Google’s Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by daturkel » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

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.

I've used Fleksy for over a year and wasn't aware of that feature. The in-app purchases are themes which I don't need. If you don't open the settings, you would never know these upsells existed. It's a great keyboard and you shouldn't be put off by the IAPs—they're completely optional.

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

#62

Post by matwood » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

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 effectively what Apple introduced with the Apple Arcade and what Google followed up with.

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

#63

Post by LocalH » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #53

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.

Can't we just mirror a regular Linux distro model ? Or possibly a Enterprise Linux model where you pay a subscription and obtain bug fixes, stability gurantees & support.

Then they wouldn't be able to move closer to a world where general-purpose computing is not the norm.

That's the real issue with computing nowadays, this desire to lock everything down. You see it with DRM, you see it with walled gardens, you see it with almost everything nowadays.

I fear that a world like the one described in "The Right to Read" [0] is closer than ever.

0: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html (yes, I know it's Stallman, but even he was right on a few things, as disgusting as he was in a lot of other things. Stopped clock right twice a day, etc)

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

#64

Post by wolco » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

gregschlom wrote: post #51

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.

I was just thinking I should look into making one if there isn't one, seems like there would be market for a good, simple keyboard app.

I've been using 'keyboard with ctrl key' and couldn't code on my phone without it.

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

#65

Post by ysavir » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #21

djsumdog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it would be one thing if Google stated that as a reason. I really hate this in-app purchase model, and now being applied to something as stupid as a keyboard, something that can literally monitor all your data and send back your most common words to advertisers ... ugh. I pre-ordered a Purism 5 from the next batch in anger a few weeks ago. I want off this Android/eyeProduct bullshit. I want full control of my…

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.

* In app library, clear and upfront expectations of what permissions each app uses (as well as an explanation for each permission in the app creator's own words).

* In app library, ability to filter apps by permissions required

...... Specifically, I would want to be able to blacklist permission sets. Eg, search for Keyboard apps, but exclude any apps that require access to my contacts.

* Ability to pay for apps directly through those apps rather than having to go through the smartphone's software author.

...... Totally fine with the software having a default payment option in case I don't want to entrust a certain app with my payment info.

* An interface that lets me see logs of which URLs each app hits and what data it sent.

* An interface that lets me see which servers are sending data to my apps and what data is included.

"App Library" here representing the same sort of app as the Play Store, but looking to disassociate from the term "Store", as that model is not necessary.

Edit: Formatting sub-lists on HN isn't intuitive, apparently

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

#66

Post by aitchnyu » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #3

I use Gboard, and today it had a strange prompt on the bar above the keyboard: "Do you like typing German?".. I was curious and I pressed it, it lead to a prompt where there was text I could copy paste and I guess post on my social media, about how much I enjoy using Gboard... So you fucking want me to advertise for you, Google? And for what reason? Does someone want their promotion/bonus and for that they have to re…

Windows apparently has the system dialog "how likely are you to recommend Windows 10 to a friend or colleague?" with a score from 1 to 5.

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

#67

Post by djsumdog » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #21

djsumdog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it would be one thing if Google stated that as a reason. I really hate this in-app purchase model, and now being applied to something as stupid as a keyboard, something that can literally monitor all your data and send back your most common words to advertisers ... ugh. I pre-ordered a Purism 5 from the next batch in anger a few weeks ago. I want off this Android/eyeProduct bullshit. I want full control of my…

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.

The same way my Gentoo and Void Linux boxes are .. except touch interfaces of search and install (like F-Droid) instead of emerge/xbps-install/apt-get/yum, etc. F-Droid also allows 3rd party repositories, just like other Linux package managers (and unlike Google/Apple/Microsoft).

I guess you could also have non-free repos and some kind of payment API (does Ubuntu/Snap do this?) but I really want to see if I can just write apps for the gaps I find when trying to use a PureOS or KDE Plasma device.

edit: see some comments on permissions. Honestly I've not looked into this space very much. I assume there might need to be some cgroup isolation that can be used to lock off hardware and filesystems, similar to containers (not sure if Snap/Flatpak use cgroups).

I suppose malicious code could get in and spy on you, but we've got the same concerns on Linux desktops and official package repos. I don't know exactly ... there's a lot to think about there.

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

#68

Post by mackrevinack » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

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.

that really makes my blood boil every time it happens

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

#69

Post by smilekzs » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

Curious: How effective would it be to separate only the app store from Google/Apple, when it comes to this rating problem? Perhaps not even the infrastructure --- I'd imagine even just having an independent group of reviewers / rule enforcers would make the situation much less absurd?

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

#70

Post by mackrevinack » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

jakemal wrote: post #46

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.

I have the emoji key turned off but they still show up when you long press the enter key which I somehow manage to do a lot