Didn't install the app, but one look at the screenshot of the Fleksy in Playstore shows "earn coins as you type" feature. It also offers in app purchases, but didn't bother to install to check which.
I know many apps use coin system, but in many cases it's just a children manipulation.
I mean, it would be one thing if Google stated that as a reason. I really hate this in-app purchase model, and now being applied to something as stupid as a keyboard, something that can literally monitor all your data and send back your most common words to advertisers ... ugh.
I pre-ordered a Purism 5 from the next batch in anger a few weeks ago. I want off this Android/eyeProduct bullshit. I want full control of my mobile device again.
* In app library, clear and upfront expectations of what permissions each app uses (as well as an explanation for each permission in the app creator's own words).
* In app library, ability to filter apps by permissions required
...... Specifically, I would want to be able to blacklist permission sets. Eg, search for Keyboard apps, but exclude any apps that require access to my contacts.
* Ability to pay for apps directly through those apps rather than having to go through the smartphone's software author.
...... Totally fine with the software having a default payment option in case I don't want to entrust a certain app with my payment info.
* An interface that lets me see logs of which URLs each app hits and what data it sent.
* An interface that lets me see which servers are sending data to my apps and what data is included.
"App Library" here representing the same sort of app as the Play Store, but looking to disassociate from the term "Store", as that model is not necessary.
Edit: Formatting sub-lists on HN isn't intuitive, apparently
I would like finer grained control on photo permissions. Particularly I don't necessarily want to grant it access to ALL of my photos.
And in general, I would prefer most apps actually don't have any access to photos, the photo picker could be completely OS level and the app never actually has access.
I'd go as far as requiring a statement of intent (soi) from developers requesting network access, describing the frequency and payload content and size. If the code doesn't match the soi then the app is crippled.
The same way my Gentoo and Void Linux boxes are .. except touch interfaces of search and install (like F-Droid) instead of emerge/xbps-install/apt-get/yum, etc. F-Droid also allows 3rd party repositories, just like other Linux package managers (and unlike Google/Apple/Microsoft).
I guess you could also have non-free repos and some kind of payment API (does Ubuntu/Snap do this?) but I really want to see if I can just write apps for the gaps I find when trying to use a PureOS or KDE Plasma device.
edit: see some comments on permissions. Honestly I've not looked into this space very much. I assume there might need to be some cgroup isolation that can be used to lock off hardware and filesystems, similar to containers (not sure if Snap/Flatpak use cgroups).
I suppose malicious code could get in and spy on you, but we've got the same concerns on Linux desktops and official package repos. I don't know exactly ... there's a lot to think about there.
Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.
Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme.
Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start.
Smartphones aren't Netflix though- I use my phone primarily to get things done and not just entertain myself. I don't want app developers to get paid more of my share if their app takes longer to perform a task, or my browser to get more money for pushing feed like "engagement features" encouraging a Reddit habit over performance changes that could cost them money but make my experience better.
That is a non starter for many apps that one uses rarely but provide high value. For example delivery tracking, sftp apps, vpn apps (only used while traveling). How would widgets work? Are they on all the time or never. Ideal app to make would be a launcher because you must use that all the time, but then do they deserve more than the app you use to do your job?
I don't think that any financial model can fit all usages. Except, of course, paid up front with paid upgrades (and a subscription if there is a cloud component). But that ship has sailed.
Can't we just mirror a regular Linux distro model ? Or possibly a Enterprise Linux model where you pay a subscription and obtain bug fixes, stability gurantees & support.
Then they wouldn't be able to move closer to a world where general-purpose computing is not the norm.
That's the real issue with computing nowadays, this desire to lock everything down. You see it with DRM, you see it with walled gardens, you see it with almost everything nowadays.
I fear that a world like the one described in "The Right to Read" [0] is closer than ever.
0: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html (yes, I know it's Stallman, but even he was right on a few things, as disgusting as he was in a lot of other things. Stopped clock right twice a day, etc)
But the problem with general purpose computing is that it's probably one of the most powerful, equalizing things humanity has ever created. This is probably the first time in history the power to create, acquire knowledge, and become self sustainable has been so cheaply and readily available to the average person. It gives a lot of power to them where historically this hasn't been the case. This is less than ideal for those in power and I think it's just taken a while for them to really catch on to what the average person with a general purpose computer can actually accomplish. It makes me worry that this has just been a brief historical anomaly. But, it could still go either way at this point.
It's worse than unclear - the Google Play team specifically cited objectionable emoji, and included a screenshot of the emoji which is also found in lower-rated Gboard. It seems like Google actually made this decision clearer than most, and it was explicitly about the hypocritical part.
I've used Fleksy for over a year and wasn't aware of that feature. The in-app purchases are themes which I don't need. If you don't open the settings, you would never know these upsells existed. It's a great keyboard and you shouldn't be put off by the IAPs—they're completely optional.
This is classic whataboutism. We shouldn't be excusing monopolist behavior because the victim "deserves" to be punished for some wholly unrelated offense.
I use Gboard, and today it had a strange prompt on the bar above the keyboard: "Do you like typing German?".. I was curious and I pressed it, it lead to a prompt where there was text I could copy paste and I guess post on my social media, about how much I enjoy using Gboard...
So you fucking want me to advertise for you, Google? And for what reason? Does someone want their promotion/bonus and for that they have to reach x downloads?
In fact I'm going to go to the Play Store and give them a shitty review...
Since I don't really use Windows that often I cannot really judge how bad this is. Does it also link you to Facebook or Twitter to recommend it if you give it a 5 star rating? Internal surveys are something different from trying to trick people into recommending a product on Twitter.
>Any software that wastes my time begging me to market for them gets uninstalled, period.
I hear you. I really hate prompts to post to social media myself, but companies do it because it is hard to get people interested in your product.
I'm passionate about this issue because I faced this problem myself many times when trying to generate reviews for my Amazon products. It is hard, if not impossible, to compete without breaking any rules.
The bottom line is, customer acquisition costs are high. In most free apps, it seems you are losing money until / unless you can reach critical adoption rates that make decrease those acquisition costs below your customer LTV. A single social media post could save the publisher $5-10 in customer acquisition costs.
---
So what can be done to fix this?
One idea is making reviews mandatory. There could be an optional prompt that can only be dismissed after a user has left a review. It could be a requirement to leave a review on a previous app before downloading another.
Any strategy to shape how or when users leave reviews will have the potential to be gamed, and I by no means have the answer.
But I think the solution to the review begging / social proof demands needs to be solved at the app store level.
As it stands, established companies have a massive, massive, advantage over indie publishers.
---
I could talk about this all day, so I'll leave it here, but I'm interested to here others thoughts on this:
How do you balance the need for businesses to generate reviews with customer convenience?
What would you change to fix this problem?
Is there an opportunity for a third party fix this?
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>I don't know why anyone puts up with that.
Because honestly, it's just a single click to say "no" and users are already invested in that particular app.
Responsible apps should only ask once, but there are countless apps that ask every time.
>At first glance a spokesman agreed with us that the situation looks odd.
Seems like someone messed up somewhere and is probably being resolved.
In all honesty though, no app with IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) should get an E rating. Fleksy should get a higher age rating for this reason, not because of an emoji.
> IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) should get an E rating
I disagree. I think it's Google's job to provide parents with the tools to lock down IAPs for children. Once the phone is locked down, IAPs shouldn't matter. And the ratings would be useless to a parent if every app with IAPs was rated > E. They wouldn't know if the content is what is giving it the higher rating or just the IAPs.
I used to be a big fan of Fleksy app before the creators went to pinterest and sold their app to some company.
They new devs probably didn’t know how to fix their previous bugs or work on the code itself. So they started adding new “features” , which was a toolbar for a keyboard app. Kept contacting them on fixing their error, but they just said we know it’s there. Until i switched back to Gboard.
I would say, it’s probably because they added something to that toolbar.
It’s always like that for most apps, especially keyboard apps. A company abandon their app, then another company buy it from them and not know how to deal with the app. The app ends up with bloatware that no one asked for and then the app gets abandoned
As someone with insider information into this specific situation I would simply remind you that were people willing to pay 50 cents for this app, Fleksy wouldn't have needed to sell to Pinterest and therefore would not have.
I'm bothered by how pilloried I am consistently when mentioning that most of these are 'free' apps and someone, somewhere, somehow needs to pay for it. Very few 'open source' projects make good 'Products' (they help, but alone OSS is not consumer oriented). It takes work to do these things. All kinds of work.
$1/download or 25 cents/month would wipe out 1/2 of consumer issues like this pretty quickly, but almost nobody wants to pay.
This is a tangent, but is there a good keyboard app for Android that doesn't have emoji? I'm tired of hitting the emoji button accidentally and having emoji show up in autocomplete.
You can do this with the Google Keyboard. Long-press the comma on the left side to open the settings menu, and then it's Preference > "Show emoji key switch". Set that to off and it should hide it under the same comma key long-press.
Edit: I should say this is Android 10 on Pixel 3a, not sure about other versions/manufacturers.
(I'm using it because in my particular case predictions and autocorrect of other keyboards always backfired, plus swiping on those big buttons works better than trying to hit the right tiny qwerty button)
what about anysoft keyboard? it might be a better idea to improve that since it's open source and it needs a bit of work.
I would switch over to it today if the swipe typing was better but its currently "in beta" and that's a bit of an understatement tbh. in my experience the predictions are wrong 80% of the time
So Google is selectively oppressing certain app developers by using the "Rules for thee, not for me" ideology.
Well, they've been doing it for years and that's why there's people in the US Government talking about anti-trust investigations... Hopefully something comes of it.
I find it very unlikely that Google is intentionally picking on this small app, but by being more lenient in reviewing its own apps, Google is abusing its position.
On a related note, does anyone have recommendations for a Gboard alternative? I've disabled all the "pipe everything I type directly to HQ for analysis" things in Gboard but I'd prefer a non-Google alternative.
AnySoftKeyboard is completely open-source and is distributed through both the Play Store and F-Droid. It comes with many different layouts and there are a few language packs available. They recently added experimental support for swipe typing if that's a concern.
I've been using and loving MessageEase [1] for several years now. There's a learning curve, but as much typing as I end up doing on my phone, the investment was well worth it. It's also hugely customizeable and makes coding much easier on a phone--not that I make a habit of that.
I've been using Simple Keyboard, which seems to be what it says on the tin. Not a lot of features, doesn't make my phone sad. (In today's android, 2GB is not enough memory, saving some ram on the keyboard makes my launcher less likely to swap out when it's in the background; I wish I was overreacting)
That would still be institutionally malicious, if not the result of malice by any single person involved.
Having a separate review system that provides different and more favourable treatment for (equivalent) internal apps is in and of itself an abuse of the store.
I mean, this could be as simple as internal app teams not going through the same form, or not getting re-reviewed automatically because it's assumed they'll speak up if they add anything objectionable. And Fleksy's point about being targeted for their increasing use count wouldn't require intentional targeting either - that could just be an automatic "trigger an extra review when user count grows enough".
Which doesn't make it acceptable, obviously. It just means that malice isn't required for unfairness - all it takes is Google fixing the dumb mistakes which hurt them faster than the ones that hurt others.
Yeah, that was a weak example on my part. If they're actually skipping the normal review process, that's either malice or unreasonable negligence. And the Google Play followup of "your app is mature and should be PEGI 16" implies a human paid actual attention to this case, which makes it seem much less innocent.
I guess I can imagine some special cases that wouldn't be Google treating itself differently, like triggering reviews when a publisher's largest app crosses a size threshold and assuming established publishers can trusted more generously. But honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Google just carved out an internal exception.
And the PEGI 16 request goes beyond "not the same treatment as Gboard" to "objectively incorrect review outcome", so regardless something is fishy...
Oh yeah, because if this was Apple no one would pile on.
At a certain point (and both Google and Apple are big enough) it becomes their fault. You should have good enough policies. It’s been 10 years or so since the app stores launched. This isn’t new stuff anymore. It’s not untrodden territory.
It’s laziness at best, and that shouldn’t keep getting excused.
That's my point. Every Unicode character may not be universally appropriate, but it's just as silly to age-rate a dictionary as it is a keyboard that simply contains a list of Unicode characters.
The hypocrisy of Google notwithstanding, I'm not sure why something being included in Unicode should have any bearing on its societal acceptance or consequently its age rating.
The Swastika exists as a Unicode character, yet is outlawed in Germany, along with other Nazi-associated symbols (Strafgesetzbuch section 86a).
While certain uses of the symbols are not illegal, they do have a negative effect on age ratings / classification board approvals (relevant to this discussion).
A famous example, is that Wolfenstein 3D was outright refused a rating in Germany. Arguably it may have been legal as artistic use, rather than propaganda promoting an unconstitutional organization, but that was not sufficient to get a rating.
There are many swastika characters in Unicode, with different contexts, none of them being Nazi specifically. That's not to say that usage of any of them would inherently preclude them from being subject to section 86a.
The crazy thing with Android and iOS software is that not only can Google and Apple reject your software now. They can kill it any time in the future. Forever.
It seems nobody talks about that.
As a software developer I would find it way too uncomfortable to build on a platform like that.
Shades of "We do not support competitors' products."
Malign neglect -- build a regulatory system that is valid in principle, but it implemented in a complex enough way that it tends to fail often, which has a tendency to scare off consumers, and subject everyone except yourself to it.
People will tend to choose your product to avoid the hassle.
You see it everywhere, from non-Pixel Android phones trying to keep with new OS versions, to Windows and MacOS API churn and "secret APIs".
Curious: How effective would it be to separate only the app store from Google/Apple, when it comes to this rating problem? Perhaps not even the infrastructure --- I'd imagine even just having an independent group of reviewers / rule enforcers would make the situation much less absurd?
So you maybe want to nationalize app stores? Getting european app store, managed by EU. Then US store managed by US government...
It is also as bad, but on the other hand I think internet infrastructure like app stores and all the other stuff should also be treated like roads in the end.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I think is most likely inconsistent reviewing. I've seen this with Apple, as well as with Google. The apps stores need to have very clear guidelines and well-defined appeal process, possibly with 3rd party arbitration.
> Fleksy’s team have done so over the years — and come up with the PEGI 3 rating without issue. But this month they found they were being issued the questionnaire multiple times and then that their latest app update was blocked without explanation — meaning they had to reach out to Play Developer Support to ask what was going wrong.
> After some email back and forth with support staff they were told that the app contained age inappropriate emoji content. Here’s what Google wrote:
> > During review, we found that the content rating is not accurate for your app… Content ratings are used to inform consumers, especially parents, of potentially objectionable content that exists within an app.
> > For example, we found that your app contains content (e.g. emoji) that is not appropriate for all ages. Please refer to the attached screenshot.
Google is apparently upset that the app contains a middle finger emoji. Which GBoard also contains. GBoard is rated 3+, not 12+/16+.
This is pure anti-competitive and monopolistic action. This is another instance that needs to be noted down for the current investigation into Google, Facebook and others. Period.
I understand it’s a difficult choice to leave the play store, but you’re playing by their rules, their game and in their own field. They can do whatever they want because they’re google.
I know many apps use coin system, but in many cases it's just a children manipulation.