Rendered at 11:34:59 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
delichon 17 hours ago [-]
> I was hoping to publish my new game on the store and charge for it, but their review process is so broken, I think I'll stick to fdroid and itch.io.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. -- Princess Leia
user43928 17 hours ago [-]
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.
ricardobeat 1 hours ago [-]
I really want open systems, but the “choose your browser”, “choose your app store”, “choose your email client”, “choose your ai provider” dance is a disgraceful user experience.
Companies should be allowed to set a recommended experience while staying open. Insisting that they offer choice as part of the UI is tangential to the OS allowing them to exist.
bigbuppo 17 hours ago [-]
They don't need record fines. They need to be liquidated and their entire c-suite and board of directors barred from serving in any executive management capacity of any business more complex than a sole proprietorship.
malfist 13 hours ago [-]
Hey I like this idea. What about proper taxation so businesses and the rich pay their fair share, workers on the board of a company and how about we enforce some antitrust laws.
I'd also love it if we also enforced existing regulations with teeth. Like of your data center doesn't have a permit for a gas turbine and you run them anyway instead of saying "oh well, you can run them until we settle in court" we toss the CEO in jail to think about their lapse in ethics
MrDrMcCoy 8 hours ago [-]
> the rich pay their fair share
If there's a way to do that that doesn't require arbitrary thresholds that won't stand the test of time or in any way screw over regular people's investments, I'd love to hear about it.
tancop 40 minutes ago [-]
How about a progressive tax on unrealized gains above inflation-adjusted $X million?
It's an arbitrary threshold for the start point but it ramps up slowly and uses marginal rates so normal people won't get screwed, and the adjustment makes it time proof. If it ends up catching small business owners then raise the limit until they're safe, or do it as a minimum tax rate instead of adding on to existing taxes.
The other option is limiting total comp inside a company to 5x or 10x median, like they do in the Nordics. But then you would also have to regulate the cash/stock mix, so a fast growing company can't pay its executives in shares when normal workers get stuck holding cash.
Or "just" have strong unions and enforced antitrust laws, we need them anyway but IMO they would take too long to reverse the inequality we already have.
ffsm8 7 hours ago [-]
The only realistic way to achieve that is to simplify tax law so there are no exemptions, deductions, incentives etc.
Just a plain rate.
It comes with funny side effects, eg companies will suddenly want to make simple things in-house again to save on taxes, and it necessitates tariffs as every other nation is following the current scheme where taxes are only due for the last trade.
The whole tax advisor profession vanishes - only book keeping and accounting would stay.
But let's be real here, it would massively impact the market, it sounds fun on paper for armchair analysts like myself - but real human life's would be ruined from the upheaval
And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.
It's very few which employ highly intelligent tax advisors that skirt them.
Same with companies, most play by the social rules. It's just large multinationals like Google, Apple and similar which get around paying taxes.
And they're mostly paying some taxes in the US too, just in eg Europe they don't at all.
autoexec 6 hours ago [-]
> And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.
In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy, companies push a lot of harm onto the rest of society so that it becomes everyone else's problem. "their fair share" should include all of those externalized costs. Tax companies for the air and water they pollute. Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself. Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick. Tax companies for data breeches and security failures. Until companies don't leave everyone else on the hook for cleaning up after their messes, they can't be said to paying anything close to their fair share.
ffsm8 5 hours ago [-]
> In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy
the latter is just something to do the former
> should include all of those externalized costs
if you actually want to have a serious debate on that topic, you need to actually cite real examples to look at, otherwise it comes off as a general platitude to capture simps who dont actually understand what theyre being told.
> Tax companies for the air and water they pollute
how exactly? and how would that not become a complete dumbsterfire of administration, with ever increasing dystopian oversight of the state?
ever more complicated tax rules, ever more situation in which they can find loopholes etc.
this sounds great until you actually think about how to implement it, then it should become quiet clear, very quickly that you'd only give exactly the companies that "arent paying their fair share" an even bigger advantage then they already have.
> Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself
seriously, how. again it sounds great as an idea, like everything socialist inspired. Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.
> Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick.
isnt that already the case? thats why you get endless legalese on all purchases pointing out all the things you may not do with the product.
If the product makes you sick, youre usually able to sue.
That this doesnt actually achieve what you want should be obvious from the status quo. unless you were seriously talking about tax there. but if you were... what would be the point? the person that was harmed would still be sick and not have gotten any help?
> Tax companies for data breeches and security failures
how do you imagine this working? does the state get a backdoor into every company so it can monitor it for intrusions, so it can throw out punitive fines?
like china basically, where every company needs to have a party member on payroll so the party is always informed on all developments?
Seriously, you didn't think any of those things through.
If you got what you wanted, you get a society akin to the USSR. Thats not something any sane person would want.
4 hours ago [-]
autoexec 3 hours ago [-]
> how exactly?
The EPA already has the means for on site tests of emissions, industrial discharge, etc. They are also capable of monitoring and investigating to locate the source of problems.
> Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.
What are you even talking about? The government already knows everyone who gets welfare benefits. They also already know who employs those people and how much money they were paid. If a company pays so little that their employee still needs food stamps, the government knows how much it cost taxpayers to subsidize the labor expense of the employer.
> isnt that already the case?
No. It isn't. Same with data breeches and security incidents. Some small percentage of the people who are harmed might join a class action, but most people won't get any compensation for their losses (which may include death) and those that do get something don't typically get anything close to fair compensation, just a few bucks and/or coupons. DuPont poisoned you. Knowingly. How much money did they compensate you for that? People should be directly compensated when possible, but often there are harms that impact everybody, even if not directly. Sometimes it's not possible to track everyone down. It'd be better to invest that money into the society that was harmed than allow companies to profit from it. It's not just about compensation, but also giving an incentive to avoid or limit the harmful behavior. Crowdstrike's fuck up in 2024 cost the economy tens of billions. Do you think they paid that all back? Even the shareholders got screwed (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/crowdstrike-defeats-sharehol...). It sure didn't take "a backdoor into every company" to figure out who was responsible for that.
The idea that companies should pay for the harms they cause isn't "socialist inspired" and doesn't require turning into "China" or the "USSR". It's something that any sane person would want. There are lots of ways to get that result. A Pigouvian tax is only one of them, better suited in some situations than others.
Eddy_Viscosity2 16 hours ago [-]
How do we do this though? Like who do I vote for to make this a reality? Republicans? Hardly. Democrats? Also no.
genxy 13 hours ago [-]
AOC
qlte 15 hours ago [-]
This apathy is somewhat absurd considering Lina Khan had been reviving moribund antitrust laws to aggressively push back against Big Tech/monopoly abuses. To the point that she was portrayed as a cartoonish villain by the SV billionaire class who vowed to get rid of her by donating to Trump.
They appreciate this sort of political nihilism where everyone seems to have collective amnesia about the current status quo vs. just a couple years ago and so lament "nothing ever changes, voting is pointless".
Eddy_Viscosity2 15 hours ago [-]
That's great actually. And its not apathy I'm feeling, its more like frustration wrapped around helplessness. So great I can support Lina Khan, but how successful will the billionaires be in casting her as a villain to enough people to get her voted out and replaced with another sycophant?
collingreen 12 hours ago [-]
If you only want to support causes you think will already win without your support, stick to watching your favorite sports teams.
You have a clear desire for change and exactly one of the two parties you mentioned has proven to take action in line with that change.
Yes it's hard and annoying and it shouldn't have to take a bunch of good people sacrificing their time and energy just to hold the jerks at a stalemate, but that's the way it is. Apathy is a powerful weapon when the motivated few are opposed by the unmotivated many.
I also wish we had fairness and antitrust and I pretty much do nothing but whine online. I need to dedicate significant time and energy if I want to see things not get worse and I recognize I'm not doing my part so don't take this as admonishment from me, just sympathy.
rjbwork 14 hours ago [-]
Extremely, considering that's exactly what they did.
Brian_K_White 14 hours ago [-]
Of course they do, when you as a developer no longer offer an app they want in the old store.
user43928 14 hours ago [-]
Provided there is no competitor in the store they already use, and that you as the developer do not bankrupt and consequently offer your app nowhere.
Brian_K_White 13 hours ago [-]
Provided the rapture doesn't come, so what? Provided infinite things. It adds or removes nothing.
And yet trivial little alternatives like idk maybe you ever heard of Steam did actually happen, or the entire Android ecosystem itself when there was already an immense Palm app ecosystem that was like desktop apps where you got apps all manner of ways from physical sd cards to web sites to various curated stores. Or idk Epic, over a single app. They are back on the traditional stores now only because they called everyone's bluff and were suceeding, so the old stores caved rather than be seen to lose to someone so much smaller and newer, even in a small way that was more appearance than material.
There is no such thing as unthinkable. It's all not only thinkable, it has all actually already happened before and multiple times.
If something seems unimaginable, that only says something about your imagination not the reality.
schubidubiduba 5 hours ago [-]
You severely underestimate the market capture of the Google Play Store, the related network effects, their control over Android OS, and their power and motivation to use all of that to prevent any competition from ever getting traction.
F-Droid is not doing too bad. And yet, the vast majority of people will never ever use it after Google Play implenents their developer verification scare screens.
None of your examples succeeded in an environment that was even remotely as hostile, neither Windows nor Palm could have done what Google does today, without risking a fatal user backlash.
It's one thing for something to be thinkable and imaginable. Of course you can imagine Google Play getting dethroned. It's just so incredibly unlikely to happen without regulatory antitrust intervention that it is pointless to consider seriously.
user43928 13 hours ago [-]
You can imagine whatever you want, the reality is that ~95% of Android app transactions happen on the Google Play store.
This is very unlikely to change without regulatory intervention.
ToucanLoucan 16 hours ago [-]
So what stops these other mythical app stores from being just as predatory and exploitative as the first-party ones?
rurp 15 hours ago [-]
They don't own the OS. One of the most powerful forces in consumer software is the ability to set defaults. The vast majority of users will never change the default browser, launcher, or app store; most don't even know it's possible. Google's position of controlling Android allows it to be wildly more corrupt and incompetent than any competing app store and still remain the dominant one. If another store does manage to gain a strong foothold, there are any number of OS changes Google can make to hamstring and stifle the competition. The situation is extremely asymmetric.
ToucanLoucan 15 hours ago [-]
I mean sure, but even if people have the ability to select a different app store, why are they going to do this? Even if you MAKE them do it, on device setup as was commented elsewhere, do we mandate Apple put the 3rd party stores above their own? Can Apple indicate which is theirs, or does this bias the answer the user gives?
And more importantly I didn't ask what the user is picking or not picking, I'm asking: why is there an app store out there that's better than the main one? Is a 3rd party app store going to spin up a CDN, a transactions system, handle the customer service involved there, etc. and then just... not do all the evil shit Google and Apple are doing now, which is why their app stores make so much money? You're asking businesses to enter a market with established competitors with solid and wildly profitable business models, and to just have them make less money for the principle of it. Which like, I agree with, but you're gonna have a SHORT list of investors if that's your pitch.
sebastiennight 14 hours ago [-]
F-Droid exists, and it seems quite a few people here would tell you it's a superior 3rd-party app store, in the sense of "if an equivalent app exists on F-droid, I'd install that one first, before even looking at whether there's a similar app on the Play store"
benoau 16 hours ago [-]
Lack of distribution probably.
But Google has agreed to distribute app stores (in America anyway) for a modest $5000 fee + $5000/year fee + transaction fees.
user43928 16 hours ago [-]
They are hardly mythical, for one I could think of Steam and Epic Games.
Competition is what stops the exploitation.
Epic Games has always offered lower fees and their CEO has been advocating for small developers for years.
There is no reason why Google and Apple get to bundle their stores, and these other big names have to collect the scraps from users who care to look up alternative stores and go through scare screens.
NetMageSCW 16 hours ago [-]
There are very good reasons, starting with the fact that there was no good mobile app experience before Apple created one. And they created one that was half the cost of the terrible stores that existed before.
And they created the hardware and software to make all this possible.
computably 16 hours ago [-]
None of that explains why the owner of an Apple device can't install alternative app stores, nor the bundling of their own app store.
GeekyBear 15 hours ago [-]
Apple never claimed to be an open ecosystem that allowed users to install anything they liked without interference.
rixed 15 hours ago [-]
Actually, from 2007 (first iPhone) to 2008 (the App Store), they kind of did.
GeekyBear 13 hours ago [-]
Apple made it perfectly clear that iDevices would be a walled garden when they released the SDK for third party applications.
happyopossum 14 hours ago [-]
That’s retconning at its best - there was no support for 3rd party apps then, just websites.
rixed 3 hours ago [-]
That's the point, in the beginning there were not supposed to be native apps, just web apps, some of them advertised in Apple site but not otherwise privileged.
dare944 16 hours ago [-]
No amount of "they did it first", "they did it better" entitles them to monopolistic behavior.
aaron695 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
criddell 16 hours ago [-]
The app store gatekeepers have so much power that it would be nice to see some legal requirements for operators of those stores put in place.
If your app is rejected, there should be a real appeal process. Maybe developers should be able to demand arbitration for some non-trivial fee?
The first step of the appeal would be for the store to disclose to the arbitrator precisely what rule was violated and in what way. The arbitrator can uphold the rejection and you lose your fee or can force the app store to accept the submission and you are refunded.
Microsoft support used to work something like this. There was a fee to get them on the phone but if the problem turned out to be an actual bug, the fee was refunded.
meatmanek 14 hours ago [-]
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.
Kinrany 2 hours ago [-]
More generally, the state should be banned from shifting the blame to private monopolies. If there is a monopoly, the state should be responsible for everything it does. It should be considered a part of the executive branch including for example for the purposes of freedom of speech.
irregularbowels 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
thih9 17 hours ago [-]
> it was rejected. They attached a nsfw screenshot of some unidentified app.
I don’t doubt the author, at the same time this is a serious accusation with no details and little context.
This could have been presented in a more organized way, with timelines and redacted content.
Part of the problem is Google not being transparent, having more transparency could help.
fooqux 17 hours ago [-]
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.
ajross 16 hours ago [-]
> 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.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
fooqux 15 hours ago [-]
> This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
Fair.
> It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google...
Ok you lost me. What is "the literature"? Published scientific studies about Google's app review process? Obviously there aren't any of those. Blog posts? You (presumably) just read one, and if you take a minute to search, you'll find tons more. News articles? Perhaps harder to find, but definitely exist.
The whole nudes thing is just a funny outlier; don't fixate on that. Who cares what randomly chosen reason the Google overmind decided it didn't like you. The point is it feels like a dice roll and you have no recourse when you suddenly and randomly fail it.
handoflixue 14 hours ago [-]
> This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
A much more charitable reading would be something like: Numerous people have all made this complaint, therefore the broader point is probably solid, even if this particular example might not be iron-clad evidence on it's own.
I've certainly heard enough similar stories that I don't have much trouble doubting this one, although I'd hardly consider any one story super-convincing on it's own
Fabricio20 14 hours ago [-]
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.
hbn 14 hours ago [-]
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
junon 17 hours ago [-]
They don't have access to the content anymore, as mentioned a bit later in the article.
p2detar 17 hours ago [-]
I think I'm done with Android apps development. The following publishing requirements just closed the door for me as a hobby developer:
> Have at least 12 testers opted-in to your closed test.
> Run your closed test with at least 12 testers, for 14 days
The funny thing is this seems to apply to recently-created personal publisher accounts. I had a very old publisher account but because I was unable to move my account owner to another email address, I closed it and registered a new one. Little did I know what this would lead to later on.
rpdillon 15 hours ago [-]
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.
bityard 15 hours ago [-]
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.)
Brian_K_White 14 hours ago [-]
There is a lot of money in it for them, in creating and owning the ecosystem itself, which is required if want to make anything at all.
But they have just become shortsighted over time and, perhaps correctly, don't think they need to keep investing that way to get the payoff any more, they can just go 100% payoff now.
volkercraig 16 hours ago [-]
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.
nvme0n1p1 15 hours ago [-]
And for the testers requirement? Should every hobbyist developer be required to buy a dozen phones and set up one of those click farms that fraudsters use? Or are we fine with ending the era of hobbyist development?
If you can't get 12 people to test your app, how do you expect to get actual users? I believe this is a good change by Google to prevent slop on the store
p2detar 2 hours ago [-]
No, this invites slop rather than stopping it. 12 testers is trivial to buy online or swap for on Reddit and Discord, so only hobbyists get blocked. Note that this requirement also affects PWAs which is quite funny to be honest. To this the fact that some people register businesses and provide paid "publishing services" to 3rd party devs over their accounts. Is this really the best Google can do? Laughable.
Look, not everyone is chasing subscriptions, ads and thousands of users, and with Google constantly squeezing side-loading, the Play store is becoming the only distribution channel left on mainline Android.
But yeah, I guess it's not a big loss, most people install 0 apps per month anyway.
yaro330 10 hours ago [-]
I mean that's the same argument as youtubers complaining about partner programme enrollment requirements being raised. Do you genuinely think your app should not have 12 testers? What if some youtuber picks it up for a promo, you get 1000 users in a day and all of them hit the same bug or someone finds a way to break the app and read everyone's actions done in the app?
Hobbyist are cool and all but I'm sure google got sick of one update publishers a long time ago and decided to only allow apps that can actually attract any sort of public.
mistic92 14 hours ago [-]
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.
snthd 15 hours ago [-]
>The plan is to equip them with some sms gateway software
MAXS (Modular Android XMPP Suite) could also work.
> Version 0.5.19 (2000506627) suggested Added on Jan 22, 2025
>This version requires Android 4.4 or newer.
(Hope the author is doing OK.)
pan69 16 hours ago [-]
Anyone can make a website and publish it but for some reason when it comes to apps there needs to be a store with a review process. Aren't apps, in a way, not just specialised browsers (not talking about webview apps here) that run in a sandbox? Why the need for all this "reviewing", does it make apps safer or better quality? Is it a device ecosystem permission / security problem? I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
alexpotato 16 hours ago [-]
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.
latentsea 11 hours ago [-]
> If you have no gatekeeping, then all of the bad actors come in and you end up with a tragedy of the commons
We need to put more money into human alignment research.
Powdering7082 11 hours ago [-]
What exactly would be the tragedy of the commons here?
Publishing a crap app on the app store doesn't make anyone else's app worse
michaelt 16 hours ago [-]
If they didn't review every app, someone might sneak in a paid app without giving Apple and Google their 30% cut.
NetMageSCW 16 hours ago [-]
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.
speedstyle 1 hours ago [-]
It's not that apps should be websites, but that you should be able to load apps as freely as websites.
yaro330 10 hours ago [-]
What the fuck are you talking about? How is Disco Elysium a specialized browser? Or banking apps? What does this even mean?
Yes they all run in a sandbox, but there's a permissions system that they can exploit.
> I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
your browser is, in a way, the store for your websites. You're only as protected from the site's fuckery as the browser is. And generally modern browsers are very well protected.
bennyp101 17 hours ago [-]
Yea I’m on over a month now of an app sitting in review, a couple of years ago it was much quicker. Apple approved the same app within a week. I can only assume it’s because it’s easier to vibecode android apps so it’s being flooded?
wink 3 hours ago [-]
I've heard just as many horror stories for the Apple app store. I don't think there is real improvement or downfall for either. You are lucky, or you are unlucky, and the two app stores trade places for your own problems every couple of months (or years).
josefresco 17 hours ago [-]
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.
freecodeio 14 hours ago [-]
Google has had automated reviews for a decade now, I think there's just so much volume (I read somewhere in linkedin there's 1000 apps per hour submitted in playstore alone) that is choking the system.
That's an average of 24,000 apps per day.
With that amount of volume, it would be safe to assume that there's more reasons why google just won't accept an app even if it works fine or fits all the public guidelines.
nine_k 17 hours ago [-]
The review process is broken. The stream of apps is enormous, the expense to review them deeply would be large, the cost of a false rejection is very low.
apetresc 17 hours ago [-]
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.
benoau 15 hours ago [-]
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.
lokar 14 hours ago [-]
And they could reasonably have different tiers/levels of review triggered by use. A fairly basic automatic review, until you get 10 installs. Then something more complex, up to 1000 installs, etc.
jmbwell 17 hours ago [-]
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.
rolph 17 hours ago [-]
>>the cost of a false rejection is very low.<<
maybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.
paulddraper 17 hours ago [-]
They have 2x the number of apps as Apple.
Millions and millions.
The cost of false rejections is generally quite low.
ryandvm 17 hours ago [-]
Exact same philosophy they use for hiring.
user43928 17 hours ago [-]
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.
renegat0x0 17 hours ago [-]
Agree. Tried to publish my app through Google, and still no luck. Link below.
I was able to share it on f-droid though, and I am starting to think that it may be good just to publish app only through it.
If Google cares about some of the long-standing problems, I wonder whether they know how to fix them. (Assign OKRs, which may be conflicting, or get quietly triaged/prioritized?)
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
anon84873628 15 hours ago [-]
Of course Google could do this, but they don't want to. Their only goal is to cut costs and avoid lawsuits.
DeluluDon 14 hours ago [-]
Not only this but letting predatory apps like NearMe, and countless scam dating apps in the Play store has delegitimized Google for me.
the_real_cher 15 hours ago [-]
I'm really excited about Graphene OS partnering with Motorola and putting out true alternatives to Google's OS's.
We really need an open source and funded OS for phones like we have with Linux for desktops/servers.
Also, with AI 100x'ing developers productivity it might be a really interesting time for phone OS's.
someonebaggy 14 hours ago [-]
Sending unsolicited nudes is sexual harassment, someone at Google could go to jail
morkalork 17 hours ago [-]
The part where the author is aware that any missteps in "debugging" the review process can get their account permabanned is lovely. I'm sure I've read cases here before where a developer has lost all their emails and family photos because their policies.
polotics 16 hours ago [-]
I only ever published anything on the google play store under another google account than the one that's got my gmail and photos.
dude250711 17 hours ago [-]
> It seems pretty clear to me that counting on google is a bad idea.
A company that does not provide support to normal people and has a compulsive habit of closing services for absolutely no good reason? You don't say?
spwa4 17 hours ago [-]
I wonder if that'll be the future. This is something AI can actually solve. Write replacements for a lot of apps, slop but efficient slop, and use that as a distraction-free phone.
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
coldpie 17 hours ago [-]
Big tech controls the AIs. The solution, of course, is antitrust enforcement.
rbtprograms 17 hours ago [-]
only on the surface, plenty of places have moved out of the big tech ecosystem to models hosted at smaller providers or even self hosted. its not the majority of work but is growing.
SwellJoe 14 hours ago [-]
Not really, though? Google isn't a leader in AI on most fronts, especially not the coding front. And, the leading AI companies have little reason to protect Google's and Apple's mobile operating system monopolies.
And, even if we assume the investments in OpenAI and Anthropic Google and maybe Apple have made somehow makes them inclined to defend their monopolies, we still have a variety of other models that can also build apps. Sure, I like Claude and Opus 5.5 is the best model for most things, but I'm not going to be severely put out if I have to use Kimi or GLM or whatever. They're Good Enough. And, I know AI companies outside of the US don't have a vested interest in the ongoing success of Google and Apple and are unlikely to stand in the way of competitors.
But, antitrust is absolutely necessary to fix this problem.
ticulatedspline 11 hours ago [-]
Not easily, assuming you even use any apps that are so trivial you could accept a straight up vibe coded replacement, side loading is becoming more difficult
gjsman-1000 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jacquesm 17 hours ago [-]
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'.
tudelo 17 hours ago [-]
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.
dgellow 17 hours ago [-]
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
98753579909754 16 hours ago [-]
That makes Google competent how?
superkuh 17 hours ago [-]
I also recently acquired some free e-waste android 6 devices (like a galaxy note 4 pad and a moto 4 phone). Using some vibe coding I was able to setup a dockerized build system for java/kotlin apps and managed to make a number of custom applications for the devices like turning them into timelapse+mjpeg streaming cameras (or irc client, or ice thickness estimation from chirped sounds+dsp). Since they're ewaste I don't mind if they get destroyed or lost.
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.
Companies should be allowed to set a recommended experience while staying open. Insisting that they offer choice as part of the UI is tangential to the OS allowing them to exist.
I'd also love it if we also enforced existing regulations with teeth. Like of your data center doesn't have a permit for a gas turbine and you run them anyway instead of saying "oh well, you can run them until we settle in court" we toss the CEO in jail to think about their lapse in ethics
If there's a way to do that that doesn't require arbitrary thresholds that won't stand the test of time or in any way screw over regular people's investments, I'd love to hear about it.
It's an arbitrary threshold for the start point but it ramps up slowly and uses marginal rates so normal people won't get screwed, and the adjustment makes it time proof. If it ends up catching small business owners then raise the limit until they're safe, or do it as a minimum tax rate instead of adding on to existing taxes.
The other option is limiting total comp inside a company to 5x or 10x median, like they do in the Nordics. But then you would also have to regulate the cash/stock mix, so a fast growing company can't pay its executives in shares when normal workers get stuck holding cash.
Or "just" have strong unions and enforced antitrust laws, we need them anyway but IMO they would take too long to reverse the inequality we already have.
Just a plain rate.
It comes with funny side effects, eg companies will suddenly want to make simple things in-house again to save on taxes, and it necessitates tariffs as every other nation is following the current scheme where taxes are only due for the last trade.
The whole tax advisor profession vanishes - only book keeping and accounting would stay.
But let's be real here, it would massively impact the market, it sounds fun on paper for armchair analysts like myself - but real human life's would be ruined from the upheaval
And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.
It's very few which employ highly intelligent tax advisors that skirt them. Same with companies, most play by the social rules. It's just large multinationals like Google, Apple and similar which get around paying taxes. And they're mostly paying some taxes in the US too, just in eg Europe they don't at all.
In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy, companies push a lot of harm onto the rest of society so that it becomes everyone else's problem. "their fair share" should include all of those externalized costs. Tax companies for the air and water they pollute. Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself. Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick. Tax companies for data breeches and security failures. Until companies don't leave everyone else on the hook for cleaning up after their messes, they can't be said to paying anything close to their fair share.
the latter is just something to do the former
> should include all of those externalized costs
if you actually want to have a serious debate on that topic, you need to actually cite real examples to look at, otherwise it comes off as a general platitude to capture simps who dont actually understand what theyre being told.
> Tax companies for the air and water they pollute
how exactly? and how would that not become a complete dumbsterfire of administration, with ever increasing dystopian oversight of the state? ever more complicated tax rules, ever more situation in which they can find loopholes etc. this sounds great until you actually think about how to implement it, then it should become quiet clear, very quickly that you'd only give exactly the companies that "arent paying their fair share" an even bigger advantage then they already have.
> Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself
seriously, how. again it sounds great as an idea, like everything socialist inspired. Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.
> Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick.
isnt that already the case? thats why you get endless legalese on all purchases pointing out all the things you may not do with the product. If the product makes you sick, youre usually able to sue. That this doesnt actually achieve what you want should be obvious from the status quo. unless you were seriously talking about tax there. but if you were... what would be the point? the person that was harmed would still be sick and not have gotten any help?
> Tax companies for data breeches and security failures
how do you imagine this working? does the state get a backdoor into every company so it can monitor it for intrusions, so it can throw out punitive fines? like china basically, where every company needs to have a party member on payroll so the party is always informed on all developments?
Seriously, you didn't think any of those things through. If you got what you wanted, you get a society akin to the USSR. Thats not something any sane person would want.
The EPA already has the means for on site tests of emissions, industrial discharge, etc. They are also capable of monitoring and investigating to locate the source of problems.
> Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.
What are you even talking about? The government already knows everyone who gets welfare benefits. They also already know who employs those people and how much money they were paid. If a company pays so little that their employee still needs food stamps, the government knows how much it cost taxpayers to subsidize the labor expense of the employer.
> isnt that already the case?
No. It isn't. Same with data breeches and security incidents. Some small percentage of the people who are harmed might join a class action, but most people won't get any compensation for their losses (which may include death) and those that do get something don't typically get anything close to fair compensation, just a few bucks and/or coupons. DuPont poisoned you. Knowingly. How much money did they compensate you for that? People should be directly compensated when possible, but often there are harms that impact everybody, even if not directly. Sometimes it's not possible to track everyone down. It'd be better to invest that money into the society that was harmed than allow companies to profit from it. It's not just about compensation, but also giving an incentive to avoid or limit the harmful behavior. Crowdstrike's fuck up in 2024 cost the economy tens of billions. Do you think they paid that all back? Even the shareholders got screwed (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/crowdstrike-defeats-sharehol...). It sure didn't take "a backdoor into every company" to figure out who was responsible for that.
The idea that companies should pay for the harms they cause isn't "socialist inspired" and doesn't require turning into "China" or the "USSR". It's something that any sane person would want. There are lots of ways to get that result. A Pigouvian tax is only one of them, better suited in some situations than others.
They appreciate this sort of political nihilism where everyone seems to have collective amnesia about the current status quo vs. just a couple years ago and so lament "nothing ever changes, voting is pointless".
You have a clear desire for change and exactly one of the two parties you mentioned has proven to take action in line with that change.
Yes it's hard and annoying and it shouldn't have to take a bunch of good people sacrificing their time and energy just to hold the jerks at a stalemate, but that's the way it is. Apathy is a powerful weapon when the motivated few are opposed by the unmotivated many.
I also wish we had fairness and antitrust and I pretty much do nothing but whine online. I need to dedicate significant time and energy if I want to see things not get worse and I recognize I'm not doing my part so don't take this as admonishment from me, just sympathy.
And yet trivial little alternatives like idk maybe you ever heard of Steam did actually happen, or the entire Android ecosystem itself when there was already an immense Palm app ecosystem that was like desktop apps where you got apps all manner of ways from physical sd cards to web sites to various curated stores. Or idk Epic, over a single app. They are back on the traditional stores now only because they called everyone's bluff and were suceeding, so the old stores caved rather than be seen to lose to someone so much smaller and newer, even in a small way that was more appearance than material.
There is no such thing as unthinkable. It's all not only thinkable, it has all actually already happened before and multiple times.
If something seems unimaginable, that only says something about your imagination not the reality.
F-Droid is not doing too bad. And yet, the vast majority of people will never ever use it after Google Play implenents their developer verification scare screens.
None of your examples succeeded in an environment that was even remotely as hostile, neither Windows nor Palm could have done what Google does today, without risking a fatal user backlash.
It's one thing for something to be thinkable and imaginable. Of course you can imagine Google Play getting dethroned. It's just so incredibly unlikely to happen without regulatory antitrust intervention that it is pointless to consider seriously.
This is very unlikely to change without regulatory intervention.
And more importantly I didn't ask what the user is picking or not picking, I'm asking: why is there an app store out there that's better than the main one? Is a 3rd party app store going to spin up a CDN, a transactions system, handle the customer service involved there, etc. and then just... not do all the evil shit Google and Apple are doing now, which is why their app stores make so much money? You're asking businesses to enter a market with established competitors with solid and wildly profitable business models, and to just have them make less money for the principle of it. Which like, I agree with, but you're gonna have a SHORT list of investors if that's your pitch.
But Google has agreed to distribute app stores (in America anyway) for a modest $5000 fee + $5000/year fee + transaction fees.
Competition is what stops the exploitation.
Epic Games has always offered lower fees and their CEO has been advocating for small developers for years.
There is no reason why Google and Apple get to bundle their stores, and these other big names have to collect the scraps from users who care to look up alternative stores and go through scare screens.
And they created the hardware and software to make all this possible.
If your app is rejected, there should be a real appeal process. Maybe developers should be able to demand arbitration for some non-trivial fee?
The first step of the appeal would be for the store to disclose to the arbitrator precisely what rule was violated and in what way. The arbitrator can uphold the rejection and you lose your fee or can force the app store to accept the submission and you are refunded.
Microsoft support used to work something like this. There was a fee to get them on the phone but if the problem turned out to be an actual bug, the fee was refunded.
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:
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.I don’t doubt the author, at the same time this is a serious accusation with no details and little context.
This could have been presented in a more organized way, with timelines and redacted content.
Part of the problem is Google not being transparent, having more transparency could help.
Although I must admit I've never gotten nudes from them. Up your game, Google.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
Fair.
> It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google...
Ok you lost me. What is "the literature"? Published scientific studies about Google's app review process? Obviously there aren't any of those. Blog posts? You (presumably) just read one, and if you take a minute to search, you'll find tons more. News articles? Perhaps harder to find, but definitely exist.
The whole nudes thing is just a funny outlier; don't fixate on that. Who cares what randomly chosen reason the Google overmind decided it didn't like you. The point is it feels like a dice roll and you have no recourse when you suddenly and randomly fail it.
A much more charitable reading would be something like: Numerous people have all made this complaint, therefore the broader point is probably solid, even if this particular example might not be iron-clad evidence on it's own.
I've certainly heard enough similar stories that I don't have much trouble doubting this one, although I'd hardly consider any one story super-convincing on it's own
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
> Have at least 12 testers opted-in to your closed test.
> Run your closed test with at least 12 testers, for 14 days
The funny thing is this seems to apply to recently-created personal publisher accounts. I had a very old publisher account but because I was unable to move my account owner to another email address, I closed it and registered a new one. Little did I know what this would lead to later on.
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.
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.)
But they have just become shortsighted over time and, perhaps correctly, don't think they need to keep investing that way to get the payoff any more, they can just go 100% payoff now.
I also had my old dev account that I used during school permanently disabled.
https://cheq.ai/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/clickfarm6-1920w....
Look, not everyone is chasing subscriptions, ads and thousands of users, and with Google constantly squeezing side-loading, the Play store is becoming the only distribution channel left on mainline Android.
But yeah, I guess it's not a big loss, most people install 0 apps per month anyway.
Hobbyist are cool and all but I'm sure google got sick of one update publishers a long time ago and decided to only allow apps that can actually attract any sort of public.
MAXS (Modular Android XMPP Suite) could also work.
http://projectmaxs.org/homepage/
https://bitbucket.org/projectmaxs/maxs/src/master/
https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Maxs&lang=en
> Version 0.5.19 (2000506627) suggested Added on Jan 22, 2025
>This version requires Android 4.4 or newer.
(Hope the author is doing OK.)
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.
We need to put more money into human alignment research.
Publishing a crap app on the app store doesn't make anyone else's app worse
Yes they all run in a sandbox, but there's a permissions system that they can exploit.
> I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't? your browser is, in a way, the store for your websites. You're only as protected from the site's fuckery as the browser is. And generally modern browsers are very well protected.
That's an average of 24,000 apps per day.
With that amount of volume, it would be safe to assume that there's more reasons why google just won't accept an app even if it works fine or fits all the public guidelines.
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.
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.
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.
maybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.
Millions and millions.
The cost of false rejections is generally quite low.
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.
I was able to share it on f-droid though, and I am starting to think that it may be good just to publish app only through it.
https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
We really need an open source and funded OS for phones like we have with Linux for desktops/servers.
Also, with AI 100x'ing developers productivity it might be a really interesting time for phone OS's.
A company that does not provide support to normal people and has a compulsive habit of closing services for absolutely no good reason? You don't say?
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
And, even if we assume the investments in OpenAI and Anthropic Google and maybe Apple have made somehow makes them inclined to defend their monopolies, we still have a variety of other models that can also build apps. Sure, I like Claude and Opus 5.5 is the best model for most things, but I'm not going to be severely put out if I have to use Kimi or GLM or whatever. They're Good Enough. And, I know AI companies outside of the US don't have a vested interest in the ongoing success of Google and Apple and are unlikely to stand in the way of competitors.
But, antitrust is absolutely necessary to fix this problem.