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

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

[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.

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...

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.

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.