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Google have declared Droidscript is malware

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Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#611
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to use any of the driver assistance features. It’s not doing any of that if you don’t explicitly engage it and sometimes even requires enabling settings toggles.

Here's the deal though, when I press the brake pedal in my truck the force is mechanically applied via a hydraulic system to brake pads in the wheels. I've read that Tesla abstracted all that with electric signals coming from a computer, now a proprietary software system sits between my legs input and the brake pads. What if it goes wrong? You can try to convince me that it is an RTOS where signals from the brake ped…

Not sure where you’re getting your FUD. The steering and breaks on a Tesla are mechanically connected with electric assist motors just like all modern cars, including your truck.

Per mile driven Teslas are the safest vehicle on the road. The software helps ensure the safe operation of the vehicle. It’s really not that scary. The software is overlaid on a pretty standard vehicle aside from tue fact that it uses electric motors instead of an internal combustion engine.

Have you ever been on a plane?

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#612

Our main guess was that one of our users was experimenting with our AdMob ID after extracting it from our APK Is this mean anybody with a grudge has an easy way of destroying any developer's revenue stream?

Apparently not only the revenue stream but a ban from the store and maybe other Google services. Seems like a good tool to take down a competitor's app.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#613
post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would believe this if Google wasn't notorious for providing the worst customer service that will avoid someone going to prison. Cable monopolies have a better reputation.

op didn't say he worked for Google

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#614
post #582

This article is big news, because it shows that Google will permanently yank your Android app if your website violates AdSense's secret fraud detector! If you're running Google AdSense ads and you have an Android app that you care about, take down the ads immediately and switch to another vendor. AdSense is the product where Google pays you for running banner ads; they can and frequently do kick people off of it for…

if you don't interlink your app account and your website's adsense google account, then this _shouldn't_ really be an issue right? So i say always maintain separate google accounts for individual apps, for individual usages. Separate your personal google account from your business account, from your ad-network account etc. And i would argue that each individual app should own their own account (you pay for this of co…

This looks like the best course of action in the current situation.

Now the different accounts would still be linked to the same entity, and as stories like this make the news, more people would split their services on multiple account. As a response, it doesn't look like a stretch to me if next time Google would go after all account owned by the entity the deem responsible.

I mean, they already crossed the line of banning all services associated with an account. Wouldn't be surprising if they cross a few more lines as long as there is no critical impact for them.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#615
post #111
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Google, and a friend reached out to me for help – his company's app was in a similar situation, with similar communication from Google. This was a good friend from high school, so I pressed the issue using internal channels. The person handling it on Google's side was very assertive about them violating a policy, and after some back and forth I received a _vague hint_ about what was the supposed vio…

> Now, it's a shame Google couldn't let them know what was the issue. However, it's a safe assumption that the vast majority of people Google support deals with are spammers. And there's a lot of them. If Google gave a detailed explanation to all of them it would mean a ton of additional work – which would create an unsustainable situation at this scale. I don't think that's reasonable. What if most are spammers ? Be…

> In this particular example, a copyright violation was detected in a image, so an automated response "someone else's image was used without permission, violating copyright" seems entirely plausible.

Google should not be enforcing copyright in the first place without at least a report of infringement by the copyright holder - and in that case they should pass the report along to the developer.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#616

This article is big news, because it shows that Google will permanently yank your Android app if your website violates AdSense's secret fraud detector! If you're running Google AdSense ads and you have an Android app that you care about, take down the ads immediately and switch to another vendor. AdSense is the product where Google pays you for running banner ads; they can and frequently do kick people off of it for…

Yeah I think claiming Ad Fraud is pretty much on the libel side of things, also I'm not sure why hasn't any developer taken legal action against outlandish Google practices yet.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think you're not doing justice to the OP's complaint. You're right that this isn't solely a faceless corporate thing. People say "I can't" when "I won't" for the same reasons Google did. We even ask " can you watch my kids?" Again, the same reasons drive the language. It lets a false but face-saving implication stand: You will pick up my kids if you can and if you won't than I'll assume you couldn…

Is "can you watch my kids?" really the same as "are you able to watch my kids?" or an idiom in which "can" does not have precisely its stand-alone meaning?

Well... I don't think you can nail down language, especially idiomatic phrases, to that level of specificity.

"Can you X" literally/etymologically means "are you able." If you were to translate, you'd translate to "will you." I don't think the etymology is coincidence, or lost on an average speaker. "Can you" feels softer and more polite. It reflects something about how people want to interact with each other. You have to leave work early because your mom "couldn't" watch your kids, not because she refused to.

Incidentally, in Ireland we do say "will you," "would you" and "are you able to" more commonly than "can you," which sounds slightly american/international to my ear. Oddly (or not), "will you" is (IMO, locally) more informal. You'd say it to friends, when making trivial (pass the salt) requests. "Would you not" is also (I think) an irish choice of words. It's used to make suggestions, rather than requests.

These things don't bother us until/unless they're coopted into a different context, and used tactically. Going back to the original point about corporate-drone speak.... The "can't" vs "won't" language is used in the first person to obscure responsibility. I didn't call it Orwellian because it's evil or onerous. I called it Orwellian because it affects culture/thought deeply. The language helps maintain an impenetrable ambiguity, implying that every contentious decision is actually not a decision. It's dictated by regulators, or at least by "corporate."

Also, in context... it's an (passive?) aggressive way to cut off a conversation. The equivalent of "Good day Sir!"

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#619
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I also worked on adtech. We viewed them as a cost of doing business. Some small accounts got nuked. :shrug: If we had to have humans investigate everything, and produce reports / interpretations that nuked customers found satisfactory, we wouldn't have been willing to service accounts under probably $40k/year. And keep in mind the ecosystem is filthy with fraud, particularly on the low end. There very much are groups…

Their recourse is to not do business, full stop, because Google has monopolized the ad space.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#620
post #584
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is the essence of discrimination and we wouldn't tolerate it for a whole range of indicators (you're black, gay, if a particular race, etc etc). My guess is the real reason they won't tell people is that they would end up in court pretty quick.

so, in you mind, detecting copyrighted images and using that as a metric to detect spammers is discrimination? Are antivirus programs discriminating too?? I bet you indent your code in an inclusive way

From a definitional point of view yes. Using an attribute to place someone in a class and then making decisions on a class basis without actual evidence they possess the other attributes of the class is discriminatory behavior.
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