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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

You are assuming that the only purpose of certification is to catch actively malicious developers. I can think of many other perfectly good reasons to have one: to make sure server response times are fast enough, to make sure it fits the guidelines for types of content they want in their ecosystem, to make sure it doesn't blatantly violate any trademarks, etc.

I don't think the concept of a certification process is the problem, just the implementation is terrible (compared to the Apple process which is merely "poor")

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You're definitely right that we don't actually know what checks they're prioritizing, but it's hard for me to believe they're actually doing any quality checking when this is the #1 skill you see in the app: http://i.imgur.com/Qp4Cv6k.png

Most accurate software company name ever.

The iOS app store was mired in fart apps in the early days. Many of them were very profitable. I think it's just a natural growing pain of any consumer-facing app store.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/23/iphone-fart-app-pulls-in-n...

I remember those days vividly, what's different here is the Alexa Skills list is sorted alphabetically so this fart app is what every single person who enters the "store" sees first.

But that doesn't refute the parent's point: since the content at a URL is inherently mutable, they could judge that (at time of submission) some app is the type of content they want in their ecosystem, and then seconds after approval, it no longer is.

I would assume the terms of service prohibit that, which probably puts some liability on the developer.

It could be that the client device validates a checksum against the approved list at the store before installing? Haven't tested if this is the case, just spitballing a mechanism that would allow for the control without the hosting.

https://github.com/substack/hyperboot

Right. Like I said, it doesn't do much for a malicious developer actively trying to subvert the process. That doesn't mean it's useless. I would guess most problematic apps are not malicious, but are an honest misunderstanding or disagreement about what level of quality is acceptable or what types of services are allowed.

A moderately clever developer could sneak something past the Apple app store review too. Wasn't there a flashlight app that included a secret wifi tethering tool?

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