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Google have declared Droidscript is malware

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Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#571

Post by sequoia »

pushrax wrote: post #419
sequoia wrote: post #301

> ...after taking into consideration the information that you have provided, we have confirmed that we are unable to reinstate your publisher account. I hate when using euphemism slides into flat out lying like this. They are not "unable" to reinstate the account, in fact they are the only party able to reinstate the account, that's why the account holder was contacting them instead of someone else. They are "unwilli…

Seems like an extremely minor gripe (as you mention, it’s all just bullshit) to be the top comment. Though FWIW I’m unable to disagree.

Yeah I don’t get why it’s top comment either, I just meant to vent about an annoyance that’s frankly not material to the question at hand. I was unable to refrain from laughing at your quip incidentally.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#572

Post by p49k »

PeterisP wrote: post #494
vaastav wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about false positives? How did you account for that?

You make your peace with the fact that you'll have a certain rate of false positives, where you'll intentionally lose also some legitimate business in order to keep most of the "ecosystem" cleaner. Perhaps an unsatifying answer, but that's it. It's not a situation like putting someone in prison where "beyond all reasonable doubt" is the appropriate mark; you can refuse to do business based on mere suspicion that may…

In Google’s case, this is not enough. They exert too much control over the online advertising industry that it’s simply unfair to ban anyone with no explanation and recourse. It should be illegal. It’s almost impossible to effectively monetize an app or website using ads without including various Google technologies and services, and that’s Google’s own doing; they’re the ones who purchased all of those companies and integrated their own products in a way that makes them inseparable.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#573

Post by yAak »

mike_d wrote: post #488
danudey wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We've noticed that you're violating our policies." "Which policies?" "That's none of your business." "How are we violating them?" "I'm not going to tell you." "What can we do?" "Fix the issues, and then appeal." "Which issues?" "I've said too much already."

I used to work detecting ad fraud. Publishers would do bad things, call in, and try to get their account rep to get details. Obviously I can't say "of the last 2500 ad clicks zero of them had any mouse movement over the ad before the click event" because then the publisher obviously just fixes their fraud software. This isn't specific to Google or even advertising. Every company has figured out when dealing with abus…

Is there anything in place to prevent bad actors from deploying fraudulent ad-click tools to takedown accounts?

(What you said makes sense to me, I just don’t know if/how ad networks could differentiate between the account-owner committing fraud and a malicious 3rd party.)

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#574

Post by anonymousab »

sanxiyn wrote: post #521
mleonhard wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is 1/2 of the mobile duopoly. No app developer can avoid Google Play Store (for publishing their apps) and Firebase Cloud Messaging (for sending push notifications to their apps).

Sure they can. They just chose not to. Do not support Apple. Do not support Google. Support freedom.

The implicit part of the statement was "and make a decent living from it".

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#575

Post by winrid »

ajross wrote: post #14
blakesterz wrote: post #2

I had to go look to see what this was: "DroidScript is an easy to use, portable coding tool which simplifies mobile App development. It dramatically improves productivity by speeding up development by as much as 10x compared with using the standard development tools. It’s also an ideal tool for learning JavaScript, you can literally code anywhere with DroidScript, it’s not cloud based and doesn’t require an internet…

Time for one of these again. So... having read through their marketing material, this is an on-device tool that opens up what appears to be most of the Android application API to at least the user of the device, and potentially to any Droidscript applications they grab from other sources, and... maybe to other apps on the device? It's not clear from a quick read how extensive the runtime control is. So just right out…

It looks like a mobile programming IDE.

You can code up Garbage in Java just fine and get it on the app store. I've seen apps send passwords in plain text....

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#576

Post by Dylan16807 »

j_barbossa wrote: post #450

As still so many people don't get it: 1) Don't make your business dependent on Google 2) Don't make any of your data dependent on Google (don't use Gmail, Workspace etc) 3) Don't make applications you build dependent on Google Hint: If you can't migrate away from Google within a working day, you're doing it wrong.

"Don't make a phone app, anyone, ever." is the absolute lowest tier of advice.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#577

Post by kbelder »

indymike wrote: post #112
ben509 wrote: post #19

The writing style of the piece looks like a political mailer. > The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation! That kind of hyperbole sets off all my BS detectors. As I go through the back and forth, DroidScript speculates this: > Our main guess was that one of our users wa…

Perhaps the problem here is the monetization model (ads) is a mismatch? Perhaps try a subscription or just let users buy the app?

Doesn't matter. They're banned from re-uploading any updated version of the app; they're not allowed to fix the problem, even if they knew what the problem was.

This non-profit org was highly focused on the educational market. I think they would have gladly stripped _all_ advertising out of the app while they worked on other funding schemes to try to eke out survival. Google is not giving them that option.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#578

Post by arp242 »

ogurechny wrote: post #428
arp242 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still need the phone app for that Linux client; everything is routed through that. Good grief, I keep bloody repeating this. Do you people actually read anything? > Although, if you're using Whatsapp at all you're either massively ignorant or stupid. I mean, giving Facebook your phone number is just not wise. I'm a normal human being who values social contact and doesn't want to pester all my friends in using…

I can't help but notice that it's not a “Linux”'s job to do something about WhatsApp demanding this and that from you. It's a problem (let's not belittle it), and it's yours (well, you share it with others). Also, people who can't get in touch with you because you don't use some fad-of-the-year app are not your real friends. Tell them that you still use MySpace (wearing a Myspace T-shirt), or prefer WeChat (a billion…

> Also, people who can't get in touch with you because you don't use some fad-of-the-year app are not your real friends.

I'm in touch with many people, most of whom are not close friends. To break up a social contact just over this is too high a price to pay (and acquittances can be upgraded to close friends over the years, too, but not if you start by badgering them in to using some other app).

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#579

Post by Aeolun »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #499
tempestn wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a case like that, sure. But they don't provide any information even when they want the publisher to make a change. Our Adsense account once got suspended because ads were appearing on pages that contained user-entered search keywords. Occasionally users would enter keywords that google considered 'naughty', and didn't want their ads appearing alongside. If they'd just told us that, we could have added a filter to…

Now your app has a bunch of offensive language compiled into it. Surely that's grounds for nuking your account.

Obviously the words were hashed before being added to the codebase :P
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