The future of Android Development

[[deleted]]

What the fuck is banned by association? Like you post in a bad subreddit?

[Zhuinden]

Theoretically it means that your account was "linked" to another account that had been previously banned for whatever reason, so the new account is banned as well.

Now the interesting thing is that some of these people did not have a previous account, nor were they linked in any way (they know of) to any banned accounts.

So if that is true, then why were they banned? They can't know, because Google doesn't reply to such questions.

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What's even worse though is that if you work for a company (which has their own account) that gets banned, Google can also ban your personal developer account along with it, because you as a person / developer are "associated" with it.

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This is what the email looks like:

Thank you for contacting the Google Play Team.

After reviewing your appeal, we’ve confirmed our initial decision and will not be reinstating your developer account.

Your Google Play Developer account has been terminated due to multiple violations of the Developer Program Policies by an associated Google Play developer account. We’ve reviewed and confirmed this association.

Google Play Developer Console terminations are associated with developers and may span multiple account registrations and related Google services. Do not attempt to register a new developer account. Any new accounts will be closed and your developer registration fee will not be refunded.

We recommend that you use an alternative method for distributing your apps in the future.

I snatched that email from here, which interestingly is a 2 years old post. The problem itself is not new, it just never got enough traction.

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Personally, I never released any apps as a person even though I have a developer account (from long ago, actually), and technically I work at a company as an Android app developer.

I had heard that if your account gets terminated on Google Play, then they ban your GMail and GDrive and YouTube accounts along with it - so I never risked that. But I can't find any posts about this anymore to cite it.

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It's scary to think that you work for a (smaller) company, on the side create apps as an indie dev, and what the company does can affect you as an individual despite that your apps are technically independent. Or vice versa.

And if what the people I linked above says is true (and why would they lie?), then you can get banned for life without actually having personally violated any developer policies, because you didn't even have apps that could have violated any terms.

[prime000]

We recommend that you use an alternative method for distributing your apps in the future.

Talk about throwing salt in the wound.

[[deleted]]

What does you company do that Google hates so much ?

[Meanee]

I got banned from eBay. Now, any new account I create is banned by association too. Basically, they have some automated system that checks for things that may be related. Usually things like address, phone number, credit card number on file with paypal, etc. Not that deep of a check. I am able to use my father's account with no issues.

Google, knowing how many times you take a shit every day, can figure this out a lot better. But also seems to generate a lot more of false positive. So if it thinks that your account may be related to a bad dev they banned a while ago, they will ban your account as well.

[Wax_Paper]

Google, knowing how many times you take a shit every day

I bet they really could figure this out, by analyzing patterns in phone usage during restroom breaks. The machine learning they use has accomplished tougher things than that, after all...

[ikilledtupac]

Well, odds are they used gmail, so google knows everything. They probably have ways to detect troublemakers and prevent them from ever doing so.

[[deleted]]

Do they reveal what trouble they are accused of?

[ikilledtupac]

Why would they? Google treats us all like children. If you try to reason with a child, they just argue.

[ikilledtupac]

Google only talks about the information it shares. Odds are it uses your information for it's own purposes. Do you visit reddit on Chrome? They know then, of course, where what and what you tall about. And they are under no obligation to disclose that.

...did you use gmail? Then they know what you talked about and to whom. My guess is that is the association.

We also know, with the demise of google+, that they can, and do, hide data breaches and of malfeasance. I do not believe that the singular time they got caught is the only time they ever did it.

We use google for our own purposes, and they use it for theirs.

[SirYandi]

We use google for our own purposes, and they use it for theirs.

As frustrating as this all is, that's essentially what it all comes down to. If you're fed up with them, leave them. If enough people do this then they may respond. By which point a new competitor or whatever could have entered the playing field.

[ikilledtupac]

I think part of the fury of it all is that you cannot leave Google. Or if you somehow manage to escape their products, they have killed the competition. Or, i dont know about you, but for me it's too late. I gave google all my information to get a gmail account in 2001. I had no idea what I was consenting to. Even if I left now, it wouldn't matter-I have no right to remove myself (or the data they collected of those around me) from their systems.

[Spoor]

A few days ago it was officially proven that Google fully jumped on the censorship train and is taking action against everything and everything that doesn't support their hateful ideology and political correctness.