Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason
andyibanez.comAnd Apple is not even an isolated case.
Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove youtube videos on a whim.
Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world.
For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in Win 10.
Paypal may refuse to pay the money you have on their account at any moment. Your money, no appeal.
Twitter and facebook censorship rules are on a case by case basis. If your famous, you may be able to use hate speech. I you are an anonymous political activist, China may ask for your shut down.
Big companies exist to make money. If they get too much power, they will abuse it. Not because they are evil, but because it's the logical thing to do for them.
This is why I was advocating in another comment that we should not use WhatsApp new payment system:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553455
Thinking about the power we give to big entities is a central mechanism to build the society we live on. That's why we should think about what we buy, the media we consumme, etc.
They are votes, just as much as during an election.
Amazon suspended my parents' seller account last August or September with no explanation. All listings removed, couldn't log in, no direct customer service number that connects you with someone who knows what's going on, and kept taking the monthly fee anyway. Finally, they closed it entirely (again without explanation) a month or two ago. They're still holding their inventory in their distribution centers, probably a few thousand dollars worth. I'm sure they'll charge storage and shipping fees to send it back, so it's almost certainly not worth bothering about given how thin their margins were in the first place. Yeah, it's not a great direction we're going in here. These companies just don't have enough incentive to care.
The incentive to care (in the US at least) is called tort law. Punitive damages against a company the size of Amazon for what sounds to me like theft should be very large. I'm sure that a lawyer would be interested in taking up this case, based on the size of the potential settlement.
What are the chances a small seller will be financially able to litigate with Amazon? And even if they do and win, what are the chances they're in a better position than before, meaning it's not a Pyrrhic victory?
Edit. These are actual questions, the US legal system is very unkind with those without very deep pockets, having the highest litigation costs in the world.
I don't know the specifics and I'm no lawyer but for the amount involved, could Small Claims court be an option? No lawyers involved and if Amazon doesn't send a rep, there can be a default judgement.
There still exists the problem of collecting the judgement.
How are you going to force a large company to pay if they are already ignoring you?
Judgements are something more than just a Customer Service issue. There are ways to compel payment via the same court system once you have a judgement, and any additional fees you incur attempting to collect can be claimed as well making them pay the fee's
You still need to have the money to go through the whole thing in the first place. Because when they don’t pay your small claims court case you’re right back at the normal court trying to enforce the payment.
Yes and no
Going to a court to enforce a judgment is going to be orders of magnitudes cheaper than a tort litigation, and there are FAR FAR FAR less delay tatics the lawyer could impose
So I still do not believe that is a reason not to use the small claims process
Seems people just want to have a deafest attitude
There is almost no down side from making use of the Small Claims system, could you still end up not being paid sure... but they have ALOT better change of getting the money with a small claims judgement than with no judgment, and small claims is pretty strait forward and inexpensive
Further once you have the judgement the ability to get consignment legal services goes up substantially as well
Yeah a civil case is an adversarial procedure with the court as a neutral party that makes a decision. And the two parties are expected to square after.
But an enforcement case the court is no longer a neutral party. It's enforcing it's previous decision. An enforcement order has the backing of the state.
I have a friend that is a minor celebrity and has controversial opinions and thus has been sued a lot (mostly frivolous, one or two semi-legit) and he will straight up tell you: the winner is the person with the most money.
If one party has deep pockets and the other does not, the rich guy wins. He can drag things out in court forever making it cost more than the small guy has to keep going. In the end so much is subjective anyway, and the high priced lawyers will get their way.
Your Parents need to look in Small Claims Court, this is often the BEST way to fight a large company because they often will not even show up and if they do in most Small Claims court they can not send a Laywer it has a be a company rep, and the burden is lower
>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world.
That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash.
Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held ( more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much ) about big business or government taking over some basic right. Yes cashless in that case is great. Is like utopian.
Unfortunately not everyone has that luxury.
I'm in Denmark, I believe this is pretty much the best example of the kind of country you are talking about, unfortunately I have some personal problems along various spectrums that mean I am not good at keeping track of things that I cannot control through a computer, anyway Denmark went nearly cashless for a bit and because of my personal problems I did not have a credit card for a portion of that time.
A cashless society would mean a society where some neuro-atypical people might periodically have to worry about starving to death.
This morning I there was an article in Finnish news that a bank stopped a 50€ bank transfer with the subject "Hasan" (obviosly a first name common Afghanistan). A reason was even given: A match with some unnamed sanction list.
Maybe somebody should try to get the word "tax" on a sanction list...
The is no disorder that causes you to be disorganized unless you're using a computer.
No, but there are things that cause you to be disordered, and then you learn to cope with it in different ways and one of the ways that a lot of people learn to cope with it is to retreat into a computer which is a world that can be controlled in different ways than the real world and thus ordered differently.
But thanks for correcting me.
The world is a wide place. If someone has a system and it works for them, it is not my job to take that system away simply to make things a little more convenient for myself.
You never know when you, personally, become the non-mainstream person.
If you could see my apartment and my credit report, you'd eat those words. My finances are on autopilot. My apartment is a mess, because it is not.
Maybe not a formal disorder, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
Mental issues can be pretty much anything you can dream off.
The problem isn't digital cash, the problem is having payment infrastructure that's controlled by only one or two companies (like Visa and Mastercard). Payment infrastructure needs to be neutral with multiple payment providers on it, so when a bank is being unreasonable, you can just switch to another.
Of course this is also an area that requires government regulation in order to prevent banks from taking advantage of their customers. And that requires a government that actually cares about this sort of thing.
> The problem isn't digital cash, the problem is having payment infrastructure that's controlled by only one or two companies (like Visa and Mastercard). Payment infrastructure needs to be neutral with multiple payment providers on it, so when a bank is being unreasonable, you can just switch to another.
But we know this isn't going to happen. At least not in the US. We have seen a massive consolidation of power in nearly every sector of the economy. That's not going to change. Nobody in our government seems to think it is a big enough problem to do anything useful to stop it.
Not until the people rise up against their government and demand better payment infrastructure.
I mean, it's finally working with police brutality after a century of protesting it. If enough people care about this, you might actually get it in a century or so.
I mostly agree, except that I think for the foreseeable future it is still essential to have an individually-held, government-backed currency so transactions can't be blocked by any third party (including the government itself) arbitrarily and without notice. However, I think the principle goes beyond just money issues.
All of the examples mentioned by BiteCode_dev have at least three things in common.
1. The company in question is in a dominant position as a provider of some product or service.
2. That product or service is important or essential to a lot of people.
3. The company is not significantly regulated by law.
Many of them could be dealt with by regulating all financial services and communications services companies. I think there is a lot of merit in offering a "common carrier" principle in these sectors, where a business provides a service but does so strictly neutrally, with neither any control over how people then use it nor any responsibility for those people's actions.
I also think there is a lot of merit in saying that if a business wants to take a more active role than that, it must also accept a corresponding increase in liability. In particular, it should then be subject to not only legal actions by individuals but also regulatory actions by an independent, government-backed agency with sufficiently strong statutory powers that a business can get stomped if it persistently and knowingly abuses people.
The other thing that IMHO we need but don't currently have in many cases is sufficiently strong consumer protections (and this should extend to small businesses dealing with much larger businesses, or any other situation where one side is effectively in full control of the terms of any deal). The danger is having dominant businesses, whether monopolies or otherwise, providing important or essential services but then having powers to damage others, whether wilfully or simply through negligence, because of the control they retain over those products or services. Under the umbrella of what is important or essential, I do include things like operating systems for PCs and phones, or hosting email, or providing almost any kind of large-scale digital marketplace facility; these are technologies that have become essential to living a "normal life" and participating actively in society. It's not just about the ability to conduct financial transactions or communicate, vital as those also are.
I could not agree more. I use credit cards a fair amount ( streamlined dispute process came in handy a few times ), but I can see first hand what kind of future is being pushed from various circles along the lines of "We can do it ( block a transaction that meets some criteria ; why are we not doing it ? ).
Yeah. If we want any semblance of actual freedom left, cash is a part of the future.
At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.
Cash is already going away in some countries.
Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore.
Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore.
I think this is an illusion.
Sure, if you're going into almost any shop it will accept other payment methods and most people will use them, particularly at the moment. Similarly, ordering anything online isn't likely to be cash-on-delivery.
However, there are still reasons people might need or prefer to pay or be paid in cash, only one of which is "I'm a dodgy tradesman evading tax". For example, we've used a few local services for things like cleaning or gardening. They often like to be paid in cash, at least for the first visit or two, so everyone immediately knows it's all above board. This is common IME even if they might be happy to be paid (or even prefer to be paid) electronically once they get to know you.
Is the use of cash declining here? Certainly. Is it negligible? Not even close. Is it still useful or even essential? Sometimes, yes.
> They often like to be paid in cash, at least for the first visit or two, so everyone immediately knows it's all above board.
Paying people in cash seems like the exact opposite of an indicator of everything being above board.
Not really. It's in your hand, right now. It can't be disputed later and retrospectively yanked back out of your bank account, or not paid out to you in the first place if you use an intermediary payment service. These are not hypothetical problems.
It's also a traditional sign of honesty, and a convenient way for someone who has provided very good service to be tipped without making a big deal of it ("Keep the change"), and both of those things can be important in these kinds of situations.
> It's also a traditional sign of honesty
Well I accept your experience, but in my experience asking for cash is a traditional sign of dishonesty and tax evasion. Why do you think they always offer a hushed discount for cash?
A professional tradesman invoices after and then accepts a bank transfer. Asking for a wad of banknotes is grubby.
Why do you think they always offer a hushed discount for cash?
FWIW, I'm not sure I've ever actually encountered that in my entire life. It seems like one of those folk tales governments tell when they want to get more money out of a group who are an easy target. After all, can you prove you only charged that nice couple what you said on your accounts for fitting out their new bathroom, Mr Plumber?
A professional tradesman invoices after and then accepts a bank transfer.
Sure, and when we've had tradesmen in that's almost always what we've done too.
But again, in my entire life, I don't think I've ever received a paper invoice from a cleaner, or a gardener, or a neighbour's teenager who was childminding, or the friendly retiree around the corner who is an ace at fixing bikes. Not unless they were working through an agency and it was the agency handling the billing, anyway. Not everything is big enough and formal enough to need invoicing and professional payment tools. Normal people still pay for plenty of stuff with cash around here. Just not usually in shops (online or bricks 'n' mortar) or for big things.
The only people I pay with cash are my cleaner and my son's allowance. And even for the allowance I'm thinking of just getting him a bank account instead.
My favourite cheese shop used to only accept cash, but the owner retired. Beyond that, the only thing I need cash for is to give to homeless people. I think they're the main group losing out due to the switch to electronic payment; the can't afford the equipment for it.
The pan handlers in London have touch oay machines connected to their phone, you can just contact less ly give money. The upside is that the excuse "I have no change" , no longer works.
Are you sure that applies generally, and not just to you and people like you?
I think he's talking about his own bubble. I see people in the UK using cash all the time.
Granted, I haven't been there in six months because of the virus, but I watch current British television every couple of days, and I still see people using cash.
I don't live in the South East and I'm not in a tech bubble, if that's what you mean.
I am in the South and use cash quite frequently, as do many other people I see or know. I think your definition of 'almost nobody' may be more than you appreciate.
>> Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore
Small shops with card fees is the last remaining hold out for me.
Payment systems should be nationalised and run by a country's central bank. It's a very boring infrastructure equivalent to roads. There shouldn't be a private company taxing every single transaction someone makes. Do that and the small stores can drop the fees.
They aren't 'taxing' it - they're charging for a service rendered, which is a valuable service to me so I'm fine with it.
I’m not sure I see your logic here. Do you think the payment networks will be cheaper to operate if they’re run by the government? Or would you prefer an actual tax to the fees you’re comparing to taxes? Do you expect banks would drop their transaction fees? Do you think payment gateways would drop their fees? Do you think payment terminals would become free, and their networks free to use?
Not OP, but I'd dislike it if everything is run by private corporations. Already our communication methods are like that (FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Zoom, Google Hangduomeetout, Twitter), and these companies can just say "You violated our TOS, get out!", or they censor things depending on who's friends with them (for example you can't send piratebay links on FB Messenger because "this website is a security risk to your computer", but the real reason is probably Hollywood lobbying). Imagine if you write bad stuff about China, and the banks in your country who have a commercial interest to expand to China gets a memo "AmericanChopper is in our embargo list, if a bank does business with him they will be embargoed from China". (I say China, but the US does this, and no bank worldwide would dare touch anyone in the US's embargo list, for example Putin's friends. At least when the US does it, they have good reasoning, imagine if China does it and makes up some bullshit against you, and the banks would just follow because... money).
Sweden has a pilot project for a digtal currency: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/20/906146/sweden-ri... , I wonder how it's going.
Yeah, that is the purpose of a functional government.
Banks have already dropped their transaction fees. Simple bank transactions in the EU are free. iDeal payment is either free or costs about 25 cents.
In the EU it’s illegal for a merchant to charge a different price based on payment method (iirc), but merchants are most certainly still charged transaction fees for card payments. SEPA transfers still incur fees too. There is a huge number of service providers involved in every single card payment, and that service infrastructure only exists because people pay to use it. It absolutely wouldn’t be strange for the 2-3% fee a merchant is charged for processing a transaction to be divided up between more than 10 service providers.
> "In the EU it’s illegal for a merchant to charge a different price based on payment method"
I really don't think that's true; there are plenty of merchants who do still charge different prices based on payment method. But there are also many who voluntarily don't, because the actual cost is negligible and better than the alternatives. Regular bank transfers of various kinds between consumers, including iDeal internet payments, as far as I can tell, have no fees at all. Cash withdrawals across different currencies may incur fees, but I've never seen fees in regular Euro cash withdrawals.
Nobody here is charging 2-3% except when credit cards are involved.
Turns out it is true.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pri...
> Traders in the EU are not allowed to charge you extra for using your credit or debit card.
Regarding this:
> Nobody here is charging 2-3% except when credit cards are involved.
The service provider that provides the payment terminals merchants use will be charging the merchants between 1-2%, often with a per transaction fee on top of that. I’m not 100% sure how service providers in the EU bundle things, but intercharge fees are usually charged on top of that again. Even though the EU caps interchange fees, merchants will very easily be incurring above 2% in fees even for non-credit card transactions. The EU’s cap on interchange fees for card not present transactions is barely below standard market rates, so EU merchants will be paying about the same as everybody else for those.
Central banks are keeping a close eye on it, so I think we’ve crossed the ‘remotely plausible’ line:
“Earlier this year, Deputy Governor Tim Lane spoke about the circumstances when it might make sense for the Bank of Canada to issue our own digital currency. This includes a situation in which most Canadians stopped using bank notes. We don’t believe that a digital currency is required at this time. But we are moving forward with contingency planning so that if we ever judged that we should issue a digital currency, we would be ready.” (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/06/opening-statement-160620...)
I have not used any cash since beginning of April. Normally I use more cash than the average person in my situation here. But since corona using cash is often seen as being anti-social, disrespecting other's health, so I did not want to be provocative. Last week libraries fully opened and I took a couple of photocopies for 30 cents/page. They have stopped accepting cash, so I paid by credit card.
This is Finland, YMMV.
Aren't Sweden and China frequently used as counterexamples, to a certain extent?
I'd say Scandinavia as a whole. In Norway I had to use my debit card to access public toilets in train stations, with a small fee. I'd be surprised if Denmark wasn't similar to Norway and Sweden.
That would depend on a country. Sweden? Probably easy. South-Eastern Asia? 100 years would be too optimistic.
I’ve never been nor kept up with SEA, but this is still surprising to hear! I would have assumed WeChat type mobile payments situations were well in place, is cash really that dominant or are there other factors?
One reason is, that cashless transfers costs money; e.g. the card processing companies in their contracts disallow the vendors to increase the prices for customers using their payment system, compared to other means of payments. So effectively all the cash paying customers subsidy the electronic payments systems, while not having the convenience of not using cash.
This part of the contract is not followed in SEA countries. If you want to pay with something that carries a fee, you are going to pay the fee on top of the price. Logically, most people will choose to pay cash then.
The second reason is taxes. Most small vendors do not bother with taxing their incomes; they are too poor for that anyway, every coin helps. With electronic ledgers documenting all the transactions, that would be much more difficult. The local IRSes do not bother with chasing these people, they know that the price would be higher than revenue; so they check only businesses with significant enough turnover.
>One reason is, that cashless transfers costs money; e.g. the card processing companies in their contracts disallow the vendors to increase the prices for customers using their payment system, compared to other means of payments. So effectively all the cash paying customers subsidy the electronic payments systems, while not having the convenience of not using cash.
In the US, credit card surcharges have been legal for many years:
Cash payments also cost money. Not small interpersonal payments, but for larger shops, storing cash safely, transferring it safely to a bank to have counted and deposit it, costs significant money. Many shops prefer electronic payment for that reason, and voluntarily eat the costs associated with it, because it's still cheaper than cash.
Of course that only works if electronic payment is cheap. This is not the case with US credit card companies.
They were booming when I visited last year. Each vendor would have 3 or 4 devices, for each different WeChat-esque network. The networks want that sweet sweet marketshare, so they work (pay?) the vendors to have special deals like "10% off your total if you pay with $PAYMENT_APP".
I think it's basically the Uber model of spending VC money to subsidize customer purchases to get that market share...
Supermarkets already exist that don't accept cash (in NL at least)
AH also doesn't accept credit card. Not sure what non-locals are supposed to do if they don't have a maestro card. I guess there aren't many non-locals at the moment, but it must be weird for cash-accustomed Germans visiting.
I'm German and was quite surprised indeed :-)
Isn't that the case for the Amazon stores?
In some states, not accepting cash at a public retail establishment is illegal. It's seen as a method of discrimination. The advent of Amazon stores has started a small wave of legislation in this direction.
It is I'm afraid. Covid has greatly accelerated this process.
>That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash.
Ah, took me a second. You don't mean paper cash in reference to fiat money vs the gold standard. You mean hard cash being replaced by plastic account balances in a sort of cyberpunk vein. Totally agree, great point.
> I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected representatives and every part of the government and...
At the moment. All those things can and do change, and then what will you do?
Paying with cash also helps small restaurants and cafes. Instead of having to pay 3% and wait 3-5 days until they get the funds which might get charged back they have the money on the spot. No need for all these middle men taking a cut.
Same goes for Uber eats etc. Call the restaurant directly, don't be a dick.
Depends where you are (like most of these things.) Where I've lived, card-only isn't uncommon because cash is an expensive hassle for smaller businesses to deal with. Also a potential security risk if it has to be left on-premise overnight.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean credit card, usually it means Maestro or EFTPOS or whatever. These tend to have low fees and function roughly like a near-enough-to-immediate direct credit.
In general, places that don't accept cash will also accept credit card for non-locals, but it's not at all uncommon for (usually smaller) places that accept cash to not accept credit card, even if they do accept the local debit card system, due to the extra expense.
And yet some restaurants in NYC still tried to go cashless. There are real benefits: faster transactions (no change) so faster queues during lunch rush, no risk of robbery, no need for armored vans to transport cash, employee theft becomes much less of a concern.
I think the benefits are compelling. NYC ruled it was a discriminatory practice though, because not everyone has access to banking/credit.
Or you pay the restaurant through direct bank transaction. Credit cards are needlessly expensive, but not all electronic payment systems are.
This has the added benefit, assuming both parties are happy to do it, that the business does not incur the overheads of handling cash, which is also not really free once you take into account things like security and bank fees.
I am firmly of the view that cash is essential as a safeguard and something people should have the option to use, but as we've seen recently here in the UK, modern alternatives like contactless payments using a bank card or one of the phone-based systems can be quick and convenient, and they do not seem to have resulted in a devastating wave of fraud.
There is no means to do this in the US, debts cards have the same fees as credit cards (maybe more?).
This is the core of the problem. In the US, credit card companies have an effective monopoly on the payment infrastructure, and there's not cooperation among banks, and not enough political will, to propose a better system.
In the EU, there's been a lot of regulation over the past couple of decades to improve payment infrastructure. Before that, international payment within the EU used to be awful, and even transferring money from one bank to another within a single country could in some circumstances be bafflingly complex.
bitcoin and other decentralized zero-trust cryptocurrencies are perfect for this.
And that, dear reader, is why you should host your own infrastructure on your own network connection. Besides being cheaper than using hosted services it:
- protects you from this type of arbitrary abuse of power
- helps in keeping third parties from mining you for all your data
- helps in resisting censorship
- protects you from surprise changes or cancellations of services (Google Reader, Google+, Microsoft PlaysForSure, etc.)
- gives you more control over your data
So get that Raspberry Pi, that old laptop without a screen, that abandoned diskless client or some other low-power (as in power consumption) machine with a few GB of memory and a few GHz of CPU and start tinkering. There are readymade solutions for those who dislike tinkering but this being Hacker News I'd assume most of you do. There are plenty of posts on this board and elsewhere on this subject so I won't repeat the whole list of services and software which can be used except for one: add a git repository (e.g. gitea [1], sourcehut [2], gitlab being too heavy for most SBCs) so you can be master (pun intended) over your own data. Nae lairds, nae kings, we are free.
> on your own network connection
ISPs can ban users just as capriciously as any other company. And they do.
Decentralized internet alternatives are both harder to use (and "host your own infrastructure" is already impossibly hard for the vast majority of people) and too limited to be useful.
It's time to accept that and emergent behavior of the internet is to become more centralized, not less.
This is where, legally, I think there should be limits. ISPs are effectively utilities, I don’t think they should be able to ban anyone so capriciously.
Beyond that, there are systems we as developers can build to make it easier for users to self-host on small home servers. But if your internet connection is cut off, building an alternative is hardly an option.
Change ISP, then. Use a mobile ISP. Use Starlink for all I care. Just laying down to accept that and emergent behavior of the internet is to become more centralized is not an option if you want to retain a semblance of 'data freedom'.
Some of us have only one ISP to pick from. I look forward to seeing what Starlink can offer, just so I know who to call if my ISP decides they don't like me. Nothing would kill my data freedom like a lack of pipeline.
This wouldn’t solve the problem though, as starlink would just be your new ISP.
If traditional ISPs including Starlink and the other upcoming satellite-based access providers all end up blocking you [1] there are other ways of getting linked up, even though they come at the cost of performance and ease of use. Mesh networks can be used for the 'last mile', I2P or similar 'darknet' protocols can be used to get content spread, a willing neighbour could hook you up through wifi and tor, etc. Do mind that this is not a goal in and of itself, it would be a way to continue to be connected to the 'net in the face of a total blockade by regular commercial access providers. Where there is a will there is a way.
[1] If everybody is out to block you it might also be time to wonder why they're all blocking you...
Do they? Could you provide some examples of this? The only time I've heard of ISPs banning users are in the case of piracy or otherwise illegal activity which isn't capricious at all.
While I agree with that to a degree, and it does provide some protection it does not provide total protection
They will then attack your Domain Register, or your DDOS protection (CloudFlare) or ISP (as more residential plan forbid running any server the ISP will ban you not for political or other reasons but for running a server on a residential plan), have your bank account / credit card cancelled (this has happened) etc etc etc
No, it does not provide total protection against malevolent third parties, nothing can. It does make it harder to catch each and every person who dares to step beyond the set boundaries of the narrative so it is a step in the right direction.
Google can be a real pain in the arse with this due to their absolute lack of customer support. I had my Play Store developer account locked due to some automated trigger that I had no control over or anyone to reach out too. The upside in comparison to the app store I 'spose is I'm free to distribute my Android apps via other means.
I had about 12 domains once and decided to park them as I was busy, set them all up on adsense, went to all the domains to make sure they all worked, a couple I refreshed a few times as it wasn't working properly.
The next day I got an email saying my adsense was closed for 'fake views / clicks', no way to challenge it or anything.
That was like 10 years ago. I still can't use adsense to this day.
I got my gmail once suspended for 'suspicious activity' after I sent two messages to my home server to test its configuration. (Both mails bounced because the config wasn't right)
I haven't been able to trust gmail with anything important after that.
I had my adsense shut down on YouTube after fraudulent clicks in less than a year and less than 50 cents in revenue. Figure that one out, too.
seems like an easy option for Google would be to set a blocklist of IPs for generating revenue, including the IP used to create the account. Users could add others with the big scary label of "prevent us from banning you, list IPs here that you use" that defaults to your current IP.
Maybe they do something like that now. This was ~10 years ago. @BiteCode_dev's comment resonated with me because it happened to me. There wasn't a warning or anything, just an email terminating my account.
Slowly trying to disconnect everything away from google.
Similar story, got an email "your account was blocked, nobody cares, we're so sorry". Yet another reason to avoid Google services.
You can already do that on your website. Check if client IP matches and then don't print JS that loads ads
For parked domains you can't tho, you point the domains to google adsense.
I dont know how to do it effectively but domain Parking should be disallowed.
Use the domain, or let some one else.
I had ideas for the domains. Just no time to do it. In the end I let them go. I have 3 ones. Blog. And 2 in progress projects.
I didn’t squat them. Parking for future use is ok to me. Squatting for profit i don’t agree with.
Yeah, that's correct. Initially I thought that you can control html on the parked domain.
> Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world.
Visa and their competitors (Mastercard et al) are companies that should almost certainly be investigated over antitrust concerns and regulated like utillities. The fact they have so much control over things like online payments should be absolutely terrifying.
But yeah, this is why we should definitely avoid giving large companies too much power, and arguably avoid relying on them as much as possible in general.
Agreed, but they have the government wrapped around their finger. I can NOT believe the IRS issued Visa prepaid debit cards as a refund check. Now Visa can profit off of their 2-4% transaction fee to the merchant AND many consumers who use the card at an unaffiliated ATM.
> Thinking about the power we give to big entities is a central mechanism to build the society we live on. That's why we should think about what we buy, the media we consumme, etc.
Elsewhere on HN today we have 'On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B (1975) [pdf] (web.mit.edu)' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549203 in a way, you could say it applies to this whole situation quite well.
> Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world.
Just curious, what were the political causes affected?
9y ago they cut off Wikileaks; this is well before the 2016 election.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m...
I would not call Wikileaks political.
You would call it...?
The United States government called them criminal. My guess is Visa took the easy road on this.
> called them
That's exactly right - there was no trial or conviction. Just the word of the administration was enough for Visa and other payment providers.
It turns credit card companies into the extra-legal enforcers of the government, bypassing various laws, courts, and any reasonable appeals process.
People should boycott Visa, Mastercard and Paypal over this.
Good luck boycotting the credit card companies, if you want to participate meaningfully in the modern economy.
That's why a better alternative is necessary. I personally think the Dutch iDeal is pretty much perfect for online payments, with none of the many problems attached to credit cards. But most of the internet seems too invested in keeping credit cards alive.
I have this horrible feeling that you'll soon buy the government you want; Amazon or Facebook Gov is a terrifying idea: "do you want to add on the international development budget for £14.99 per month".
I wonder if it would be better than what we currently have?
Representative democracy doesn't really represent me.
I want to go online and fill out a long, myers briggs like personality test that judges my political leanings, and then have that data fed to a script that votes on all the issues for me directly, skipping the middlemen. Collectively those scripts would be a far better representation than any human.
Replace all politicians with tiny shell scripts.
There is not a person, alive, dead, or not yet born that I would trust to write such code.
As opposed to politicians who take bribes in the form of campaign donations?
So instead of repealing bad legislation we should invent a whole new system from scratch using technologies the very inventors barely understand? Eesh.
Haha, I’m only playing devil’s advocate, it’s a terrible idea clearly.
This is the self driving care problem
People want a perfect system to replace an imperfect one. When instead they should rationally look at it and ask "is it better than what we have now" instead they pick it apart for any flaws then proclaim that is not workable because it is not 100% perfect every time
Not asking for perfection mate. Just don't ask me for a blessing when the cure is worse than the disease.
I volunteer to write that script. I am very trustworthy and totally won't abuse this position to push my own political leanings.
How will those shell scripts discuss the merits of various proposals? Discussion and compromise are vital aspects of political decision making.
You would have to keep those scripts secret otherwise someone could easily build an adversarial neural network or a hacker might just find an exploit. Secret scripts that decide everything isn't a democracy. That's an AI government and we all know that we shouldn't let AI have military access.
I like the idea of direct democracy, but I don’t think I’d go that far with it. More appealing here would be to have the ability to delegate my votes on issues in certain sectors to someone I trust. Maybe with a delay so I can override their decision if I disagree with something important.
Isn't that what surveillance capitalism is alsready doing on your behalf?
Competition in a government space would be a good thing, imo. For a while at least. Beats being quite permanently attached to a shitty gov at birth.
Kinda what voting is for - to change the current gov't.
Voting can be helpful, but not always. For a long time the voting majority in some places thought treating black people as lesser human beings was fair. In those cases, having the option to easily choose a different government would be useful.
In a way, having states in the US is that idea. E.g. moving from a deeply racist southern state during the height of equal but separate era to a more progressive state would have given you far better results than voting in terms of how you were treated by the local government.
> having the option to easily choose a different government would be useful
This opens everyone up to the kind of complexity nobody is ready for.
- Would the groups split under different governments but sharing the same territory? Who has the final word?
- Do they split the territory? Who gets the better one?
- In any group someone will be unhappy with the treatment. How many times do you split and "get your own government"?
- Maybe the competition is between the already established governments of existing countries. What happens when one government (or the people it represents) doesn't what specific people from joining the group?
Depends on the type of voting employed.
First Past the Post (what most nations us) is not a way to pick a true representative official, it breads defensive voting, vote spoiling, and all kinds of other problems where you end up in a spiral of worse and worse people, and where everyone says "I do not want either option but...."
A functioning government more or less is a negotiation and arbitration platform between large economic players - the state being one of these, of course.
So I'm not sure what 'buying the government' actually would mean or how it would be different...
What is this functioning government of which you speak?
You have just inspired me. I've always wanted a political fiction to try and write in my spare time, this sounds perfect :)
Not sure if you've read Jennifer Government
This kind of post infuriates me. As an iOS developer for 10 years, i can guarantee you that there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of stories like that, with people getting shut down for no good reason, and having their business killed.
It's now so bad people are refraining from trying out innovative business model or apps just because they think there could be a chance someone at apple validation wouldn't like it and kill the product at any time.
I wish the Hey story makes people realize it is not reasonable to have one actor control the only software distribution channel to hundred of millions of customers.
I'm fine with apple wanting to provide a highly curated experience to their users by having them download apps from a store they control. But this shouldn't be the only option.
That's why I've ditched all of my Apple hardware and went 100% FLOSS years ago. The experience is polished enough for me as a developer to do what I need to do and after I set it up just the way I wanted it, no other setup can touch how productive I am on my Arch setup.
I've recently got the PinePhone in and while actual Linux on smartphones is very early, it's also an opportunity to have some real impact. I'll never go back to a walled garden, no matter how appealing it may seem from the outside.
> That's why I've ditched all of my Apple hardware and went 100% FLOSS years ago. The experience is polished enough for me as a developer to do what I need to do and after I set it up just the way I wanted it, no other setup can touch how productive I am on my Arch setup.
For the majority of users, this is irrelevant because linux is unusable for them. And they are the customers. To have a sustainable business, we have to target the platforms that paying customers use. That platform is not gnu/linux.
> For the majority of users, this is irrelevant because linux is unusable for them.
I got Ubuntu recommended by an electrician back in 2005 or 2006. (I used to be using Red Hat/Mandrake/Mandriva back then.)
Soon after I realized it had come to the point where Ubuntu was not only possible to install and use but simpler to install and use than at least OEM-loaded Windows machines.
It seemed to work well for grandmothers, kids and sysadmins.
Notable exceptions:
- certain people refuse to learn (certain Windows sysadmins)
- people who depend on powerhungry software that doesn't exist on Linux (for less power hungry software there is RDP or Citrix and Windows Terminal servers.)
I've thought about this as my grandmother has had a host of computer issues, some of them resulting in fraud scares.
The real problem for me is that support is really hard to come by if something goes wrong. Grandma can't access the internet on her Ubuntu system — who can help her? I'm 500 miles away, my parents are equally as far in the other direction. Neither myself or my parents use Linux as a daily driver either. Her neighbors have Windows or Mac machines. Does she drive to Best Buy with her desktop? Call in external help?
If she uses Mac or Windows machines, help is just a lot closer. My dad can replicate her issues on his machine and walk her through it on the phone, or I can. Her neighbor will at least potentially be familiar with the way the OS looks, so can offer greater help.
I'm not sure how you can close that gap if you're not next door to the individuals who would benefit most from it. While it may be a great individual solution, the support burden just isn't a solved problem in my opinion.
you've touched on the problem and the solution - number of people using it. for people who were children in the early 2000s it's a distant memory now but adults used to be generally bad with computers and windows was just as much wizardry as anything. be the linux userbase you want to see in the world and help others when they want to join just like the 10 year olds of 2003 handheld parents through computer use. there's never going to be a magic solution, there just needs to be a sufficient number of people using it so that your outlined issue of proximal support gets better.
ubuntu (and i'm sure others) are in a great state for casual users already -- i've handed multiple family members an ubuntu machine with no more instruction than "use it like any other computer, don't be scared by the icons looking a little different" with great success. for the increasing number of people who do almost all of their work in a word processor and a browser exclusively, it's a complete solution with almost zero hassle.
You must be new: the rules of software development from time immemorial.
There is no such thing as to much RAM
There is no such thing as to much DASD (Disk)
There is no such thing as to much Screen Size
There is unfortunately never enough Budget :-)
> To have a sustainable business, we have to target the platforms that paying customers use. That platform is not gnu/linux.
Try to tell Red Hat/Canonical/SUSE about it.
The biggest OP mistake is relying on iOS only. Spending 9 years as iOS developer - great, but if you're mobile dev working with two platforms will be a life savior for cases like this one.
I was thinking more of developers who can target the web/server, multi-platform. If you're dependant on Cocoa/SwiftUI then sure, but that means you'll always be at Apple's mercy. It's up to you to decide if you're fine with that.
> For the majority of users, this is irrelevant because linux is unusable for them.
While I think I get what you're trying to say, I don't think it's necessarily unusable for regular users, more so unreachable in a nice, preinstalled form from a well-known brand & retailer.
Also, there's no ads for GNU/Linux machines on TV or on the Metro, which I think is often underappreciated.
I know because I've personally witnessed friends and family members who swore Linux is unusable give it a serious try only after Windows or macOS crossed them for the nth time and haven't had a single one switch back.
The key is to get hardware that is well-supported and not 2nd tier i.e. not a netbook etc. that I'm just going to throw Linux on and compare the experience to my 10x more expensive MBP.
The experience's not perfect, but that's not the case for macOS either. Is it "unusable"? Far from it.
The key is to get top-class hardware with the express intention of it running Linux, rather than installing it on the laptop Windows will no longer run reasonably on.
It is true however that such as switch is easier for developers like myself who are not dependent on Cocoa/SwiftUI etc. but that's a choice you have to make.
Linux runs better on old commodity hardware than new "top-class" experimental hardware.
Not from my experience.
Linux does run better than Windows tends to on old HW, sure, but comparing that experience to macOS on new hardware is less than fair.
There's plenty of new hardware Linux runs great on, I am not sure what you call "experimental" hardware, but I am using a Surface Pro 7 as my main machine with exclusively Linux on it, no problems.
Any recent standard ultrabook should also work fine, heck I even have a random, no-name Chinese UMPC that works well.
Unusable is waaaay overstating it. It's no harder to use for the average user than Windows or OSX. Gaming is actually easier these days on Ubuntu than it is on both other platforms. And it's just getting better and better every year.
For some markets, unusable is not overstating it at all - it's literally true.
Much as I loathe Windows and increasingly dislike MacOS, there is nothing like Adobe CC or any of the major DAWs, video editing tools, or VJ performance suites on Linux. Not even close.
There are toy copy apps run as hobby coding projects. But professionals need the real deal - for file exchange and for other workflow reasons - and Linux simply does not offer that.
I did specify "average user". Obviously some people have needs that can't be met by just any old operating system.
I would understand if you said it's on par with other platforms but saying it's easier is bs
Linus made a recent video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T_-HMkgxt0
Valve invested a lot in proton & Linux graphic stack last years.
So it's better than both Wondows and Mac experience now?
according to linus tech tips the answer to that is surprising...
on the other hand i just updated Windows 10 to v2004 and my microsft xbox controllers no longer work in Windows and they f'd up my resolution/scaling so i think i'm gonna go download Pop
Major version updates like 2004 frequently break drivers and basic functionality on first boot; a reboot usually restores majority of functionality automatically. Maybe try unplugging and replugging your controllers and manually check for Windows updates. There was a cumulative update for 2004 recently which may fix your issues.
Unless you want to use a gamepad.
Of you want to work for Apple at-will, go for it.
If your desktop product is good enough, your users will install Linux. Linux runs on Windows and Mac.
Your mobile app can be a web app.
I have never heard of a desktop Linux app that made people install Linux to use it.
I know a person who switched because of Docker prior to Docker for Mac being available and stayed because it's still a better experience.
Not a GUI app per se, but an app used on a desktop.
Selling software to users? Did you time travel from 1999 or something?
1) There are plenty of paid apps: https://appfigures.com/top-apps/ios-app-store/united-states/...
2) Taking his argument in good faith, he also means "free" apps with microtransactions, because in both cases the same situation exists: The iOS App Store is too big a market to ignore. Which leads to the same problem, regardless of whether your app is paid or "free", that if Apple suddenly decides it doesn't like you, you're screwed.
It's worth pointing out that you can absolutely sell software to Linux users i.e. I pay for all JetBrains software and recently purchased Ripcord[1].
What I've noticed on macOS however, is that is a lot easier to sell things that should be bundled or FLOSS for relatively serious money. For example there are dozens of rather expensive "Finder replacements" on macOS and you'll have a hard time selling something proprietary like that to Linux users because we do have good file managers that are libre software already.
Try doing any of the following to professional level with a web app:
- sound editing/musical production
- video editing/special effects
- CAD/CAM/EDA
- Mechanical/physics/electrical simulations
- interfacing with custom hardware
> - video editing/special effects
Hollywood studios run on Linux (except Pixar, and granted, not with webapps), so it is possible. What's missing is the middle-ground, mass-market solution like Premiere/After Effects or FCP, though DaVinci Resolve is quite nice entry there.
It looks like we edit on windows where I work, but we're actually using proxmox. Shhhhhhhh it's a secret.
At least for:
- interfacing with custom hardware
From experience, that's a lot easier on Linux.
As for CAD, video editing and music production - sure you do have a point, except that in those areas the likes of Autodesk and Adobe dominate anyway and the "pro" segment of macOS/Windows users is a tiny fraction of the overall userbase, so I'd be rather surprised if that's the kind of software you can sell in decent numbers to macOS/Windows users as an indie dev.
You haven't tried using Manjaro Linux as your workstation.
I'm very lazy and I don't want to tinker with shit to get it running or maintain it. So, I stuck with Windows for the longest time. It was the easy path for a long time because a lot of my work was doing .NET. However, once I switched full-time to doing Node.js Windows got in the way more and more. I spent a lot of time investigating issues. I have a couple of Macs and I tried using macOS as my main, but honestly I can't stand anything about the way Apple does things. I just hate the bad window management, the shitty finder, the stupid global menu bar and the lack of a coherent hotkey system.
I had been trying out Linux desktop distros for honestly decades, out of pure interest. Every single one of my experiments ended in a failure to boot one day after an update. Then one day I read about Manjaro and I decided to give it a shot. 2 years later, I'm still running it as my main work OS on 3 different workstations (home desktop, work desktop and a laptop). Not one of them has ever eaten itself due to a bad update. I've had to fix minor issues after a couple of updates, but that's nothing compared to the shit I've gone through to make Windows or macOS usable.
If you're new to Linux, skip Debian, Ubuntu and all that crap and go straight to Manjaro. Installing software in Manjaro is way, way, way easier than any other distro and the stability for me on 2 desktops and a laptop has been nothing less than stellar.
> i can guarantee you that there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of stories like that, with people getting shut down for no good reason, and having their business killed
How about Apple telling me they don't like my business bank (a well known UK bank I've been with for 10 years) and simply refusing to set up the account. In a very cold, "go away already", manner. I wasn't going to kill the relationship with my business bank just because Apple told me to, so the app never got onto App Store and I shut down my dev account.
All the issues people have with apple can be applied to most corporations.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's abhorrent, but it's something you should think about.
I once tried to open a new bank account with my bank of 10y, and set up direct debit to it. The point was that I was going to pay my rent from that new account (both me and a roommate would pay into the account, and a direct-debit would go to the landlord).
I filed the paperwork, in person, and heard nothing, a week passed, I phoned the bank, they said call back tomorrow.
I did, "please call in a week".
Waited a week, "please call back next week"..
So I go in person to the bank, and I refuse to leave until they fix it- I was being pressured by the landlord, I couldn't take the keys of the new property until proof of direct debit was handed over.
I waited for 5hrs in the lobby, basically from a few minutes after the branch opened until the mid-afternoon. Eventually a teller decided to help me because none of the bank managers were going to look at it.
What was the problem? apparently because I had claimed to have an income on one of the forms they wanted proof. I had never been asked to delclare proof before; and bearing in mind that previously I had never declared any income on any account _and_ I had standing orders/direct debits coming from the account; this was also the account that was where my salary landed, the only account I'd had since I was 13.
I tried to give proof, I showed bank statements and payslips... contracts etc; but because the payslips were on my phone they didn't accept them, I asked if I could use a printer and they said no.
So, I walked across the street to Barclays, opened 3 accounts with my passport and a proof-of-address, set up all my direct debits in 1hr, transferred all my money and that was the end of it.
What pissed me off most was the lack of transparency on exactly /why/ they decided not to move forward, expecting me to just sit on my hands forever is not good.
Fuck you HSBC, that was nearly 10 years ago and I still fucking hate you.
er... my point is that corps can be fickle and you shouldn't trust any of them. Especially the ones that implore you to trust them.
About 10 years ago HSBC got caught helping drug cartels launder money and they got massively fined for it. In the subsequent years they made it really difficult to open an account, but they wouldn't tell people what the hold up was because it's illegal for UK banks to tell customers that they are performing an anti money laundering investigation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to-pay-1-...
> "About 10 years ago HSBC got caught helping drug cartels launder money and they got massively fined for it."
From what I understand, the fine was much less than what they made from that money laundering. People should have gone to prison for it. The fine was only a slap on the wrist.
This explains so much about my experience... Couldn't they have asked me for materials though?
If they had been up front and said "we need payslips in A4 printed format" I would have provided them..
I tried to opened a business at that time and they asked what countries we think we might have customers in. I came up with a list off the top of my head and on that list was a potential customer in Mexico (which has the 15th biggest economy in the world so it shouldn't be that unusual). Anyway we never got anywhere with them and 3 months later they told us they couldn't open the account. I too wish they would have been open about it. It only took 3 days to get an account opened with Barclays across the street.
Ironically HSBC at the time had adverts plastered at airports all over the world bragging at how good they are for international businesses...
> Especially the ones that implore you to trust them
With long established institutions (like banks) you still have lots of competitors to choose from, and legal recourse if you are wronged. There is no recourse when PayPals, Amazons and Apples of the world decide to scrub you.
In my case it was Apple refusing to work with a bank because they don't have branches, apparently. It's a well known private bank, with a gazillion businesses banking with them, a subsidiary of a rather large multinational bank. For ten years my company has been paid by, and paid out to, numerous entities in the UK and abroad, with no problems. But now Apple comes around, all arrogant as they are, telling me to switch banks because they have enacted a rule that doesn't exist in any laws, just because they can? I am not willing to go down that route.
> because they have enacted a rule that doesn't exist in any laws, just because they can?
Which is the same as my example.
Legal recourse for your bank to lock down your account is actually very limited. But I agree that banks are at least more competitive so they're less likely.
If there were two banks (a duo culture, like google/apple in phones) then you can be very sure it would be the same.
You built a Progressive Web App (PWA) after that, right?
OT: why do you care which bank you're in?
Why would you allow Apple to decide which bank you must use?
My bank doesnt support Google Pay so I switched. Life is full of obstacles but we should go around them and not through them. Only person you hurt in your case is yourself. Or you didn't really want to bother with the whole thing anyway so you stopped at the first issue
The person you replied to is not the same one from the original story. And there are many reasons to prefer one bank to another; in the poster's case, switching to an Apple-supported bank might have introduced more obstacles to go through than it would have avoided.
> Life is full of obstacles but we should go around them and not through them.
Excellent example of short-term thinking. If everyone followed your advice, Google and Apple would be able to extort any bank in the world, until in addition to their software and ad near-monopolies, they'd also have a banking near-monopoly.
Why would you not allow Apple to decide what banks they want to deal with? If some bank has e.g. bad reputation because of some money laundering or terrorist money scandals, why would a business want to be associated with that?
As an American (banking system), I carefully choose which banks and credit unions I use based on a multitude of factors. Anecdotally many of my friends and colleagues are the same, the service and benefits (and hassles) vary greatly from one financial institution to another.
Yeah I guess I'm asking from EU perspective where in 2 countries I haven't really experienced any difference between available banks. I just went with first advice and haven't really noticed something was missing
I personally want to do banking with my local bank so the money flows to local economy not to some big American international company. I think this is a very good reason out-of many.
If Apple doesn't back down, they should be broken up by the DOJ into a phone/hardware company and an iOS/Mac/Services company.
The same should happen to Google with search, Chrome, and Android. You can't use dozens of entire markets as your product moat.
> The same should happen to Google with search, Chrome, and Android.
But... Why? Are you not an Android user maybe? Because it didn't make sense to me as an Android user. My default browser is set to Firefox with ublock origin installed. Search backend is still set to Google, but it's pretty easy to switch between providers. You're not forced into anything here
The real issue there is the deep coupling between Google services and Android, removing at least 70% of the phones utility if the phone isn't signed into a Google account.
The same applies to apple devices though, with the added issue that everything else is forced as well. While I'd be glad if Google opened up the services api, that's a very different issue to the one the original discussion was about.
i generally agree (and the same goes for amazon). But let's not mix everything, otherwise we'll get no result. I believe there is a real momentum at the moment on the "app store" issue, and we should focus 100% on that until we get some result (then we'll move to the next one).
I hope it's not going to be a talk about which commission rate is fair, because it completely misses the point. If apple wants to charge 30% commission for being able to distribute on the store, use their development tools, their apis, and have people pay using apple, fine. But just let my customers free to install my software on the hardware they own the way they want to.
> let my customers .. install my software .. the way want to
I generally agree with the sentiment as a developer.
As I user I never want to side load an app though. I’m afraid this will e.g. allow my bank to develop a shitty app bypassing the permission model and ask / force me to install it. I prefer to know even “strong” entities need to play by the sandbox rules.
Just because you can sideload doesn’t mean apps can just be unconfined; if you sideload an Android app for example, it’s still restricted by the OS sandbox and still has to prompt you for access to contacts, location, etc.
And as an aside: you can sideload apps on Android. Have you seen any banks try to convince users to sideload their app? I sure haven’t.
Its not about commission rate, its about market share. We should be breaking up every corporation that gets anything close to 50% of market share if we are going to pretend that we live in a "free market" system.
Even if it weren't the only option, the sad reality is that, for most, it'd be financial suicide to not be on the App Store.
Compare that to games on PC: even though competition has fortunately started to pick up recently, it'd still be madness not to publish on Steam.
All platforms seem to naturally tend towards monopoly, with an enormous first mover advantage. I wish I knew of a solution :/
I disagree. there are so many constraints today imposed on developers, and so many risks by trying to develop innovating apps, that i think a new ios store would have a lot of interesting apps to offer.
Also, for startups, making sure you have an alternative option to distribute your app in case it gets shut down on apple’s store makes it almost a guarantee that they’ll try to deploy on as many different stores as possible.
But that's the thing, for iOS devices there is no alternative option, and it is not possible to have another option since Apple won't allow it.
> it'd be financial suicide to not be on the App Store.
I find it amusing that people and businesses are willing to put their future in the hands of a company that has historically destroyed anyone who gets enough users on their platform.
If this is the best option, I think that the best option would be to actively work with a platform competitor. Do developers have a sense of stockholm syndrome ?
This is one of those nasty Prisoner's Dilemma type problems where everyone would probably benefit from a collective action in the long term, but it's hard to agree and coordinate when so many individuals derive (smaller and/or short-term) benefit from the status quo. Most societal problems seem to be of this form.
What's your alternative, since there isn't any, except to completely change your industry or business model?
iOS users are known to pay for apps they like. Android users less so.
The alternative could a webapp. But this all depends on what hardware access you need.
In the end it is a choice of business model. Taking the risk of making money while being dependant on one party (Apple, Youtube) is always a huge risk.
Users won't pay a one time fee to use a webapp and theres no infrastructure to do this. Maybe paid up front apps are a dying business model anyway and everything will be subscription based in the future. Theres also just a whole lot missing from PWAs right now, even on Android where they're at least somewhat supported.
Edit: Just to clarify I'm not bashing PWAs I've developed a lot for both the web and iOS and consider myself fairly mercenary, I will jump ship to other tech if need be. But there is still quite a way to go[0] and it's going to be hard to get these companies to agree on some of these standards. I'm also conscious of the fact that PWAs may just replace one dictator (Apple) with another (Google).
the PWA experience is still not so great on iOS. no push notifications, limited service worker support, etc. the only realistic solution for many businesses is sadly a native app.
This is one of many reasons I am mad at Apple. Crippling PWA support makes perfect business sense for them, but ugh I hate them so much for it.
I don't even want to make any money off iOS apps in the short or medium term. I just want to make apps for my friends and family, and have the iPhone users have as good an experience as the Android users. But I'm not going to get into iOS development just for that. Why, why, why can't I just achieve it with a PWA?!
Because Apple will make less money that way, that's why. Again, it makes sense, but I still hate them for it.
Web app is not really an alternative on iOS, not unless Apple stops actively crippling PWAs and I don’t see Apple doing this unless they are forced to do so (anti trust).
PWAs are crippled by design.
Your ignorance is showing. There's few if any features PWAs can't compare in. And many of them are derived from Apple or Google fuckery.
No one will pay anything if there isn't a thing to buy.
That's not true at all. Plenty of developers sell through the Epic Store (having development funded by Epic), or GOG, or the Humble store, or on Itch.io, or even via microsoft store. There are abundant ways to fund a project on PC precisely because it isn't a walled garden. Sure Steam has massive dominance, but that is arguably because of the relatively open nature of steam itself. Valve don't have or seek a monopoly on distribution.
> Plenty of developers sell through the Epic Store (having development funded by Epic), or GOG, or the Humble store, or on Itch.io, or even via microsoft store.
They do, and that's great, but rarely can they afford to not _also_ sell on Steam. Steam will still take their ~30% cut of the vast majority of revenue, still mostly thanks to its first mover advantage, and there's no self-interest-preserving move the developer has against that.
The only exception are exclusives like Epic's, and exclusives aren't exactly great for consumers either.
> This kind of post infuriates me.
Apple's callous "walled garden" practices have always been well known. Honestly, developers who continue to participate in this shitshow had it coming.
If you want to create a cross-platform mobile app, you have no choice. In my country, iPhones are ~50% of smartphones. This needs to be regulated.
You have the same choice the device users have. It's their right to choose their device, and it's your right to choose which provider you use or don't.
It is not your right to reach all those people.
Sorry but that makes zero sense. Monopolies like these kill the free market, kill competition, kill innovation and by that they hurt the end-users and the whole economy. No one benefits from this current situation except Apple. That's why antitrust laws exist, to prevent exactly this type of behavior.
I agree with you 75%.
> No one benefits from this current situation except Apple.
This isn't true. See top comment, but all the FAANGs and their smaller siblings benefit in the exact same way.
The problem is systemic, and it starts with lobbying and disparity of legal standing between corporations and individuals.
I obviously (at least it was my intention) meant: "No one but big corps" (and I include their subsidiaries, sidekicks and wannabes into that). Countries don't, societies don't, not even science or economy, and especially not customers and makers.
No you dont.
People with more users have more word of mouth network effects.
Thats not much of a choice.
Either participate, or be locked out and lag behind the competitors.
The problem here is that Apple is both the platform and the distribution network, when we know very well, computers work just fine with a distribution of power its pretty silly to argue anything counter to that.
Id love to see mac users round here survive on mac os with nothing but the app store.
Good luck without npm, homebrew, wget, or any other convenient way to install software.
Reaching people is not your right. This is the fallacy that social media has taught a generation.
> Id love to see mac users round here survive on mac os with nothing but the app store.
You're moving the goalposts here... Anyone can publish outside the App Store, I thought this was a conversation about publishing ON the Apple Store?
> Anyone can publish outside the App Store
Not on iOS they can't. Which is the entire point.
> Reaching people is not your right.
No... but a competitive market is in everyone (except the monopolist/oligopolist's) interest. Our entire economic model is based on the premise that markets are competitive. Thus in situation like this where a big player in a significant market is being anti-competitive, it is more than reasonable to complain about it.
That’s his point... on iOS you can’t publish outside of the App Store, which cripples it as a platform
I agree, that is a business risk you take. The problem is just that this risk is very difficult to assess and it leaves you very little in term of being able to influence it.
Exactly, this is why I vote with my wallet and don't buy Apple products. Apple's hardware is perhaps only marginally better than the competition's, which by the way is much richer in choice. Developers should look further than Apple. It is better for the profession.
Remember:
developers : Apple == taxi drivers : Uber> Apple's hardware is perhaps only marginally better than the competition's
Microsoft and other brands are getting better at making quality hardware faster than Apple is innovating in the space.
Apple still has the lead in their os just feeling so much nicer and solid to use but again it's still stagnant while windows is slowly evolving and when it comes down to it you can't even build a mac with the power you're working with on the Windows side so it stops really being an option if one means your work can be done multiple times faster (GPGPU workloads for example) than on the Mac side.
It definitely also helps that Apple has been churning out laptops with heaps of major issues. In recent years they've had issues with their keyboards, screens, and audio hardware. Plus they don't do any board-level repair or allow anyone else to, so if you're stuck with a dead mainboard outside of the warranty period the solution is basically "say goodbye to your data and buy a new laptop."
...and then not complain when they can't distribute to Apple users.
All these whinging developers seem to have forgotten that they made an agreement with Apple which included:
"10. Term and Termination. Apple may terminate or suspend you ... at any time in Apple’s sole discretion."
Don't like the terms, don't sign the contract. I learned that the hard way at the age of 19, it wasn't in tech, it was a housing contract, but I learned my lesson:
Before you agree to anything with legal standing, read it and reread it. Understand it, and if you don't seek help to get that understanding. Once you understand the terms you have to make a choice to agree or walk away. Then you have to live with the consequences.
This is the basis of legal justice (as it stands) and much of society relies on it.
I wish the Hey story makes people realise that we can't depend on benevolence of two corporations and should be working on open platforms.
Open platforms are great (and they are, I say this as a Fedora user who just finished an install via dnf'ing all the things) but they lack the money which translates to marketing that large corporations have, it's not a case of a level playing field, we are playing two different games on entirely different fields and ours is mostly uphill.
When your opposition has an absolute chokehold on major markets it's a near unassailable position - throw in that the vast vast majority of users simply don't care whether an app store is open or not or know why they should care - attention is finite and the only way things will improve is if governments lead it and well see my earlier paragraph about who has the money...
Apple and Google are not primordial forces. At some point they've started small and had to compete/coexist with IBM, Yahoo etc.
There are still emerging markets and space for innovation. And next innovation might be based on something open, like Ubuntu Touch.
>I wish the Hey story makes people realize it is not reasonable to have one actor control the only software distribution channel to hundred of millions of customers.
While Apple hasn't officially announced yet, they should have reached 1 Billion Active iPhone user in the past few months. They are just waiting for the moment to make the announcement.
The Mission Impossible 5 lines always come up in my head when I read these stories.
The App Store, was a hypothetically brainchild of certain people within Apple. Recruit former developers from other platform, supply them with tools, use them to grow the ecosystem and surgically remove our competitors, both at home and abroad. Its operation was to be hidden within Services in a virtual account that Steve alone would control. It would have made him a Judge, Jury and Executioner with zero accountability.
I say this little tongue in cheek but it's time to make a www.helpXisthreatningme.com (where X is Google play store, Chrome store, Apple store) and I'm sure it will have at least dozens of new stories like this everyday.
That’s a fantastic idea. It would also be a great place to collect these voices and get a bigger platform in discussions with the platform owners. Almost like a union of sorts...
>It's now so bad people are refraining from trying out innovative business model or apps just because they think there could be a chance someone at apple validation wouldn't like it and kill the product at any time.
This is very true. I know of many people who have legitimate App ideas that would flourish today had it not been the extreme restrictions that Apple and Google is putting on mobile devices. Sadly, I can testify, that Apple and Google are actively putting obstacles in the way of innovation because it hurts their business models.
> But this shouldn't be the only option.
Switch to Android. You just realized the same reason why I switched 8 years ago.
That and consistently raising prices. Apple is doing this to satisfy their never-ending rising stock-price and it will only get worse.
Ps. Android exploits are worth more than iOS once now. How times have changed...
I keep reading these comments on HN of people trying to guess on what the reason is Apple, Google or who else is terminating accounts, apps, videos or monetizing opportunities. Usually accompanied by a tone of voice telling people they should have known better. The point is: Your guess is as good as mine.
The fact is that those companies are not telling people what they did wrong and even more persuasive these days not explaining why their apparent transgression is leading to a particular punishment. Or how that transgression fits the punishment. I for one will not subject myself to such a form of tyranny.
In this case even if having your app in TestFlight too long, why is now (3 years in) the time to revoke the app? Having 200 test users is too much. Why not tell people beforehand they exceeded a limit if that is your rule?
Lets say you are invited into a country as a citizen, but the conditions are: You can be punished arbitrarily, even banished, without recourse, harassed, given arbitrary commands by minions. You pay a 30% tax on all your proceeds, but your proceeds are your sole responsibility. There is no right to have your grievances addressed by the tyrant, not even by one of the lower minions. Would you go? I will not. Now say you already find yourself in such a country. I'm sorry for you. I think I would organize and try to collectively have those rights improved.
> The big problem is that when Apple tells you that the reasons “are not limited” the ones they listed, it could be anything. They could call my face ugly and remove me from the Developer Program under that reason and tell me it was because of “fraud”.
<rant>
Seriously, just how hard is it for these companies to communicate properly? Would it kill them to send something like "We saw X on your account so we are closing your account temporarily. Contact us.". Instead it is just "We closed your account. Get screwed.".
This is why so many developers are going the web app way these days. Dealing with a closed platform who won't even talk to you is just infuriating.
Sorry for the rant.
> Sorry for the rant.
Don't apologize, your rant is valid and unfortunately this issue is not limited to Apple. Google is infamous for closing accounts and sending an automated message along the lines of "You may have violated a rule. We won't tell you which rule, and we won't offer proof, deal with it." They don't just do this to their free users, it's happened to businesses using paid Google services for their core infrastructure. It's maddening that a corporation can get so big that it's effectively a human walking through an ant hill, oblivious to the thousands or even millions of lives it's disrupting in the name of moving forward and making profits.
Not defending, but look at it from the attacker's point of view: The more information the target divulges about their process, the more accurate a playbook you are able to develop about what kinds of attacks the target will and won't allow.
When you type your password into your computer, if you do it incorrectly, you get a generic error like "That didn't work, try again". If instead the OS gave out more specific hints, like "Your username is good but your password isn't" and "You tried 9 characters, but your password is not 9 characters", it would only make things easier for the attacker.
Apple's strategy against the web app workaround appears to be two-pronged: abandon any pretence at maintaining webkit whilst continuing locking out more competent browser engines. Even Microsoft in the IE era didn't actively ban Netscape from running on their platform...
WebKit is clearly being actively maintained, though.
And, might I add, Safari performs way better for me than Chrome, on macOS.
> WebKit is clearly being actively maintained, though.
Depends what you call "actively maintained", I would call it on life support personally, it's lacking very far behind the other engines.
How can that possibly be the case if it's becoming more, not less, standards compliant and performant?!
Additionally, it even manages to outperform Blink in certain use cases / benchmarks, especially after the last major update or so.
It might not be Apple's bread and butter like Blink is for Google, but I see no obvious signs of WebKit dying, though I'm open to proof to the contrary.
PWA, wepb, fullscreen support, intersection observers... the list is very long. And I'm not counting the basic bugs they never solved.
I recently lost 2 days troubleshooting an iOS 13 Safari bug: It just froze, when it got certain html. Wasn't possible to connect a debugger. Never seen that in a browser before.
FF, Chrome: all fine, page rendered correctly.
(I had to bisection-comment out half the html page and so on, until I found out what made Safari freeze. The problem: Radio buttons in separate divs but not wrapped in separate forms, killed Safari.)
What's wrong with WebKit's implementation of intersection observers?
PWA anybody?
> Would it kill them to send something like "We saw X on your account ..."
They fear it would kill their fraud prevention efforts because they'd just be giving evil actors a list of instructions on how to stay as close as possible to their undesirable activities.
Unsolvable.
> We saw X on your account so we are closing your account temporarily
There will always be some idiot who goes 'oh so you're descriminating against X' or some other bullshit but legally valid reason and sues them. Can't have that.
I can only speak for myself, but I have had a number of interactions with the review team, and I have always ended up communicating with a human; although they would often paste “talking points” into their replies.
Because of the nature of a couple of my apps, I’ve had them bounced for “providing commonly available services” (i.e. competing with OS tools). In each instance, I have appealed, citing some unique features, and have prevailed.
I think that reviewers have a number of “1-button” responses, provided by some kind of dashboard, in order to ensure a narrative is maintained. This is actually common for many customer interaction scenarios. I don’t like it, but understand why it happens.
I’ll bet that the more heated an exchange gets, the more “canned” these responses become, because...lawyers. He may, in fact, be communicating with a human, who keeps hitting canned response buttons (not much different from ‘bots).
I’ve wondered whether or not folks might use TestFlight for “shadow release.” I have seen app makers use Enterprise in that fashion. I have no idea (or opinion) on whether or not that was the case, here.
I’m not sure I would want to pursue my case in the court of public opinion. It’s a risky gambit, but this chap may feel he has nothing to lose.
EDIT: One thing that I should mention, is that I never have a release in TestFlight for more than a few days. It has a "time bomb"; I think, maybe 60 or 90 days. That means, in order to maintain an app in TF for three years, he'd need to keep re-releasing every couple of months. That speaks to some kind of intent.
Yep, I had rejections too and I have always managed come to an understanding with the review team. I even had the reviewer call me to explain why he would reject the app and give me an idea to fix the issue. He even gave me his phone number and working hours so I can call him if I had further questions.
It wasn’t a fun process but I like having a human contact on the other side of the things.
Sometimes I think, people having issues must be omitting some part of the story because I am not a big-time publisher, I have no privilege but at the same time, I don’t have these problems of ”evil Apple destroying the little guy” sort.
"Apple threatens to close my developer account" is a very different situation from Hey's disagreement with the business practices of Apple.
One of the nicest interactions I had with customer support was with Apple. It was a younger, very patient and helpful support.
At the start I also got canned responses, which was a bit frustrating (because I knew that these won’t help me in the slightest) but then I got real help and it also felt like the support actually wanted to help, which is often not the case in such scenarios.
I guess what I wanted to say is that this is what brings value to interacting in any business. You need to be able to listen and talk.
I’ve wondered whether or not folks might use TestFlight for “shadow release.”
They are. I know a real estate company that distributes its app to its customers that way. I don't know why they do it, but it's annoying not to be able to just download it from the App Store like a normal app.
> I know a real estate company that distributes its app to its customers that way.
That's insane. Their brand must be in the toilet. This guy has a "niche" product that is probably only of interest to a few geeks. A real estate company, on the other hand, has a brand that it needs to protect and project.
Also, I'll bet they will get to interact with the account fraud department, sooner or later.
Yeah app review have been surprisingly reasonable to deal with, from the "they seem like humans" point of view.
It sounds like OP is dealing with the account fraud department instead
TestFlight has its limitations, unfortunately. It is not a distribution platform, it is not intended to be active for longer than 90 days without updates and should not be monetized
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#bet...
I encourage you to read through the entire AppStore guidelines, there might be more sections that apply to Apple's decision to terminate the account
I didn't read through all of your privacy policy on the app's website, but definitely worthwhile to cross check it with the AppStore guidelines as well.
I don't see the 90 days rule in those guidelines.
As others have said, GMail was 5 years in beta, it's normal for products to be in beta for years as long as they are not monatized. Maybe he didn't get the updates reviewed according to the guidelines though.
Yeah maybe this was it. Any significant changes must be reviewed again.
But from the way it sounds the author was not actively developing the application, so I am not sure how many changes went into each 90 day revision, perhaps Apple does not look kindly on resubmitting a build just for the sake of resetting the TestFlight 90 day activity counter. This might be seen as a way to try and avoid deployment and the final app review process.
The 90 day counter is mentioned here https://testflight.apple.com/ Look for it under "Testing"
From the way I have understood the 90 day counter before is that the app should be updated with new functionality/patches to be more beta tested, otherwise your app is obviously not being developed so no need for beta testing anymore
You can’t monetize an app in test flight. All purchases are fake and collect no money. This argument is bullshit. I know a bunch of apps that have been in TestFlight for ages, and they’re all up and well.
No need for your unconstructive argument
"Note, however, that apps using TestFlight cannot be distributed to testers in exchange for compensation of any kind, including as a reward for crowd-sourced funding."
If you have taken the time to read the information posted you would see that the information is relevant on monetization outside of the app.
I am just giving possible considerations for the author that they haven't consider in the article, we don't know how the app link has been distributed throughout the last 3 years, maybe they posted a donation link somewhere before and Apple considered this as compensation for the beta distribution of the app.
For someone who’s considering getting into Apple Developer program: should Apple Developer account be separate from primary Apple ID used across devices?
And if not, and a single Apple ID is also used for development, (1) can it remain intentionally unassociated with any payment method in any specific country, and (2) is there a threat of losing it if Developer account is terminated for some unfathomable reason?
If your personal Apple ID is on most of your devices, absolutely.
If it’s a business ID then I’d still say you have little to lose by using a separate one for the Dev account. You can even switch IDs on iOS for using the App Store if you need to login using the dev account.
An interesting spin of the story would be if Apple announced an intel to arm migration kit called "Mignori" next week at WWDC...
I really hate this current reality of having to use social media channels for a chance of proper customer support. Are there any initiatives that are working against this? I would be happy to contribute to any kind of platform or movement or whatever that aims to mitigate/fix this.
Apple’s decisions in the last 5 years are causing more and more of my developer friends to move away. Bringing back the escape key on the MacBook Pro won’t change that.
If Apple were not years behind PWA integration, switching to a PWA instead of native app might be an option. But this is sadly not in Apple’s interest.
I wonder how many people will choose Android over Apple in the future because of PWAs. I can imagine there will be a flood of useful PWAs, freely to use and only fully working on Android, not Apple.
At this point I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the EU competition/antitrust investigation [1] might go somewhere and get an outcome. The trouble with investigations like these, as we all know from previous cases, is they tend to drag on rather than yield rapid outcomes.
In this case, it seems we've sleepwalked into a situation where there are conflicts of interest like never really seen before - companies with global scale, able to arbitrarily decide which competition they wish to allow to be present on "their" marketplace, and make them either raise their price by 30%, or be 30% less profitable.
Resolving these conflicts, and recognising these aren't simple "creation of a moat", but rather some actual, tangible, anti-competitive practices would be a good starting point. But what is the outcome? Apple's view is "we're protecting users from bad things on the internet", but perhaps this kind of arbitrary decision-making is not one to be getting made arbitrarily?
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
We already have the cookie law. Do you need another gift from EU?
GDPR itself is a lot more than the "cookie law", and in my view most people are mis-interpreting and mis-applying it. Any site that won't let you in without accepting their tracking cookies is actually breaking GDPR.
If we enforced the law as written, I think the "cookie law" would be a net positive for everyone.
In terms of who deals with the anti competitive situation, I don't think that matters. But this is textbook market distortion that traditional antitrust laws were made for, and I think it's high time we saw them used to break up anti-competitive market practices.
"In the last few days, Next Anime Episode has started to receive an unusual number of 1-Star reviews and all in a quick sucession, so I am starting to think that someone is targetting me for god knows what reason"
Speculation but my money would be on some unethical competitor or even just a jerk who doesn't like Andy is spamming negative reviews and reported him to Apple for fraud. Since I've never heard of this happening, I don't know if Apple's fraud department takes a guilty-until-innocent approach or if they agreed fraud occurred. Either way the lack of transparency and communication is not right. I'll echo sentiments that I've spoken to humans about app issues but never about fraud.
> I know of developers who were instantly terminated and all their apps removed. Luckily this has not happened to me.
Well there you have it. The rest of devs will be happy they're still under Apple's wing, and nothing will change.
The problem with all these "Apple is being nasty to me" stories that have been appearing recently is that there appears to be a strong smell of "two sides to every story".
I have not read the blog post above fully, but a speed-read suggests that the author was publicly distributing an app through TestFlight rather than App Store.
I am not accusing anyone of anything here. But if my speed-read is accurate, then its not at all surprising Apple have taken issue with him.
TestFlight is a dev tool. Its not for production deployment. Its meant for beta testing.
Author says that he develops app in his free time, did not have time to push it to app store properly and that he has 200 beta testers. Apps with a public invitation link for testing are common and if the delay is the problem here, then Apple should have said so.
What's completely unacceptable here is that Apple does not specifically say what the author did wrong and this can't be defended by apologists.
What is surprising or not coming from Apple is irrelevant, stop normalizing this abusive behavior from app store gate keepers.
> Author says that he develops app in his free time, did not have time to push it to app store properly and that he has 200 beta testers. Apps with a public invitation link for testing are common and if the delay is the problem here, then Apple should have said so.
I agree that Apple’s lack of communication with developers is a massive problem, but I also think there are a couple of gaps in his story that need filling in.
TestFlight betas expire after a short amount of time – one or two months, if I remember correctly. He says the application has been available through TestFlight for three years. This means that he will have had to publish a new build well over a dozen times to keep it active for this amount of time. And if it’s already on TestFlight with external testers, it’s really not much effort at all to push it live. The build is already in Apple’s system – you've got to fill out a couple more form fields and click submit.
So looking at it that way… he gets hundreds of users, keeps pushing new builds to those users on a regular basis for three years, but never submits it to go through the public App Store review process. If I were Apple, I’d think he was probably trying to bypass the review process as well. Apps with a public invitation link are common, but this behaviour is not.
But yes, they should talk to him about it and this is a failure on Apple’s part even if he is acting suspiciously. I’ve been saying for a while that Apple need a VP of Developer Relations to take ownership of this type of thing, because it seems clear nobody owns it at the moment.
But it's not just the app marketplace providers. It has become the tech-company norm to shut people out of their systems without rhyme or reason.
It's outrageous, but people rag on Apple disproportionately, as though their model (curated App Store vs free-for-all) is the issue. We need sweeping technology reform from the top. Governments need to start understanding the technology that they oversee, not just dealing on a 'business level' with lobbyists and execs who will do anything to maintain their autonomy.
When these companies are service providers to a majority of the population (in aggregate, or individually) they must be treated as infrastructure providers and held to basic standards of accountability, transparency, and governance.
But to what extent is it 'publicly distributing' when the app has only 200 users. It sounds more like an extended beta than a 'clever' way to circumvent the app review process.
And, as the author extensively explains, the major sin of Apple is not that they removed the app from Testflight, but that threaten to suspend his developer account completely and give no explanation _why_, even after multiple attempts of the author to reach out to Apple to solve this situation.
> TestFlight is a dev tool. Its not for production deployment. Its meant for beta testing.
If that's the case, surely the better action would be for Apple to just remove the app from Testflight (and maybe reset the list so testers have to sign up again)?
That sounds plausible. He claims to have 200 beta users without having been through app review. TestFlight only permits 25 internal testers [1] (you can have 10,000 external testers but the app has to go through review first). Something smells off.
The author states in the article that it did go through review.
Does he? This is the portion I was basing my comment on : "The app has been sitting on TestFlight for 3 years now, it has around 200 beta users, and if anything, the only reason I can think of, is that Apple thinks I decided to unofficially deploy the app with TestFlight without going through the formal review."
I guess there's the implication it had some form of review when he says: "Mignori 3 was published on TestFlight in 2017 and Apple approved it."
In order to allow external testers, not on your company Apple account, you have a sort of mini review. It’s not the same as a full review although I don’t know the difference.
Yeah he's been distributing the app through TestFlight with the link on his website for three years.
If that was the issue surely Apple would tell him? Why keep such information a secret?
It seems to be very clearly as a temporary beta: https://www.mignori.com/beta/
10 months doesn't sound all that temporary.
GMail was in beta for 5 years.
Games on early access can be there for years...Software can remain on beta for the same duration too depending on how the developer feels.
We see terrible software all the time now because it's rushed to GM because that's what you need to do, apparently.
It is more like 3 years.
Yeah probably this can be related considering "Mignori 3 was published on TestFlight in 2017 and Apple approved it."
There's not two sides of every story as long as Apple acts the way they do.
As for TestFlight lengths - if you are required to guess what the issue is you have already proven his point.
Having worked at large companies - Apple is not a nice company especially to their app platform users. They will hold your app hostage whenever they want something. They play hardball (read: act like immoral sociopaths) because service revenue is how they justify their 13 figure valuation to their shareholders.
The consequence of playing in a walled garden.
Is there still no way to release an iPhone app out with the iOS app store?
Not unless you make it open source and require your users to download and compile it to their device with Xcode on their own. Not going to work for most, and without a developer account, they'd have to redeploy to their device every week, since that's how long the license lasts.
yes, you can i heard instacart for example uses their enterprise cert signed app for their drivers/deliverers. Drivers are instructed to go into settings and change things to allow loading that app
I wouldn't call that an alternative to the App Store, as that's exactly what the enterprise certs are for - internal distribution to employees (or more likely in this case to be contractors but whatever). Getting regular users to go in to settings and change things just to install your app is not feasible.
From what I understand, in the free market system we consider things to be anti-competitive, anti-consumer, etc. when a corporation has some kind of market dominance acquired through earning the trust of consumers, and once they have obtained that trust, they abuse it by imposing a set of self-serving conditions on the market which serves their own interest in some way at the cost of some other player in the market - either consumer or competitor or someone else.
To enable this countries and regions have drafted laws to govern what business and trade practices are permissible.
Some non-rhetorical questions out of curiosity because I genuinely don't know:
Is it illegal for supermarkets to only partner with certain brands and carry their products over those of their competitors? If there is only 1 Walmart within driving distance of 50,000 people, and that Wal-Mart chooses to throw out all toilet paper brands and sell their store brand, is this allowed under current law? What if they allow the brand to stay if they pay an additional whimsical commission to Wal-Mart? Is that legal?
Is there something that makes the App store different from the physical store equivalent?
Putting aside the letter of the law, does it violate the aforementioned "spirit" of the law? i.e. ought there be laws against this kind of behaviour? I am sure there are good arguments for both sides.
The App Store is different than in your example. In your example, I could put up a store myself called Toilet Paper Warehouse, and probably be successful in that town given that nobody else sells the toilet paper consumers desire. Whereas if the App Store is Walmart, then the iPhone is the town, but the town has a law on the books that says "No stores except Walmart can be in this town!". Consumers don't get the toilet paper they value, and Walmart can control the supply. In exchange, Walmart makes sure that nobody sells toilet paper with poison ivy on it, and guarantees that residents will have to go to the bathroom less than if they sold non-Walmart toilet paper.
The problem is that the iPhone itself isn't a monopoly. You can buy an Android phone that can access any store and install any app you want, so monopoly law doesn't apply (in the strictest sense). Now, one could say that you shouldn't have to move towns just because your favorite toilet paper isn't sold. But as it stands today, you have to, as I understand it. (With that being said, Apple, start acting right.)
The article doesn't pass the smell test to me.
By his own description of what it does, I'd say the app is highly likely to be selling access to content that the author hasn't licensed, and is on sketchy copyright grounds.
Also, the fact that a vote manipulation app...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-...
...was distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former Clinton and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers...
https://apnews.com/5232ce5601996c1de440806ad30fa4fb
...has likely put Apple in the position of being compelled to more actively police what goes on in test apps. I get the knee-jerk tendency to blame corporate oppression of indie developers since that is usually what we see from the Googles and Microsofts of the world, but Apple has little monetary interest in kicking a successful app developer off of their ecosystem, unless that app developer is blatantly flaunting civil / criminal statutes or trying to scam Apple out of their cut of the profit.
If I had a to guess I'd say this guy is doing both.
If you read the article, you'll find that the app itself doesn't even link to any content by default and you have to explicitly enter a data source yourself.
Also, I'd say referring to that app (however problematic it was, and I agree they did a terrible job building and deploying it) as a "vote manipulation app" is unnecessarily inflammatory.
> distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former Clinton and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers This implies that TestFlight has financial backing from those groups. Maybe that's just unclear wording, but interpreted as written the claim is unsupported by the provided source.
Assuming you meant to say the Iowa caucus app was supported by those former staffers, it should be clarified that the company who made the app also provided services to those campaigns. I wouldn't consider Shadow Inc. to be competent as a technology company, but it doesn't surprise me that Democrats would buy political tech from a company founded by people who worked on digital outreach for the most recent Democratic presidential campaign.
I read the article, I still think this is a fine line that overall points to a nefarious intent, I suppose we can debate which one it is...
1) Desire to cut Apple out of their share by trying to monetize a test app
and/or
2) Desire to escape the review process which might flag and reject an app designed to allow the user to easily fetch data from source that would be in violation of copyright laws.
This is relevant to the political example for a similar reason. Sure, we can say there's nothing wrong with the judge in a politician's criminal trial being seen with the politician in a restaurant after the politician's acquittal.... on the same day (look up Edwin Edwards and you'll see examples of just that), but it certainly does look bad, doesn't it? Similarly we can say that people from the vote counting app and their investors being seen in a bar with the guy responsible for failing to count the votes is not necessarily nefarious, but when the guy who counts the votes fails to count the votes in a way that favors the candidate whose staffers were also at the same get together at the same bar, it sure does look bad, doesn't it?
There's no reason for a guy with a successful app to fail to launch it and monetize it, unless he's trying to skirt Apple's rules in some way. It's just a matter of what way he's trying to game their system, isn't it?
You get the same thing with YouTube creators (plus they get bogus or spurious copyright flags with the same result). If we're going to have these big platforms (and I'd include Steam, Amazon, YouTube etc) then we need to have legislation giving their clients basic, non-waivable rights to a quick and independent review and reasonable treatment. Sadly the law seems to be headed in the opposite direction (requiring platforms to do more "moderation").
`While the first version of this app was on the App Store from 2014 to 2016, I removed it in that last year because the app stopped working properly with most Boorus, and it was broken for most users. Since then, I started developing a new version called “Mignori 3”, which has never hit the App Store. It has been on TestFlight for a while.`
So basically he was calling something a 'beta' and distributing it through Testflight for 3 years.
Yep, no clear reason here. Big Apple bad!
Apple has a lot of problems, and I agree, but most of these 'developer stories about mean Apple' always have two sides of the story. I remember the same outrage about Kapeli's Dash situation, and then came out an account in his name was doing fraudulent activities ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131 )
So it was in beta for three years. What of it? That's hardly fraudulent. If something is in beta, then it's... in beta. He wasn't selling it.
He was using Testflight to distribute it on his website. This has been a nono to do for a long time. You may not agree with it, but them are the rules.
You are speculating though. Do you know for sure that is the fraudulent activity that Apple are referring to?
No, I can't say for sure, but it is A reason to terminate the account, and since this post is called 'Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason' I believe it is the case. We will never know the real reason as Apple probably won't provide it, but there is a violation of their rules, even if the termination was because something else, they are still entitled to close it based on the violation.
I do t see why it is so hard for Apple to explain what in particular he was doing wrong.
Might be that they just don’t like the idea of image board browser. Apple is somewhat strict on what kind of content the apps are providing to user (See ”Objectionable Content” [1])
Techically this is of course just like web browser, but Apple could see it differently.
[1] Objectionable Content
Then you reject the app in App Review, not terminate the account for "Fraud"
Where are the people arguing that it’s fine because private companies can do whatever they want?
> All the skills I have built over the course of almost a decade are obsolete now, because I do not imagine myself working for other people as an iOS dev without having my own hobby iOS apps on the App Store. It feels like all the blogging I have been doing has been a waste because I cannot participate in the knowledge I myself write, and it’s pointless to engage in the knowledge of others if I cannot try what they write.
The fact that a faceless entity can lock you out of developing like this is just wrong. I fear for the future of such closed off ecosystems.
Oh FFS, well, up to the top you go. Maybe someone at Apple will see this and poke their friends in App Store Review or something.
We really shouldn’t have to do that kind of shit.
Startup idea for anyone who is interested:
Paid customer service where the customer pays money (say $100-$1k depending on how serious the issue is) and each company can have a special channel to respond to these paid requests and be compensated (say 80% of the fee the customer pays). That way companies will have the will and ability to attend to serious issues and filter them out from the "useless" customer requests that flood any large size business.
The companies that want to sell dedicated support and the people who want to buy it are already selling and buying it. And since, outside of FOSS that the customer controls hosting of, and some other special cases, only the original vendor, with whom the user will have interacted to get the software, will be able to provide support, so there's not a lot of matchmaking/discovery to be done to justify a middleman taking a cut.
This is how the Microsoft paid support channel works: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4341255/support-for...
In the UK and least there exists a service like that - resolver.co.uk. I have used it once and got a response from the company that I complained about. I thought that was rather neat.
Irony. You can publish a book without a publisher right now. But you have to rely on publisher will if you want to publish an app.
We need third party app stores and there should be a section on the Apple App Store dedicated for installing these.
This.
I once had Apple reject an iOS app update citing IP violations because we had an in-app settings page using a stock UITableViewController with default UITableViewCells with UISwitch in the accessory view (on the right) and vanilla text. Literally no styling.
Apparently it looked too much like the iPad Settings app.
Insane.
That's why I often don't bother with Apple. If it doesn't work on OSX or iOS, too bad. People have to learn that Apple is not good for them or for society and I'm happy to make my products unavailable to Apple users to help them to learn that valuable life lesson.
Just find an alternative business strategy that doesn't rely on Apple. You can't rely on them. They don't give a crap about developers and never have. Why do all developers keep enabling them? Seriously, just sacrifice a small % of your income by ignoring Apple and you will help make the world a better place. Developers have to stand up for themselves.
I specifically opened HN just now to see if there were any negative posts about Apple, given that WWDC is in a few days, and like clockwork, there it is.
What are you implying?
here's my thought on the "raging" debate -- what if, just what if, we are free to set up "stores" where our computing devices can connect to without liability and with the same level of complexity as with the default one being offered up? walled gardens create opportunities for abuse, which, unfortunately for us hapless developers, impose yet another level of bureaucracy.
We do need legislation here.
I would suggest requiring cause to be stated for account termination or threatened termination, and a formal right of appeal to request evidence.
Of course this would be onerous for the smallest businesses, so we’d need some threshold for when it kicks in. E.g. 2 years, or $1,000 of transactions.
This wouldn’t make any particular kind of termination illegal. It would simply force transparency, so that then if there really are abuses or patterns of abuse taking place, we can expose them.
It would also apply to all businesses - Google, Banks, Gyms, whatever.
Had a horror experience with PayPal. Lost tons of cash. Getting paid became incredibly difficult.
where is this ? https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/tech/apple-app-store-supreme-...
Please build progressive web apps.
There's not much they can't do, now.
They can malfunction due to changes in the device runtime anytime the OEM chooses, so no.
Have I misunderstood something, or is this app's main goal to view Japanese comics infringing copyright in some way? That's probably the reason it was pulled. Sure it has other uses, plausible deniability, but what did the guy expect?
This title could really benefit from some punctuation.
If you need an online SaaS account, that can be remotely disabled, to develop and distribute your software, you have been already lost anyway.
Forget that useless malicious platform already. It's not worth it.
What is the revenue potential of app store apps? Any studies or surveys on the matter?
Impudent code serf thinks he's owed reasoning by his corporate lord.
Nice framing. :)
govt's need to catch up and start setting some rules. App stores have gotten so large that they essentially become like real estate or store space. You can't just have a few stores control all the means of distribution.
I imagine some cities already have laws around this for farmer markets, flea markets, etc. It would be interesting (and hilarious) if cities started trying to enforce those laws on Apple, like they did for taxes.
> Mignori is a client for Image Board websites (we informally call “Boorus”). These image boards are popular in the anime community, although there can be image boards for anything you can think of.
I just googled this, found some references to the anime image boards. Most were Hentai / Porn. If the main purpose of an app is viewing adult content, its main purpose is viewing adult content - even if you have to add the ressources yourself. (I might be wrong, I don't have a clue about the Boorus community).
So prop. Apples "Freedom from Porn"approach?
In that case they should ban browsers, too (which in a way they do, there's a de-facto WebKit monopoly on iOS).
Honeslty if the browser would be invented in 2020 they prop. would.
prop? What does that mean?
Probably 'probably.'
But in a browser you'd had to enter the url yourse... oh, yeah, nevermind
They could have pulled his (and his users) UIWebView caches up into Apple HQ to see what it’s really being used for, but it’s all speculation until they make a public accusation (which they might not do if they don’t want to reveal their manner and methods).
Twitter and Reddit have endless amounts of pornographic content and seem to be allowed on the app store just fine.
yea i had a feeling it was going towards this...