The exact same thing happened to me last week<p>My ads-free really simple React Native app was removed from the play store for “deceptive ads”<p>I don't care too much as this was just a way to learn React Native for me, but it's still really weird<p>To be honest every interaction I have with Google products nowadays are bad:<p>- This app kicked from the Play store<p>- A bug with the new Adsense Auto-ads where you couldn't disable the giant ads that were added on your content without removing completely Google Adsense script, which I did<p>I'm now moving away from anything Google
When you receive that email from Google you can only fill a generic form given at the bottom of the email. You can't contact a human being to understand why it is rejected/removed. Problem is not written clearly and it doesn't include a screenshot as apple does. Google is terrible at support on Play Store (and some more of its services).
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.<p>Google and Apple <i>wanted</i> 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.<p>Now the power is out of our hands and its unfair. It isn't our choice.<p>One might argue this is better for consumers, but I honestly don'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.<p>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.
><i>Felkod: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE</i><p>Couldn't access it. Found Web Archive link[0].<p>Mistaken identity for an app with the same name (it seems). More specifically, it seems like someone at Google was looking to disable the app, yours was the first to return in their search, so that must've been it. You'd think there'd be correlatable identifiers to specifically prevent this?<p>[0] - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190325230133/https://www.purpleleafsoftware.com/2019/03/google-removed-mommy-saver-plus-for.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20190325230133/https://www.purpl...</a>
From the blog comments:<p>> Good luck man. I had an app removed because someone did a review of it and their review had screenshots of my app and Google banned the app for copyright infringement siting them as the source. No appeal, one strike, never got through to a human.<p>If true that’s laughablly insane.
If Google can't be bothered to give a fuck, can't this be mittigated by splitting the responsibilities?<p>Have a company that takes care of building, uploading and distributing apps from developers to the app store, and fixing all the distribution issues (via Google/Apple contacts in cofee shops in SV, that could push for resolution of issues internally).<p>And developers would work with this comapny, and would not need to care about Google/Apple at all.<p>Why do we need to see all these "Google did this to us" articles on HN? This should be a solvable problem, via some intermediary that would have more options/human contacts/power wrt Google, than a single developers.
I hear a lot of people complain they got falsely banned by some automated process. But automatic processes are easy to game, so just do what the spammers likely do, slightly edit the app, re-upload using another account and IP, etc, repeat. I'm sad every time I install an Android app, thinking how much crap/spyware it will install on my device ...<p>Android should allow other "app stores", just like you can have different browsers, you should also be able to have different "app stores". Just like there is not just one "store" in the physical world. Then there could be niche stores that focus on some category, or quality.
Why is it that software repositories work so much better than these app stores? Every app store on every platform is a wasteland of adware and malware, but I have never found such a program in, say, the Debian repos.<p>App stores manage to be simultaneously more restrictive than a repository and less trustworthy than downloading executables through a web browser.
I do think that the redress model is broken. It might require money, but there should be a path, to put up a stake for a good-faith review. If they judge you not a spammer or time waster, you should get to talk to a person with an advocate or adjudicator.
I had a similar situation where I contacted google and asked permission about having a certain app made. Got the green light from several google teams. Pushed and marketed the app and app brought in 7+ figures of revenue throughout the years. Got shut down after about 2 years randomly with no feedback etc. Even my personal consultants from google that they assign to you had no clue and I was left to fend for myself and just eat the lost/work I put into the app.
"Games" part considered advertising because you are advertising your own games. You should rename it to like "Our Other Games", "Check Other Games" or just add "ADS" label to pictures and update your new APK.
Similar happened to us, they want to keep the traffic in their platform so they want for tricky behavior, confusing buttons, ect. Pretty anal about getting constant updates to games, makes it impossible for small companies to survive.
Advertising your own apps/games in a different app of yours is still an ad.<p>If you click it, it will probably point to the play store to install it like any other ad.<p>Change the copy to "install more of my apps" and they will allow it.<p>Yes since they employed lots of manual labor, many false positive have hit me as well. And it's very frustrating.<p>But this is just another empty "Lets hate on Google".
Following the guidelines this IS a deceptive ad.<p>Simple reply them in the policy form and they'll get back to you why within 2 days.
I got that too. I had no ads, but I did have a link to other apps that I made that were similar (It was a city travel guide app). That counted as an ad apparently. Yeah, I can see there point, so I changed the link text.
In case it helps - they recently forced me to remove all "upgrade to pro" UI affordances that led from a free app to a paid app in the app store claiming they were ads as well. So their definition of ads is pretty strange.
it seems that in such cases easiest approach is to contact someone at Google to forward your case to the right person. I met Goog people at my coffee shop and had cases where weird behavior happened (when i tried to leave a review for example) and i just emailed them and they said "oh @#$ that looks like a bug I've forwarded this to PM at xxx. here's interim solution.." I couldn't believe it was that easy.. in the end network is probably the best path
Looking at this from another lense, think the reason why so much moderation is automated is that these companies do Human Ops (might be the wrong term) where essentially it's important to employees mental health not to be working on menial moderation duties. So to improve the quality of employees working life they use bots to do the same job.<p>Now moderation seems to be automateable but could a bot do customer service?
Why anyone would develop apps for Apple/Google duopoly is beyond me.<p>Right, I get that you may need the money - but if your livelihood depends on money earned from making this world a worser place perhaps it is time to gut check and determine what really is your purpose and best use of time; maybe (easy) money is not all it's cut out to be in that context.