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Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

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Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#41

Post by dessant »

deftnerd wrote: post #35
osrec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would your ideal open-source smartphone ecosystem be structured? Genuinely interested as I'm looking to explore this as a potential project myself with my team.

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme.

Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#42

Post by [deleted] »

deftnerd wrote: post #35
osrec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would your ideal open-source smartphone ecosystem be structured? Genuinely interested as I'm looking to explore this as a potential project myself with my team.

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#43

Post by the8472 »

parliament32 wrote: post #13

On a related note, does anyone have recommendations for a Gboard alternative? I've disabled all the "pipe everything I type directly to HQ for analysis" things in Gboard but I'd prefer a non-Google alternative.

Does it still work when you block its internet access?

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#44

Post by jakemal »

drusepth wrote: post #11

>At first glance a spokesman agreed with us that the situation looks odd. Seems like someone messed up somewhere and is probably being resolved. In all honesty though, no app with IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) should get an E rating. Fleksy should get a higher age rating for this reason, not because of an emoji.

> IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) should get an E rating

I disagree. I think it's Google's job to provide parents with the tools to lock down IAPs for children. Once the phone is locked down, IAPs shouldn't matter. And the ratings would be useless to a parent if every app with IAPs was rated > E. They wouldn't know if the content is what is giving it the higher rating or just the IAPs.

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#45

Post by [deleted] »

dessant wrote: post #41
deftnerd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme. Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#46

Post by jakemal »

skybrian wrote: post #29

This is a tangent, but is there a good keyboard app for Android that doesn't have emoji? I'm tired of hitting the emoji button accidentally and having emoji show up in autocomplete.

Swiftkey has a setting to remove the dedicated emoji key.

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#47

Post by Bartweiss »

duxup wrote: post #20
levosmetalo wrote: post #5

Didn't install the app, but one look at the screenshot of the Fleksy in Playstore shows "earn coins as you type" feature. It also offers in app purchases, but didn't bother to install to check which. I know many apps use coin system, but in many cases it's just a children manipulation.

If that is the reason they should probabbly do a better job of telling them (granted it's Google, they're terrible about communication in this way). I think that is a valid reason, but it should be clear that is the reason.

It's worse than unclear - the Google Play team specifically cited objectionable emoji, and included a screenshot of the emoji which is also found in lower-rated Gboard. It seems like Google actually made this decision clearer than most, and it was explicitly about the hypocritical part.

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#48

Post by yoz-y »

deftnerd wrote: post #35
osrec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would your ideal open-source smartphone ecosystem be structured? Genuinely interested as I'm looking to explore this as a potential project myself with my team.

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

That is a non starter for many apps that one uses rarely but provide high value. For example delivery tracking, sftp apps, vpn apps (only used while traveling). How would widgets work? Are they on all the time or never. Ideal app to make would be a launcher because you must use that all the time, but then do they deserve more than the app you use to do your job?

I don't think that any financial model can fit all usages. Except, of course, paid up front with paid upgrades (and a subscription if there is a cloud component). But that ship has sailed.

Re: Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival

#49

Post by gnode »

magashna wrote: post #37
gnode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hypocrisy of Google notwithstanding, I'm not sure why something being included in Unicode should have any bearing on its societal acceptance or consequently its age rating. The Swastika exists as a Unicode character, yet is outlawed in Germany, along with other Nazi-associated symbols (Strafgesetzbuch section 86a).

I believe there are contexts where it's allowed, being part of Unicode I assume wouldn't be illegal.

While certain uses of the symbols are not illegal, they do have a negative effect on age ratings / classification board approvals (relevant to this discussion).

A famous example, is that Wolfenstein 3D was outright refused a rating in Germany. Arguably it may have been legal as artistic use, rather than propaganda promoting an unconstitutional organization, but that was not sufficient to get a rating.

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