So long Google, and thanks for all the nudes (lecaro.me)

Not really, unless paying users switch to alternative stores, which they don't just because I as a developer face friction in publishing to Google Play.

In fact, Google is making alternative stores even less convenient with their latest 'side-loading' hurdles.

Regulators need to wake up, issue record fines, mandate equal access and a 'Choose your app stores' screen on device setup.

Otherwise competitive third party stores and a fair market are going to remain a pipe dream.

More generally, I think there should be a legally-enforced right of due process online. Much of the rules of modern society are enforced by these companies, rather than governments, and we should have similar rights.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it makes sense for a company to have the ability to block spammers, scammers, and malware without proving a case in a court of law, but I feel like there's a spectrum of importance, where the more potentially harmful the action is to the user, the more process is due to the impacted user to make sure the action is justified. Examples from least- to most-important:

   - removing individual content that has little real-world importance: comments, social media posts, etc.
   - banning accounts on platforms that generally have low real-world value (other than sentimental value) to the user: reddit, HN, non-monetized Youtube accounts, etc
   - banning accounts on free platforms that have a very high cost to the user of being banned: Gmail (keys to the user's digital kingdom, the rest of the Google account), Facebook (real-name policy means that it's difficult to start over), high-notoriety accounts on other social media, etc.
   - removing individual listings/etc on platforms where the user makes money: eBay, monetized Youtube videos, paid App/Play store apps, etc
   - Banning accounts on platforms where the user makes money and the account itself has some intrinsic value (reputation, following, etc): eBay, monetized Youtube accounts, App store accounts, social media accounts for businesses, etc.
   - Locking up or taking the user's money: locking the user out of a bank/brokerage/crypto/payment platform account; rescinding money (or other things with monetary value): bank account balances, payment platform balances, unpaid Youtube/other monetization earnings, loyalty/credit card points, etc.
   - Banning accounts that are essential for the user to participate in society: bank account, cell phone plan, identity providers, etc.

Alongside that, I feel like if there's a clear revenue stream to the platform owner from the account, then the case for due process is even stronger -- if the platform is making hundreds or thousands of dollars because of my presence, surely they can have a competent, empowered human look at things when necessary.

They don't have access to the content anymore, as mentioned a bit later in the article.

Anybody who's ever tried to get through their review process can attest that the article writer's experience is far from outside the norm.

Although I must admit I've never gotten nudes from them. Up your game, Google.

Is this supposed to be some hypocrisy gotcha? It's a guy's personal blog

He's jotting down his thoughts, not trying to be a review process to distribute software on the most used operating system on the planet

You know, personal anecdotes and all that, but a company I used to work with was applying for their b2b app as well and we got a denied with a screenshot of a completely unrelated app as well, and that was at least 5 years ago. We ended up just replying "That's not our app" and I think it got stuck in limbo after that as I don't recall hearing anything about it afterwards and then I left the company.

Open a corporation and register as an organization. Easier way to get through.

I also had my old dev account that I used during school permanently disabled.

I've written about this before on HN, but it's pretty clear that once the app stores courted the hobby developers and convinced them to publish their apps on the stores to get the marketplace flywheel started (remember all the discussion about the app stores competing based on the number of apps available in each?), that the focus wasn't going to be on hobbyist developers at all because they don't bring in the most cash. By imposing ever higher restrictions on app developers in the name of security, they are raising the bar to such a degree that typically only funded corporate customers will have an incentive to go through all the effort, since they can literally pay someone to do so.

In essence, while the app stores used to be about hobbyist software to some degree, they have become a place created by big companies for big companies, much like Walmart or Target. That would be fine if customers could choose when they visited Walmart or Target, but instead, we've created a regime where you must buy everything from Walmart or Target.

This has made mobile development a wasteland for hobbyist-built and community-built software. I know some people cheer this as the removal of amateurs and crappy software from the marketplaces, but I would counter with the observation that commercial software often doesn't have my best interests at heart, and I would, many times, prefer a piece of community-built or amateur software instead. This gets harder to procure with each passing day.

So, I think developers are generally better-served leaving mobile development and instead focusing on web development, which is not gated in the same ways. While you won't have the same reach that you would get through the app stores, you do have much more control over the platform on which you're developing.

I think it's fairly obvious that Google doesn't _want_ hobby developers in the play store at all. Their app development, publication, and review process seems quite intentionally designed to be penetrable only to those who are willing to make it (or already is) their full-time job.

There's just no money in it for them, and a lot of support burden. Hobbyist apps are either free, or a few bucks. For Google, the income is a rounding error compared to ad revenue for household-name apps or in-app purchases inside blockbuster mobile games.

(I will be first in line to buy the first working and affordable Linux smartphone.)

Because you are hobby developer. Thanks to this there are no so much junk in Play Store. When you open business account you don't need to do this closed test, you go straight to prod.

I don't understand how Google aka the company that famously automates all the things can't "vibecode" a review tool to handle the increased submissions. I'm sure they already have which makes the delays puzzling. With all that compute, and all those brilliant engineers they should should be cranking out reviews, security audits and approving new apps/updated apps quicker than ever.

>>the cost of a false rejection is very low.<<

maybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.

The expense to review them deeply used to be large, a few years ago. There should be a review process that consists of putting the source code in some escrow build environment and letting an LLM do a full audit. What would that be, a few bucks at-cost?

Okay, can you concoct some prompt-injection-like scenario where you can fool increasingly sophisticated agents about the presence of your malware? Sure, maybe. It's MILES ahead of where both major app stores are today, though, where you can find obvious scams that sailed through review just by looking at their description.

Exact same philosophy they use for hiring.

AI apps are flooding everything. No doubt they are using or planning to use AI to help manage the load.

And then of course all the apps will use some kind of AI, and because humans don’t care to wade through a trillion tip calculators or whatever, they’ll use AI to pick the app. And then have AI use the app for them through a voice assistant.

If only they would charge developers exorbitant fees that could fund such work...

Of course I understand that they are not going to spend money on improving their review process for our benefit until regulators force them to.

Why would it be large? Or problematically so.

Apple releases numbers: 130,000 app reviews per week.

The human component to this doesn't need to do much more than verify it works, they say they churn through that with just 500 reviewers that must be costing just a few $10s of millions.

They could certainly do a better job, but maybe that means 2,500 reviewers? That'd cost them half-a-year of Roblox's commissions.

If Google needs 2x as many that's 5,000 people, their whole Roblox commission. There are more people working at their HQ, and this is a job they can distribute between cheaper countries.

Of course Google could do this, but they don't want to. Their only goal is to cut costs and avoid lawsuits.

If you have no gatekeeping, then all of the bad actors come in and you end up with a tragedy of the commons.

Apple did this correctly, IMHO, when the App Store first came out by both:

- reviewing all apps

- having it take 30 days to get the feedback

The 30 days seemed draconian or bureaucratic but it forced builders to be 100% sure that there app was working and ready for consumption. It probably also acted as major friction for scammers etc who figured it wouldn't be worth it.

The iPhone 1 only allowed web bookmarks. They aren’t as capable as real apps in dozens of ways. The fact that lots of Apps are just glorified web site browsers doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of apps that aren’t, and some that couldn’t be done with a web site at all.

If they didn't review every app, someone might sneak in a paid app without giving Apple and Google their 30% cut.

I only ever published anything on the google play store under another google account than the one that's got my gmail and photos.

Big tech controls the AIs. The solution, of course, is antitrust enforcement.

Are you an editor or involved with app review? I would rather read this honestly written, succinct blog post than a mountain of AI slop that half of the HN front page is.

That’s irrelevant. The author likely doesn’t have English as their first language. They are an individual, not one of the most valuable company ever

You can't win. If he had had a perfect text with a - or two you'd have written 'Oh, this must surely be AI'.

That makes Google competent how?