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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate that the developer resubmitted the app without the donation link, open source projects having a donation link in their apps does not violate Google Play policies.

> Here are some examples of products not currently supported by Google Play In-app Billing:

> One time-payments, including peer-to-peer payments, online auctions, and donations.

https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/

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It indeed is unfortunate. But what other recourse did we have? The first objective, before we even consider donations or anything, is to make our software available and functional to our users. So we had to resubmit. And it's not like the resubmission process is instantaneous; as of writing, the app still isn't back in the store.

But anyway, now what? Let's say things return to normal, but we still want to put the silly link in the app. Our appeal was rejected. We could send letters, I suppose. Perhaps this article on HN will get the attention of the right people? We could appeal the appeal, maybe. And then appeal the appeal for the appeal. At what point does this become a waste of energy that could be spent coding and improving the app in other ways? It's hard to know where to draw the line and which battles are worth fighting. I'm happy to hear folks' opinions on the matter.

I certainly agree, though, that it is unfortunate.

Donations are not supported by in-app purchases, and I'm sure this doesn't mean open source apps are not allowed to sustain themselves by showing a donation link. Or if that is Google's unwritten policy, people must make their voices heard, this abusive behavior cannot be accepted.

I would resubmit the app with the donation link and continue to document and share what happened. Please do not allow them to set a precedent with a popular project like WireGuard.

It's important to share every detail of the issue, the messages you received, your replies, and the policy links you were given about the alleged policy violations.

I think what you are proposing is to make an ideological fight out of this issue, that is exactly what the author describes as "a huge time-drain that does not make the app better" and exactly the opposite of what he meant with "choose your battles".

Let me say that I think you're morally right, but it is probably not a reasonable choice of actions for the author and the users of the app.

There is no need for an ideological fight, because there is no written Google Play policy against donation links in apps. This is most likely a mistake made by the reviewer or an automated system, and I believe they should follow up on it to sort things out.

> I believe they should follow up on it to sort things out. reply

I'm sure you believe that.

Do you work at Google in a position to supervise app reviews? Because if you do, then you can help straighten this out.

If you don't, then it is hopeless. Technically, Google has the right to drop any app for any reason whether it is fair or not (so suing them or something isn't an option). OP already followed the ONLY channel that Google provides (an "appeal" handled, I presume, by a bot that generally issues quick, automated rejections. Sure, I wish Google had a better policy, with some sort of genuine appeal policy which included genuine human review, followed a consistent policy, and most likely had a public record of decisions... but they don't.

I wouldn't assume up front that any action is hopeless. There are many Googlers on this forum and issues like that get forwarded and discussed internally. Google has Open Source Programs Office which used to have a lot of clout inside the company, at least at the time when I worked there.

You are effectively proposing to spend the donated money on improving the Play Store instead of on improving Wireguard.

It's amusing - I feel it's almost like causing a media "storm" is part of the whole "AI powered" process they've got going on. Create Reddit/Hackernews/tech blog outrage and maybe a human might step in and reverse the decision.

You can look at r/videos and see how many examples there are, the link in [1] provides quite a few...

So hey, go get people to repost across social media, maybe get a nice trendy hashtag going like #freewireguard and maybe their "AI" (or PR department) might actually do something useful.

Because to me, I've noticed more and more companies only reverse decisions or backpeddle once there's enough shit flying at them (See Blizzard recently, for example).

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/search?q=flair%3AYouTube%2BD...

Of course. No company will admit fault unless forced. The best PR move is wait for it to pass.

I can almost guarantee you that a googler who reads hn has submitted this issue to an internal mailing list and you will get special treatment for this problem.

It's fucking infuriating that the only way to get the attention of a human at Google is to know someone or to frontpage HN.

Time for HN to branch out.. "HN Eyeballs, submit your gripe with Google, we'll show it to Googlers based on their IP address".

As soon as you do that, the effect is gone. It can only ever work in a few isolated cases. Attention arbitrage so to speak

Or in Germany to get an emergency court order ("Einstweilige Verfügung"), dunno if the US has a similar legal venue. At least with an EV you get the immediate attention of their legal department.

The US does, but courts are reluctant to issue them in general. Since google as a fair chance of winning the courts will probably reject the immediate order, and then this drags out in court for a few expensive years before a ruling is issued that could go either way, and either way will drag through the appeals process for many more expensive years.

Does GDPR cover these kind of issues where accounts/apps are demonetized or taken down because of some automated process mistake?

No.

Yes, it does actually. Article 22 of the GDPR covers this.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

GDPR doesn't cover apps, or organizations a data subject can only be an individual.

Individual developers (sole proprietors) are covered under GDPR!

They are, their products aren't. This is about a decision being made on the basis on PII not just an arbitrary automated decision.

In England you can sue a company for failing to follow its own policies but I don't know if this is possible as a small claim. If not it's probably eye-wateringly expensive.

My app was also removed a few months ago for this. In the email they say you have to use Google Play In-app Billing, however:

> Donations to 527 designated tax exempt organizations are also permitted.

So if Wireguard becomes a proper tax exempt organisation it would be ok.

If you want donations but aren't tax exempt there is basically no way to do it. However you could easily work around it by offering something trivial like a badge (games can use IAP to purchase trivial things like hats). The downside is that Google take their 30% cut.

I was going to suggest this too. According to the Android dev site "Google Play Billing can be used to sell the following types of in-app products: One-time products: An in-app product requiring a single, non-recurring charge to the user's form of payment. Additional game levels, premium loot boxes, and media files are examples of one-time products."[0] So could you have buttons to buy a "bronze supporter badge", "silver supporter badge" etc. (trying to avoid using the word donation in case it triggers something), perhaps even enabling a "Show my supporter badges" page that shows the ones you've purchased? Kind-of unnecessary extra dev, and as you say Google will take their hefty cut, but might be better than nothing.

[0] https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_ov...

You could probably just sell it as "get name on Wireguard website".

And then Google get 30% of it.

Yeah...

> Google take their 30% cut.

AKA follow the money.

google gets a 30 % cut. I wonder about the exactwording and legalese. so if someone is financially endowed then could they make a simple game or a loot box bonus, that pays people to play it. then google would owe 30% to that player.

just to stir the pot and see what happens.

>Apps that employ in-store or in-app purchases must comply with the following guidelines

A donation is not a purchase.

So what is stopping all apps from being “free with a donation”?

Because the huge majority of users don’t donate?

The same thing that stops random stores from being "free with a donation"? Laws, tax fraud, etc. .

It’s not “tax fraud” to ask for donations even if you’re not a non profit. A for profit developer can ask for a “donation” to get feature X.

There's no law against it. You just have to pay taxes on it as it's just a normal income if you're not a charity.

Can someone explains me why PayPal's app is then allowed per this policy ?

Because you can't add funds to your PayPal account through Google Play billing. It has its own billing platform.

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