141–150 of 342 posts
Google and Apple have kept a stranglehold on the mobile application distribution market for over a decade now. It's time to break them up, or require them to allow other mobile app distributors on their platforms. Surely other companies can be more efficient with the 30% cut or less that Google takes, without forcing users to put up with the poor service that's exemplified by the article in the OP.
What's up with this American obsession with censoring profanities? Who gets to decide what's a bad word? And why are people suddenly okay with "censored" versions of "swearwords" like heck vs. hell, or bleeping out the middle of f*ck while you can still hear both F and K...? The intent is still there... If there is enough of other people who are annoyed by this, can we please start doing something about this?
I can't easily find the exact passage, but The Better Angels of Our Natue talks about how it's improper in English culture to use a knife to help eat peas. He credits these kind of arbitrary rules for helping reduce violent impulses. (Note: I read the book a while back so I'm probably misrepresenting the author's point in some way, but I think that's the general idea.)
It is infuriating that Google's default action for these automated takedowns is to remove the app and ask the developer to upload a new build with a new package name , which means not keeping any of the existing users. It's happened to two of my clients in the past 6 months based on small infractions in the app metadata, but no issue with the app itself. In both cases the app was taken down with no advance notice, an…
I don't understand Google's App store play. Just another walled garden where things like this can happen. They were the champions of the open web for a long time. What happened?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that so? I find that U.S.A. media tends to avoid rape but features all other kinds of violence. Anything related to sex, nudity and swearwords is held to the utmost standards of censorship.
It depends somewhat. There are very strict rules around sex on broadcast TV, but those rules largely do not apply to cable TV or internet streaming.
The rules, of course, exist as a reflexion of the sensibilities of the people.
It's similar to how in Germany anything related to the Third Reich is treated with the utmost sensitivity, with many rules; these rules exist as the people willed it so. The end result was that the videogame Wolfenstein 3D had to be significantly edited ere it could be legally sold on the German market, as it depicted Third Reich soldiers in accurate uniforms, which was considered too sensitive, even though they are the opposing side the player is fighting against.
At least you got a reason from Google. I have an update to an iOS app that's been stuck in review for two weeks now with zero feedback from Apple other than boilerplate responses from support. This is causing me serious stress as I have no idea how long it's going to be in this state and I rely on this and another app for 100% of my income.
Some one said, and was downvoted into oblivion (?)... " Yup, that's about how much effort I expected them to put into their app store: absolutely nothing beyond cheap, automated heuristics. Why invest in a decent ecosystem when you're one of the two options in town? I'm about an inch away from throwing my phone in the river and switching to a GPS-only device for navigating in my car. All the convenience a mobile devi…
It's really breathtaking. They take an astonishing amount of your revenue. And they do not even try.
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I'm just agog that people are still doing dumb pattern matching for profanity filters. I just assumed that YEARS AGO people realized how dumb it is, but apparently: No.
This is Google. It's probably very smart pattern matching for profanity. The neural network may have taken millions of core-hours to learn to be as dumb (here) as a blind keyword search.
What the fuck is "profanity"? Are we a religious society? Why shouldn't we able to say "ass" (!) or show nipples??
The ban on porn is defensible outside of any moral framework because once you allow porn then all what's left is porn (although it would be useful to think about why that is).
But "profanity"? Come on.