The review process is broken. The stream of apps is enormous, the expense to review them deeply would be large, the cost of a false rejection is very low.
The expense to review them deeply used to be large, a few years ago. There should be a review process that consists of putting the source code in some escrow build environment and letting an LLM do a full audit. What would that be, a few bucks at-cost?
Okay, can you concoct some prompt-injection-like scenario where you can fool increasingly sophisticated agents about the presence of your malware? Sure, maybe. It's MILES ahead of where both major app stores are today, though, where you can find obvious scams that sailed through review just by looking at their description.
AI apps are flooding everything. No doubt they are using or planning to use AI to help manage the load.
And then of course all the apps will use some kind of AI, and because humans don’t care to wade through a trillion tip calculators or whatever, they’ll use AI to pick the app. And then have AI use the app for them through a voice assistant.
I wonder if that'll be the future. This is something AI can actually solve. Write replacements for a lot of apps, slop but efficient slop, and use that as a distraction-free phone.
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
only on the surface, plenty of places have moved out of the big tech ecosystem to models hosted at smaller providers or even self hosted. its not the majority of work but is growing.
Not really, unless paying users switch to alternative stores, which they don't just because I as a developer face friction in publishing to Google Play.
In fact, Google is making alternative stores even less convenient with their latest 'side-loading' hurdles.
Regulators need to wake up, issue record fines, mandate equal access and a 'Choose your app stores' screen on device setup.
Otherwise competitive third party stores and a fair market are going to remain a pipe dream.
They don't need record fines. They need to be liquidated and their entire c-suite and board of directors barred from serving in any executive management capacity of any business more complex than a sole proprietorship.
They are hardly mythical, for one I could think of Steam and Epic Games.
Competition is what stops the exploitation.
Epic Games has always offered lower fees and their CEO has been advocating for small developers for years.
There is no reason why Google and Apple get to bundle their stores, and these other big names have to collect the scraps from users who care to look up alternative stores and go through scare screens.
There are very good reasons, starting with the fact that there was no good mobile app experience before Apple created one. And they created one that was half the cost of the terrible stores that existed before.
And they created the hardware and software to make all this possible.
Anybody who's ever tried to get through their review process can attest that the article writer's experience is far from outside the norm.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
Yea I’m on over a month now of an app sitting in review, a couple of years ago it was much quicker. Apple approved the same app within a week. I can only assume it’s because it’s easier to vibecode android apps so it’s being flooded?
I don't understand how Google aka the company that famously automates all the things can't "vibecode" a review tool to handle the increased submissions. I'm sure they already have which makes the delays puzzling. With all that compute, and all those brilliant engineers they should should be cranking out reviews, security audits and approving new apps/updated apps quicker than ever.
Are you an editor or involved with app review? I would rather read this honestly written, succinct blog post than a mountain of AI slop that half of the HN front page is.
I also recently acquired some free e-waste android 6 devices (like a galaxy note 4 pad and a moto 4 phone). Using some vibe coding I was able to setup a dockerized build system for java/kotlin apps and managed to make a number of custom applications for the devices like turning them into timelapse+mjpeg streaming cameras (or irc client, or ice thickness estimation from chirped sounds+dsp). Since they're ewaste I don't mind if they get destroyed or lost.
I think I'm done with Android apps development. The following publishing requirements just closed the door for me as a hobby developer:
Have at least 12 testers opted-in to your closed test.
Run your closed test with at least 12 testers, for 14 days
The funny thing is this seems to apply to recently-created personal publisher accounts. I had a very old publisher account but because I was unable to move my account owner to another email address, I closed it and registered a new one. Little did I know what this would lead to later on.
The part where the author is aware that any missteps in "debugging" the review process can get their account permabanned is lovely. I'm sure I've read cases here before where a developer has lost all their emails and family photos because their policies.
If Google cares about some of the long-standing problems, I wonder whether they know how to fix them. (Assign OKRs, which may be conflicting, or get quietly triaged/prioritized?)
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
The app store gatekeepers have so much power that it would be nice to see some legal requirements for operators of those stores put in place.
If your app is rejected, there should be a real appeal process. Maybe developers should be able to demand arbitration for some non-trivial fee?
The first step of the appeal would be for the store to disclose to the arbitrator precisely what rule was violated and in what way. The arbitrator can uphold the rejection and you lose your fee or can force the app store to accept the submission and you are refunded.
Microsoft support used to work something like this. There was a fee to get them on the phone but if the problem turned out to be an actual bug, the fee was refunded.
Anyone can make a website and publish it but for some reason when it comes to apps there needs to be a store with a review process. Aren't apps, in a way, not just specialised browsers (not talking about webview apps here) that run in a sandbox? Why the need for all this "reviewing", does it make apps safer or better quality? Is it a device ecosystem permission / security problem? I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
If you have no gatekeeping, then all of the bad actors come in and you end up with a tragedy of the commons.
Apple did this correctly, IMHO, when the App Store first came out by both:
- reviewing all apps
- having it take 30 days to get the feedback
The 30 days seemed draconian or bureaucratic but it forced builders to be 100% sure that there app was working and ready for consumption. It probably also acted as major friction for scammers etc who figured it wouldn't be worth it.
The iPhone 1 only allowed web bookmarks. They aren’t as capable as real apps in dozens of ways. The fact that lots of Apps are just glorified web site browsers doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of apps that aren’t, and some that couldn’t be done with a web site at all.
The review process is broken. The stream of apps is enormous, the expense to review them deeply would be large, the cost of a false rejection is very low.
maybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.
They have 2x the number of apps as Apple.
Millions and millions.
The cost of false rejections is generally quite low.
The expense to review them deeply used to be large, a few years ago. There should be a review process that consists of putting the source code in some escrow build environment and letting an LLM do a full audit. What would that be, a few bucks at-cost?
Okay, can you concoct some prompt-injection-like scenario where you can fool increasingly sophisticated agents about the presence of your malware? Sure, maybe. It's MILES ahead of where both major app stores are today, though, where you can find obvious scams that sailed through review just by looking at their description.
Exact same philosophy they use for hiring.
AI apps are flooding everything. No doubt they are using or planning to use AI to help manage the load.
And then of course all the apps will use some kind of AI, and because humans don’t care to wade through a trillion tip calculators or whatever, they’ll use AI to pick the app. And then have AI use the app for them through a voice assistant.
If only they would charge developers exorbitant fees that could fund such work...
Of course I understand that they are not going to spend money on improving their review process for our benefit until regulators force them to.
I wonder if that'll be the future. This is something AI can actually solve. Write replacements for a lot of apps, slop but efficient slop, and use that as a distraction-free phone.
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
Big tech controls the AIs. The solution, of course, is antitrust enforcement.
only on the surface, plenty of places have moved out of the big tech ecosystem to models hosted at smaller providers or even self hosted. its not the majority of work but is growing.
Not really, unless paying users switch to alternative stores, which they don't just because I as a developer face friction in publishing to Google Play.
In fact, Google is making alternative stores even less convenient with their latest 'side-loading' hurdles.
Regulators need to wake up, issue record fines, mandate equal access and a 'Choose your app stores' screen on device setup.
Otherwise competitive third party stores and a fair market are going to remain a pipe dream.
They don't need record fines. They need to be liquidated and their entire c-suite and board of directors barred from serving in any executive management capacity of any business more complex than a sole proprietorship.
How do we do this though? Like who do I vote for to make this a reality? Republicans? Hardly. Democrats? Also no.
So what stops these other mythical app stores from being just as predatory and exploitative as the first-party ones?
They are hardly mythical, for one I could think of Steam and Epic Games.
Competition is what stops the exploitation.
Epic Games has always offered lower fees and their CEO has been advocating for small developers for years.
There is no reason why Google and Apple get to bundle their stores, and these other big names have to collect the scraps from users who care to look up alternative stores and go through scare screens.
There are very good reasons, starting with the fact that there was no good mobile app experience before Apple created one. And they created one that was half the cost of the terrible stores that existed before.
And they created the hardware and software to make all this possible.
I don’t doubt the author, at the same time this is a serious accusation with no details and little context.
This could have been presented in a more organized way, with timelines and redacted content.
Part of the problem is Google not being transparent, having more transparency could help.
They don't have access to the content anymore, as mentioned a bit later in the article.
Anybody who's ever tried to get through their review process can attest that the article writer's experience is far from outside the norm.
Although I must admit I've never gotten nudes from them. Up your game, Google.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
Yea I’m on over a month now of an app sitting in review, a couple of years ago it was much quicker. Apple approved the same app within a week. I can only assume it’s because it’s easier to vibecode android apps so it’s being flooded?
I don't understand how Google aka the company that famously automates all the things can't "vibecode" a review tool to handle the increased submissions. I'm sure they already have which makes the delays puzzling. With all that compute, and all those brilliant engineers they should should be cranking out reviews, security audits and approving new apps/updated apps quicker than ever.
"Google is incompetent at review"... while the author is misspelling words constantly.
Are you an editor or involved with app review? I would rather read this honestly written, succinct blog post than a mountain of AI slop that half of the HN front page is.
That’s irrelevant. The author likely doesn’t have English as their first language. They are an individual, not one of the most valuable company ever
You can't win. If he had had a perfect text with a - or two you'd have written 'Oh, this must surely be AI'.
That makes Google competent how?
Agree. Tried to publish my app through Google, and still no luck. Link below.
I was able to share it on f-droid though, and I am starting to think that it may be good just to publish app only through it.
https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
I also recently acquired some free e-waste android 6 devices (like a galaxy note 4 pad and a moto 4 phone). Using some vibe coding I was able to setup a dockerized build system for java/kotlin apps and managed to make a number of custom applications for the devices like turning them into timelapse+mjpeg streaming cameras (or irc client, or ice thickness estimation from chirped sounds+dsp). Since they're ewaste I don't mind if they get destroyed or lost.
A company that does not provide support to normal people and has a compulsive habit of closing services for absolutely no good reason? You don't say?
I think I'm done with Android apps development. The following publishing requirements just closed the door for me as a hobby developer:
The funny thing is this seems to apply to recently-created personal publisher accounts. I had a very old publisher account but because I was unable to move my account owner to another email address, I closed it and registered a new one. Little did I know what this would lead to later on.
Open a corporation and register as an organization. Easier way to get through.
I also had my old dev account that I used during school permanently disabled.
The part where the author is aware that any missteps in "debugging" the review process can get their account permabanned is lovely. I'm sure I've read cases here before where a developer has lost all their emails and family photos because their policies.
I only ever published anything on the google play store under another google account than the one that's got my gmail and photos.
If Google cares about some of the long-standing problems, I wonder whether they know how to fix them. (Assign OKRs, which may be conflicting, or get quietly triaged/prioritized?)
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
The app store gatekeepers have so much power that it would be nice to see some legal requirements for operators of those stores put in place.
If your app is rejected, there should be a real appeal process. Maybe developers should be able to demand arbitration for some non-trivial fee?
The first step of the appeal would be for the store to disclose to the arbitrator precisely what rule was violated and in what way. The arbitrator can uphold the rejection and you lose your fee or can force the app store to accept the submission and you are refunded.
Microsoft support used to work something like this. There was a fee to get them on the phone but if the problem turned out to be an actual bug, the fee was refunded.
Anyone can make a website and publish it but for some reason when it comes to apps there needs to be a store with a review process. Aren't apps, in a way, not just specialised browsers (not talking about webview apps here) that run in a sandbox? Why the need for all this "reviewing", does it make apps safer or better quality? Is it a device ecosystem permission / security problem? I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
If you have no gatekeeping, then all of the bad actors come in and you end up with a tragedy of the commons.
Apple did this correctly, IMHO, when the App Store first came out by both:
- reviewing all apps
- having it take 30 days to get the feedback
The 30 days seemed draconian or bureaucratic but it forced builders to be 100% sure that there app was working and ready for consumption. It probably also acted as major friction for scammers etc who figured it wouldn't be worth it.
The iPhone 1 only allowed web bookmarks. They aren’t as capable as real apps in dozens of ways. The fact that lots of Apps are just glorified web site browsers doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of apps that aren’t, and some that couldn’t be done with a web site at all.