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Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

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Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#171

Post by jevoten »

freedomben wrote: post #120
UIUC_06 wrote: post #52

I think you were lucky they told you anything . On Quora they just say "your answer was deleted for violating Quora policies. Click here to read our policies." This sort of "tell them nothing" approach seems pervasive in the online world. Blame the lawyers. Their lawyers must caution them "Don't give any details. That just opens us up to more questions & legal actions." The fact that it's completely self-serving and…

I despise the tell them nothing approach and I think it's despicable, but that said I think there is a more legitimate reason than the lawyers. If the person is a spammer or otherwise not legit and you tell them what they did wrong, it's a lot easier to hack around the problem and beat the automated moderation and get your malware into the store. I don't think that justifies the harm it does to regular people, but it…

> If the person is a spammer or otherwise not legit and you tell them what they did wrong, it's a lot easier to hack around the problem and beat the automated moderation and get your malware into the store.

Is it? Because spammers and malware writers are the only ones that already know what they did wrong - spamming and malware! While everyone else is left guessing.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#172

Post by brokenmachine »

aperrien wrote: post #159
freedomben wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise the tell them nothing approach and I think it's despicable, but that said I think there is a more legitimate reason than the lawyers. If the person is a spammer or otherwise not legit and you tell them what they did wrong, it's a lot easier to hack around the problem and beat the automated moderation and get your malware into the store. I don't think that justifies the harm it does to regular people, but it…

At that point, why not put up an option for paid tech support? It would make life costly for the spammers, and give an option for people with a critical and legitimate problem.

Because then they might be liable for the advice provided. Can't be sued if you don't provide anything. *taps head*

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#173

Post by jamesfinlayson »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #10
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #2

which one is more incompetent as a service company - Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple? I think my ranking would be Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, but that is not so much decided via any sort of logical evaluation but only due to my feeling on the matter.

I think AWS is the best, but only because you can have a paid support plan, and real humans will reply to your support requests.

Agreed - I don't think AWS Support is cheap (but my company pays) but it is good.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#174

Post by antifa »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #143
freedomben wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise the tell them nothing approach and I think it's despicable, but that said I think there is a more legitimate reason than the lawyers. If the person is a spammer or otherwise not legit and you tell them what they did wrong, it's a lot easier to hack around the problem and beat the automated moderation and get your malware into the store. I don't think that justifies the harm it does to regular people, but it…

Could be, actually. The press sucks: a bunch of untrained people too lazy to get off their laptops and talk to people. I don't think Quora falls into that "spammer" category, though. No one is seeking to make any serious money from it, AFAICT.

If your product/brand is an answer on every relevant question, that's probably worth a lot.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#175

Post by anamax »

aperrien wrote: post #159
freedomben wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise the tell them nothing approach and I think it's despicable, but that said I think there is a more legitimate reason than the lawyers. If the person is a spammer or otherwise not legit and you tell them what they did wrong, it's a lot easier to hack around the problem and beat the automated moderation and get your malware into the store. I don't think that justifies the harm it does to regular people, but it…

At that point, why not put up an option for paid tech support? It would make life costly for the spammers, and give an option for people with a critical and legitimate problem.

Spammers are in it for the money, so why do you assume that they wouldn't pay?

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#176

Post by RNCTX »

UncleMeat wrote: post #134
javajosh wrote: post #29

This kind of incompetence makes me seriously doubt that Google is doing anything to more substantially review apps for deeper security issues, either statically or at runtime. The asymmetry of effort in this situation is profound: consider that you spend all your time and effort writing a, long, complex, thoughtful message by hand (the app), taking hundreds or thousands of hours, but then they respond with machine ge…

> This kind of incompetence makes me seriously doubt that Google is doing anything to more substantially review apps for deeper security issues, either statically or at runtime. I actually know the team that does security vuln automation for Google Play. They've found millions of vulns in apps over the years. One of the challenges they face is precisely this sort of headline: how do you use static analysis to find vu…

> I actually know the team that does security vuln automation for Google Play. They've found millions of vulns in apps over the years. One of the challenges they face is precisely this sort of headline: how do you use static analysis to find vulns and ensure that you don't inundate users with false positives, forcing them down the admittedly limited support channels.

Pay people to do tiered support.

"but that costs money"

Make less. Or don't have an app store.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#177

Post by MrDresden »

I've been making Android applications professionally for a decade now, and I'm of the opinion that who ever manages the Play store, it's policies and developer relations should be fired on the spot along with at least the next two levels of management below.

It is frankly a burning dumpster fire.

I still don't see why the app is not on any of the other app stores that the author mentions though (only rages about Play and thus the app is only there?)

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#178

Post by MrDresden »

heavyset_go wrote: post #162

Maybe we shouldn't be relying on Google and Apple to decide what we can run on our phones and tablets. Maybe we shouldn't let Apple and Microsoft decide what we can run on our computers, either.

I agree with the sentiment, however you are not forced to run Google's Android on your phone if you don't want to. It is just the most convenient OS to run (as it comes preloaded).

For the PC's (yes, an Apple laptop/desktop is a personal computer) you can always install Linux.

Try it, it's great!

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#179

Post by raxxorrax »

MrDresden wrote: post #177

I've been making Android applications professionally for a decade now, and I'm of the opinion that who ever manages the Play store, it's policies and developer relations should be fired on the spot along with at least the next two levels of management below. It is frankly a burning dumpster fire. I still don't see why the app is not on any of the other app stores that the author mentions though (only rages about Play…

To be fair, he would be fired if people didn't develop against this environment. People have warned repeatedly that developers make themselves dependent. Money is good of course...

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#180

Post by eproxus »

UncleMeat wrote: post #161
advael wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds to me like what you're saying is that the walled-garden approach of needing to approve every app that ever gets developed as a whole is what's infeasible without creating kafkaesque conditions dealing with their automation, and I fail to see how you've made a case for this automation being all that good in the first place, given that your main argument for it is that it's found "millions of vulns in apps over…

> Sounds to me like what you're saying is that the walled-garden approach of needing to approve every app that ever gets developed as a whole is what's infeasible without creating kafkaesque conditions dealing with their automation, and I fail to see how you've made a case for this automation being all that good in the first place, given that your main argument for it is that it's found "millions of vulns in apps ove…

They can’t really have their cake and eat it too.

Either they have a system with zero false positives and they should have a review team for all the complaints of things that slipped through. Or they should aim for zero false negatives and have a review team for anything which gets stuck.

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