser.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#129

Post by anon19anon »

mhuffman wrote: post #71
jonathanlydall wrote: post #32

For those not from South Africa, this app is primarily for people to be able to get notifications or look up when their area will be affected by a "planned power outage", or as Eskom (our state owned power utility) refers to it, "load shedding". "Load shedding" is enacted whenever they have a power production capacity issue where different areas take turns without power so as to not let the power grid collapse. This…

This sounds like a nightmare! Eskom seems to have been around for a long time, but this problem seems to have kicked in a little over a decade ago. Did something recently happen to Eskom to make them incompetent?

Expansion of a thing called Black Economics Empowerment. They give out contracts based on the race of the owners. They spent billions on black companies that had no clue what they were doing, while also firing white male engineers

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#130

Post by derekp7 »

swiley wrote: post #111
euph0ria wrote: post #53

The company I work for has forbidden the use of Google and their services such as GCP etc. due to how they treat their Play Store developers and other customer, in particular that there never seems to be any human being that you can talk to and find out what you need to do to fix the situation. We do not want the same to occur to our servers or if there is an overflow from Play Store ban to GCP etc. The business risk…

Smartphone app development is a poor investment. Just build a good website.

That brings up a question I've had -- so many web sites seem to work better as an app. Is that because app development is easier, or is there some things that you can do with an app that you can't do through web standards? Specifically what types of items can't be [easily] done as a web app but are easy as a smartphone app?
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