YHK - yet another hacker news clone

So long Google, and thanks for all the nudes

84 points speckx 1 hour ago 29 comments

nine_k 59 minutes ago | parent

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.

rolph 43 minutes ago | parent

>>the cost of a false rejection is very low.<<

maybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.

paulddraper 12 minutes ago | parent

They have 2x the number of apps as Apple.

Millions and millions.

The cost of false rejections is generally quite low.

apetresc 34 minutes ago | parent

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.

ryandvm 23 minutes ago | parent

Exact same philosophy they use for hiring.

jmbwell 13 minutes ago | parent

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.

user43928 12 minutes ago | parent

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.

spwa4 43 minutes ago | parent

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!

coldpie 41 minutes ago | parent

Big tech controls the AIs. The solution, of course, is antitrust enforcement.

rbtprograms 36 minutes ago | parent

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.

delichon 36 minutes ago | parent

> I was hoping to publish my new game on the store and charge for it, but their review process is so broken, I think I'll stick to fdroid and itch.io.

  The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. -- Princess Leia

user43928 14 minutes ago | parent

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.

bigbuppo 11 minutes ago | parent

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.

ToucanLoucan 5 minutes ago | parent

So what stops these other mythical app stores from being just as predatory and exploitative as the first-party ones?

thih9 34 minutes ago | parent

> it was rejected. They attached a nsfw screenshot of some unidentified app.

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.

junon 27 minutes ago | parent

They don't have access to the content anymore, as mentioned a bit later in the article.

fooqux 17 minutes ago | parent

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.

bennyp101 33 minutes ago | parent

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?

josefresco 23 minutes ago | parent

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.

gjsman-1000 31 minutes ago | parent

"Google is incompetent at review"... while the author is misspelling words constantly.

tudelo 28 minutes ago | parent

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.

dgellow 28 minutes ago | parent

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

jacquesm 19 minutes ago | parent

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'.

renegat0x0 31 minutes ago | parent

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

superkuh 28 minutes ago | parent

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.

dude250711 23 minutes ago | parent

> It seems pretty clear to me that counting on google is a bad idea.

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?

p2detar 21 minutes ago | parent

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.

morkalork 11 minutes ago | parent

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.

neilv 2 minutes ago | parent

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.