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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

Is there any large group representing App developers that could manage the large-scale negotiation and legal wrangling required to force Apple and Google to be more helpful when rejecting legitimate applications?

When I worked in Google (Ads, then later in Recommendations for Play and youtube) people often said this was intention to avoid teaching spammers how to get around the rules. But it's clear there are enough legitimate developers acting in good faith who are trying to change their applications without significant guidance that it seems entirely reasonable for a large-scale group negotiation.

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Part of the problem here might be conflating abuse prevention with policy compliance.

Abuse prevention is adversarial, and it's risky to reveal details about why something was flagged as abusive. Policy compliance isn't, or shouldn't be. A building inspector wouldn't say "this building has a code violation in the kitchen area" and refuse to provide specifics about what would fix it.

An app store needs both, and they need to operate differently.

> A building inspector wouldn't say "this building has a code violation in the kitchen area" and refuse to provide specifics about what would fix it.

Electrical inspections can be very much that way.

"This isn't up to code, I'm not signing off on it."

"How is it not up to code?"

"Your electrician knows. Or you can look in the electrical code."

Your electrician doesn't know; no other inspector has ever objected to the way they've done things.

That electrical code is paywalled, despite being official government policy (written and published by a trade association, which regularly updates said code mostly to force people to keep re-buying their volumes.)

That's actually really problematic - both that the code is paywalled and that an inspector would be cagey about it.

That's an established existing cartel.

app store regulation is a new forming cartel, without any formal body nor oversight.

Even a cartel would be easier to deal with. Google could then say "your Play Store Certified Compliance Specialist can tell you what's wrong".

It seems more likely that what's going on here is the issue was flagged by a bot which doesn't tell the human reviewer why it thinks there's a problem, and the reviewer believes they will be in more trouble if they make a mistake in overruling the bot than if they make a mistake in agreeing with it.

> That electrical code is paywalled, despite being official government policy (written and published by a trade association

If you're meaning the US National Electric Code written and published by the National Fire Protection Association, I would point out that it is available to the public for free:

https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-stand...

You need a free account and you can't download a PDF, but strictly speaking the contents of the document are not paywalled.

It's insane enough that we even allow corporations to own platforms and users. Software development should be free. They should not be able to reject anything. We should reject that notion entirely instead of playing the game they made up.

It may be hard to believe, but free software development stacks are a relatively new thing. When I was growing up, you had to buy the compiler, and the documentation for how to use the tools, and the language. (Though I think most 70s and 80s era computers came with BASIC)

While I sympathize with the idea that this should be open and free and easy, there are too many bad actors out there, so we can’t have nice things. And for every “free” platform and language and toolset there is either a developer who’s being funded by some other source or not being paid at all.

But there might be alternate approaches that allow for more freedom. For instance, what if Google assessed the risk level of each app and presented that to users, rather than blocking publishing entirely?

They could add all sorts of scary warnings in-between a user and a suspicious looking app, but eventually still allow both users & app developers to proceed if they have sufficiently high intent.

They could even monetize it by getting developers to pay per update if they want a "detailed assessment" which was able to result in a "very low risk" rating, if passed.

That already happens -- google already allows both users & app developers to proceed if they have sufficiently high intent. Here is one example:

https://www.expressvpn.com/support/vpn-setup/enable-apk-inst...

> They could add all sorts of scary warnings in-between a user and a suspicious looking app

That's a nice looking app, would be a shame if it had a big scary warning on it.

If they did that, they would rightfully be accused of running a racket.

They currently block some apps from publishing altogether. Is that not worse?

They'd block all the same apps, and some extra for the racket money. So no, current situation is not worse.

The tooling wasn't free because it costs money to develop - that is sensible. But it didn't limit what you could do with the stuff that you made with said tooling. You didn't have to pay all OS vendors for the privilege of them allowing your code onto user's devices. I think that's really what OP refers to, not the cost of tooling.

And, yes, most computers from at least 1980s onwards came with something. DOS had BASICA first, then GW-BASIC, then QBasic - and these all were quite adequate for plenty of tasks, even games. By the 90s, we even had free 32-bit C++ compilers (DJGPP 1.03, 1991).

Software development, on Android at least, is already free. It only takes a few clicks to enable third-party apt files, and then you can install software from any source. (And if you complain that this is too complex.. well, it is simpler than many Windows InstallShield wizards at least). You can even install f-droid and then you have appstore experience without a review.

What Google controls is "endorsement" and that's where Google is rejecting things. If you want to reject it, go ahead... but a lot of people actually want it.

A union for customers of monolithic tech companies who provide negligent support could be cool.

I've been chewing on this idea for a while now. I would love to join a software buyer's cooperative and pool my money with other like-minded individuals.

Me too! It's an interesting idea.

Sounds like in this case it needs to be a craft union or industrial union: a union made up of laborers of a craft or industry (in this case, mobile app developers).

Get enough developers of high-profile apps on board, and now you have negotiating power. If they balk, make a union-controlled app store, threaten to sell apps only on the union store.

One problem with this approach is that the customers of the app stores generally aren't individual developers, they're the companies that make the apps. It would be stronger to say

  Uber, King Games (candy crush), Roblox, and PUBG Mobile are dissatisfied with the way policies are unevenly enforced on the App Store / Play Store.  Here are our demands, kindly address them or we will collectively deprive Apple / Google of the app revenue and band together to make our own.

than

  Developers Alice, Bob, Carol, Dan, [...], and Zelie, who work at Uber, King Games, [etc] are dissatisfied with [...]

... Although, I can't say I would like to live in a world where the biggest revenue producers for the app stores get to dictate terms to the app store providers.

That's not a problem at all. Pretty sure the GP meant publishers, e.g. Uber, King Games, Roblox (...).

That is a completely ridiculous solution to a very simple problem. How do we give bargaining power to developers? We break up the app store monopolies. That's it.

Google/Apple giving you shit? Give them the finger and put your app on another store. There's no stronger bargaining chip than the free market.

Which other store? The only stores that matter as far as mobile goes are Google and Apple's.

I'm not an Android user, but aren't third party app stores allowed on Android? https://www.androidauthority.com/best-app-stores-936652/

They're probably not great places to try and grow your userbase based on the number of users compared to the Play Store, but they exist.

> They're probably not great places to try and grow your userbase based on the number of users

Cca 2012 there were thriving, competing stores then Google shut that shit down. They got sued and lost, but the competing stores were dead, never to recover.

I don't know if they are dead, on my Samsung Galaxy I usually download apps from the Samsung store not from the Playstore.

F-Droid is still around, as is Amazon's thing.

Maybe courts can force phone manufacturers to include those stores just like they forced Microsoft to include other browsers on Windows. Without that, people are always going to stick to the default store.

That’s a chicken and egg problem. Break up the monopoly, and the competitors will come.

It’s not like the Google/Apple stores would be hard to compete with. They both have massive, longstanding problems that consumers and developers have been complaining about since forever. There’s a lot of opportunity to innovate in that space, if only it were actually possible to compete.

That's not easier at all. By a wide margin.

IANAL, but isn’t that group called “the court system”? This person is stuck in google’s kangaroo court, but they should just switch venues as soon as the apps are removed and sue google for damages. They can demonstrate google materially impacts their business and is acting in bad faith. Going through google’s legal department is probably going to quickly get the result they want.

Didn't work very well for Epic (v Apple). While the law might force their hand, it may just end up in a lose-lose situation (the most likely outcome).

The Coalition for App Fairness, which of course, is currently involved in major litigation against both Google and Apple.

It's open to new members! It looks like the author of this post is already a member.

https://appfairness.org/members/

Thanks for pointing this out- I either failed to recall it existed, or didn't know it existed, but it more or less is what I was describing above.

Support legislation requiring Apple and Google to allow third party app stores.

But this is already about Google and Google already allows third party app stores. (I mean even Epic, which is a pretty well-known, high-profit company couldn't get very many people to download their store for Android.) The solution is to support legislation requiring companies to give specific details of what the problem is rather than allowing them to play these games of "bring me a rock."[0]

[0] https://jonathanbecher.com/2020/08/30/the-bring-me-a-rock-ph...

^^^ this

Doesn't Verizon lock down all their phones against sideloading? Doesn't do much good for google to allow something if everyone else is still allowed to do the same. The user needs to be able to download from the web like any windows/linux/mac app. Security and curation are no excuse for preventing it.

No, they don't.

And Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft! I’d love to write software to run on my PS5.

Homebrew development has been a thing for as long as video game consoles have been around. I don't think it'd be reasonable to require Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft to provide the development toolchains/SDKs/software they've developed for free.

However, it would be good if they were required to allow third-party software installations with software written using third party toolchains (like the homebrew ones). Consoles like the PS5/Xbox really aren't all that different from PCs nowadays, even from the software library side. Most games are cross-platform, and even Sony has been bringing their exclusives to PC.

So really, a PS5/Xbox/Switch is just a gaming PC with arbitrary anti-consumer, anti-competitive restrictions. Even if these restrictions actually subsidize the price of the hardware, it's still harmful to consumers since they end up spending a lot more money on software over the lifetime of the console. Plus, that hardware is extremely locked down, so it's not like consumers are really benefiting from those supposed subsidies. They're just paying slightly less up front for a machine designed to take a lot of money from them.

Google allows third party app stores, or just installing apps without any app stores at all. But there's much less $$$ in targeting users outside of the walled garden.

> But there's much less $$$ in targeting users outside of the walled garden.

That's due entirely to Google's aggressive anti-competitive business practices. Legislation that "allows third party stores" would also need to include rules preventing Google from, for example, blocking non-Google app installations unless users flip a switch buried in the settings app (which looks different on every phone), and then plastering the screen with scary technobabble about security vulnerabilities to scare the average consumer away.

My Samsung phone comes with Samsung App store, ready to use. No need to flip a switch or accept scary warnings.

Did you choose the Samsung App Store, or was it preloaded on the device by the phone manufacturer?

Consumer choice is restricted by those anti-competitive business practices I mentioned. Whatever deal Samsung has with Google for preloaded software is irrelevant. If you wanted to install the Epic Games Store, you'd have to go flip that switch[*]

[*] actually, Samsung allows Epic to distribute their store through the Galaxy store app. So that's a bad example lol, but EGS is the only major Android app store I could think of. If anything though, the fact that Samsung allows this is evidence that increased competition benefits consumers. Samsung doesn't have the market position Google does, so they need to make different decisions to compete. Making it easy to install a third-party store without Google's security theater bullshit is good for consumers.

Relative to almost anything else a consumer might want to choose in their purchasing lives, tapping a screen a couple of times doesn't seem to qualify as difficult. Definitely not as a restriction of consumer choice.

By “tapping a screen a couple of times” you’re referring to the process of enabling side-loading on Android?

Because if you don’t think that’s a problem, then you must be living in a bubble surrounded by techies.

Imagine you’re trying to start a competing app store. What does user acquisition look like for you on Android? Besides the regular ad spending to promote your app, you also need to figure out a way to guide consumers through the installation process.

Even if you manage to solve that problem effectively with some kick ass tutorial, your main competitor doesn’t have to worry about that. They will always be advantaged no matter how superior your product/service is.

And that’s just the side loading side of it. There are many other anti-competitive things Google does on Android to maintain their monopoly.

I have the consumer choice to buy any compatible car battery I want. That doesn't mean it's easy to install. Unless I'm living in an ivory tower with people who find app stores easier to install than car batteries.

Ease of installation (which, again, at least in my rarefied atmosphere of people who find tapping a screen under 10 times [0] easier than, say, going and buying a compatible battery, remove the old one, installing the new one, and disposing of the old one) still isn't particularly to do with choice. Android certainly has choice. It's Apple that doesn't.

[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/696504/how-to-install-third-party-...

you right android good apple bad

This is coming in the EU. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

According to https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme..., you can file suit in Santa Clara for a contract dispute.

I think it will be pretty hard to fight a class-action legal battle with Google over a contract since every Android phone will happily install arbitrary APK files for users without the play store, but serving an APK from the play store in the first place requires agreeing to the above contract in full.

You don't want this to be a lawsuit; you want it to be a friendly, bidirectional negotiation.

That's backed by a severe economic impact for Google if they don't play nice.

The Digital Services Act is supposed to provide some legal recourse, at least in the European Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act https://verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fails/

However, ask the politicians at the European Commission, and they will boast that it is about this:

> By summer 2023, the first very concrete effects of the #DSA will be visible for all users. This includes: Accessible "button" to easily flag illegal content

https://nitter.it/ThierryBreton/status/1592856203935510528#m

Which just happens to be what the reviewer was complaining about (ways to report "objectionable content").

The EU is in a weird place.

They seem to be genuinely motivated by "individual rights", but with more of a focus on harassment rather than freedom of expression, so they usually err on the side of over-enforcement (of censoring rules, etc), since they're so used to the under-enforcement of the past.

This is what trade guilds were for.

Antique webs of trust with documentation purporting legitimacy.

That's still, in real terms, how college degrees are done.

The play store could have tiers so beginners can still access it.

"Untrusted app" versus "trusted app".

Then if you had satisfied the trust for say the itunes store you can bring the documentation over to fast track it on the play store.

It shouldn't be an incremental one off pain in the ass every time. Do the passport paperwork once and be done with it

> Is there any large group representing App developers

Why would enlightened individualists band together? It reeks of unions, or worse, tribalism! /s

National governments.

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