undefined | Better HN

0 pointsClosi5y ago0 comments

Can't we? I mean even if it took 5 hours to adjudicate each ban, and Google offshores the adjudication at $10 per hour, you are looking at about $6m in cost.

With a more aggressive speed of 1 review per hour and a USA based review team, you are looking at a team of about 60 reviewers. At $60k per reviewer, you are talking $3.6m.

Hardly a big ask for a company with annual revenue over $180 billion, making $30 billion in revenue from Play Store alone.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

II2II5y ago· 1 in thread

The article mentions close to 1.1 million apps (962k for policy, 119k for malice/spam), so those efforts are off by an order of magnitude. Then the question it represents that much benefit to Google. Keep in mind that Google is a business. They don't have to concern themselves with being just. They only have to worry about their reputation and operating within the confines of the law. Keep in mind that legitimate violations may be more of a liability to Google than the revenue generated by approving it (may that being the sale of an illegal product or of something that violates their policies).

ClosiOP5y ago

OP that I was replying to was specifically talking about the feasibility of manually checking the 120k account bans, so I'm not off by an order of magnitude. I'm not suggesting all automatic checks are replaced with manual checks anyway, in fact the suggestion was a manual system for appeals, which would be much lower than the total number flagged.

I think your message pretty much gets to the same place though:

* Could Google do manual checks for appeals? Yes - absolutely. Even if it costs them $30 million to review, this is still tiny in the scheme of things (c0.01% of app store revenue). Never mind the fact that these developers had to pay to be on the platform in the first place.

* Would it be best for Developers if Google did it? Yes, it would give developers a chance to appeal and lower the number of absolute horror stories we hear.

* Does Google want to do it? No, because Google only cares about profit and doing the minimum it can get away with.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse