I wrote a passive-aggressive email. I posted this. I tweeted at them (first tweet ever).
I'm not sure what worked, but something got through. Thanks all for the support.
For reference, I haven't ever used the Google account for anything like Google Duo, Allo, Hangouts, etc. There was an appeal system linked in the message saying "You broke the terms", but when I filled it out, about 24 hrs later I got a response saying "You can't appeal if you broke the terms", which seems inconsistent at best.
I managed to track down a Google support employee and basically told him "Hey, it should be obvious that I'm a real person and not a bot for a phone carrier". His response at first was "The appeal should work, let me know if it doesn't". I told him that it didn't work, and his response was "Well we're not allowed to help you if the automated system says you broke the terms. You must have broken the terms."
Happy for you getting anything out of them other than a brick wall, at least.
EDIT - To pre-empt some questions that may come up: I was using a unique, randomly generated password for my Google account. Plus, you have to be able to login to the account to see the "You broke the terms" message, so the password was definitely not changed.
We're descending into the parody dystopia envisioned in this game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)
In the early 90's, if I were to tell people that a mega-corporation would seek to take over all the world's information, and they would subject users to this Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare treatment straight out of the movie "Brazil," they'd think my brain was taken over by "Paranoia" the role playing game.
You can pay to get your competitors banned permanently. That's what probably happened to your account and to my colleague's account as well.
Is this attitude prevalent in Google: pure trust in automated systems? Engineers should know better than any that software is not perfect and it's insane to have blind trust in it.
The logical solution is to depend on them for nothing important because any service you depend on to make money may be withdrawn at any time with no notice of any kind.
Continue enjoying excellent services like search and maps while continuing to block the adds that may or may not contain malware.
The fact that this means google has no opportunity to derive any meaningful revenue from this sort of relationship isn't your problem. When they want to earn money they can figure out how to have actual support.
What you want is u2f (hardware security key), and if you don't want u2f for some reason (e.g. cost or usability), use some other 2-factor authentication methods. No amount of "randomly generated" password will make a difference for malware or phishing, which account for majority of account hijacking.
A totally repeatable and transparent process indeed.
If you have a business relationship, this shouldn't be the way to get support. But it is. :(
Social media is an excellent tool for publicly shaming companies, but it's sad it has come down to this.
It's not though, a few rare cases get enough publicity to be dealt with and for every one of those there are a thousand left with no recourse.
I don't think we should seek to become a society running on public shame. Didn't we used to identify that kind of society with "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter?"
"How did you know about that? A little bird told me."
front page on HN, aka public shaming
> "Mommy Saver Plus was removed for 'deceptive ads' which is a little silly because there is no ads in the app. The attached screenshots have nothing to do with Mommy Saver Plus."
I think it would be a bit too easy for someone a google employee reading this to go 'he's saying he doesn't consider them ads, and ranting about the screenshots out of frustration'. That's not a reasonable thing for the google employee to do, but it is a possible one. I think I would prefer something like
> The evidence attached for removing "Mommy Saver Plus" are screenshots from a different app by a different developer. "Mommy Saver Plus" was removed for having "deceptive ads", but unlike the app in the screenshot "Mommy Saver Plus" doesn't have any ads, so clearly this was done in error.
> Please see the attached screenshot of "Mommy Saver Plus" for comparison.
> Thanks,
> <Name>
My response email to the rejection today was very clear. Unfortunately, it was also passive aggressive.
Hopefully I'll learn to clear my head before reacting next time.
I actually posted this hoping to spark some useful conversation on what a good email to send would be, unfortunately all I've got are upvotes instead
As with the sibling poster, I was tangentially following this because of the absurdity. I don't think I would've handled it as well as you did.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092039
It's silly that the only way to get big companies to resolve crazy failings in their normal processes is to take the problem public on social media.
Instead they should have a built in process that operates outside their normal systems - an ombudsman who has the power and authority to instruct other areas of the organisation to make different decisions.
Their organization and priorities absolutely do not leave room for support for everyday people. There is zero evidence that they have any intentions of changing this, just like every other one of the past 20 years.
I’d Azure breaks I have a direct hotline to Seattle. Granted we’re enterprise and spend a lot of money on Microsoft products, but I can still call Seattle and they’ll work on it and give me hourly status reports until my issue is resolved. If our google cloud breaks I can talk to a chatbot.
Maybe having fewer support staff saves google money on the budgets, but I’m not convinced it’s a very good long term strategy if you want enterprise to take your services seriously.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/02/google-finally-adds-consum...
I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s tried to take advantage of this, I’m upgraded to One for more storage but haven’t had a reason to test out their humanoids (yet).
[edit: I’m definitely not suggesting Google One would have helped with this particular Play Store publishing predicament, for the record!]
Source: me
Appeal again. But this time, put some real effort into it. Spend more than 2 seconds on it. Really make it clear that your app does not contain ads and the screenshot is not your app.
Seeing yet another one of these stories hit the front page of HN is making me want to double-down on removing Google from my life entirely.
gpm wrote a comment with an alternative hypothetical redaction that I like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19497131
I googled the app in the screenshots and it shows in google but now it 404s, just like Mommy Saver Plus. So it seems they removed the correct app also.
(Not an Android developer. Thought of starting but never did --- for mostly different reasons, however.)
https://twitter.com/jeremydeanlakey/status/11106845016659968...
I did ship a complex HTML5 Offline app for a client, and it was more pain than it should've been, but I made it work. (Tip: the two big mobile platform owners seem to have an obvious disincentive for HTML5 Offline to work well.) If I do something Web-first, it'll be handheld&desktop responsive, and I'll be keeping a smooth path to HTML5 Offline in mind as a possible alternative to the app stores.
I've been a native app developer for ten years, I've worked on dozens and dozens of apps, and I know a tonne of app developers and entrepreneurs.
I don't think I've come across a single case of somebody saying that they want an app for those reasons.
The closest I can think of is a loyalty card app, and they got the usage data through use of the loyalty system, not by spying on your phone, and it didn't matter whether you used the plastic card, the website, or the app.
And why did you redact this fact?
It's redacted because that app has nothing to do with OP.
Chances of this happening again are very slim for the next guy who falls prey to their faulty moderation (ai).
It bothers me greatly that not only can they shut down your app, but they can shut down your Google account (and any future accounts they might deem as being related...)
What are the chances that they might accidentally (human failure or algo failure) believe one Google account is related to another "bad" account and close the good account? It certainly seems possible given that obviously Google does not have complete control over its systems.
They make you provide a screenshot to submit an add-on. I used a screenshot of the website it works on with the porn ads it blocks heavily pixelated. I can't think of any other way to take a screenshot of what my add-on does. So I guess users will have to do without the new update.
'... repeated violations can result in the suspension of this app or your Google Play Developer account.'"
Learn the lessson not to make yourself dependent on a despot.
