Chrome killed my extension and won’t tell me why

And so the mice voted to bell the cat.

Neither Apple nor Google are governments. When laws and constitutions were crafted, those framers did not comprehend a future where private companies had effective control (and even monopoly) on what might amount to critical infrastructure, and if not critical, then infrastructure nonetheless.

As Arch Linux user if I found a software I like and want to help with distribution I can create package and push it to AUR [1]. This works as recipe - list of make and run dependencies, configuration, installation. Package is not safe and should be reviewed on installation.

Popular package may be pulled to official repository [2], distributed in binary form. "community" repository maintained by Trusted Users [3], "core" and "extra" by Arch Linux Developers [4]. It is evergreen - rolling release. Some distributions provide Stable releases which should be even safer.

Distributions may remove package, block version, patch to its standards. I think if opt-out addons were distributed by Debian they would be patched to opt-in.

In other words - many 3rd party distributions, by users to users, pulled - not pushed, not required to accept all packages.

[1] https://aur.archlinux.org/

[2] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/

[3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trusted_Users

[4] https://www.archlinux.org/people/developers/

That's the "middle ground" scenario that isn't true for either side. Apple does directly hire employees to do this, so their policies and rules are often the pain point. Google doesn't hire anyone - they have the team that runs the approval systems and will review certain extensions, but it's completely automated for 99% of all cases.

The only people that probably do use contractors are Amazon for their Alexa skills and Kindle apps.

As soon as you give up the idea of preventing people from distributing malicious software, and they're not even doing a good job of it right now, you can let competition in a curation market solve the problem for you. I'd way rather have a system where I can get recommendations from someone that's an expert in an area. Ex: Like JonnyGURU is for power supply recommendations, but for software / extensions.

If you extend that concept to the mobile app stores, a system where someone from my city could run a store for local businesses would be significantly better for users and developers than what we have now. For developers it would be amazing to go to a local business, show some local ID, and get a signing certificate. For users it would be amazing to have a local store where established businesses with ties to the community all have a vested interest in it's quality / trustworthiness. That would be at the lowest end for tiny apps. For anything bigger, someone could build a brand / reputation around curation. For example, think of something like a specialized password manager extension store.

When it comes to Google I think there are two problems that prevent them from building a better system. First, they're arrogant and think users are too stupid to control their own devices. Second, their search has devolved to be an atrocious garbage pit of paid content that's optimized for SEO. It's a cyclic dependency where Google's failure makes it difficult for users to make good choices. Google interprets that as the users being dumb and makes the system even more complicated / less effective by adding more ML and automation.

That also probably plays a role in the reluctance to open up some of the current systems. The attempts at scaling with automation and ML are such failures (everywhere) the only way to make them look half reasonable is to ensure no one else can build a competing system.

With their (intentional) behavior you described, these companies often violate even basic legal principles and sometimes even specific laws (depending on country/jurisdiction). Moreover, these same companies (again, intentionally) also use their financial/legal weight to pretty much stifle/kill any individual attempts to bring them to task for those violations. In fact, that itself is illegal (antitrust) behavior in many places.

This isn't just about governments failing to regulate these companies, but probably even more so about their failure to even enforce existing rules and protect citizens against such abuses.

It's a pretty good demonstration of how bad the state of class (in)justice really is, including all the corrupt governments that keep it a reality.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact-us/ - I have never failed to talk to a human that way.

(For AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/)

Oh the many times I have written to a company's "Support" forms and never got a response. And then I wrote to them on Twitter (message) and I got my answers in 2h or less... Unfortunately social media tend to be the escalation point..

That it has its walled garden, but it is possible to install from arbitrary sources (with sufficient warnings to users of those dangers). In iOS, you can't sideload at all.

So if you break up Google, chrome would have to cut its budget or stop existing. And either way, chrome extension Devs wouldn't be better supported than they are now would they?

This is always my question with "Break up X": then what?

They thought we weren't using the TTS permission, but we are.