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Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

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Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#91
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the giants banned that app after the incidents in 6 January in US, you see a lot of comment like "free markets" and build your own platform from scratch including banks, ISPs and hosting. P.S. I am not from US so I am not in a blue or red camp, I just don't like it when some big corporation can lock you out of your account, decide what books you can read, what apps you can install or brick your application/devic…

Simion314, If you would indulge another non-political poster. Playing devils advocate with and exploring your ps... >some big corporation What about a small one? >lock you out, decide what you read, apps you install or brick your application Are these an abuse of power? Illegal? Unethical? Is it their right to do these things to maintain some focus? (The example here is often that one does not want profanity, sexual…

I am for moderating stuff in general. So if you have a forum and want to ban politics or religious topic that is fine IMO.

I would also be fine if Google or Apple would ban an application because it does something illegal or it's name/icon/description is offensive and it could "pollute" the store listing. I don't like when the giants try to ban some small applications because of user generated content but they never ban YouTube(remember the issues with pedos?)

The issue I have with the giants is that this is not a "Free market", you have only 2 players that are smart enough to correctly play the "prisoner dilemma" so both win.

Maybe in that political case they were right to ban that application but is still uncomfortable to know that 99% of mobile market is censored by the 2 giants.

Conclusion: Moderating content on your website is fine, but banning legal apps or websites because should not be easy, there should be a police,judge or some other official request behind it at least.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#92
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the giants banned that app after the incidents in 6 January in US, you see a lot of comment like "free markets" and build your own platform from scratch including banks, ISPs and hosting. P.S. I am not from US so I am not in a blue or red camp, I just don't like it when some big corporation can lock you out of your account, decide what books you can read, what apps you can install or brick your application/devic…

Simion314, If you would indulge another non-political poster. Playing devils advocate with and exploring your ps... >some big corporation What about a small one? >lock you out, decide what you read, apps you install or brick your application Are these an abuse of power? Illegal? Unethical? Is it their right to do these things to maintain some focus? (The example here is often that one does not want profanity, sexual…

>I also hate it when software won't work without a 'security' handshake.

You are in for a bad time unless you go full FLOSS. The days of shareware and freedom from stupid centralized license enforcement is long dead, sadly.

Don't bother bringing that up on HN though. The Upton Sinclairism "It is difficult to get someone to understand that which their paycheck fepends on them not understanding" applies.

Unless of course you're talking TLS, in which case that handshaking is cool, and responsible, and if done right transparent to the end user.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the giants banned that app after the incidents in 6 January in US, you see a lot of comment like "free markets" and build your own platform from scratch including banks, ISPs and hosting. P.S. I am not from US so I am not in a blue or red camp, I just don't like it when some big corporation can lock you out of your account, decide what books you can read, what apps you can install or brick your application/devic…

I'm fine with banning apps that permit organizing violent insurrection in response to independently certified elections. That isn't the case here however and I expect some resolution will come.

How do you draw the line exactly? What if someone used FB or the official Appole/Google email/chat apps to start a revolution in some country? For illegal stuff you have laws and examples, for this stuff you need to guess what Silicon Valley does not like and censor your content just in case.

For the case you mention, do you think it helped? As I said I am not from US so I have no idea if the were any effects.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#94
post #81

After reading this, I think Signal is also violating this policy. I was not able to find a way to report messages or users. In comparison on WhatsApp I can report a user or group and the "most recent messages" will be forwarded to moderation. I think it is kind of strange that even a private messenger needs to implement a report system for messages.

> In comparison on WhatsApp I can report a user or group and the "most recent messages" will be forwarded to moderation.

Really? So if a random person decide to report me, plain text uncrypted messages will be sent to WhatsApp?

Even if this does not happen regularly, this means that WhatsApp have means to read my messages, which is scary enough.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#95
post #86

The company I work for has forbidden the use of Google and their services such as GCP etc. due to how they treat their Play Store developers and other customer, in particular that there never seems to be any human being that you can talk to and find out what you need to do to fix the situation. We do not want the same to occur to our servers or if there is an overflow from Play Store ban to GCP etc. The business risk…

It's rife in the industry. The drama this week is that my wife can't log in to Facebook because their code generator just doesn't work. The number in the app shows up, she types it, but she can't log in because apparently it's just wrong. Due to their marvelous design, you need a personal account to run an advertising account for your place of work. Luckily she hasn't been logged out on her work laptop yet or she cou…

If you haven’t already, check the time / date / timezone on the device that is generating the codes. Facebook uses TOTP for this, which is time-based. If the time on your device is wrong, the codes will be wrong. I would expect this problem to pop up more frequently this time of year due to errors relating to daylight saving time.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#96
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no appeals process unfortunately. For the past 2 years I have been asking for an update regularly and the only response I get is an automated response saying that they have checked my ad account and there is nothing they can do about it. My website is still blocked by Facebook's sharing debugger and my ad accounts with balance in them have been blocked without a reason given.

You could sue them in small claims court.

I'm completely in favor of everyone suing facebook for literally any reason, but to be clear, what would the legal standing/basis be for this small claims court?

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#97

The company I work for has forbidden the use of Google and their services such as GCP etc. due to how they treat their Play Store developers and other customer, in particular that there never seems to be any human being that you can talk to and find out what you need to do to fix the situation. We do not want the same to occur to our servers or if there is an overflow from Play Store ban to GCP etc. The business risk…

This is a prime example of why Google and Apple's mobile app distribution duopoly needs to be disrupted. They're poor stewards of this space, and they've kept an iron grip on the mobile app market for over a decade, now.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#98
post #92
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simion314, If you would indulge another non-political poster. Playing devils advocate with and exploring your ps... >some big corporation What about a small one? >lock you out, decide what you read, apps you install or brick your application Are these an abuse of power? Illegal? Unethical? Is it their right to do these things to maintain some focus? (The example here is often that one does not want profanity, sexual…

>I also hate it when software won't work without a 'security' handshake. You are in for a bad time unless you go full FLOSS. The days of shareware and freedom from stupid centralized license enforcement is long dead, sadly. Don't bother bringing that up on HN though. The Upton Sinclairism "It is difficult to get someone to understand that which their paycheck fepends on them not understanding" applies. Unless of cour…

FLOSS is great but not enough. There are more and more places where you need a smartphone and an application (or else you can't use a service or it will be 100 times more time consuming) IMO all smartphones should have an unlock code. it will be printed in the box you b ought the phone, if you use that you unlock your phone and can install FLOSS apps in it. (now the Apple fanboys will try to change my mind, I will not change my mind, some Android smartphones have a more simpler method to unlock side loading and Google is still full with money, in fact when you go to an official page for an app they link you to the Store and never found a page that gives you the installer.

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#99
post #59

For those not from South Africa, this app is primarily for people to be able to get notifications or look up when their area will be affected by a "planned power outage", or as Eskom (our state owned power utility) refers to it, "load shedding". "Load shedding" is enacted whenever they have a power production capacity issue where different areas take turns without power so as to not let the power grid collapse. This…

OMG. This is as bad or even worse than Texas or California...

It is far worse, but South Africa has an inept and corrupt government, I wonder what the excuse is for Texas?

Re: Our app was banned because the button says “Report User” and not just “Report”

#100

For those not from South Africa, this app is primarily for people to be able to get notifications or look up when their area will be affected by a "planned power outage", or as Eskom (our state owned power utility) refers to it, "load shedding". "Load shedding" is enacted whenever they have a power production capacity issue where different areas take turns without power so as to not let the power grid collapse. This…

This sounds like a nightmare! Eskom seems to have been around for a long time, but this problem seems to have kicked in a little over a decade ago. Did something recently happen to Eskom to make them incompetent?

Corruption.
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