As a scientist, I often have to deal with similar BS of a reviewer misunderstanding a submitted journal article, literally insisting we do something we already did, and explained in the paper.
I try to just own the fact that I didn't make my explanation clear and visible enough, so I just submit an updated version along with a comment like "We thank the reviewer for pointing out that we didn't clearly articulate our work on X, so we revised the manuscript accordingly."
In this case change around the UI for this tool to make it slightly more idiot proof, resubmit, and it will be approved. Getting angry and adversarial will only make them have a bad attitude and intentionally be unhelpful. Take them seriously, stroke their egos, and take fully responsibility for having presented your feature in a way they didn't understand. Thank them for pointing out this huge flaw in your program and giving you the opportunity to fix it!
That is a decent approach to any "Gate Keeper" entity. The Gate Keeper might be anything from a budget holder to a government.
"The Prince" by an Italian lad off of the 16thC is still a pertinent read 400 years later and he's riffing off old Romans, Greeks and before and that's just in Europe. I'm sure China and India, int al, have similar writings. Coercion and other trickery is hardly the invention of Renaissance Italy but a fair few expert practitioners were extent.
Surprisingly enough, some people don't abide by some stated rules and need careful handling. Bonus points are awarded when you make your eventual goal the idea of your "adversary".
This is all a massive game of "us - decent types" vs "you - unpleasant types" and hence a form of tribalism.
As soon as you find yourself using a term like "As a ..." or even "We ..." why not look a little deeper and see if you can't find some common ground or defuse the situation somehow. Perhaps a chat over the blower instead of the usual email trail as a precursor to hostilities might help.
I don't know exactly what is allowed (lol) in refereeing a journal submission but surely the current situation is a bit rubbish. I've been a non scientist reader of New Scientist for 40 odd years and this sort of issue comes up quite regularly. Journos, scientists, engineers and the rest are all unhappy with the way "publication" happens at some level. This is way more fundamental than open vs closed too.
Change is indicated but it will require quite some effort.
This advice is relevant in many aspects of daily life too. I visualize it like tug-o-war. The more they disagree, the more they both back up + pull harder. But the more they "agree" (it's all in the delivery as @universehacker mentioned) the more they approach one another + relax their grip. Meet in the "middle"!
>Take them seriously, stroke their egos, and take fully responsibility
With academic reviews, I'm a bit split on this approach. It's context dependent, but sometimes being on the offence is a better strategy. You shouldn't be rude, but if you clearly demonstrate that the reviewer is wrong and their understanding is wrong, it can have the effect of disarming them and swaying the other reviewers in your favour. It's extremely likely that 1 out of 4-5 reviewers that you typically get will be someone who puts minimal effort and doesn't get the paper. So this is something that you need to do often.
A comment added that he should just have added ,,Report objectionable content''. On the screenshot there was only a ,,Report'' button under blocking user.
I think the person who submits the app underestimates how much heat Google can get from advertisers and people for the content itself.
>literally insisting we do something we already did
>I try to just own the fact that I didn't make my explanation clear and visible enough
Exactly, I think this works the best. You don’t have to explain the reviewer’s mistake and risk them misunderstanding your reply for being argumentative, the reviewer doesn’t have to admit a mistake, and your writing likely benefits from additional clarity.
They didn't get angry and adversarial, they just explained and asked for clarification. Of course, kafkaesque bureaucracies don't like that, so making a random trivial change and obsequiously resubmitting is still probably the approach to use if you want to stay in business. Google these days is like something out of Brazil.
And this is why we need to cherish the web. I see no reason why a yoga app can't be done on the web. I do know that apps tend to convert better, if only we could bridge that gap.
It's in particular troubling how much of this madness we've internalized to just accept. The idea that you need to resubmit a 100 apps because Google decided you need to target a different internal version number is insane. It would be very bad if the SDK had a breaking change, but in this case it's just busy work: upping a number and resubmitting.
And what about the rule to be able to report user generated content? Who the hell is Google to interfere on such app-specific functionality? What if my moderation workflow would only allow draft posts, each manually approved, making reporting them pointless? Does Google actually check if a report gets sent or followed up? I don't think so. So it's an invasive power grab, and then poorly regulated.
These platforms and gatekeepers have become far too powerful and leveled up the arrogance that comes with it.
We implement our apps with an offline mode which offers everything, but because you have to manually bookmark them on your phone home page, it is too much to ask for users and they forget. So they download the app from a store. If we had something that an online app can indicate it has a fully offline mode for the browser to pick up, it could ask ‘download for offline and add icon to your apps?’ . The extra step is preventing users from doing/knowing about this; AppStore/playstore is just lower friction.
Cos users want mobile apps. When Roam research and Obsidian launched, one of the biggest thing people were ranting about was that their lack of mobile apps. Simple.
Google also is dominating the browser market. Not to mention, I see Manifest v3 as something in this direction. They just don't have the exact amount of control they do in Play store is all. So my question is, how long are you gonna run?
I wish people would stop doing crap like "you need to install our app to click this button and do the action you want to do" which I could totally do online but probably without providing that sweet install +1 and those sweet tracking data. So it happens more and more.
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.
I think at least one thing worth a try is: make a tiny, relatively inconsequential change, and submit it again.
If you had a 93% success ratio before, you've got pretty good odds that you'll get a new reviewer on the next update and it'll be approved.
Maybe something like the copy change puffoflogic recommended. Just make any tiny change in the area, re-submit the app, and hope you get lucky with a better reviewer.
It's not clear from the screenshot that the "Report" button is reporting content rather than a user, especially when it's listed right under "Block user". (Also keep in mind the viewer of the image has no idea how you brought up that popup, like whether you tapped someone's name or their comment, so that context is missing.) I would just make that clear in the app + screenshot by calling it "Report post" or "Report comment" or something like that.
There was a previous topic about this issue where the developer just iterated on things (changing font size, labels, add text, remove text) to past whatever bots they have.
I think that approach would be valid here. Change the link to "report content", etc.
At this point, why not just add the link to report your non-UGC. If this is what they want, give it to them. You can just ignore the reports on the backend. You can probably remove it next update when you don't get Anthony since it's pretty clear it's just one stubborn, lazy reviewer.
All that said - the Play Store and App Store review hell is one dystopia I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I'm so happy to work on the web now.
What I've learned from Google is that you are always talking to a bot, it just happens to be that some of those bots are human. Even though they are walking and talking simians they are executing a conversation script and have no agency and ability to control an outcome spare the most banal common issues.
It's funny. Google will flood us with captchas if it thinks we're not human but they subject people to inhuman treatment whenever we need to contact them. Bots for me but not for thee.
Can't believe you've published 100 apps and are only now experiencing this. That's the craziest part to me. It's not just Google Play btw -- the app stores are so notoriously bad that they nearly made me quit app development outright. Your experience is not just common, it's actually relatively mild. Something to look forward to: having your app accepted onto the play store only to randomly be taken down for policy violations a few weeks later with no warning or explanation. This will happen several times until it almost kills your company. It's a rite of passage to get bullied into desperation by big tech.
For the sake of your sanity, minimise the number of interactions you need to do with the app stores. Submit a bare bones app to the stores with all the native libraries you might need, then live the rest of your days on OTA updates (expo-updates, codepush, etc). This is against store policies but everyone does it and I've never heard of an app being taken down for it.
I clicked on this thinking "immature rant incoming", but darned if I didn't end up increasing my anger at the exact pace he did with every step! Nothing more frustrating than talking to a human refusing to behave like a human, and a process that isn't a process.
I want to guess the following and maybe knowledgeable people can chime in:
I would guess that the people reviewing these are contractors, paid by the app they review, and with a certain set of criteria that they're supposed to apply, but they make mistakes. And the supervisors of these contractors (who themselves are contractors) don't have great ways of comparing the work of one person to another / enforcing consistency, except by the customer escalating it.
I would guess that this is approached by Google as a piecework customer service task for contractors (a pure cost center to review and QA app submissions) and not employees, so it means that even something so important as developer experience is being outsourced, and not being daily internalized or felt by Google's own engineering team or product managers (who have moved on to more year-end-review-favorable projects after setting the top-level guidelines).
They probably only review (and whose job is it full time?) error reports / QA / complaints about this process every week and all you are is a line on a sheet that says to them well, "not that many people are upset, so it's going ok, we don't need to worry / put someone on it full time".
Until you get to be a huge revenue developer and worthy of some employee's attention -- and even then only on the "interesting" aspect of your needs, not the day-to-day is it working well experience. You're in the hands of minimum wage contractors reviewing whether you've adhered to sometimes subjective rules, with only so much interest in resolving something they have to study to understand -- and who has the patience for that? They're not SWEs themselves, they have no idea what your description of the problem is really trying to convey (unless they're talented people, and if so they're probably out of there soon).
Until that changes, there will be really frustrating cases like this. Even if your livelihood has come to depend on the app you built.
I had this problem with a phone case that I ordered from the Google Store. It shipped, allegedly, but the tracking never updated. After ten days I asked to cancel my order but was told that this could not be done as I had a tracking number. If I wished to return the item after it was received, I could do so for a full refund.
I spent a week going back and forth with them and explaining that nothing had actually shipped and, again, asked for a refund. 90% of the time they sent me something telling me what the tracking number was and that I could return the item once it was received for a full refund. The other 10% of the time they assured me that I was being handed off to another service tier and that this group would surely be able to help me.
The higher tier just sent me the same tracking number and seemingly ignored my pleas and my question of what happens if I do not receive the item before the return window had closed.
It wasn't even worth that much, but I was being petty and tried to respond within minutes of them emailing me. My thought was that someone over there was desperately trying to keep their work queue empty, and I was going to do my best to prevent that from happening.
They finally refunded my order 18 days after it had been placed. The tracking information still says that they're waiting for the package from Google. I'm half expecting a phone case to randomly arrive within the next few months.
I was also thinking I was talking to an AI after a number of emails, so eventually I tested it out:
> I wish to speak to a human. If you are human and are allowed to write anything, please use the word "cow" in your reply.
Response:
> We appreciate you getting back to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you. Yes, you are communicating to a human being and per your request, please see the word "cow".
The most dry way to user 'cow' ever. Humor must be crime within that department.
--
Even today I got a rejection to my appeal at the same time my app update went live. They don't hold any record of previous communication or history on app updates and rejections.
The rejection was for a too minimalist text I fixed already in an earlier update. They quoted a text that was not part of the update (!).
Multiple times I have overcome a rejection, by just adding a single character to my main app store text (a space char will do). And just re-submit.
Then you get to re-role the dice, and perhaps the update can go live.
I also always appeal everything, use their feedback tools, give single star ratings to review process, etc, hope it will set something in motion.
Stay off Google. Stay off Apple. Stay off Facebook. Stay off Amazon. Stay off Microsoft. Stay off Reddit. Stay off Twitter. Stay off Adobe. Stay off Salesforce. Stay off Oracle. Stay off Sony. Stay off eBay. Stay off GoDaddy. Stay off PayPal. Stay off Etsy. Stay off Steam. Stay off Comcast. Stay off RCA.
Own your platform from the bottom to the top. If your business model requires you to rely on one of these companies, pivot.
We have lost. They have won. They can deplatform anyone for anything or for nothing. Your continued use of the platform depends on whether or not you make them money. You are entitled to nothing they have built. They are not providing public services or utilities.
Abandon them, or on your own head be it when, not if, you get fucked.
What about passing a law that if your company is whatever this big at providing services, automatically enforcing that they need to behave as a utility company.
At this point, even Walmart, CVS, etc... should be treated as a utility company. the moment you got a big chunk of the economy depending on you, company lost ability of stop providing services, unless a court case is involved.
You seem to have missed a detail in their replies "We confirm that your app has options to report and block abusive users but your app does not contain functionality to report objectionable content." You complain that they haven't answered the specifics of your emails yet you've actually failed to address theirs.
Unpopular opinion but it seems like their response was reasonable tbf.
Yes, I think this is an issue of language/context. Perhaps the developer doesn't appreciate the full scale of the meaning of the phrase "objectionable content". Google for some reason thinks this app may be a legal liability, and they won't tell exactly why because it would make their position worse if they admitted they knew something.
It'd be great if google offered an option for a video call with a reviewer for $500/hr as an escalation option for businesses who are getting nowhere with the regular process. Ideally you'd get a refund if you turned out to be correct, but I'd be happy even without that.
That’s a terrible idea. What if instead they were held accountable to criminal and civil processes and if Google didn’t meet their end of a contract they were accountable for it.
They can offer their support via a legal accountability mechanism and not a paid-for escalation.
Just this past week, our app got the boot too. The reason was that the app was in violation of "user privacy". May be it was strings.xml that angered the Algorithm, may be it was the user reviews, may be it was something on our website... Then, magically, the app came back up. It turned out that as we were migrating our domain name to a new DNS Nameserver, the cached DNS entries probably pointed to an IP address that didn't exist, and the privacy policy web page was therefore 404 for a brief while.
Downloads from our website for the app went up by 2x, but that number dwarfs in comparison to installs from the Play Store. What can I say, Android developers are slaves to The Algorithm. At least until some other Algorithm at Google decides to properly staff up its support centers for developers.
As a contingency, what we do is:
- Sign our own APKs.
- Bake in a custom update mechanism as an escape hatch (this is against ToS, but whatever...).
This is relatable. I have spent many hours attempting to get someone at the IRS to answer my questions, and the best part is that they have always ended up hanging up on me after putting me on hold, and there is no way to pick back up where you left off with them since it's all done verbally.
They've been starved for labor. That is being fixed, but it will take a while.
Last time I had to actually talk to someone at the IRS was over a decade ago, but I recall it being an efficient conversation, and as pleasant as it could have been, given the topic.
Just hope you never get screwed by the USCIS. At least you found a way to talk to a human, if only for a second. The USCIS just phone menu trees you into disconnection.
Not only all this but the system doesn't work. The play store is flooded with low quality baiting garbage. Somehow their onerous policies block out legitimate users and have a VIP line for spammers
This is what surprises me the most about these stories of dealing with Google/Apple app stores. Most of the apps that aren't produced by very well-known studios or large corporations are just trash. There are few gems here and there but its like digging through a landfill to find anything decent.
[+] [-] _yb2s|3 years ago|reply
I try to just own the fact that I didn't make my explanation clear and visible enough, so I just submit an updated version along with a comment like "We thank the reviewer for pointing out that we didn't clearly articulate our work on X, so we revised the manuscript accordingly."
In this case change around the UI for this tool to make it slightly more idiot proof, resubmit, and it will be approved. Getting angry and adversarial will only make them have a bad attitude and intentionally be unhelpful. Take them seriously, stroke their egos, and take fully responsibility for having presented your feature in a way they didn't understand. Thank them for pointing out this huge flaw in your program and giving you the opportunity to fix it!
[+] [-] gerdesj|3 years ago|reply
"The Prince" by an Italian lad off of the 16thC is still a pertinent read 400 years later and he's riffing off old Romans, Greeks and before and that's just in Europe. I'm sure China and India, int al, have similar writings. Coercion and other trickery is hardly the invention of Renaissance Italy but a fair few expert practitioners were extent.
Surprisingly enough, some people don't abide by some stated rules and need careful handling. Bonus points are awarded when you make your eventual goal the idea of your "adversary".
This is all a massive game of "us - decent types" vs "you - unpleasant types" and hence a form of tribalism.
As soon as you find yourself using a term like "As a ..." or even "We ..." why not look a little deeper and see if you can't find some common ground or defuse the situation somehow. Perhaps a chat over the blower instead of the usual email trail as a precursor to hostilities might help.
I don't know exactly what is allowed (lol) in refereeing a journal submission but surely the current situation is a bit rubbish. I've been a non scientist reader of New Scientist for 40 odd years and this sort of issue comes up quite regularly. Journos, scientists, engineers and the rest are all unhappy with the way "publication" happens at some level. This is way more fundamental than open vs closed too.
Change is indicated but it will require quite some effort.
[+] [-] andirk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bubblethink|3 years ago|reply
With academic reviews, I'm a bit split on this approach. It's context dependent, but sometimes being on the offence is a better strategy. You shouldn't be rude, but if you clearly demonstrate that the reviewer is wrong and their understanding is wrong, it can have the effect of disarming them and swaying the other reviewers in your favour. It's extremely likely that 1 out of 4-5 reviewers that you typically get will be someone who puts minimal effort and doesn't get the paper. So this is something that you need to do often.
[+] [-] xiphias2|3 years ago|reply
I think the person who submits the app underestimates how much heat Google can get from advertisers and people for the content itself.
[+] [-] Isamu|3 years ago|reply
Exactly, I think this works the best. You don’t have to explain the reviewer’s mistake and risk them misunderstanding your reply for being argumentative, the reviewer doesn’t have to admit a mistake, and your writing likely benefits from additional clarity.
[+] [-] dekhn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gary_0|3 years ago|reply
They didn't get angry and adversarial, they just explained and asked for clarification. Of course, kafkaesque bureaucracies don't like that, so making a random trivial change and obsequiously resubmitting is still probably the approach to use if you want to stay in business. Google these days is like something out of Brazil.
[+] [-] fleddr|3 years ago|reply
It's in particular troubling how much of this madness we've internalized to just accept. The idea that you need to resubmit a 100 apps because Google decided you need to target a different internal version number is insane. It would be very bad if the SDK had a breaking change, but in this case it's just busy work: upping a number and resubmitting.
And what about the rule to be able to report user generated content? Who the hell is Google to interfere on such app-specific functionality? What if my moderation workflow would only allow draft posts, each manually approved, making reporting them pointless? Does Google actually check if a report gets sent or followed up? I don't think so. So it's an invasive power grab, and then poorly regulated.
These platforms and gatekeepers have become far too powerful and leveled up the arrogance that comes with it.
[+] [-] tluyben2|3 years ago|reply
We implement our apps with an offline mode which offers everything, but because you have to manually bookmark them on your phone home page, it is too much to ask for users and they forget. So they download the app from a store. If we had something that an online app can indicate it has a fully offline mode for the browser to pick up, it could ask ‘download for offline and add icon to your apps?’ . The extra step is preventing users from doing/knowing about this; AppStore/playstore is just lower friction.
[+] [-] Gentil|3 years ago|reply
Google also is dominating the browser market. Not to mention, I see Manifest v3 as something in this direction. They just don't have the exact amount of control they do in Play store is all. So my question is, how long are you gonna run?
[+] [-] smsm42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackbravo|3 years ago|reply
Wish we could have again this idea of publishing web apps as real apps in our phones.
[+] [-] nyuszika7h|3 years ago|reply
this implies you never make mistakes. even if there's manual approval there should be a way to report content that slipped through.
[+] [-] NullPrefix|3 years ago|reply
Upping targetSDK might mean that some deprecated functionality is not available to the app anymore. Storage access permission is one example.
[+] [-] dekhn|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ncallaway|3 years ago|reply
If you had a 93% success ratio before, you've got pretty good odds that you'll get a new reviewer on the next update and it'll be approved.
Maybe something like the copy change puffoflogic recommended. Just make any tiny change in the area, re-submit the app, and hope you get lucky with a better reviewer.
[+] [-] dataflow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|3 years ago|reply
I think that approach would be valid here. Change the link to "report content", etc.
[+] [-] celestialcheese|3 years ago|reply
All that said - the Play Store and App Store review hell is one dystopia I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I'm so happy to work on the web now.
[+] [-] mfDjB|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danuker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koala_man|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paraknight|3 years ago|reply
For the sake of your sanity, minimise the number of interactions you need to do with the app stores. Submit a bare bones app to the stores with all the native libraries you might need, then live the rest of your days on OTA updates (expo-updates, codepush, etc). This is against store policies but everyone does it and I've never heard of an app being taken down for it.
[+] [-] Noumenon72|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernova87a|3 years ago|reply
I would guess that the people reviewing these are contractors, paid by the app they review, and with a certain set of criteria that they're supposed to apply, but they make mistakes. And the supervisors of these contractors (who themselves are contractors) don't have great ways of comparing the work of one person to another / enforcing consistency, except by the customer escalating it.
I would guess that this is approached by Google as a piecework customer service task for contractors (a pure cost center to review and QA app submissions) and not employees, so it means that even something so important as developer experience is being outsourced, and not being daily internalized or felt by Google's own engineering team or product managers (who have moved on to more year-end-review-favorable projects after setting the top-level guidelines).
They probably only review (and whose job is it full time?) error reports / QA / complaints about this process every week and all you are is a line on a sheet that says to them well, "not that many people are upset, so it's going ok, we don't need to worry / put someone on it full time".
Until you get to be a huge revenue developer and worthy of some employee's attention -- and even then only on the "interesting" aspect of your needs, not the day-to-day is it working well experience. You're in the hands of minimum wage contractors reviewing whether you've adhered to sometimes subjective rules, with only so much interest in resolving something they have to study to understand -- and who has the patience for that? They're not SWEs themselves, they have no idea what your description of the problem is really trying to convey (unless they're talented people, and if so they're probably out of there soon).
Until that changes, there will be really frustrating cases like this. Even if your livelihood has come to depend on the app you built.
Am I guessing wrong?
[+] [-] fullstop|3 years ago|reply
I spent a week going back and forth with them and explaining that nothing had actually shipped and, again, asked for a refund. 90% of the time they sent me something telling me what the tracking number was and that I could return the item once it was received for a full refund. The other 10% of the time they assured me that I was being handed off to another service tier and that this group would surely be able to help me.
The higher tier just sent me the same tracking number and seemingly ignored my pleas and my question of what happens if I do not receive the item before the return window had closed.
It wasn't even worth that much, but I was being petty and tried to respond within minutes of them emailing me. My thought was that someone over there was desperately trying to keep their work queue empty, and I was going to do my best to prevent that from happening.
They finally refunded my order 18 days after it had been placed. The tracking information still says that they're waiting for the package from Google. I'm half expecting a phone case to randomly arrive within the next few months.
[+] [-] juliushuijnk|3 years ago|reply
> I wish to speak to a human. If you are human and are allowed to write anything, please use the word "cow" in your reply.
Response:
> We appreciate you getting back to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you. Yes, you are communicating to a human being and per your request, please see the word "cow".
The most dry way to user 'cow' ever. Humor must be crime within that department.
--
Even today I got a rejection to my appeal at the same time my app update went live. They don't hold any record of previous communication or history on app updates and rejections.
The rejection was for a too minimalist text I fixed already in an earlier update. They quoted a text that was not part of the update (!).
Multiple times I have overcome a rejection, by just adding a single character to my main app store text (a space char will do). And just re-submit.
Then you get to re-role the dice, and perhaps the update can go live.
I also always appeal everything, use their feedback tools, give single star ratings to review process, etc, hope it will set something in motion.
[+] [-] trhr|3 years ago|reply
Own your platform from the bottom to the top. If your business model requires you to rely on one of these companies, pivot.
We have lost. They have won. They can deplatform anyone for anything or for nothing. Your continued use of the platform depends on whether or not you make them money. You are entitled to nothing they have built. They are not providing public services or utilities.
Abandon them, or on your own head be it when, not if, you get fucked.
If possible, stay off the U.S. Dollar.
[+] [-] erremerre|3 years ago|reply
At this point, even Walmart, CVS, etc... should be treated as a utility company. the moment you got a big chunk of the economy depending on you, company lost ability of stop providing services, unless a court case is involved.
[+] [-] kodt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deviance|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] insaider|3 years ago|reply
Unpopular opinion but it seems like their response was reasonable tbf.
[+] [-] Nemo_bis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parkerhiggins|3 years ago|reply
All they had to do is add a link to report the specific contentId that user created.
The author was blinded by frustration and didn’t read.
[+] [-] basro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Izkata|3 years ago|reply
> 1.) Comments (which you can report or block by tapping on the comment)
[+] [-] praxulus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljm|3 years ago|reply
They can offer their support via a legal accountability mechanism and not a paid-for escalation.
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
Little did he know that the entire google play store was set up as a gigantic Turing test. It was never about the apps...
GLaDOS: Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center activity.
[+] [-] ignoramous|3 years ago|reply
Downloads from our website for the app went up by 2x, but that number dwarfs in comparison to installs from the Play Store. What can I say, Android developers are slaves to The Algorithm. At least until some other Algorithm at Google decides to properly staff up its support centers for developers.
As a contingency, what we do is:
- Sign our own APKs.
- Bake in a custom update mechanism as an escape hatch (this is against ToS, but whatever...).
[+] [-] ledauphin|3 years ago|reply
I shall now go read The Metamorphosis.
[+] [-] _jal|3 years ago|reply
Last time I had to actually talk to someone at the IRS was over a decade ago, but I recall it being an efficient conversation, and as pleasant as it could have been, given the topic.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
[+] [-] anonymousiam|3 years ago|reply
My advice is to never deal with the IRS yourself. Hire a tax attorney who has some experience in dealing with them.
Also, are you referring to "The Trial" (also by Kafka)?
[+] [-] silisili|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ldx1024|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristopolous|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aeolun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] typon|3 years ago|reply