We became experts on Google Play Store policy violations

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&#x27;s been accepted each time. We&#x27;ve had the same description for over a year&#x2F;10+ releases before.<p>The latest rejection:<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; The app title or description does not accurately describe the app’s functionality. Issue details<p>We found an issue in the following area(s): Full description (en_US): “▪ Tutorial &amp; Rules ” &lt;&lt;&lt;<p>So we changed this to:<p>▪ In app Tutorial &amp; Rules<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.templegatesgames.DominionAndroid&amp;hl=en_US&amp;gl=US" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.templegate...</a>

It&#x27;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 &quot;gardens&quot;.

&gt; <i>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.</i><p>A solution will be to have an AI submit modifications to the other side&#x27;s enforcement notifications. Robots talking to robots. What a world.

Can someone explain why both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store give opaque explanations for rejections? Why don&#x27;t they just tell developers what&#x27;s wrong and what needs to be fixed instead of pointing to some broad rule and forcing an interpretative song and dance?

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&#x27;s like now but the managers were incompetent back then even so.

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&#x27;d have to pre-appeal our next try.<p>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.<p>Our fix was to refactor the namespace in the code, change product &amp; company name. Jk, we just abandoned Google Play, wasn&#x27;t worth it.

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.

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: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J8iy4qYONAc&amp;t=941s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J8iy4qYONAc&amp;t=941s</a>

Throwaway so the Googlers don’t hunt us down. Whenever we get a violation we just resubmit a new build without any material changes, maybe a bug fix or two. We know our app review will be handled by a different person in country A this time instead of country B, or a different person down the hall, so there’s a strong chance the review passes without issue.<p>Violations are completely arbitrary and not enforced or closely reviewed upon resubmitting, so we put as much effort into them as Google does.<p>Being forced to work under these conditions feels like being in an abusive relationship.

What I think, after reading the post:<p>1) Pushbullet is frequently &#x27;randomly selected&#x27; for extra scrutiny (TSA style) because it competes with some offering from Google or a preferred partner.<p>2) The review algo simply diffs the resubmission with the previous version and if there are changes &#x27;near&#x27; any of the keywords from the violation, it gets approved, until the next &#x27;random&#x27; scan.

I had the unpleasant experience of submitting an extension to Google Chrome Webstore. Here is a summary:<p>1- Submit an update<p>2- Wait a week for it to be approved<p>3- Publish said update<p>4- Forget about it and move to working on something else for a few days&#x2F;weeks<p>5- Get a random rejection email with a bogus claim and 14 days to &quot;fix it&quot; or the extension is removed<p>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.<p>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 ...

I&#x27;m convinced that the only way this situation will improve is via legislation. There are simply no other sufficient incentives since strikes&#x2F;bans&#x2F;policy enforcement is uniformly broken across the large players.

Before this, they become experts on suddenly converting to the subscription model and then just ghosting all&#x2F;any development. [1][2][3] I didn&#x27;t mind them converting to subscription, I got value out of them, so I paid for the sub (even though it was one of those that removed features from the free to put them into paid and I felt a bit dirty. All good products deserve some suppporter cash IMHO)<p>I paid for a year. They just totally shut up shop, didn&#x27;t develop a feature, didn&#x27;t do a thing. I left after my year&#x27;s subscription was up, sick of sticking up for them in forums&#x2F;reddit etc and realising most of the complaints people were leveling and them (him?) were valid.<p>It&#x27;s a shame to see Google treat anyone like this, but meh, that&#x27;s how we felt after paying up for Pushbullet Pro which saw zero development&#x2F;love after the fact and the developers who had, previously, been very vocal and supportive, go to radio silence.<p>I kinda support Google here, put this poor thing out of its misery.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6wby5b&#x2F;is_pushbullet_dead&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6wby5b&#x2F;is_pushb...</a><p>2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;7bjvhx&#x2F;is_this_project_dead&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;7bjvhx&#x2F;is_this_...</a><p>3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;77egnz&#x2F;is_pushbullet_just_completely_dead&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;PushBullet&#x2F;comments&#x2F;77egnz&#x2F;is_pushb...</a>

I have a somewhat related story regarding the first Android app I ever created. It practically drove me to give up on Android development.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@daniel_11666&#x2F;331c98270ec4?source=friends_link&amp;sk=d01250707057ed71f2c7af8ed4ac9eea" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@daniel_11666&#x2F;331c98270ec4?source=friends...</a>

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…

Tbh pushbullet sms privacy policy is pretty vague<p>&gt; We take seriously the security of any information stored on our servers and take all reasonable precautions to protect this information.<p>All reasonable precautions?<p>What&#x27;s that supposed to mean?<p>You got internal policies in place that not all engineers are able to access these messages according to their contract?<p>This type of data should be e2e encrypted, pushbullet shouldn&#x27;t even be able to decrypt it and messages should disappear from pushbullet servers as soon as the message is pushed to all devices.<p>I&#x27;ve been using pushbullet for years but now I&#x27;m considering disabling the sms sync feature, the privacy policy looks really shady and Google has all the right to call it out.

Related submission (different company, same issues): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33273210" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33273210</a><p>the experience of publishing apps to Google Play is really awful.<p>After developing native apps for years, we&#x27;ll be publishing our next project as a PWA for this reason alone.

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&#x27;s just buried in some encyclopedia length ToS.

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.

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!

Chiming in to say I love Pushbullet. I find it invaluable for sending things between my devices.<p>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.

Thanks for sharing your experiences OP.<p>I have gone through the joys and pain of having an app approved and pushed live, to being teared down and removed for not meeting certain guidelines.<p>What frustrates me, is the reasons are very vague or don&#x27;t have go into detail as to how YOUR app is in violation.<p>It is just a generic statement and you have to go through the hell of trial and error to figure it out.<p>The main ones I have faced are the following.<p>* Not adhering to Families policy requirements policy<p>* Not adhering to Google Play Developer Programme Policies<p>My apps are games built using Trusted Web Applications (TWA) and Google talk about the following...<p>&quot;Your app must not merely provide a webview of a website or have a primary purpose of driving affiliate traffic to a website, regardless of ownership of the website. We are constantly exploring ways to enable new experiences for kids app developers. If you are interested in joining our Trusted Web App pilot for education apps, please submit your interest here&quot;<p>My apps have no ads, no tracking, no analytics, they have a privacy policy, but it still gets rejected. :(

Fuck Google and fuck anyone who works for them. How do you live with yourself? A $300k paycheck?

I used pushbullet for years, until they deprecated their iOS app (I think for similar reasons?). I have yet to find an adequate replacement.

Is there any evidence that there&#x27;s any causal link here? Like, it seems like to me it could just be the act of changing something — <i>anything</i> — and the output from review is just a roll of the dice. Sometimes you change something, and it&#x27;s approved, but given the frequency with which these sorts of articles crop up on HN, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d assume that the change necessarily meant anything more than &quot;they changed it&quot;.<p>… of course, it would help build confidence that there is a causal link if Google would clearly articulate their reasons for rejection.

People are perpetually wondering why Goog keeps doing this, and the answer is because they can.<p>&gt; <i>I really really need to make Google happy.</i>

This is not customer service. For pushbullet or for the end user.<p>This is not fair or just.<p>This is not artificial intelligence.<p>This is not freedom.<p>This is abusive.<p>This is capricious.<p>This is arrogance on the part of Google developers.<p>This is comparative programming designing a system to meet a standard maintained by an automaton.<p>This is the worst form of tyranny.

This is basically what Google does on the chrome webstore too.<p>Things got so frustrating that I wrote my own guide on pushing updates to the webstore: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getsnapfont.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;avoiding-lengthy-review-times-for-chrome-webstore-submissions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getsnapfont.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;avoiding-lengthy-review-times-...</a><p>At this point, I can sufficiently say that the author is on point regarding AI training and I know when an extension review has been through an automated process or via a human.

How much would a private investigator charge to find someone at Google who&#x27;d talk to you about this off the record? This might be a situation you could farm out.

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.

People complain a lot about developing for the web, but at least we don&#x27;t have to put up with this kind of thing.

I love Dominion the card &#x2F;board game. Have played it many times!<p>I&#x27;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.<p>I don&#x27;t want that even if you claim to not be sharing it with anyone else...

I think they are getting rejected for not mentioning the url of their api?

We switched to distributing our own APK after Google forced Android App Bundles. Definitely sleep better at night because of that decision.

Pushbullet is a great app, been using it for a long time. Hopefully they&#x27;re able to permanently sort this out (yeah right)

Pushbullet is so awesome. I wish they had an iOS app. It was the worst part of moving to iOS for me.

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.<p>Somewhat frustrating, but most of the times the issue was just that the apps were already compliant, but the reviewer on Apple&#x2F;Google side was just not carefully checking

In my experience, apps with too many ads get rejected.

been using pushbullet for many years, feels like they always got the shaft from google

[Ding]. They’d sent me another automated notice. THIRD THIS WEEK.<p>My work had been PATmatched for review, pending cancellation. <i>Drat</i> I was already low on credits to cover food bills this week.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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!