<story><title>Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”</title><url>http://www.purpleleafsoftware.com/2019/03/google-removed-mommy-saver-plus-for.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KirinDave</author><text>&amp;gt; No single entity should wield this much power. And we should rewrite the laws to make this so.&lt;p&gt;I think in fact a lot of people do want them to do this. Folks complain the Play store is full of malware and spam, and that there are data leaks and deceptive ads.&lt;p&gt;Then Google or Apple goes and removes them, and then folks are mad if that process has errors.&lt;p&gt;It seems like a business where you make everyone mad no matter what you do.&lt;p&gt;[edit: Just to be clear, I&amp;#x27;m not a fan of the practice. But an awful lot of folks seem to think Apple and Google SHOULD wield editorial power, if only to stop outright malware. And of course, certain politicians want to make sure that the internet refuses to show content unflattering to people in power]</text></item><item><author>echelon</author><text>Can we sue Google when they do things like this? No single entity should wield this much power. And we should rewrite the laws to make this so.&lt;p&gt;Google and Apple &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; to be in the role of gatekeeper, so they should be beholden to the apps on their platform. We had a web where developers were in control of their own deployment. Everything was decentralized and required responsibility and diligence.&lt;p&gt;Now the power is out of our hands and its unfair. It isn&amp;#x27;t our choice.&lt;p&gt;One might argue this is better for consumers, but I honestly don&amp;#x27;t think so. Technology could have fixed discoverability and provided sandboxing, networks could provide curation. And there would probably be better privacy in the world where Mozilla won instead of Google.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am so happy that GDPR and CDPA have arrived to protect consumers. We need similar laws to protect startups, small businesses, and sole proprietors that rely on these platforms to treat us fairly. They owe us that after haven taken away the nice open web we once had. Maybe laws are how we get back the web we lost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>btown</author><text>It is absolutely possible to do this without making people mad. The solution is simple: educated, intelligent customer service for developers. Heck, make them pay a developer subscription fee to make the customer service cost-neutral. Or make them pay a refundable deposit to escalate a situation for manual review by a trained developer, at the cost of a market salary for however long that developer would take to review the situation.&lt;p&gt;But this cuts into the gatekeepers&amp;#x27; profit. Why have a cost-neutral program when you can not worry about having that program at all, and (in Apple&amp;#x27;s case) &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; charge people for access to the store and documentation?</text></comment>
<story><title>Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”</title><url>http://www.purpleleafsoftware.com/2019/03/google-removed-mommy-saver-plus-for.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KirinDave</author><text>&amp;gt; No single entity should wield this much power. And we should rewrite the laws to make this so.&lt;p&gt;I think in fact a lot of people do want them to do this. Folks complain the Play store is full of malware and spam, and that there are data leaks and deceptive ads.&lt;p&gt;Then Google or Apple goes and removes them, and then folks are mad if that process has errors.&lt;p&gt;It seems like a business where you make everyone mad no matter what you do.&lt;p&gt;[edit: Just to be clear, I&amp;#x27;m not a fan of the practice. But an awful lot of folks seem to think Apple and Google SHOULD wield editorial power, if only to stop outright malware. And of course, certain politicians want to make sure that the internet refuses to show content unflattering to people in power]</text></item><item><author>echelon</author><text>Can we sue Google when they do things like this? No single entity should wield this much power. And we should rewrite the laws to make this so.&lt;p&gt;Google and Apple &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; to be in the role of gatekeeper, so they should be beholden to the apps on their platform. We had a web where developers were in control of their own deployment. Everything was decentralized and required responsibility and diligence.&lt;p&gt;Now the power is out of our hands and its unfair. It isn&amp;#x27;t our choice.&lt;p&gt;One might argue this is better for consumers, but I honestly don&amp;#x27;t think so. Technology could have fixed discoverability and provided sandboxing, networks could provide curation. And there would probably be better privacy in the world where Mozilla won instead of Google.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am so happy that GDPR and CDPA have arrived to protect consumers. We need similar laws to protect startups, small businesses, and sole proprietors that rely on these platforms to treat us fairly. They owe us that after haven taken away the nice open web we once had. Maybe laws are how we get back the web we lost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>echelon</author><text>&amp;gt; I think in fact a lot of people do want them to do this.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I, the engineer,&lt;/i&gt; do not want them to do this. Before Google and Apple, I didn&amp;#x27;t have this problem. I didn&amp;#x27;t have to pay their tax or march to their beat.&lt;p&gt;You might argue that it&amp;#x27;s their platform and that&amp;#x27;s the cost for us to pay. But it wasn&amp;#x27;t always this way! These companies leveraged their advantages to steal eyeballs away from an open web and lock them in their own platform.&lt;p&gt;They could have spent money making the open web work better on mobile. Or designing a portable app framework and runtime for all devices. But we know why they didn&amp;#x27;t and what the outcome has been.&lt;p&gt;I want them to pay back the negative externalities they&amp;#x27;ve leveraged onto us.</text></comment>