In my opinion yet another symptom of our chronic lack of public options when it comes to the internet. I would have no issue with the App Store applying whatever arbitrary and capricious actions it wants if there were another option for Apple users. It's like if Walmart sold self-driving cars that wouldn't drive you to any other store and everybody was just ok with that because you could always buy a self-driving car from Target, except you have to modify the Target car's settings to let you drive manually to get to any other store than Target.

Dude, you win today's unluckiest developer award. Most of those were good ideas to work on, right up until they were banned.

The flip side is, you've been involved with a lot of projects. And that's often a big advantage. Some devs stay with the same company for 5 to 10 years.

> Some devs stay with the same company for 5 to 10 years.

Depending on how you play it, that doesn't have to be the worst thing in the world. The megacorps have an incredible diversity of roles you can try out.

Absolutely! I only meant to encourage them / focus on the silver lining. It's true that there are some wonderful megacorps to work for.

The thing I fear most here, is companies getting banned because they employ a developer who worked at another company that gets banned. I've heard that either for Apple or Google (I forgot which), any relationship at all to a banned account can get you banned.

So an unlucky developer could rapidly become even more unlucky, and infect others with that 'bad luck'.

Indeed, for that reason I will never use any google products for my businesses. The risk of being destroyed overnight and without any possible appeal is just too high.

Curious do you just stick with web apps or just don't do any sort of business that requires it? I was thinking about a career shift into apps or web apps, leaning towards web actually because I do have a little bit of "full stack" experience on simple web applications/databases in the embedded sphere.

Yes I now focus on business ideas that cannot be blocked/banned/rejected ... Since 2011 I had 4 startups that where killed by either google, apple, Facebook and YouTube. In 2016 I decided to avoid them as much as possible and never rely on third parties, ... Yes this is discarding a lot of good business ideas ... But your business then cannot be killed by a third party at any time

Something is obviously wrong with you! ;)

More seriously you're a cautionary tale to what Stallman has warned us for so long.

Just wonder, what are you gonna do next? You know, just my simple curiousity;)

You just want to know what seemingly-safe category to stay away from :p

If you don't mind, it would be helpful to the discussion if you can explain why/what justification was given in each case.

you've really had it rough. I guess the lesson to all of us is to never rely on third-party platforms as much as possible

Even if you develop for bare metal, you’re at the mercy of hardware manufacturers, who sometimes change specs without warnings.

Windows and Linux are third-party platforms too. I mostly develop for these two platforms (been doing for couple decades now), and never had the unfortunate experience of GP.

None of those are quite as arbitrary as the App Store, though.

It's one thing if an app stops working on newer versions of the system due to fundamental change to that system. It's totally different if you get banned simply because the gatekeeper doesn't like your face.

OK, so that's a good argument for not tying your product to the "bare-metal" / Win32 / (specific distro?) APIs, and using something higher level and portable. Which, frankly, everybody should be doing anyway, if you're not in the business of writing kernel drivers.

Should also be a lesson to anyone trying to build a third party platform that if you build a walled garden, people will start to resent it

Conversely, we wouldn't be here bickering about such platforms if it wasn't immensely profitable. So, depending on your morals, it's a lesson on what to aim for. I wouldn't run a platform that stifles use, but I'm sure there are industrious people who will be able to exploit such a business _device_ to bring more good into the world.

Industrious people like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Larry Page, and Sundar Pichai?

Why were 2, 3, 4, and 6 banned?

2 - driving traffic to apps (advertising), it was considered "manipulating the rankings"

3 - the apps for were too similar, we were kicked out for being "templated". eg two different hair salons stores had too similar functionality - but were aesthetically totally different

4 - the social network allowed people to post text, someone said something horrible on the network and reported it (with screenshot) to apple

6 - google reported the content was too similar, eg generated. every doctor had different content but the structure was too similar

> 4 - the social network allowed people to post text, someone said something horrible on the network and reported it (with screenshot) to apple

This was clearly exploitation of their power. Let's find some horrible comments on Reddit now and report to Apple with screenshots, huh?

I have a distinct impression we aren’t getting the whole story.

This feels a bit like “if you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole” territory. Or someone who works in the space really doesn’t like them.

We're working on a decentralized app platform that mechanically is unable to kick devs off. Its early and doesn't have a monetization layer yet, but it's our goal to provide developers and users alike with a home that will outlast the whims of a single corporation.

https://siasky.net

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but if you’re unable to remove apps from the store how will you handle blatant issues of spam or, worse, viruses?

Current plan is to support opt-in moderation. Users can subscribe to banlists or curated lists (which could be machine generated) which filter content.

If a user doesn't like their moderation/filter, they can swap in a different one or disable it altogether.

Wow interesting idea. I am probably way behind you on the thought process, but my first thought is: I wonder if you are just shifting the meta game and adding an extra step for those wishing to push malware etc. They would need to become list curators and promote some percent of legitimately good apps while also pushing their bad apps.