The business is an American manufacturer that added capacity to manufacture PPE to make up for the lack of Chinese supply. Since we were supplying direct to the market, the prices of the PPE were in-market from before COVID times, or cheaper. We weren't out to make a killing, just to fill up some manufacturing time and help folks out. We had the equipment, the people, the facility.

However, we didn't have a great way to reach people who needed it - healthcare was not our normal industry - so we decided to put it up on Adwords.

Within 24 hours, the account was suspended. We appealed it (thinking it must have been a mistake), and a month later, they told us they reviewed it and maintained the suspension. We told them we were only promoting PPE to help people in health care find supply and they didn't care. We've never had suspension issues before.

The whole experience left a very negative taste for Google. With their extreme dominance in market share for advertising, they no longer need to cater to customers' needs. (Maybe they care if you're a multimillion dollar customer, but certainly not if you're an everyday SME manfuacturer.) And there's not a lot of alternatives to turn to for that type of advertising. There was no recourse, no discussion, no reasoning. Just the Google blank wall.

We wound up manufacturing lots of it anyway to hospitals in need, but Google actively tried to stop distribution of American-made PPE during the pandemic.

This sounds like a great headline to shine some light on Google's banning practices. Some bad PR may help them reconsider their lack of customer service.

Shame there won't be any ads put on that article to pay any of the staff. Another one of the problems that comes from a near-monopoly.

I guess much like mass-surveillance before Snowden, we in the tech-world are the only ones who know how bad it really is and why that is so dangerous.

After countless email replies from "Emily" - the Google support bot, and actual phone hangups from the call center, we gave up.

And there are plenty of other examples out there.

More story and screenshots here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229073

https://twitter.com/PodcastAddict/status/1261651512947691520

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 situation 100x worse on our mobile phones without batting an eye.

Finding software for Palm and Windows phones was often a trek through random forums and websites to download garbage that didn't work.

There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person, and the registry needed some quality assurance so that the average person would have a good experience.

Tucows wasn't going to cut it, and the only open model that worked at the time was linux distro package repositories, which would need a dozen features tacked on before it was usable, and only added packages glacially (that QA problem again.)

Smartphones wouldn't be a thing without centralized app stores, but I'm also in favor of allowing users to add third-party app stores, in the belief that 99% of people won't do it, and the 1% would understand the security risks.

This is revisionist. The iPod/iPhone originally didn't even have third party apps and it caught on anyway. Even now, 90% of the value of a smart phone is having a web browser in your pocket and most "apps" could have just as easily been web pages.

I think the only apps on my phone that can actually justify being apps instead of web pages are Signal (so it can store my conversations on my phone and not a third party service) and Firefox (because it's a web browser). Meanwhile the iOS app store won't allow Signal to be my SMS app and requires Firefox to use Apple's browser engine, so the utility it provides is strictly negative. I could have been just as happy to get Firefox from firefox.com and Signal from signal.org.

I still don't understand why Facebook is an app. Facebook is a web page. (I mean I do understand, it's because the app can hoover up more of your personal information, but why should I want that?)

The functional web browser was the main killer app, but the additional functionality of native applications is a non trivial part of the modern smartphone's success.

They will be very soon. PWA is spreading like wildfire.

Now we just need to teach people to use secure browsers. (Not just ones people think are private.)

Do you mean on Android? I've read they're a bit crippled on iOS

And also at the time, the company (Lindows/Linspire) that created an app store based on that foundation caught hell for doing so (my first job out of high school was doing QA on that app store).

So even if it was necessary to have app stores for consumers it wasn't an easy transition to make.

Contrast the iPhone where the only real things apps get you are push notifications and there’s nothing you can do even if you’re a decent programmer because you’re totally locked out. Plus nowadays we have github so there’s no need to “hunt” for software.

She isn't going to Github to download Whatsapp either.

IT folks are extremely tech savvy and do not count as normal when it comes to the market as a whole.

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...

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.

The US government went after MS multiple times. Most were over anti-competitive contracts. But the list includes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Which definitely did go after MS over bundling IE.

The penalties that Microsoft suffered under from the USA were sufficiently weak that they considered it a cost of doing business. It was only the much larger EU penalties that caused them to change course. But the USA definitely went after them for bundling IE.

The Nintendo NES came out in 1983. Didn't they have control of all apps allowed to run on their machine? They weren't charged with anti-trust violations.

They didn't.

The security of the consoles from that era was based on trademarks. The hardware would refuse to execute software unless it could find the manufacturer's name at some predefined memory location. Since these were trademarks, game companies had to obtain permission in order to use them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

The judges ruled that people had every right to reverse engineer existing games and produce compatible software for those consoles regardless of the manufacturer's wishes. The trademark violations were the manufacturer's fault since they made it necessary for games to work.

The world was a much better place before the DMCA.

The comparison breaks down somewhat though when you consider the size of the NES market (61.91 million units sold) vs. smartphones (1 billion+ sold). Nintendo, and the whole gaming market, may have just been too small for the justice department to pursue anti-trust charges.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System#...

Duopolies seem to be a natural state

Unfortunately, the vetting process has issues and I think even though the quality will improve over time due to more/better usage of ML/AI techniques but that will make the process more opaque.

Most smartphone apps seem like a way for a bank to wedge themselves between you and what you want to do.

Even then at least power users would be happy. At least I could load up apps that aren’t approved without having to jailbreak.

The problem with side loading us social engineering attacks.

Imagine how many iPhone users could be persuaded to sideload ‘corona 5g bioshield app detunes the software radio in your phone away from the harmful frequencies the NWO is trying to expose us to’.

I've tried Android, I don't like it. Apple has put a lot more thought into their UX. Also the Apple hardware is better.

Telling someone to use Android because they want control of their iPhone is a ridiculous argument because they aren't substitutes for each other.

> The problem with side loading us social engineering attacks.

Exactly, which is why I said to make it hard to side load. Require you to run an app on a Mac laptop and write some code to make it work. Make it so that there are so many steps that only the most dedicated are interested. But just make it possible.

And besides, somehow Android doesn't seem to have a widespread problem with this, despite allowing side loading.

Exploiters don’t need to leverage side loading because the platform and store are insecure enough as it is.

As to making it into a huge pain to sideload, what you want is already available. You can install whatever you like by downloading XCode.

Only if the source is available. Or the creator is under their 100 user limit.

Can't you do exactly that with xcode?

Only if the source is available. Or the creator is under their 100 user limit.

There is no way for someone to make an iPhone app and put it up online and let anyone who wants to download it and install it.

Less than 0.5% of them, apparently.

But also, what do you care what idiots do? Nobody is forcing you to install it on your phone. Freedom of choice is not an obligation to choose poorly.

I think there’s good reason for the sideload feature to be there, but your argument seems to be about it being unimportant because 0.5% isn’t a big percentage.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18528297/google-io-2019-an...

Google copied them because they wanted a piece of the app store tax.

I'm being snarky, but it seems a little naive to think either of these companies wasn't eager to capitalize on the lucrative mobile software market. Aren't you also prevented from buying subscriptions or making other in-app purchases within iOS apps (but not through the app store's integrated system)? Seems like that has little to do with malware as it's not just a ban on malicious IAP, but rather any type of IAP that doesn't include the "app store tax" as you put it.

I think both the Google and Apple stores purport to be a generally safe repository of mobile software in order to encourage the sale and distribution of apps, strengthen the appeal of their respective platforms, and generate revenue by providing these markets (for a cut).

Apple's motivations for continuing to charge outrageous fees are, of course, that they want to keep the free money rolling in. And they must have hoped to generate a revenue stream. But establishing tight control had lots of other motivations.

By contrast Google was deliberately creating an open platform on open sourced software. Their decision to lock down this piece was opposite the rest of the product direction. And it is hard to believe that they weren't looking at the demonstration of what happened with the iPhone and were trying to replicate the revenue model.

Yes, but I see this as Apple desiring tight control, first and foremost (as you hint at). Helping cut a potential malware problem off at the pass was a nice side benefit. I see the flow of causation in the other direction here. Apple just wanted control, because that's just how they do things. Initially they weren't even going to allow third-party apps.

This cuts both ways: while you can't distribute obvious malware on Apple's App Store, you also can't distribute perfectly benign things that people want, but Apple has decided is distasteful... to them.

> By contrast Google was deliberately creating an open platform on open sourced software.

I think that's a fairly naive view of it. They believed that open-sourcing the OS was the best way to gain market share (which worked, for all Android's fragmentation and faults). I sincerely doubt it had much to do with some desire for openness; that would contrast pretty sharply with most of the rest of Google.

> Their decision to lock down this piece was opposite the rest of the product direction.

Except they didn't lock it down! I have several apps on my phone installed via F-Droid. The Facebook Lite app used to (I uninstalled FB a couple years ago, so not sure if it's still the case) have the ability to manage and install its own updates (I assume for lower-spec/non-Google-Apps phones in developing markets). If I feel I can trust an app I download off the internet, I can install it. I have a couple of my own apps installed on the phone, without needing to pay Apple a $99 gate-keeping fee, and the software to install them is open source, not wrapped up in proprietary Xcode.

I will be the first to agree that most people don't avail themselves of this option, and an app developer who doesn't publish in the Google Play Store is kneecapping their market reach. But the fact that it's possible (and not even difficult) to do is the point. Sideloading on an iPhone is something that costs money; requires specialized skills, tools, and a particular brand of hardware; and is out of reach for the vast majority of people who (for example) would otherwise sideload on Android.

> * And it is hard to believe that they weren't looking at the demonstration of what happened with the iPhone and were trying to replicate the revenue model.*

I'm sure that was part of it, but... so what? I don't really see this as indicative of a particular mindset.

ON the other hand some wise open app store wild west... the android app store is bad enough with malware, can you imagine one with nobody minding the store?

No approval process, no banned from App Store.

It's quite amazing when you think about it, that two US companies have absolute power over deciding what 99% of people in the world can do with a device that many would describe as an extension of themselves.

> When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their website, an effort made to avoid the substantial revenue cuts that Google takes from in-app purchases of Play Store downloads. After 18 months of harsh rhetoric regarding platform gatekeeping, Epic Games says that Fortnite is now available for download on the Google Play Store, though it will still be downloadable from fortnite.com moving forward.

> Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,: an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. "Because of this, we've launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store."

https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

Isn't that actually proof that something doesn't need to be on google play to be checked and improved?

> Any app with the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission can substitute the APK immediately after the download is completed and the fingerprint is verified. This is easily done using a FileObserver. The Fortnite Installer will proceed to install the substituted (fake) APK.

Notably, all operating systems that allow programs to write to files have this "pathologically bad security". Download a .exe file on Windows and check its hash before installing and you have a TOCTOU bug where malware can sub the file after you've checked the hash.

Another alternative is to not permit any application to be installed unless it is signed by the OS manufacturer or some other finite trusted list of signers - but then we are right back at the app store model that pisses people off.

That's a solved problem. Apps on iOS can request access to the photo library. Why Apple still doesn't allow write access to the music library is frustrating.

It would be nice if you had a universal "folder picker" where multiple apps could be given access to a user created folder on ios, admittedly.

That's not Android fault: you're asking Android to give you access to an unrestricted storage area (e.g. because you want to edit photos shot with your Camera app), and the fact that other apps can read/write to it, is the whole point of that storage. Hence you need to treat it as untrusted, and validate that you're going to install the APK that you thought you were going to install.

Which, yes, is a reason to not use external storage. But for large downloads it's undeniably the norm, since internal storage is frequently limited. Since Android doesn't appear to provide a way to use the SD card and also prevent this, that part of it is an Android flaw IMO.

As evidence, note the external storage options say "can another app access it? yes, if it's in external storage": https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage...

The fact that the norm is different is a good point, but the norm is also not to implement your own app stores.

In fact, if internal storage is so limited that you don't have space for the APK, you'll get errors due to lack of space even while installing apps from the Play store

Anyway. Yeah, silent installs make this dangerous, no disagreement there at all (tho they're always more dangerous. I'd prefer to never have them). But there's also no reason that Android can't provide a protected external store, except that they've been self-destructively hostile to external storage in any form. It won't work if you remove the SDCard and manipulate it elsewhere, but that's not the attack vector here - it's entirely possible to protect from things on-device, just like they do for internal storage. They even partially achieve it now, with "adopted" internal storage, so it's absolutely possible.

But really? That's the card you're going to play? That "every app has security issues" so this is okay?

They probably invested quite a few engineering hours to devise a solution, as there’s a lot of code / Google services that need to be replicated. It’s unsurprising to me that there were some bugs in this code, and I think generally companies that respond to bug reports and issue patches should be commended.

Where I would disagree is if you are claiming that we should be treating Google Play akin to a low-level cryptographic library in the vein of a “don’t ever roll your own” approach. Allowing independent software distribution is usually considered a positive differentiator for Android. For this to be a viable distribution channel it’s actually extremely important for large and popular entities to be using side loading in order to build recognition and trust in its use. Ideally it results in open-source sideloading frameworks and best practices that the larger community can build upon.

Personally I’ve relied on Zoom to get meetings running quickly (without wasting precious time fighting with hard to install client software) many times on meetings where I would gladly trade ease of use for security posture.

I think Zoom messed up but has shown they can admit fault and course correct.

They are—as far as I’m aware—an entirely content neutral communications network that lets me pay for a service, doesn’t try to analyze and data mine my content, isn’t operating as a middleman between me and my customers, and isn’t at risk of becoming my competitor if it detects my product is becoming successful. They aren’t leveraging a monopoly position to maximize rent seeking and crushing the little guy through arbitrarily enforced content moderation policies. They aren’t exploiting cheap labor or phish a business to intercept their customers.

So as far as growth-hacks go, playing some API tricks on Mac and Windows to get their client ridiculously easy to install and running in a meeting — which risked you entering a meeting without an extra prompt, or potentially provided a pivot for unsigned code....

Frankly they seem about as un-villainous as they come in terms of publicly listed tech companies or venture-backed unicorns.

QubesOS, Snaps, Firejail, Sandboxie, browser tabs to some extent, restrict user-freedom in only the most technical way, with no bundled choice traps. On the contrary, a good sandbox allows users to forego human curation/proprietary malware detection services and execute any code they want.

Wait a sec, does this affect F-Droid as well?

It was done with Windows and Explorer so I don't see why this is any different.

That said, auto-updates are still not possible without root access, I believe.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

Just because the parent is talking about the implementation doesn't mean the user-facing UI will actually expose any of it.

I believe the parent was suggesting, like with Windows/IE decades ago, that Android phones may have to come with a prompt to enable alternative stores to Play.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged...

I think we agree this is a crucial technical disadvantage. Do you think it would be fair for users to be able to make this decision for themselves on devices they own?

https://www.xda-developers.com/xda-labs/

It tries to provide an alternative to the 30% "platform charge", and offers PayPal and cryptocurrency payments (with real-time approval etc from what I recall).

It's hard to gain users on an alternative store, especially when most don't know what isn't available to them. And most also don't see the 30% fee being taken from the developer by the platform. Low cost apps are pretty much unaffordable to do at hobbyist scale when you factor in the platform charge, VAT, and taxes, and I fear for the future with app development heading down the route of only large professional outfits doing so (with their large, professional data gathering and monetisation plans).

Aurora Droid supports F-Droid-like repos, you can have multiple selected, and they may include proprietary applications.

All usual issues with Android's security getting in the way still applies though.

Overall Aurora Droid is still miles away from a "proper" store, because there is no payment, there is no user feedback (so apps are still ordered by last updated or name...), and I don't think the author plans on adding such features (Because it also requires backend work). That's still a nice update to F-Droid original app.

But as I understand it, Apple is not accepting any apps related to COVID-19 that don't come from an authority like a medical institution or a government body. In the face of the reality that there are many people ready to sell their mothers to slavery for profit(and even maybe likes or the LULs), I am O.K. with leaving the pandemic to the monopoly of institutions that can be held responsible for their actions.

You should try to re-submit your app without referencing to the pandemic in any way. Do not include any keywords that can get you flagged again. After all, the pandemic could have never happened. You are not entitled to profit from it, right?

Your description looks fairly innocent and I see how it is relevant to mention the quarantine and I wish you luck as your app might actually help people with it but it's not the end of the world not to use the word.

Unlike you, there are many people looking to rank high in the most popular keywords simply because these are popular keywords at the moment and it's likely that Google and Apple don't have a better way to separate bad apples from the good apples so they go for the crude but safe approach of banning them.

I am using the German email provider mailbox.org They even report how often the government forces them to release info with a search warrant.

However, I have yet to find an email provider that mimics Gmail's tagging system (=> you can give n many tags to a single email and that email is only kept once on the server).

I often think that Google's "Don't do evil" motto is stretched way too often these days.

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 categories(?). It's not obvious at first if you only know traditional categories.

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 AppSuite. Both are ok, but usability could be better.

In any case, best of luck with it!

Thunderbird's tags are a different concept from folders on IMAP.

As I remember the way GMail is using IMAP keywords is considered "broken". They just do it wrong and make it impossible to play nice with alternate clients on gmail-accounts.

  And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!

[^1]: https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

'The updated version of Google’s code of conduct still retains one reference to the company’s unofficial motto—the final line of the document is still: “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”'

So they literally just moved it to the end of the code of conduct and did not remove it.

I actually run my own dovecot and postfix server, and use an SMTP proxy. That way I know I have full custody of my email.

I just use Outlook as a client, and it was surprisingly not awful.

Honestly, encryption and privacy isn't what motivates me. It's the fact Google could delete my data without warning, because they have with others. They also have no support I've ever been able to speak to. Even when I was using GCP, and I was paying Google hundreds for the privilege of decent technical support, it was like pulling teeth to get ahold of someone who could actually help. Not sure if Protonmail is like this, or has ever deleted paid accounts (I have one with them, too), but their vendor lock-in is very real, and it's justified through encryption and privacy measures.

Honey, if I wanted actual privacy and anonymity, I certainly wouldn't use a paid service. There are ways to get an email and server that never asks for your name, and can be paid for in privacy coin. Then, you can own your own VPN, and that's where you proxy. Tor wouldn't help here, since even if you ran a hidden service and SOCKS proxy, you're still screwed if the logs are compromised. So make sure your distro is adequately LUKS encrypted, etc., etc. Best to think hard about your threat model depending on what you want to do. I don't do illegal shit, but I'd just done the thought exercise of how someone would if they lived in a place where stuff we'd consider an infringement on our freedoms an acceptable reason to do something illegal in their jurisdiction.

The United States is a remarkably safe place to do business and live your life, as long as you keep your nose clean and pay your taxes. Have some money stashed away for a good attorney if necessary. Try to make their job easier by not doing anything the cops would need to care about, of course.

But people like easy privacy, and pseudonymity even when they're doing nothing that could even be misinterpreted as illegal. But if they were, they're absolutely doing it wrong if you pay for Protonmail, or don't but sing up with a phone number they pay for or with their personal Gmail address.

...but when they did, they acted the same way. ...and if they do again, they'll do the same as Google.

The only correct move, IMO, is to self-host.

Stop hating on Google! Google is one of the few companies that provide quality services for end-users "for free".

Since there are no rules, and no published list of words you can't use, there's also no recourse. Irrational and irresponsible.

Par for the course for Google, really.

You can try to talk to someone at Google, but good luck with that. I think you’re doing what’s best now. Shine a spotlight so far up Google’s hooter via publicity about your case that someone higher up catches your attention and remedies the situation.

I only downloaded it because he's my brother but I now realize how helpful it is and it's frustrating that potentially helpful apps are getting banned when they're not even attempting to profit.

that is just crazy

As usual they are just using a hammer to crack a nut.

They can't pull this shit with youtube because creators have a direct line to draw attention to it. With developers they know it will go largely unreported

In the worst case, I doubt it will resolve anything but it could give other developers an idea on how or how not to communicate with google. In the best case, you might restore your app on google and have a template for other developers on how to deal with this issue.

If you have send a request but didn't get a reply, please post those as well.

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 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.

I'm no expert, but I guess you need to try and phrase it like it just the thing you need when you are home, and let the users figure out why they are home.

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...

Though I'm still puzzled at how Google allows so many YT feeds showing live COVID stats.

Why do you want to advertise that to your future users?

From your description, your app appears to be an event finder that started out for only physical events, and you later expanded that to include online events.

The app itself does not appear to have anything to do with COVID. COVID was simply what personally motivated you to add online events, and so it's not clear to me that including COVID related words in the description will actually help anyone find or understand your app on the store.

Of course, they won't, because this policy is absurd and enforced unevenly.

More like dumber than the dumbest human.

The odds are good they ban Red Cross or a reputable news organization.

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

The following videos have been removed from youtube.

- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 10: New Studies, Transmission, Spread from Wuhan, Prevention (2019-nCoV)

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 43: Shortages, Immunity, & Can a TB Vaccine (BCG) Help Prevent COVID-19

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 57: Remdesivir Treatment Update and Can Far-UVC Disinfect Public Spaces

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 60: Hydroxychloroquine Update; NYC Data; How Widespread is COVID-19

- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 71: New Data on Adding Zinc to Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin

Watch their latest video to see that they try to stick to the facts and avoid politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANgon3Umns

- The information on their app store regarding the virus is 100% medically and scientifically accurate.

- Nobody takes advantage of the pandemics to profit.

"global circumstances"

"event restrictions"

Google has a monopoly on phone apps. If they don't like your app then you pretty much don't exist. You don't have many options.

When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or game console.

This idea that if something isn't available on your phone, then it's not available is silly. There are many things that, while you can technically put on a phone, really don't thrive there. Phones are low powered, minimal form factor devices with inferior inputs. You do stuff on the phone because the benefit of doing it from any location far surpasses the unpleasantness of the interface. For example getting a cab, or figuring out how to get from A to B, or sending a quick message to someone when you are away from the house.

If it's not related to helping you move around from place to place, or helping you connect to a friend quickly, it's not going to thrive on the phone even if you put it there, and if you look at the usage statistics of phone apps versus regular PC apps, you'll see this confirmed.

That’s clearly not true. For a large portion of the world, the smartphone is their only computing device.

There are about 6 billion smartphones in use. Last I heard, the desktop/laptop install base was around 1 billion, but that’s a fuzzy memory.

The trend has been obvious for years: more and more people do all of their computing on smartphones.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital-div...

Just to throw some numbers out there, as of 2018:

iOS revenue: 47 B. (global, all sources, software, ads, etc) [1]

Google play: 25 B (global, all sources, software, ads, etc) [1]

Global software revenue: ~450 B (global) [2]

Total software revenue (US only): ~260 B. [3]

You are right about the 90% and 10%, but it's not pointing in the direction you think. So you can keep counting devices with very different characteristics and insisting that one number is higher than the other, or you can start counting dollars.

[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

[2] https://www.statista.com/markets/418/topic/484/software/

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184124/estimated-revenue...

Then why is the games category the #1 promoted category on the Apple App Store?

I sometimes find it difficult understanding all the complaining about Google and all the love for Apple, with regard to doing what's right.

Liability is not the only reason Google might choose to censor Covid keywords. They might do it because their users expect them to. They might do it because they think it's the right thing to do. They might do it because they care more about blocking disinformation than allowing useful information. They might do it because a programmer has been working on this really cool censoring algorithm and they want to test it in production. They might do it because they're tired of people talking about Covid on their platforms and want it shut down in general.

Section 230 applies to every major/minor platform in the US, granting all of them immunity from liability for most content. And yet, virtually all of them from Facebook to 4Chan, from Youtube to Pornhub, from Reddit to tiny 200-member Wordpress forums -- all of them censor some content. So liability is clearly not the only motivation for platforms to moderate, otherwise every comment section would be 8Chan.

Censorship of any content implies approval of all remaining content. One can't be protected from liability as a common carrier if one is curating.

So if you have been provably harmed by anything Google has served you, you can sue the owner of the content and join Google as a defendant.

(Not a lawyer.)

No, that's literally the opposite of current US law. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

Moderation does not imply endorsement of remaining content. It only implies disapproval of the rejected content.

There are plenty of people who who would like to change the current legal system, but (thankfully) by either grace, luck, or perseverance they have so far been prevented from doing so.

Does taking a third of the revenues imply endorsement?

The goal of Section 230 is to allow companies to moderate. It was based on two cases: one where a company that tried to moderate harmful content got stuck with liability, and one where a company that did no moderation at all got off by calling itself a platform.

The point of Section 230 is that you should be able to moderate a forum you run or remove malware from the Ubuntu repositories without opening yourself up to liability. There is no exception to Section 230 based on revenue. If you put a paywall up on your forum, you don't suddenly become liable for slander that someone else posts.

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but if you really wanted to find a way around that, probably the best strategy would be to argue that the company was purposefully disseminating unlawful content. A lot of old pirate hosting sites got hit with this. They weren't liable because they were publishers, they were liable because lawyers argued that piracy was the only reason their services existed, and that in some cases the companies had gone far as to encourage their own employees to upload pirated material.

So I'm not going to make a 100% black-and-white blanket statement; there are ways you could get around Section 230. But none of them really apply to Google. Google isn't building its own ads for Covid misinformation, and it would be hard to argue that banning the Covid keyword was evidence that they actually wanted misinformation to spread.

If Google takes 30% of revenues from all apps on the play store, should it not assume 30% of product liability for the content found therein? It seems like a common sense rule, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is anywhere in law, or that civil courts apply it.

If you put up a paywall on your forum, and it is a platform for libel, you damned well should be liable, at minimum to the extent to which you profited from the wrongful behavior, and possibly lessened by the extent to which any libel is usually moderated away.

If the moderation in place is so strict that it is producing significant false positives, why should the false negatives be protected? Having both is a symptom of sloppy, insufficiently earnest moderation.

I would assume from the actions of Twitter that they implicitly endorse content from people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and I would assume from Facebook that they implicitly endorse misinformation campaigns. They are making money on their failure to moderate to their own published standards. Should that be legally protected? Section 230 presumably makes no exception for lazy, insufficient moderation.

But legally, you aren't. Both Compuserve and Prodigy, the companies that Section 230 are based on, were commercial services that made money. Section 230 is a blanket protection, it doesn't have an exception built in to open liability back up in the case of lazy, insufficient moderation.

That's been upheld pretty consistently since the law was created. In particular, in 2008:

> Immunity was upheld against claims of fraud and money laundering. Google was not responsible for misleading advertising created by third parties who bought space on Google's pages. The court found the creative pleading of money laundering did not cause the case to fall into the crime exception to Section 230 immunity.

Scrolling through the case law since Section 230 was founded, you'll see that many of the cases it was used in involved commercial entities that profited from their services.

> If the moderation in place is so strict that it is producing significant false positives, why should the false negatives be protected?

Because that was the intention of the original law. The thought was that if moderation creates liability, companies won't do it. If scanning for malware makes Google liable for malware under some ruling that their moderation isn't "complete", then there's no incentive for Google to scan for malware in the Play Store. And if nobody moderated anything, the Internet would become a cesspool of malware, spam, pornography, advertisements, misinformation, hate speech, and general poor content.

Of course, some people think the Internet already is a cesspool in that regard, but my feeling is they don't have a good grasp on how much worse the problem could be.

Section 230 was created specifically to protect services who tried to moderate content, but who didn't do a perfect job, because (the thought was) imperfect moderation is better than nothing. It didn't come with a clause that said that companies would lose their protection if they were accidentally banned the wrong person, or if they had inconsistent standards, or if their standards were lazy.

> Should that be legally protected?

Legally, it is protected. Should is a separate question, and people are free to believe whatever they want. There is no shortage of Democrats and Republicans in Congress right now who are asking that same question, although the two parties seem to have radically different, incompatible ideas about what the world is going to look like when the protection goes away. And then there are a few people like Barr who mostly just care about using 230 as a proxy to attack encryption, which is at least a nonpartisan goal that the DOJ has consistently pursued across multiple presidencies.

But the point is, whatever these people's motivations, if you really think that Section 230 was a mistake, it's not impossible that you might be able to get a world without it in the future -- and then we'll all find out whether or not it was a good idea. Just expect some hefty resistance from people like me, as well as from organizations like the EFF and ACLU.

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.