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Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

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Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#151

Post by mcv »

mediaman wrote: post #100

Slightly different topic, but Google also suspended our company's adwords account, I believe for using keywords related to COVID-19. The business is an American manufacturer that added capacity to manufacture PPE to make up for the lack of Chinese supply. Since we were supplying direct to the market, the prices of the PPE were in-market from before COVID times, or cheaper. We weren't out to make a killing, just to fi…

> "Google actively tried to stop distribution of American-made PPE during the pandemic."

This sounds like a great headline to shine some light on Google's banning practices. Some bad PR may help them reconsider their lack of customer service.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#152

Post by stx »

Youtube also removed several videos from a youtube channel MedCram.com. Its a channel run by a medical doctor who discusses updates from medical journals in technical detail.

The following videos have been removed from youtube.

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 10: New Studies, Transmission, Spread from Wuhan, Prevention (2019-nCoV)

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 43: Shortages, Immunity, & Can a TB Vaccine (BCG) Help Prevent COVID-19

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 57: Remdesivir Treatment Update and Can Far-UVC Disinfect Public Spaces

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 60: Hydroxychloroquine Update; NYC Data; How Widespread is COVID-19

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 71: New Data on Adding Zinc to Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin

Watch their latest video to see that they try to stick to the facts and avoid politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANgon3Umns

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#153

Post by AnthonyMouse »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #102
koheripbal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone remind me why there is an "app store" that is run by the phone OS maker? Aside from the anti-trust/monopoly type issue, should there be a more market healthy de-coupling between the place I buy my apps and the OS maker? Monopolies are almost always bad for consumers. I kind of chuckle when I think about how Microsoft had such a huge battle over IE being integrated into Windows, and now we sort of accept a…

The why is that there was a huge solution/market gap. Finding software for Palm and Windows phones was often a trek through random forums and websites to download garbage that didn't work. There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person, and the registry needed some quality assurance so that the average person would have a good experience. Tucows wasn't going to cut it,…

> There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person

This is revisionist. The iPod/iPhone originally didn't even have third party apps and it caught on anyway. Even now, 90% of the value of a smart phone is having a web browser in your pocket and most "apps" could have just as easily been web pages.

I think the only apps on my phone that can actually justify being apps instead of web pages are Signal (so it can store my conversations on my phone and not a third party service) and Firefox (because it's a web browser). Meanwhile the iOS app store won't allow Signal to be my SMS app and requires Firefox to use Apple's browser engine, so the utility it provides is strictly negative. I could have been just as happy to get Firefox from firefox.com and Signal from signal.org.

I still don't understand why Facebook is an app. Facebook is a web page. (I mean I do understand, it's because the app can hoover up more of your personal information, but why should I want that?)

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#155

Post by rsj_hn »

macintux wrote: post #141
rsj_hn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal people" do not just use their phones for everything. Normal people use their phones for getting around and they stare at the screen when they are bored, for example waiting for a bus or waiting in line. When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or ga…

> When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or game console. That’s clearly not true. For a large portion of the world, the smartphone is their only computing device. There are about 6 billion smartphones in use. Last I heard, the desktop/laptop install base…

Counting install base doesn't matter when you are comparing such different devices. There are more shoes than cars in the world, but that doesn't mean you are going to sell hood ornaments to people who only have shoes. The large number of cheap smartphones simply aren't going to be useful to run your office app, regardless of the size of the install base. And for the types of phones that will run your app well and give you access to the customers with the spending power you care about, you will discover that they cost a lot more than a standard desktop and about as much as a decent laptop. People who can afford those phones have options to use the best form factor and will use their phone when mobility is much more important than a lousy interface, which is why there has been so little success in the mobile app world outside of the top 10 apps, which are stuff like Uber, google maps, etc. But if your reasoning is to be followed, it must be the case that billions of people care mostly about maps, connecting with friends on facebook, and getting taxis than about using other applications, which isn't the case at all, it's just that's what people do on their phones.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#156

Post by yumraj »

bbarn wrote: post #116
cryptoquick wrote: post #5

Google is just such an awful, despicable company, that I've actually moved everything I can from their platform. It wasn't easy, I'd been a Gmail user for nearly 15 years. I'd rather pay Microsoft a hundred bucks a year than support them. That's how much I hate Google.

I've had a private email address and domain for years, sending and recieving via gmail. I'm looking to move away from gmail to some other hosted solution that I can keep my personal domain emails with, without having to have my own SMTP servers running. Any suggestions?

try Zoho. recently moved my emails to it. I like it so far..

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#157

Post by posguy »

nitrogen wrote: post #130
elsonrodriguez wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The why is that there was a huge solution/market gap. Finding software for Palm and Windows phones was often a trek through random forums and websites to download garbage that didn't work. There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person, and the registry needed some quality assurance so that the average person would have a good experience. Tucows wasn't going to cut it,…

the only open model that worked at the time was linux distro package repositories And also at the time, the company (Lindows/Linspire) that created an app store based on that foundation caught hell for doing so (my first job out of high school was doing QA on that app store). So even if it was necessary to have app stores for consumers it wasn't an easy transition to make.

The Linspire app store was great, it made Linux easier than Windows for my family back in the mid-2000s. The experience on modern app stores still feels clunky comparatively.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#158

Post by AnthonyMouse »

zepto wrote: post #126
jedberg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Imagine how much criticism Apple could avoid if they allowed side loading. Heck, make it complicated and require a Mac desktop/laptop. Even then at least power users would be happy. At least I could load up apps that aren’t approved without having to jailbreak.

Power users can use Android. The problem with side loading us social engineering attacks. Imagine how many iPhone users could be persuaded to sideload ‘corona 5g bioshield app detunes the software radio in your phone away from the harmful frequencies the NWO is trying to expose us to’.

> Imagine how many iPhone users could be persuaded to sideload ‘corona 5g bioshield app detunes the software radio in your phone away from the harmful frequencies the NWO is trying to expose us to’.

Less than 0.5% of them, apparently.

But also, what do you care what idiots do? Nobody is forcing you to install it on your phone. Freedom of choice is not an obligation to choose poorly.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#159

Post by macintux »

rsj_hn wrote: post #155
macintux wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or game console. That’s clearly not true. For a large portion of the world, the smartphone is their only computing device. There are about 6 billion smartphones in use. Last I heard, the desktop/laptop install base…

Counting install base doesn't matter when you are comparing such different devices. There are more shoes than cars in the world, but that doesn't mean you are going to sell hood ornaments to people who only have shoes. The large number of cheap smartphones simply aren't going to be useful to run your office app, regardless of the size of the install base. And for the types of phones that will run your app well and gi…

Roughly half of lower-income Americans don’t own a PC[1], and we have some of the highest market share in the world. I don’t have numbers handy outside the U.S. but again, 1 billion PCs doesn’t cover much of the population.

The trend has been obvious for years: more and more people do all of their computing on smartphones.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital-div...

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#160

Post by Magnets »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #22

Yeah, google banned mine too ( https://medium.com/@lazherrera/that-one-time-google-made-it-... )

>Please remove all metadata and In-app mentions of COVID-19 or its related keywords such as stay home, social distancing, etc.

that is just crazy

As usual they are just using a hammer to crack a nut.

They can't pull this shit with youtube because creators have a direct line to draw attention to it. With developers they know it will go largely unreported

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