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Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

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Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#311

Post by thaumasiotes »

int_19h wrote: post #264
thaumasiotes wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would have to do literal translation based on phonetics. That seems pretty unlikely to have happened here; I don't know the Russian word in question, but the Chinese "hui" rhymes with English "clay". (It also rhymes with the more sensibly spelled Chinese "wei"; the 'e' is only omitted when the syllable begins with a consonant. Compare "feng shui".) I'd be surprised if that were a possible reading of any Russia…

A native Russian speaker who is familiar with how Russian is usually transliterated, but unfamiliar with Chinese, would read it very similar to the Russian word in question ("khoo-y"). As to why the filter was applied to Latin characters - I'm not sure, but I'm assuming that's to prevent people from using translit to sneak in profanities. Of course, this ends up being a pointless game of whack-a-mole - there's so man…

Huh, I looked up the word. хуй?

Looks like Russians and Americans can find common ground on thinking Chinese last names look like "penis", even if we're making fun of Wang and they're making fun of Hui.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#312

Post by jonprobably »

sebastien_b wrote: post #271
dgregd wrote: post #199

I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates. 10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App u…

Please sign up as a witness at the next congressional hearings.

Someone needs to make a website for Google suspensions. Let people post these stories. I have mine.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#313

Post by ta1234567890 »

Just got my Google Ads account suspended for supposedly violating their “circumventing systems” policy. But I hadn’t even touched the account in months, and before that I ran it for years without issues. Never did anything remotely fishy or against the guidelines, never got any warnings either. The only time I can even remember having issues with an ad was because we inadvertently changed the url of a landing page, hence producing a 404 on the link in the ad, which we quickly corrected after being notified.

And of course Google won’t even tell me the exact reason why they made a decision, so I can’t do anything about it. Their policies are super vague and broad, so in some sense almost anything could be interpreted to be against their guidelines as well. And they told me to not even try creating another account with either another name or email, because they’ll find them and block them as well.

Given there isn’t really a true alternative to google ads (no other company is allowed to run ads on Google results), and they dominate 80%+ of the search market. Actions like what happened to me, especially without a clear explanation, definitely feels like an abuse.

Being a bit cynic, if I had to guess the real reason behind the suspension of my account, I would say it’s because I didn’t implement almost any of their BS “enhancement” recommendations, which really were just thinly disguised efforts to get me to increase my spend.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#314

Post by Bjartr »

elihu wrote: post #293
horsawlarway wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ o…

What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?

> What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store?

A huge piece of it is the network effect of starting with a store that lacks a significant number of apps available on the Play store. Sure, a competitor could, over time, grow their store to be competitive, or they could fail to tread water and go the way of Windows phones.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#315

Post by ViViDboarder »

elihu wrote: post #293
horsawlarway wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ o…

What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?

On Android there are 3rd party stores. F-Droid being a popular one with FOSS apps.

Major difference is that only the Play Store can install apps in the background. That is, unless you root your phone.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#316

Post by fakedang »

_23sd wrote: post #303
elihu wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?

A competitor would have to get most/all of the phone manufacturers to all at once drop Google Play and use their ecosystem instead, otherwise no one would bother publishing apps for it. There's no way to ramp up a competitor because users won't tolerate a subpar app selection. See Amazon's Fire Phone launch for what happens when one manufacturer tries to start their own ecosystem.

It's actually very easily possible. Apart from Samsung, the largest phone manufacturers are all Chinese, and currently under sanction by the US government, with more soon on the way. Out of the Chinese bunch, the majority are Huawei. Huawei has been forced to move into a non-Playstore Android OS.

I use a burner Huawei for non-essential Android stuff. Every time I click the "Rate App" button on apps, it redirects me to Huawei store instead of Play Store. Every time I click the "Download" or "Install" button on the browser, it sends me to Huawei store. I think we can expect to see more changes in the coming two years as Android keeps updating. Huawei phones up until 2018 are allowed to use the Google SDKs but none are allowed from 2019.

The only one left behind is Samsung, which has the wherewithal to create its own (Apple clone) app store. If they go ahead with that, Google Play will be a fucking joke at that point.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#317

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

dgregd wrote: post #199

I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates. 10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App u…

Way to go. Someone gave me an old unlocked Android phone that had almost no apps installed. Playing around with it, I removed all the installed apps and somehow I managed to also disable (break) PlayStore so that it does not work, refuses to update. If there is way to fix it, I surmise it is well beyond the capabilities of the average Android user. AFAICT PlayStore cannot communicate with the mothership to heal itself nor send user data; anyway there are no PlayStore apps installed.

I installed a few useful F-Droid apks. Installing from "untrusted" sources seems far more reliable than any "app store". Besides the F-Droid apps I use it like a dumb phone with maps on a different cellular network. I wish there were more reliable sources for apks, like F-Droid, including apks for older Android versions.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#318

Post by perryizgr8 »

fakedang wrote: post #316
_23sd wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A competitor would have to get most/all of the phone manufacturers to all at once drop Google Play and use their ecosystem instead, otherwise no one would bother publishing apps for it. There's no way to ramp up a competitor because users won't tolerate a subpar app selection. See Amazon's Fire Phone launch for what happens when one manufacturer tries to start their own ecosystem.

It's actually very easily possible. Apart from Samsung, the largest phone manufacturers are all Chinese, and currently under sanction by the US government, with more soon on the way. Out of the Chinese bunch, the majority are Huawei. Huawei has been forced to move into a non-Playstore Android OS. I use a burner Huawei for non-essential Android stuff. Every time I click the "Rate App" button on apps, it redirects me t…

Galaxy store is alive and well on Samsung phones.

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#319

Post by rgrs »

horsawlarway wrote: post #217
dgregd wrote: post #199

I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates. 10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App u…

Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here: You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself. Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers. This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ o…

Yep, these content aggregators have become consumer aggregators. They make money by controlling our attention in the webverse

Re: Suspended from Google Play for listing supported subtitle formats

#320

Post by brmgb »

kuschku wrote: post #227
Lammy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the old-school analog EIA-608 captioning system can do positional captions. It's all these modern web players (like Youtube's) that have regressed to a single line of text bottom-center.

Actually most modern systems support image embedding, animations, styling, and positioning with TTML. It’s an official spec, supported by every television, Netflix, Chromecast, etc. It’s also a format no fansubber ever heard of.

TTML is also supported by pretty much every piece of m pptultimedia equipment out there including chromecast , which is the exact opposite of ASS which is supported by basically nothing.

The fansubbing community is so annoying with its insistence on terrible formats. The community has somehow standardized on 10bit hevc with ASS subtitles. That makes releases so hard to play.

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