[HN Gopher] We became experts on Google Play Store policy violat... ___________________________________________________________________ We became experts on Google Play Store policy violations Author : Guzba Score : 309 points Date : 2022-10-27 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.pushbullet.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.pushbullet.com) | evolve2k wrote: | [Ding]. They'd sent me another automated notice. THIRD THIS WEEK. | | My work had been PATmatched for review, pending cancellation. | _Drat_ I was already low on credits to cover food bills this | week. | | Car capsules filled the crimson sky of the small windows in my | 10000 story apartment room, day and night the automated vehicles | rolled past my window like a raging torrent. Living so high, not | much to do but sit at the console. | | Another automated notice from TECHCORP. Always the same. Never a | human. So insanely lacking in logic that often I'd want to scream | in rage. | | But actually, IT WAS LOGICAL. To the billions of learning | machines, running at basement level, in windowless buildings, | beyond places I'd never know; I was the anomaly. | [deleted] | Multicomp wrote: | Just wanted to say I appreciated this nice start to a story and | now I have an app idea to create crowdsourced interactive | fiction or at least branching fiction, one paragraph at a time. | | You pay the in-app-token equivalent of $0.25 to post a new | paragraph at any given node, then as other users select your | node for that branch, your node rises in popularity. | | Once a month, the most popular branches get paid a prize of in- | app-currency for submitting good content. | hancholo wrote: | As someone that used to work on the Play Store team many many | moons ago... a lot of that was outsourced to overseas which | resulted in much slower response time. Here stateside we had a | lot of metrics in place to fast response. Typically your app | would get reviewed the same day. Not sure what it's like now but | the managers were incompetent back then even so. | travisgriggs wrote: | > the managers were incompetent back then even so. | | This. So. Much. This. | | We go round and round about specific policies at corporate or | civic levels. We hash it all out and pat ourselves on the back | that we've at least proposed how whatever the issue of the | moment might be improved. | | But we never come to the basic generic issue. That large swaths | of decision makers should not make the decisions they do. | nicoburns wrote: | My experience has been that the Play Store does have relatively | quick review times (usually under a day). But the feedback | given upon rejections is often so poor that it doesn't help | much. As it can often take several trial and error submissions | to resolve the issue. | Aulig wrote: | Only for app updates in my experience. Publishing new apps | takes ~7 days for years now. If I remember right, it started | with Covid but it never improved. | bambax wrote: | > _Your app did not receive a deliberate analysis by a human | leading to the violation notification. There is no one to debate. | There is no opinion at all. Your app simply didn't look enough | like the AI's training data. (...) your goal is to look as much | as possible like the training data. Unfortunately, this can be | easier said than done since we do not have access to the training | data._ | | A solution will be to have an AI submit modifications to the | other side's enforcement notifications. Robots talking to robots. | What a world. | mkmk3 wrote: | Outside of the implications it might have for the economy built | up around SW dev, it's significantly better that AI modifiers | deal with AI masters, than human modifiers with AI masters. | Scary either way. | ransom1538 wrote: | Eh. This looks like pushbullet just got a different reviewer once | that approved it. I imagine (atleast apple does) the reviewers | are assigned a submission and any new update - gets you the same | reviewer. BUT! IF you submit over and over, you will catch this | person on vacation or sick, then Approved! | ranger_danger wrote: | It's completely automated. Even Google does not have enough | money to pay for human support. | Beltalowda wrote: | With a net income of $76 billion USD in 2021, I beg to | differ. | | Google just has so much money sloshing around they don't | notice or care if they lose a bunch of revenue over stuff | like this. There's no business pressure to retain customers. | Even with the news from the other day that profits dropped: | it's still more than what they did a just a few years back. | | Almost all these tech companies have very high profit/per | employee; the idea that they can't afford a small army of | human support people is just not the case; they just don't | because they don't have to. | veeti wrote: | Fuck Google and fuck anyone who works for them. How do you live | with yourself? A $300k paycheck? | pacifika wrote: | I think they are getting rejected for not mentioning the url of | their api? | Guzba wrote: | Hello, thanks for reading my post. I just wanted to reply here | quick and see if I understand your suggestion correctly. | | Your thought is that mentioning that the necessary data is sent | to https://api.pushbullet.com instead of just "Pushbullet | Servers" might help? | | I had not considered this but it is an interesting idea. | savy91 wrote: | We tried that, it doesn't work. | | In our case, Google was claiming we were sending contact | information to a URL corresponding to our static landing | page. | | In fact, we didn't even upload contact information anywhere. | pacifika wrote: | Exactly. Probably in the privacy policy not the ui. | Alupis wrote: | Seems like Google was oddly specific here with exactly what | they were wanting from OP. Every single screenshot called | out that URL explicitly... | return_to_monke wrote: | I love the (cat) json response. Rock on! | carlhjerpe wrote: | Seems to me like the common denominator | gopher_space wrote: | How much would a private investigator charge to find someone at | Google who'd talk to you about this off the record? This might be | a situation you could farm out. | busymom0 wrote: | I remember there being a case where a developer's app got banned | because they used the word "windows" in the play store | description and Google considered this as a third party trademark | violation. The developer was referring to house windows, not the | operating system... | V__ wrote: | Sometimes you have to change the code of the privacy policy page, | because the AI might have problems parsing it correctly. Here is | Luke from LinusTechTips talking about the problems with their | Floatplane app: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8iy4qYONAc&t=941s | Arnavion wrote: | The pushbullet article indicates an appeal succeeding doesn't | mean the issue was fixed to the reviewer's liking. So I | wouldn't assume the correlation that LTT's appeal succeeded | because of what they did. Google's review process seemingly | does not comply to logical reasoning. | V__ wrote: | Maybe, but he talks about sending it in a few times and only | after changing the page's loading behavior it got accepted. | Therefore, I don't think there were human reviewers involved | at all, otherwise why not spell out the problem directly? | Would save everyone's time and reduce the number of | interactions. | stevage wrote: | People complain a lot about developing for the web, but at least | we don't have to put up with this kind of thing. | iandanforth wrote: | I'm convinced that the only way this situation will improve is | via legislation. There are simply no other sufficient incentives | since strikes/bans/policy enforcement is uniformly broken across | the large players. | Eumenes wrote: | been using pushbullet for many years, feels like they always got | the shaft from google | ohbleek wrote: | Chiming in to say I love Pushbullet. I find it invaluable for | sending things between my devices. | | I recently learned that it's no longer available for iPhone and | that if I get a new iPhone I won't be able to load it onto the | new device. It has kept me from upgrading. Eventually I'll have | to but it will be a sad day. I've seen a few alternatives but | they don't appear to have the same usability. | bobsmooth wrote: | Pushbullet is a great app, been using it for a long time. | Hopefully they're able to permanently sort this out (yeah right) | derN3rd wrote: | From most friends and colleagues I know that most of these | rejected updates simply go through if you resubmit it a second | time a day or two later. | | Somewhat frustrating, but most of the times the issue was just | that the apps were already compliant, but the reviewer on | Apple/Google side was just not carefully checking | djbusby wrote: | One time a project I was on got booted from Google Play. Then we | did an appeal, they would let us back in! Yay! And we'd have to | pre-appeal our next try. | | But, we could not use the same Name or Namespace | (com.company.project) because those were locked. They are keeping | the blocked in, with notes. | | Our fix was to refactor the namespace in the code, change product | & company name. Jk, we just abandoned Google Play, wasn't worth | it. | tgtweak wrote: | Was it due to copyright/trademark hit on the namespace/name? I | saw that once before on a very large app 5 years into it's life | on google play (I assume they implemented this copyright check | job circa early 2018 based on that). Was a simple "we own the | domain and here is the proof" reply and it was reinstated | without further issue. | djbusby wrote: | No, we work with deadly deadly cannabis. | flutas wrote: | Any tips or things to avoid that they called out to you? | | Working on an app right now that is very close to the | industry and we're really worried about a rejection because | of that. | djbusby wrote: | Don't mention anywhere at all that you have any | connection to cannabis. | | Also, if I had known the block would lockout my | name/namespace I would have entered with a throwaway, | then get the real one in. | | We moved away from needing an App and now keep it all | web. | meltedcapacitor wrote: | Obvious YC startup idea here: build an AI model that analyses app | store rejections and automatically modifies and resubmits the | app. Fight fire with fire. | Raed667 wrote: | I had the unpleasant experience of submitting an extension to | Google Chrome Webstore. Here is a summary: | | 1- Submit an update | | 2- Wait a week for it to be approved | | 3- Publish said update | | 4- Forget about it and move to working on something else for a | few days/weeks | | 5- Get a random rejection email with a bogus claim and 14 days to | "fix it" or the extension is removed | | 6- Drop everything in my sprint so I can handle this. No actual | code change was required, just a series of Kafkaesque support | forms and email exchanges. | | After 3 or 4 rounds of this, I created a template response with a | history of previous interactions and arguments and sending those | became part of the routine ... | dessant wrote: | Chrome Web Store reviewers leave a lot to be desired. My only | effective strategy over the years has been to shame them in | public and let them know that our interactions are immediately | published across the web. You have to be relentless, otherwise | they will destroy a decade of your work in a snap. | | These threads will surely give PTSD to any extension developer: | | https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/57 | | https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63 | Fnoord wrote: | Thank you for Buster! | BarryMilo wrote: | Jesus, are even the reviews done entirely by AI? | heavyset_go wrote: | And this right here is why we shouldn't let Google, Apple, or | Microsoft dictate what software we're allowed to distribute | and run. | | I wouldn't be surprised if Google put you through the | gauntlet because your extensions either touch their products, | or because they offer similar functionality. | entropicdrifter wrote: | I'm gonna be that guy: | | Summery means "characteristic of or suitable for summer", as in | the season | | Summary is the word you meant to use | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Which one is used in the context of an execution? | taberiand wrote: | It depends. Perhaps Summery, if it's a nice warm day, a | comfortable breeze is blowing and the birds are si- | jraph wrote: | This commenter got "cut". | jraph wrote: | Summary. "The prisoners were executed in a summary | fashion." | | Also means brief, concise. I guess a summary execution | (which means without trial if I understand correctly) is a | briefer process than an execution with a trial... | | Would also properly qualify the rejection of an extension | from the Chrome store, I guess, to go back to the main | topic. | | https://www.wordreference.com/fren/sommaire | | (yes, found out by translating from French :-) - sommaire | also means basic, rudimentary, now I wonder what made us | use this word for executions - the brevity, or the basic | aspect, sounded like the latter to me in history lessons) | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Merci pour la lecon :) | jraph wrote: | Avec plaisir ! ah ah | | Thanks to wordreference above all. You might have meant | it as a joke initially, but I learned something. | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | I meant it half joking but I'm also in the process of | learning French so I learned something too. | [deleted] | [deleted] | [deleted] | Raed667 wrote: | Thanks! fixed it. I shouldn't be using the spellcheck without | reading the actual suggestion. | [deleted] | m00x wrote: | I worked with the extension Webstore and the Android Play | Store. The Webstore is absolutely way worse. | | We took the resolution really seriously at first, and we tried | our best to find the issue and fix it, but then we realized we | had about the same resolution rate if we just changed a random | character in the codebase and resubmitted. We had contacts at | Google, but even they couldn't tell us what was wrong. | | Play Store was/is much better, but we aren't dealing with | complicated phone APIs, just basically a React Native app with | REST calls. We rarely have any issues getting rejected, and | when it is, we get very fast turnarounds on emails. | | Play store had a much lower | aasasd wrote: | People are perpetually wondering why Goog keeps doing this, and | the answer is because they can. | | > _I really really need to make Google happy._ | zkirill wrote: | We switched to distributing our own APK after Google forced | Android App Bundles. Definitely sleep better at night because of | that decision. | ranger_danger wrote: | For most people, this is not an option though, since it | bypasses the Play Store (and the majority of the userbase) | entirely. | lordleft wrote: | I used pushbullet for years, until they deprecated their iOS app | (I think for similar reasons?). I have yet to find an adequate | replacement. | joshstrange wrote: | EDIT: Ignore this comment, I thought I knew what PushBullet was | but I was mistaken. | | Pushover is what I've used for as long as I can remember, I | bought the app so long ago that I can't even remember what I | paid. It's decent, a little basic though. | | Recently I've just been using a Discord server since that's | trivial to setup and I can get notifications on desktop and | mobile easily. I just have 1 channel per "thing" that might | want to alert me and then grab the webhook url for that channel | and then I'm good to go. | | I usually drop a "push" binary in the ~/bin folder on my | machines (which is in my path) so I can do: | ./longRunningCommand.sh && push "Command finished!" | klabb3 wrote: | It's really sad that software distribution has deteriorated into | this submissive permission-seeking practice of pleasing an opaque | moving target, as a sort of disorganized morality police that | claim to act on behalf of the users. And not only that, but we | still have 0 standardization or agreed-upon APIs so devs | generally have waste heaps of time on per-platform idiosyncrasies | that has nothing to do with business logic. We do have cooler | tech today, but that is despite, not because, this suffocating | and unsustainable selection of walled "gardens". | liotier wrote: | Should developers come together with a foundation for software | distribution ? An appstore, members are individual or | corporations, governance through election of a board by the | members (see Debian and Openstreetmap)... And a little help | from the European Comission who'll be happy to have a neutral | channel to impose on the monopolists ! | karmelapple wrote: | Sounds neat. How will you help ensure malware doesn't show up | on there? | warkdarrior wrote: | Time to nationalize F-Droid! | jahnu wrote: | We developers sure do act like temporarily embarrassed | millionaires at times. | greysphere wrote: | Starting around January, our app (Dominion[1]) has randomly had | updates rejected (including one that _delisted the existing app_) | because of our app description. We make some irrelevant changes | and resubmit and, so far, it's been accepted each time. We've had | the same description for over a year/10+ releases before. | | The latest rejection: | | >>> The app title or description does not accurately describe the | app's functionality. Issue details | | We found an issue in the following area(s): Full description | (en_US): "# Tutorial & Rules " <<< | | So we changed this to: | | # In app Tutorial & Rules | | And it passed. Every release is just a bucket of stress that we | are going to lose N-days of revenue again for no obvious reason. | | [1] | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.templegate... | sneak wrote: | lakomen wrote: | Excuse my ignorance, not a native English speaker, what's | sharecropping? Google's description doesn't make any sense to | me. | sneak wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping | acomjean wrote: | Basically they are saying to stop putting your app on the | app store and letting google take a large % of the app and | letting your business be dependent on another business. | | In this case the landlord is Google, and you are the | sharecropper, giving a share (30%) to google to be allowed | to use the play store. | sneak wrote: | More importantly: a share whose figure is chosen by the | owner, not by you. | Imnimo wrote: | Sharecropping originally refers to a process where a | landowner would let people farm their land in exchange for | a portion of the yield. It has negative associations with | post-slavery exploitation of black farmers as well as poor | farmers in general in the 1800s and early 1900s. In this | setting, it's being used to compare the practice of hosting | and selling your app on someone else's platform, with those | same connotations of exploitation. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | Do you think their attempts to make a living would be less | stressful if they started releasing only on f-droid? | sneak wrote: | They could release on their own website. The Google store | is not the only game in town - unlike on iOS. | warent wrote: | I've owned an android for years and have never once | installed an app outside the google play store. There's | no way this is a viable business option | nine_k wrote: | What you lose then is the auto-update. You can of course | make the app nag about installing a new version when | available, but it works much, much worse. | lern_too_spel wrote: | The app can auto-update itself without nagging. | eropple wrote: | By being granted very broad security permissions that an | application shouldn't need on a phone, yes. | svnpenn wrote: | Not sure why the downvotes, this is exactly what's happening. | woodruffw wrote: | No, it's not "exactly what's happening." | | At the best, it's a thought-provoking analogy. At the | worse, it's a tasteless comparison between software | engineering (overwhelmingly lucrative, mostly filled with | otherwise well-off people) and a legal loophole for | slavery. | aliqot wrote: | It's a throwback to a painful point in history, so while it | is accurate, some people will kneejerk downvote out of | internal distaste to it. | 0_____0 wrote: | It's a bit hyperbolic to compare the experience of a | Reconstruction era sharecropper to the plight of a 21st | century app developer. | etc-hosts wrote: | My dads family were sharecroppers in the south. | | The system definitely was not confined to Reconstruction | sneak wrote: | The situations have more in common than you might think. | In both cases, you accept the non-negotiated deal offered | to you unilaterally by your owners, or you accept zero | revenue. | Beltalowda wrote: | They're very different scenarios, because throughout | history sharecroppers have almost always been "stuck" in | their situation with no hope of relief, whereas app | developers can realistically just go do something else. | | When I lived in Asia as a white guy I was regularly the | target of "racism": inflated prices (I was earning local | salary), you're automatically "in the wrong" in any | conflict even when you did nothing wrong, being a target | of theft and government corruption, sometimes just | general hostility. But it's not really the same "racism" | in the same sense that, say, a black person in the US | experiences it, as I can just choose to leave, whereas a | black person in the US can't really. In spite of the | similarities, in the end the experiences are not the same | at all. | | This makes all the difference. I'm not saying that what | Google is doing is right, but it's just not the same | thing at all. | [deleted] | aasasd wrote: | Yes--the developer can simply move into a different line | of business, that doesn't require having a mobile app. | [deleted] | dipsyduck wrote: | I'm wondering if the & sign is causing the issue. Perhaps the | AI reviewers can't parse it well? | rvba wrote: | I find it incredible that Google's sharedholders did not do | anything about the company just plain losing money "here and | there" which probably adds up to billions. | | Just because someone wants to get promoted by making another | half baked pseudo-AI to check apps, or someone making the 6th | chat program (sorry, all people quit already after the 3rd | change). | deathanatos wrote: | Is there any evidence that there's any causal link here? Like, it | seems like to me it could just be the act of changing something | -- _anything_ -- and the output from review is just a roll of the | dice. Sometimes you change something, and it 's approved, but | given the frequency with which these sorts of articles crop up on | HN, I don't think I'd assume that the change necessarily meant | anything more than "they changed it". | | ... of course, it would help build confidence that there is a | causal link if Google would clearly articulate their reasons for | rejection. | warkdarrior wrote: | Of course, we do not hear from the approved apps, so it is hard | to tell which part of the review is random and which is | deterministic. | PaulHoule wrote: | naet wrote: | I love Dominion the card /board game. Have played it many times! | | I'm a little confused why the app version would need to access my | SMS message history, send messages on my behalf, and access my | contact info though. | | I don't want that even if you claim to not be sharing it with | anyone else... | shkkmo wrote: | You seem to have missed the fact that the commenter talking | about Play Store issues with the Dominion App is different | person at a different company, the author of TFA (who works for | PushBullet). | binkHN wrote: | I have a somewhat related story regarding the first Android app I | ever created. It practically drove me to give up on Android | development. | | https://medium.com/@daniel_11666/331c98270ec4?source=friends... | andwaal wrote: | After dealing with booth Google and Apple for a couple of years I | cannot express how much better the Apple experience with an | actually human you can communicate with on the other end. To | whomever thinking about starting a business relying on publishing | through the Play Store, please think twice. | nicoburns wrote: | Google's play store approval process really is a nightmare. | Apple's reviewers might be slow and not always the most | competent, but at least they're real humans you can talk to and | reason with. Google as usual is just an automated process that | often gives you little to no actionable feedback. | kyle-rb wrote: | It's been a couple years since I did mobile dev, but in my | experience you don't get to reason much with Apple's reviewers | either, but you can change something minor, re-submit, and hope | you get a different, better reviewer. | mrbombastic wrote: | You can reply to app review in app store connect and ask for | clarification, in my experience apple is much better at this | than google. | djbusby wrote: | With Apple, I got to actually talk to a human, on the phone | and have a 10 minute conversation to clear things up. | dessant wrote: | Luckily all of this will be illegal in the EU thanks to the | Digital Services Act, developers will have the right to know | the exact reason for a rejection, and Google will need to | provide real human support. | [deleted] | noasaservice wrote: | What I'm hearing is there's a hell of a European market to | cater to USA and other regions to host apps, and then play | hardball in getting real answers. | professoretc wrote: | Someone will need to start an EU-based business where US | developers can submit their rejections, and have the EU side | get a proper explanation. | klooney wrote: | I'm sure they'll manage the process so that it so that it's a | powerless human reading an AI's decision back to you. There's | no way to legislate wanting to do a good job. | therealmarv wrote: | oh, I was not aware the Digital Markets Act will change that | too. That is a win. | dessant wrote: | It's actually the Digital Services Act, I have corrected my | comment. | grogenaut wrote: | there are many completely valid and completely unactionable | reasons for rejecting people. Yes this might make it a bit | better but it's very hard to make someone who doesn't care | about helping you help you. Even regulation can just make | them do the minimum. | ranger_danger wrote: | Google will stop servicing Europe entirely before they offer | competent human support. | georgebarnett wrote: | This is a ridiculous assertion. Google won't do anything | like that. They'll comply with the law, because they want | European money. | parkingrift wrote: | It is really hilarious to me that Google is making PB jump | through hoops for this. Google is vacuuming vasts amount of user | data without any explicit user consent at all. It's just buried | in some encyclopedia length ToS. | Beltalowda wrote: | Last time I read it, it wasn't actually all that long. It was | just full of qualified language like "in some circumstances | such and such could be collected" and "Some Google services may | do this". At the end of it, it was entirely unclear to me what | Google actually did collect, but "services may do this" is | really no different from "services can do this" and the result | was essentially little more than "we can collect every bit of | information you send to us, which we may or may not do". The | qualified language was engineered very carefully to make it | sound _not_ like that. | fluidcruft wrote: | People should just copy-paste Google's TOS and Privacy Policy | as their own. After all, Google's own apps on the Play Store | surely comply with the Play Store's policies and the AI | gremlins that enforce it will have Google's own apps in the | "always approve" training bucket. | mysterydip wrote: | "but they pressed 'I accept'!" - some lawyer | mring33621 wrote: | What I think, after reading the post: | | 1) Pushbullet is frequently 'randomly selected' for extra | scrutiny (TSA style) because it competes with some offering from | Google or a preferred partner. | | 2) The review algo simply diffs the resubmission with the | previous version and if there are changes 'near' any of the | keywords from the violation, it gets approved, until the next | 'random' scan. | meltedcapacitor wrote: | Or just because it looks at SMS. Few non-malicious apps have a | reason to look at SMS and it's very high value data for | malicious ones, no surprise the AI model misclassifies the one | app with a perfectly legitimate use. It should be whitelisted | but hand tweaks to algo results are probably taboo at Google. | themoonisachees wrote: | Pushbullet is directly competing against google's "messages" | app. They have the exact same use case. Note that Messages does | not display such prominent markers that it's uploading stuf to | google server yada yada, probably because it is immune to play | store verification. | savy91 wrote: | Related submission (different company, same issues): | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273210 | | the experience of publishing apps to Google Play is really awful. | | After developing native apps for years, we'll be publishing our | next project as a PWA for this reason alone. | anononaut wrote: | It's comforting to know I'm not the only one. | stevenkkim wrote: | Can someone explain why both the Google Play Store and the Apple | App Store give opaque explanations for rejections? Why don't they | just tell developers what's wrong and what needs to be fixed | instead of pointing to some broad rule and forcing an | interpretative song and dance? | bliteben wrote: | I'm pretty sure its because the reviewers don't speak english | and thus can't type a fluent response in your language. | gjm11 wrote: | The (plausible) speculation in the article is that the | reviewers "don't speak English" because, being machine- | learning models rather than human beings, they don't speak | any language at all. | nvrspyx wrote: | Probably because giving a clear explanation would demonstrate | how often and how badly app reviewers misinterpret their own | rules. | TheRealPomax wrote: | Bots don't really care about that, though. | mrmuagi wrote: | I think they are using automation in detecting "violations" | perhaps, given the other commentors did seemingly no-op updates | and resolved things -- and any pushback would show the wizard | behind the curtains, so they keep it vague as possible? | | Unless someone who actually works behind the scenes can chime | in. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | While I think it would benefit Apple or Google as a whole to | explain their reasoning clearly, it'd make things harder on the | app approving teams, who probably don't want to do this for a | number of reasons: it'd take more time, it'd expose | inconsistency/mistakes/incompetence (why was this okay last | time but not this time?), and worst of all, it'd lead to the | organic creation of a binding network of labyrinthine | precedents. | ivanmontillam wrote: | Whilst I don't agree with the opaqueness policy, I understand | why it's in place. | | It's because it leaves them at risk of using previous precise | answers to others as precedents for future cases. Being opaque | allows them to not be too committed, and outside of situations | like "but you accepted XYZ app which does exactly the same, I | don't understand" | | You can still claim XYZ app does what you did and didn't get | punished by that, but they can never admit it in paper/words. | MBCook wrote: | There is also the intent vs letter issue. | | Scammers will try to skirt rules by making sure to adhere to | the letter of the law, even if it's plainly obvious they are | violating the intent of the rule in question. | | Rule 407b: no real money gambling apps | | Scammers: it's not real money. It's Linden Dollars. Or our | company script. Or our new NFTs. You can't reject us. | | Should the rule have to list out every single thing that | could possibly used as currency? Because there are people who | will argue that point. | three_seagrass wrote: | Yep, anti-fraud and anti-scam is an exercise in game | theory. | | The more explicit you are with the rules, the more specific | bad actors will try to weave around them. It sucks because | it means the scalable, machine-assisted review process | comes up with more false positives, but it's a two sided | market and the marketplace owners care more about the users | than the devs. | | I feel like the U.S. tax code is a good example of when you | try to go more explicit with the rules. | mkmk3 wrote: | Maybe theres a way to functionally build up towards the same | destination by collecting feedback and accepted changes. I | don't know how that integrates with law, but is there | something that influences the legal implications beyond what | this kind of system would cover (provided a sufficient number | of samples)? | np- wrote: | Isn't that unethical though? Preserving the right to make | arbitrary decisions and favor some people over others? Most | of the entire human history of conflict seems to be because | of this reason of arbitrary unfairness. | lazide wrote: | That isn't ethics, IMO. | | What you're referring to is the application of power, and | their retention of arbitrary power, specifically. | | Ethics is if they used that power for abuse or an unethical | goal, or to acquire an even larger amount of arbitrary | power. | | Pragmatically, it's their app store, and they need to | retain a non-trivial amount of power to police it. It's a | requirement of ownership. If they don't do so, it will | devolve to an even worse garbage dump, and rather quickly. | | We're of course going to complain about inexplicable | rulings, things we don't agree with, etc. but that doesn't | change the equation unless they get so obnoxious that other | places are more attractive or it violates some law. | vbezhenar wrote: | They's no way they would treat random app equally to | Facebook. It's unethical, but it's convenient for them. | unethical_ban wrote: | To answer your question, no. | stevenkkim wrote: | Yeah, I think this is probably the right answer. I once | worked on an iOS app that took about 5 cycles of "guess | what's wrong?" -> submission -> rejection before we got it to | pass. Each time, we asked "Can you just please tell us what | to fix?" and each time the answer was "refer to rule x." So | frustrating. | jstummbillig wrote: | The same reason they are not thrilled about support in general: | Manual labor is expensive, and at the scale that Apple or | Google operate, the amount of abuse and unwarranted complaints | you receive at high traffic, low entry barrier, outward facing | services is absolutely insane and can not realistically be | shouldered without heavy reliance on tools and templates. | Maxburn wrote: | First off, there's no human involved in the first couple passes | with this. Also bad actors could then use that detail to tweak | things and get around policy. It's not a great answer either | but possible. | artdigital wrote: | In my experience AppStore Review is usually pretty direct. They | tell me I violate this and that because of these things, and | even include screenshots where the violation is | sprokolopolis wrote: | As a long-time Pushbullet user, I would like to thank the | developer for their efforts in creating it and in keeping the app | available to us! | mrsaint wrote: | Ditto. As an Android user, I am glad Pushbullet exists, and my | whole daily workflow depends on it. Kudos. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-27 23:00 UTC)