Skip to main content

Appealing the removal didn’t yield any result. Google just repeated the same statement "the app was removed because it uploads the contact list" without even acknowledging any of the arguments I made in the appeal.

I understand that most of my audience here on Mastodon is more ideology aligned with F-Droid but the app sales on Google Play store have contributed significantly to me working (almost) full time on #Conversations_im.

Without the revenue from Google Play I can’t afford this.

#conversations_im

Nicoco reshared this.

in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Benjamin
Benjamin
• •

As if there's a human being actually looking at those.

Do you have a kofi account or similar that you can receive financial support on?

in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Markus :bayern: 🇩🇪 🇪🇺
Markus :bayern: 🇩🇪 🇪🇺
• •
An additional important argument is the availability of play store on almost every android device.
We'll be unable to switch the average user to use conversations.im if they've to retrieve it via f-droid or similar.
Additional automatic updates on f-droid are only available on rooted phones.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Memnochs
Memnochs
• •
maybe you can only release an unlocker for a supporter version (no need to remove features, just add a jive message or a way to show that you are a supporter).
In fact the unlocker doesn't do anything.
But it let you receive money from user who want to support you.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Ben from CDS
Ben from CDS
• •
Google's position as judge, jury and executioner on app-store listings is a nightmare when that is effectively our only access to any kind of audience as developers. Especially the way they treat developers building real products as suspect but inexplicably seem to let nonsense-scam apps through.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

ikanreed
ikanreed
• •
Whoops, you shouldn't have competed with their spyware by making a better product.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

gumnaam
gumnaam
• •
maybe try multiple times until they hook up a human reviewer?
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Mazhe
Mazhe
• •
What can we do to help? Post one star reviews of Google messaging app on the playstore with the comment "where has conversations.im gone?"
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

@leX 🤘🏻
@leX 🤘🏻
• •
Interesting that uploading contact lists isn't a problem for Meta with Whatsapp, Google itself, and whatnot...
Good luck with your quest! 🍀✊
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Guus der Kinderen
Guus der Kinderen
• •
is there anything that we as users can do to help you with the Play Store thing?
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷
• •
The Google (and Apple) "stores" need to be regulated like the monopolies they are.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Duduar Deagle
Duduar Deagle
• •
They have been doing it for years. When I was a student I wanted to upload an app for a school project, and they didn't even think about it.... if I used contacts and messages permissions, and almost immediately, they denied me the app upload 😔.
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

las
las
• •
That's horrible. This sounds like a clear violation of the Digital Markets Act to me, e.g. 6.12: "The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores (...) publish general conditions of access, including an alternative dispute settlement mechanism."
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Luc
Luc
• •
that sounds familiar... have you heard of FairEmail (open source email client) getting removed from Google's app repository a few years back, I think for the same nonsense reason? Might be worth looking into how that got resolved (though it involved the creator sadly giving up and taking a break that, fortunately!, turned out not to be indefinite)
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

JanC
JanC
• •

Do you have an explanation of how the "uploaded contact list" is used in your privacy statement?

ISTR that's something they require…

in reply to Daniel Gultsch

Bernhard E. Reiter
Bernhard E. Reiter
• •
Fairemail also documents a very hard process of staying on the play store: https://email.faircode.eu/status/

FairEmail in the Play Store

Status and frequently asked questions
email.faircode.eu
in reply to Daniel Gultsch

PixelHamster
PixelHamster
• •

Pretty sure almost all of these systems are just bots and ai models looking for something they think is suspicious and will have 0 people looking at your case unless you bring in big bucks for them :)

I use the playstore version because it has gcm/fcm enabled but I'd rather not of course.

⇧