Google 'Experts' To Screen Android Apps For Banned Content

An anonymous reader writes Google has announced that it will start an official human-based screening process for all of the apps featured in its Google Play store, in a bid to "better protect the community" and "improve the app catalogue." The search giant revealed yesterday that a "team of experts" would be reviewing apps and all updates offered across the Google Play platform for those which violate Google's developer policies. The team will also give direct feedback to developers on what they need to do in order to fix their apps before they can be listed on the Store. A dedicated review page will allow developers to gain further "insight into why apps were rejected or suspended," as well as offering them the opportunity to "easily fix and resubmit their apps" for those who have violated minor regulations.

Comments

Screening

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, I'm unimpressed with their interest in explaining and allowing corrections of minor violations. The AdMob defaults include tons of offensive advertising and you're prohibited from observing them in your testing by their T.O.S. Fixing the AdMob settings is apparently not sufficient to get Google to lower your app's content rating once the mistake has been made, not that they'll actually discuss it with you.

Curated Collection

[macs4all]

Hmmm. Sounds like Google is moving toward the concept of a Curated Collection.

Wonder where they would have gotten THAT Idea...?

Re:Curated Collection

[damn_registrars]

Hmmm. Sounds like Google is moving toward the concept of a Curated Collection.

Wonder where they would have gotten THAT Idea...?

If you want to be that nonspecific, I will point out that was making submissions to a Curated Collection a decade before Apple launched their App store for any platform. So perhaps google took the idea from the National Institutes of Health?

Re:Curated Collection

[silentcoder]

Curated software collections have been standard practise in the Linux world since debian launched in the early 1990s.
There were probably even earlier ones on other unixes and maybe even on some earlier OS's than that.

FreeBSD has repositories and macOS is based on that so apple had been working with versions of the idea for ages, many distributions have both curated and uncurated repositories (in some cases the latter is not part of or hosted by the distribution however).

The only thing Apple did was to actively prevent access to any repositories EXCEPT their own - which google is STILL not doing (nothing in here announced their imminent blocking of the amazon appstore for example).

The appstore wasn't an invention at all - it was merely an already ancient idea being added to a cellphone OS and it wasn't even the first to do THAT - blackberry had an appstore-like feature years earlier.

The only change here is the addition of curation. Now we can debate whether the nature of that curation is good or bad for consumers. Distributions usually curate as well - checking submissions for malware is common -and many have additional levels (for example checking for license compliance or limiting approval to software under a pre-chosen subset of acceptable licenses).
Some even curate content - education marketed distros for example will generally not allow adult content programs in their repositories while a distro like debian will usually let it through.

Re:Curated Collection

[Scoth]

It's a little difficult to prove direct correlation, as is the usual case with Apple product releases, but if you recall the original announcements for iPhone specifically called for it to run only Web 2.0 applications through Safari. For example. It wasn't until after the first jailbreaks and unofficial third party apps that the App Store came along after weathering objections from Jobs. It's hard to conclusively say whether it was directly in response to jailbreakers or not, but it's likely it sped up their plans.

Featured apps only will be analyzed?

[turning in circles]

So this is telling me that the apps that Google "Features" currently are not inspected or analyzed by any humans before they become featured. "Featured," to my way of thinking, means recommended. So, currently, are algorithms recommending apps, not people? And if so, how long before algorithms recommend movies, books, music? (Currently, Wikibooks notes that "Featured books are books that the Wiki community believes to be the best . . .")

Re:Featured apps only will be analyzed?

[swillden]

So this is telling me that the apps that Google "Features" currently are not inspected or analyzed by any humans before they become featured. "Featured," to my way of thinking, means recommended. So, currently, are algorithms recommending apps, not people? And if so, how long before algorithms recommend movies, books, music? (Currently, Wikibooks notes that "Featured books are books that the Wiki community believes to be the best . . .")

No. "Apps featured in Google Play" isn't the same as "Featured Apps in Google Play". Neither phrase was from Google, either, but from the summary.

The summary is wrong in others ways, too. It says that Google is going to begin screening apps. The actual announcement says that this has been going on for several months. It also says that the process is "human-based", which the announcement doesn't say, just that the process "involves a team of experts who are responsible for identifying violations of our developer policies earlier in the app lifecycle." This leaves open the possibility that the team in question automates the actual screening, which is obviously much more normal for Google.

Really, your best bet is to ignore the summary and the linked article and just read the post from Google: http://android-developers.blog...

Will DMCA requests affect this?

[HalAtWork]

So will alleged conent owners begin sending DMCA requests now, and hold Google responsible? This is a two way street, it could end in a lot of legitimate apps being held hostage.

Needed because of bad permission system?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Google had taken a different road:
- help users understand permissions (e.g. Internet + SDcard = app could upload your private pictures to a remote server)
- users get scared of apps with too many permissions
- apps request few permissions

Instead they entered a vicious cycle:
- apps request more permissions
- simplify the displayed permission list
- apps request even more permissions

and now we're at a stage where apps request tons of permissions they don't need, and Google needs to manually check that each app doesn't abuse the permissions that they request but don't need. Ridiculous.

Irrelevant, I can already install banned content

[Karmashock]

I have a rooted android phone and I install programs etc on it all the time that aren't provided or approved by google.

In the long run, if android is to become a real operating system that must be a significant element of the android software ecosystem.

Walled gardens are fine for those that need them but they are of limited value to those capable of getting more from their machines.

This attempt by google to weed their garden is fine... it does not matter. So long as I can leave the garden entirely and get what I want... it matters little what is permitted inside the garden or not.

Re:Irrelevant, I can already install banned conten

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even need to root Android devices to install programs from outside Google Play. There's a check under Settings - Security to allow installation from sources other than Google's repositories.

Re:No walled garden

[Feral Nerd]

I find it troubling that Google wants to dictate what we can and cannot install on our own portable computers. Yes, I realize we can in install things from outside their app store, but, it puts those outside apps at a huge disadvantage. Google has also, many times, showed us it will delete apps for sketchy reasons. Their more open market is the main reason I use android over apples bullshit.

I don't get what you are complaining about. Having read TFA I did not sounds to me as if Google was planning to foist this down the throat of third party app stores. They just want to reduce the vast piles of what is quite frankly digital refuse that's cluttering up the Play Store. So even if Google turns the Play Store into 'Walled Garden Light (TM)' you can still side-load malware laden apps from questionable sources and if that doesn't float your boat any Tom, Dick and Harry can still set up an app store of their own with no walls and no quality checking (but hopefully at least a basic attempt at filtering out malware). Isn't that the great advantage of Android? Even with a fence around the Play Store it's still an open market, you can always go somewhere else.

Re:Irrelevant, I can already install banned conten

[Karmashock]

there are fads... and as I said, there is value in a walled garden but it is a crutch for the ignorant. And as the OS becomes more useful and involved such things will be of diminishing relevance especially for those like myself that are required by employment to do with it things that the makers did not initially wish.

You can circumvent the protections in iOS rather easily as well.

First rule of computer security... physical security.

If I hold it in my hand then I can control it given time. And given that the machines are the same and that others work with the same problem, all that need happen is that one of us break through and then share the solution.

Most security systems fall in this way in mere hours after release. The only ones that last longer only do so because no one really cares.

I have some experience with it. You can value my opinion as you will. We're all equals on the internet after all.

Re:Irrelevant, I can already install banned conten

[narcc]

But that's the wrong approach.

You're a iOS users, so you're well-aware of how much absolute crap has found it's way in to the App Store. That's not to criticize Apple, there's crap in every OS's store, Google, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Amazon, even Mozilla have "curated" marketplaces full of garbage -- and the cream rarely seems to float to the top.

We've tried the monolithic do-everything marketplace. All we got was the great app-count war and more fart-apps than I can reasonably estimate. What I'd like to see is a lot of smaller, preferably community-driven, stores. If I have a special interest in waffles, I could use the Waffle Aficionado's store to find a small selection of highly-recommended waffle apps. If I like candy-themed match-three games, I could use the Triple Candy Club's store to fuel my addiction.

An open platform, supporting a variety of marketplaces, would be a huge win for the consumer. This is possible on Android, if you change a setting, BB is a bit more locked down, as you need to have your apps signed and connected to your computer even after switching to developer mode, but it's still a possibility. It's obviously seamless on FirefoxOS (like it used to be on BB). Vendors can even distribute their apps directly from their website.

So why aren't we doing this? There are already alternative app stores for Android, why haven't we seen any specialty stores?

privacy?

[argStyopa]

It would be wonderful if they'd review apps for needless privacy intrusion. Why does a radio player app need to access my camera? Why does a weather app need to access my contacts? I can't count the number of apps that I uninstalled because the new update wants nonsensical accesses....

Anyway, I know that's not going to happen.