Live data from Hacker News

Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 219 posts

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They banned my app which gives COVID-19 related information in Sign Language. No reply on my appeal yet.

You need to give me more than this. Like: I filed a complaint at date X, time Y, and wrote . Today is date X1 and I haven't received a reply. It might not matter for your case, but the next time I'm in a meeting I can use this to say "Hey, maybe it's not smart to go with those services from company Z"

I doubt this will be of much use to you but here are the emails I received from Google.

I appealed to Google on March 27th at 9:18AM. Received a response on March 30 at 5:31 AM telling me they received my appeal. Google denied my appeal on March 30 at 8:43 PM with no more information than the original. I responded to Google within minutes on March 30 at 9PM. I received an email back from Google on April 1 at 1:10 AM with a final "fuck you."

Here is the last email from Google:

----------------

Thanks again for contacting the Google Play team.

As much as I'd like to help, I’m not able to provide any more information or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.

As stated in our previous email, we have confirmed your violation, we will not be able to reinstate your app if you don't provide proof that the app is from, commissioned OR supported/acknowledged by a government entity or public health institutions like WHO.

--------------------------

And the original rejection from Google:

-------------

During review, we found that your app violates the Sensitive Events policy. Specifically, we don't allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.

You can read through the Sensitive Events page for more details.

For example, your app currently contains content towards a specific sensitive event, such as Coronavirus, without legitimate source of information.

If you are one of the following, please provide verifiable documentation for our review.

A government body/healthcare organization who developed this app. A developer commissioned to build this app by a government or an official health organization entity (examples include WHO, Red Cross, Hospital, etc). An app supported/acknowledged by a government or official health entity for use. Alternatively, please be advised that we will not be able to reinstate your application without the above documentation.

You may also want to read through the Protecting People From Misinformation paragraph in article Coronavirus: How we're helping on Google's blog.

If your developer credentials are still in good standing with Google Play and if your app allows for it, you can publish a new compliant version of the app by following these steps:

Make the necessary changes to your app to address the issue described above, if possible. Double check that your app complies with all other policies listed in the Developer Policy Center as additional enforcement could occur if there are further policy violations. Sign in to your Play Console and upload a new app using a new package name and a new app name. Thank you for your understanding. Please let me know if you have any other questions on Google Play policy.

--------------------------

Your app can't even mention the words Covid or they'll suspend the app and ding your account. Absolutely preposterous.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I have yet to find an email provider that mimics Gmail's tagging system IMAP does support keywords, which are basically tags. Probably some good IMAP-Client supports this? There is also JMAP as a modern alternative to IMAP in development. Fastmail released a beta-interface for this, which also includes tag-support AFAIK. And finally, Outlook surprisingly seems to support tagging, but they call it categorie…

Thanks for your comments. I have used Thunderbird and Evolution mainly. They cannot really do that afaik. > Probably some good IMAP-Client supports this? The Gmail clients do that (at least the last version's I remember 3 years ago). Haven't seen any other FOSS that does so too. That is what made going away from Gmail kind of "hard". Currently I'm using K9 on Android and the web client by mailbox.org based on OX AppS…

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure you can give an email multiple tags on Thunderbird. Although, you run into an issue because some email servers don't support tag sync, so that might be creating an issue here. Or so I think.

In any case, best of luck with it!

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#74
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427

Can someone remind me why there is an "app store" that is run by the phone OS maker? Aside from the anti-trust/monopoly type issue, should there be a more market healthy de-coupling between the place I buy my apps and the OS maker? Monopolies are almost always bad for consumers. I kind of chuckle when I think about how Microsoft had such a huge battle over IE being integrated into Windows, and now we sort of accept a…

My cynical view is that it's because both OS makers want vertical integration, in order to justify their 30% platform "tax" on being allowed to sell apps on their platform.

I'd definitely agree there should be a decoupling (made mandatory if needed) to prevent this conflict of interest.

On both platforms, the OS maker enjoys an anticompetitive position of being able to provide their own services without the platform fee (see Apple Music and Spotify dispute), as well as being able to inhibit the visibility of third party rival apps at their whim.

I wonder if the issue is that now we don't have a platform with 90+% penetration, this isn't perceived as a monopoly scenario, even though the effects of it are effectively identical as there are significant (cost and practical) barriers to switching, and no feasible ability to enter and provide an alternative. And on iOS, not even feasible - no actual ability at all.

But that 30% platform tax must be pretty attractive when justifying your position with legal internally...

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#75
My app was suspended back in March just before Google updated their policy regarding to COVID. And my app was just being submitted for (my own) internal testing, didn't even made public.

One would've thought the change in policy back then was to allow Google to offer more clarity and fairness.

Seems things are going the other way.

Hacker News Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22462315

Updated Link to Blog Post: https://flyingnobita.com/mobile/flutter/2020/03/02/coronavir...

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#76
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427

Can someone remind me why there is an "app store" that is run by the phone OS maker? Aside from the anti-trust/monopoly type issue, should there be a more market healthy de-coupling between the place I buy my apps and the OS maker? Monopolies are almost always bad for consumers. I kind of chuckle when I think about how Microsoft had such a huge battle over IE being integrated into Windows, and now we sort of accept a…

The "why" is because the creator of the OS can lock down the system to only allow apps from their own marketplace.

The "why is this not being discussed as an anti-trust violation like Microsoft was hit with" is because the US government of the last 10-15 years doesn't have the same viewpoints on anti-trust that they did 20+ years ago.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#77
post #75

My app was suspended back in March just before Google updated their policy regarding to COVID. And my app was just being submitted for (my own) internal testing, didn't even made public. One would've thought the change in policy back then was to allow Google to offer more clarity and fairness. Seems things are going the other way. Hacker News Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22462315 Updated Link to B…

Note that, unlike OP's events app, your app was specifically about Covid/Coronavirus and serves no other purpose but to deliver Covid/Coronavirus information. I expect their judgement call is more plausible in your case than in OP's.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#78
I'm not a fan of censorship at any level. But at least you can always have Android users install themselves.

Sure you don't get their massive advertising platform Play Store. But that's Google's decision.

You can organically develop users, you don't need Google.

Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms

#80
post #4

Artificial intelligence? More like dumber than the dumbest human.

Yes. Going after the crop of fraudsters and SEO scammers trying to cash in on the crisis is a fine idea. But between this and Podcast Addict, it's pretty clear they're just indiscriminately deleting everything or trusting and algorithm to make hard calls. The odds are good they ban Red Cross or a reputable news organization.

I don't understand how Google could decide a single organisation has the canonical source of truth on a subject, nor the failure in logic Google are using to determine there's any way to determine absolute truth at scale.

Keep in mind the WHO published this in January:

> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳.

If Google's policy of removing anything that contradicts the WHO existed back then, then they would be deleting any heterodox opinion saying Corona can be transferred between humans.

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

Post reply on HN