Snicket Blog | Snikket Android app will be temporarily unavailable on Google Play Store

Posted by Matthew Wilde on April 13, 2024

We initially shared this news on our social media pages, thinking this was a temporary issue. However, after a few days of no response from Google, we would like to further explain the situation.

summary

We integrated some changes from our upstream project, Conversations, and submitted the new version to Google for review. Before taking action, we removed the existing public version from the store. We submitted a new version (on April 10th) that we think should satisfy Google, but Google hasn't published it yet or provided any feedback.

This means that Android users cannot currently install apps using Google Play. We recommend installing via F-Droid instead.

Workaround for Android users

If you receive an invitation to Snikket, the Play Store link in the invitation will not work. The best course of action is to install the app using the open source marketplace, F-Droid, instead.

Download and install F-Droid following the instructions at f-droid.org. Install Snikket using F-Droid. Once the Snikket app is installed, reopen the Snikket invite link. Tap the “Open app” button. Follow the instructions in the Snikket app to set up a new Snikket account.Detailed story

I'm Matthew, founder and lead developer at Snikket. This is the story of how we got to this point with Google.

When did it all start…

A few months ago, Snikket, like many other XMPP apps, discovered that our update had been rejected by Google's review team. Because we are uploading users' address book entries to our servers, we argued that this needed to be “conspicuously disclosed” internally. App. The problem is…I haven't uploaded the user's address book anywhere.

The app will request permission to read your address book. Granting this permission is optional and the reason will be explained before the permission is requested. If you grant permission, the app will have local-only (no upload!) functionality, allowing you to “link” your XMPP contacts to contacts in your phone's address book, allowing you to integrate contact photos, etc. Become. Address book contact information is never uploaded.

Many messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Signal, request access to your address book so that you can upload it to their servers and identify other users using their services. Google has decided that's what we're doing and won't accept any evidence that we're not doing it.

We don't have telemetry in our app, but we thought most people probably wouldn't use this feature, so rather than continue fighting Google, we decided to remove it from the Play Store version of our app. .

Interestingly, Google also rejected an update to remove the “READ_CONTACTS” permission. More than once. On one of the beta tracks he still had an old version with READ_CONTACTS permissions, so it took an appeal before he revealed he was rejecting the new version. strange.

I corrected it and resubmitted it. They also rejected it. This time, a test login to the app was required. Interestingly, we already provided it a long time ago. I thought my old test account was no longer working, so I created a new account and resubmitted the app. They refused again for the same reason – valid test account credentials were not provided.

“You have not provided an active demo/guest account or a valid username and password required to access the app.” – Google Reviewer

Weirdly, when I logged into that account to test, I saw that they were logged in and sending some messages. So were they lying?

We filed a dispute with all the evidence that the account was functional and the reviewer was logged in and using it successfully. After a while, they finally responded that they wanted his second test account. Why couldn't you say that from the beginning?

After adding the credentials for the second account and using the Snikket circles feature to make it easier to find each other, we resubmitted.

Rejected again.

This rejection reason was the best yet. The app claimed it couldn't send or receive messages. Pretty interesting for a messaging app that thousands of people use to send and receive messages every day.

Wait, a messaging app that doesn't allow you to send messages?

When I logged back into the test account I provided to Google, I found that messages were successfully exchanged between the two test accounts. We filed another appeal with evidence.

They eventually responded and clarified that their complaint was specifically about the app's smart car integration when used with Android Auto. I don't have such a car and I couldn't find the poster who did, but I found that Google offers an emulator that can run on his PC, so I used it on my laptop I set it to , and proceeded with the test.

At this point, you probably won't be surprised to learn that the messaging feature was working fine. We responded by creating a screencast of the messaging feature working with Android Auto. They told us that they were “unable to assist in the implementation” of their policies. Then, at the end of the answer, I suggested that if you think your app is compliant, you should resubmit it for review.

So I resubmitted the app, but it had already been rejected 7 times. I resubmitted it without making any changes. We resubmitted the version they rejected. Later that day they sent me an email saying they were live.

How would you rate the developer experience of publishing apps on Google Play? One star out of five, no surprise. If I could give zero, I would.

Removal

But this was all a few months ago. Everything was fine. Until Daniel integrates some of the cool stuff he's been working on lately into his Conversations, the app that Snikket Android is based on. We put the new version out for beta testing and everything went well. The app passed review, and after a few weeks, with no major issues reported, we pressed the button to publish the new version from beta to the store.

On April 8th, I received an email from Google with the following subject line:

“Action required: Your app does not comply with Google Play Policies (Snikket).”

I was not feeling well that day and could hardly do any work. As those of you who have read this far will understand, I decided to take on this fight when I felt better. Confusingly, a few days later I received another email with the same subject. At this point I was horrified that the first email wasn't about the new update. They reviewed the currently available version and decided to remove it from the store completely.

Anyone trying to add new Android users to a Snikket instance (hosted or self-hosted) will have a hard time because Snikket is not available. This is not good.

Their complaint was that the privacy policy was not prominent enough within the app. They had previously posted the same thing on Conversations. Daniel has already placed a link to the privacy policy in the main menu of its app, which was already included in the update and was awaiting their review. They didn't deny the update until a few days later, but for a different reason.

Unbeknownst to me, Daniel was trying to re-add the “READ_CONTACTS” permission to the conversation, thinking that the new privacy policy link and other disclaimers were enough. They had already refused it, but he revoked the permit again. But he did this after I had already started testing the new beta version of his Snikket. The order of events is now:

Daniel ly re-adds the READ_CONTACTS permission to the conversation Merges the conversation changes into Snikket and begins beta testing The permission denies the conversation update and Daniel reverts the READ_CONTACTS change to the conversation Without knowing the rejection, I promote the Snikket beta to the store. Google refuses to update Snikket

What's interesting is that Google only refused to change the permissions. Contact integration itself was still disabled on his Snikket. This is strong evidence that Google assumes that if you have permission (and perhaps even network permission), you must be uploading your contacts somewhere.

As soon as we noticed the problem, we merged the new changes from the conversation and rushed a new upload to Google Play. However, as of this writing several days later, Snikket remains unavailable in the store and we have yet to receive any feedback from Google.

this is an unsustainable situation

During this period, multiple people signed up for hosted Snikket instances and then canceled them shortly after. This is almost certainly because a key step in the onboarding process (installing the app) is currently broken. This provides a bad experience for users and customers and negatively impacts the project's reputation and revenue.

We're grateful that alternatives like F-Droid exist, allowing people to access open source apps through a transparent process and without the tyranny of Google or faceless, unaccountable review teams. We need to make sure these projects are supported and continue to improve their functionality, usability, and user awareness.

Finally, we also support EU efforts, such as the Digital Markets Act, to break the grip that Google's (apparently) arbitrary review process has over the success and failure of projects and people's livelihoods. We welcome your efforts. App developer.

Google, are you there?

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://snikket.org/blog/snikket-google-play-removal/ The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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