Open-source apps removed from Google Play Store due to donation links - <AUTHOR> https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2019-October/004596.html <comment><USER2> We merged a similar thread, "AndOTP Removed from the Google Play Store Due to Donation Link", into this one. Perhaps we'll update the title to cover both.

[https://github.com/andOTP/andOTP/issues/396](https://github.com/andOTP/andOTP/issues/396)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269542)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, any idea how Google automatically catches a donation link? I feel like there's so many ways to do it that they must only be catching a handful.

<comment><USER4> My app also got taken down some months ago. I had a menu entry called Donation that linked to a web page containing a PayPal donation button. I'm guessing they are just looking for the string Donation in your app.

<comment><USER5> What app was it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google Play In-app Billing does not support donations [1], so open source developers should be allowed to link to their own donation pages. Google Play policies do not spell out that linking to donation platforms such as Patreon is forbidden.

Disallowing developers from using in-app billing for donations, while also barring them from linking to external donation platforms, puts open source projects in a difficult position, and appears to be overly hostile towards funding open source development.

Google must clarify their position on whether they allow donation links in apps published on Google Play. The app takedowns [2] of the last few days show that this is a significant development, and it is of great importance for all open source developers.

It's best to publicly document the messages you receive during app takedowns, since app store policies are often vague, it's easy for reviewers to make mistakes, and having a clear reference for these decisions also helps the public assess the validity of the takedown.

[1] [https://play.google.com/about/monetization- ads/](https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/)

> Here are some examples of products not currently supported by Google Play > In-app Billing:

> One time-payments, including peer-to-peer payments, online auctions, and > donations.

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389)

<comment><USER7> > Disallowing developers from using in-app billing for donations, while also > barring them from linking to external donation platforms, puts open source > projects in a difficult position, and appears to be overly hostile towards > funding open source development.

Google Play has been very clear about this[1]:

> Fund solicitations

> Examples: Donation solicitations from parties without a valid 501(c)(3) tax > exempt status clearly displayed to the public; solicitations from parties > without valid proof of exempt tax status or proof of registration with the > relevant country's regulatory bodies and authorities; and political > organizations that have registered with the Federal Election Commission > (FEC)

For instance, Wikipedia displays an external "Support Wikipedia" link in the main menu of its Android app[2] without violating Google Play's terms and conditions.

[1] [https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/75724?hl=en](https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/75724?hl=en)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/MEut6yC.png](https://i.imgur.com/MEut6yC.png)

<comment><USER8> Sure, but _why_? If the rules clearly said "no chess games", one could say "that ends the discussion of why chess games are denied", or you could further ask "but why are no chess games allowed?". Is it because Google plans on having their own Google-Chess someday and thus is preemptively preventing competition? Is there a technical or regulatory reason chess games aren't allowed?

That's the question (at least for me) here: why are (non-tax-exempt) donations not allowed, beyond the tautological response of "because the rules say so"? I'm not familiar with the regulations around this area, so for all I know there's a great non-Google reason for this and Google just wants to avoid the hassle of conforming to some law. Or maybe donations is a feature they want to _eventually_ support in Google Play and they don't want to have to force a bunch of apps in the future to switch once they add it (which would be a more disappointing reason). Perhaps they're afraid that it would create a loophole where people could get around the 30% cut since psychologically it feels shitty for someone to middle-man a donation, but then if they made donations Google-tax free, everyone would just choose "donation" and they'd have to police this.

<comment><USER9> Their house, their rules.

<comment><USER10> Smartphone app stores are a duopoly, so I don't think Google should have total freedom to decide what they allow and what they don't.

<comment><USER11> There are at least three, actually, since Amazon also runs their own store which can be installed on any Android device. Samsung has another one specifically for Samsung devices, and there's also F-Droid though that might not count as a "store" since it doesn't handle payments. Anyone else can start their own the same way. Only the Apple devices are restricted to apps from their vendor-specific app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> WireGuard was reinstated after Jason has submitted a new version which _does not_ contain a donation link. The issue has not been solved, and Google did not yet contact maintainers to clarify whether they would be allowed to have a donation link in WireGuard.

Several other open source apps are still missing from Google Play, including andOTP.

While WireGuard was bought back online, version 0.0.20191013 was briefly made available (with a donation link) before it got updated to version 0.0.20191016. Again, the current version of WireGuard does not contain a donation link.

This is the original version of the post, which has become inaccurate minutes after it was posted:

> WireGuard has been reinstated [1], and the donation link is in the app menu > (version 0.0.20191013).

> Google has reversed its decision to remove an app that contains a link to a > donation page, likely because of public scrutiny.

> I'm hopeful that people will continue to seek answers for why Google has > begun to remove these open source apps, there are several of them mentioned > in this thread alone. Please don't allow this to go unnoticed, the future of > a bunch of less popular open source projects may depend on how this issue is > perceived by the public, and addressed by Google.

> [1] > [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wireguard....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wireguard.android)

<comment><USER12> > Google has reversed its decision to remove an app that contains a link to a > donation page

Are we sure that this is a decision reversal, as opposed to just reinstating one (or a few) apps?

<comment><USER6> This is why it is important to continue questioning their actions, a bunch of other open source apps remain taken down, or were forced to remove their donation links. The issue of donation links in apps must be clearly addressed by Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The very same thing happened to manyverse (android ssb client) the other day. Got de-listed, resubmitted without donation page, now it's back up.

How google tries to claim any sort of support for open source is beyond me. What open source app doesn't need a donation link? Those approved and funded by google don't, okay. But other than that?

<comment><USER14> The strangest fact is, those donation pages only have some links, there is no in-app payment. I don't understand what Google is thinking about when they banned donations...

Wait. I suddenly understand something I've seen previously...

There is a workaround! You simply upload two versions of the app, the free edition and the supporter edition. The support's edition is a paid app. You can ask the users who want to support you to install the paid app in your free app. The program itself is still 100% free and open source, there is no functionality restrictions in the free app, the donation notice can be turned off - just as a way to encourage donations. And it's nothing against the rules of the store.

<comment><USER15> That way google gets a cut of the donation.

<comment><USER14> Oops, it's not a good idea! I now see the motivation behind it!

<comment><USER16> This is the reason Apple started doing this way back. Sad to see Google follow suit. I guess the bottom line is the bottom line...

<comment><USER17> I thought this was a Apple only thing and Google doesn't do this. For example, you cannot buy Audible books frim iOS apuo but can from the Android app.

<comment><USER18> You can, but I don't think you're supposed to direct your users to put their credit card info in, that all needs to be handled somewhere outside the app (with a message like please sign in on our website). Which seems very blatantly anticompetitive to me.

Now that I think of it, Uber has you put your credit card in. I'm not sure why that's allowed

<comment><USER19> It's allowed because Play Store in-app billing is only required for digital goods & services fulfilled by the app, not physical goods & services fulfilled outside your device. Uber isn't selling you app functionality, they're selling you the physical service of transportation, so they're exempt.

Quote from policy [1]:

Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases:

\- Payment is solely for physical products

\- Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players).

[1] [https://play.google.com/about/monetization- ads/payments/](https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/)

<comment><USER18> Oh, what if the donation link added you to a list of contributors to the website. Seems like that would be "digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself" which might be a workaround. Google might ban it anyway of course

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's unfortunate that the developer resubmitted the app without the donation link, open source projects having a donation link in their apps does not violate Google Play policies.

> Here are some examples of products not currently supported by Google Play > In-app Billing:

> One time-payments, including peer-to-peer payments, online auctions, and > donations.

[https://play.google.com/about/monetization- ads/](https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/)

<comment><USER20> It indeed is unfortunate. But what other recourse did we have? The first objective, before we even consider donations or anything, is to make our software available and functional to our users. So we had to resubmit. And it's not like the resubmission process is instantaneous; as of writing, the app _still_ isn't back in the store.

But anyway, now what? Let's say things return to normal, but we still want to put the silly link in the app. Our appeal was rejected. We could send letters, I suppose. Perhaps this article on HN will get the attention of the right people? We could appeal the appeal, maybe. And then appeal the appeal for the appeal. At what point does this become a waste of energy that could be spent coding and improving the app in other ways? It's hard to know where to draw the line and which battles are worth fighting. I'm happy to hear folks' opinions on the matter.

I certainly agree, though, that it is unfortunate.

<comment><USER6> Donations are not supported by in-app purchases, and I'm sure this doesn't mean open source apps are not allowed to sustain themselves by showing a donation link. Or if that is Google's _unwritten_ policy, people must make their voices heard, this abusive behavior cannot be accepted.

I would resubmit the app with the donation link and continue to _document and share_ what happened. Please do not allow them to set a precedent with a popular project like WireGuard.

It's important to share every detail of the issue, the messages you received, your replies, and the policy links you were given about the alleged policy violations.

<comment><USER21> I think what you are proposing is to make an ideological fight out of this issue, that is exactly what the author describes as "a huge time-drain that does not make the app better" and exactly the opposite of what he meant with "choose your battles".

Let me say that I think you're morally right, but it is probably not a reasonable choice of actions for the author and the users of the app.

<comment><USER6> There is no need for an ideological fight, because there is no written Google Play policy against donation links in apps. This is most likely a mistake made by the reviewer or an automated system, and I believe they should follow up on it to sort things out.

<comment><USER22> > I believe they should follow up on it to sort things out. reply

I'm sure you believe that.

Do you work at Google in a position to supervise app reviews? Because if you do, then you can help straighten this out.

If you don't, then it is hopeless. Technically, Google has the right to drop any app for any reason whether it is fair or not (so suing them or something isn't an option). OP already followed the ONLY channel that Google provides (an "appeal" handled, I presume, by a bot that generally issues quick, automated rejections. Sure, I __wish __Google had a better policy, with some sort of genuine appeal policy which included genuine human review, followed a consistent policy, and most likely had a public record of decisions... but they don 't.

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't assume up front that any action is hopeless. There are many Googlers on this forum and issues like that get forwarded and discussed internally. Google has Open Source Programs Office which used to have a lot of clout inside the company, at least at the time when I worked there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I use WireGuard daily since 2017, and it's one of my most favorite computer programs in the entire world - robust, reliable, state-of-art cryptography, and seamless integration into the system.

I've never donated to WireGuard before, and I didn't think about donation (I installed WireGuard from my package manager and didn't realize a donation link exists), until now.

Just donated 25 USD.

Thanks Jason. No thanks, Google.

<comment><USER24> Me too. Just donated. Awesome software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In an ironic twist, our app that Google supported via Summer of Code was removed.

Whoever came up with this policy and started enforcing it at Google is completely tone-deaf, needs to be fired and publicly called out so we can set an example as a community that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated.

We have contacted engineering leadership at Google and they are in the process of figuring out who it is internally.

<comment><USER26> As crazy as this policy is, firing and publicly shaming an employee is not the right response to a poor decision by an employee.

<comment><USER27> I feel it is. It's an effective platform for (positive) change, in this case.

<comment><USER28> I think this is a bad decision, but I don't want to live in a world in which people risk their privacy by making poor decisions.

We just need processes to learn and avoid doing mistakes twice, and shaming is a poor way to do it.

If I risked being ashamed when making decisions, I would probably avoid decisions altogether. This would be awful. The discussed decision is not even out of law.

What we can do though, is to tell people we know and love about F-Droid and suggest them to only fall back to the Play Store if they don't find what they want, and that they should be aware that by doing so, they enter the jungle and that this jungle follows Google's arbitrary rules, some of which are not in their own interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ugh, app stores!

No one needs them for discovering new software. You go to the app store to get a specific piece of software you already know about and whose reputation you've already verified.

No one needs them for code signing. If you want the real firefox.apk you can download it from [https://firefox.com/](https://firefox.com/) and notice a lack of SSL alarms going off. What's the code signing for — to let me know that HTTPS works?!

All I really want is an OS facility that only executes code that has been installed explicitly by me, and always in a sandbox. That'll stop that dodgy email from executing r00t.sh via an exploit in my mail client.

App stores and code signing popups are proxies for that kind of OS facility, but I'd rather it was just part of the OS explicitly.

App stores leave me with all sorts of unwanted properties, namely Google / Apple throwing their unwanted opinion around. Search for Instagram in the iOS App Store: the top UI element is "InstaMap", thanks Apple!

<comment><USER30> > No one needs them for discovering new software.

There's also people that don't know that they need "Firefox", they just want a browser. Or a tool to print envelopes or crop an image. So they search in the app store and they know it'll probably be okay.

If you search for this online you'd get a bunch of SEO spam sites, shady tools among other things. At least due to the developer fee and reviews there's at least some barrier of entry (Also if it's not perfect).

> App stores leave me with all sorts of unwanted properties, namely Google / > Apple throwing their unwanted opinion around. Search for Instagram in the > iOS App Store: the top UI element is "InstaMap", thanks Apple!

Apple's search is notoriously bad and the perfect case to apply Hanlon's razor.

<comment><USER31> In what sense will it be ok? Isn't a lot of the stuff in appstores spyware nowadays?

<comment><USER30> While there is generally always some small percentage of apps that don't do what they promise and slip through the review I think I can be reasonably sure that if I download something from the macOS / iOS app store it'll do what they say.

I trust it enough to believe it won't start crypto mining in the background or connect to random servers and sending the content of my computer somewhere. For the average user it's probably the better option than downloading the top Google result and just executing it.

<comment><USER31> Uh, what are you talking about? Phoning home with your data (mainly phonebook and location data) is exactly what a lot of apps are doing.

Sure, they wont do crypto mining, but that's because it would drain your battery quickly, and people would notice and uninstall.

<comment><USER30> As I said, it can happen but I'd assume it's done a lot less than on the "open" internet where there's no repercussions. At least in the App Store the developer would get thrown out, people would post it in the reviews or report to the App Store moderators.

Isn't the whole point of sandboxing and the permission systems exactly preventing phonebook and location data misuse? Especially location tracking prevention was a pretty big part of the iOS 13 announcements.

<comment><USER31> The permission system does work and is a great achievement. Along with battery monitor and the ability to easily and cleanly uninstall any app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Apparently andOTP was removed for the same reason a couple of days ago: [https://github.com/andOTP/andOTP/issues/396](https://github.com/andOTP/andOTP/issues/396).

As mentioned in the announcement, you can switch over to F-Droid (for the time being) to get the latest version: [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.wireguard.android](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.wireguard.android).

<comment><USER33> >(for the time being)

Why do you have that caveat ? You can use f-droid forever.

<comment><USER34> I'm on an unrooted phone and F-Droid doesn't do auto-updates or even "update all". I have to remember to open F-Droid once in a while to click "Update" and then "Install" for each app, one-by-one.

I understand that it's probably Google's fault for not providing APIs/permissions but it's still terrible UX. I only use F-Droid when an app isn't available on the Play Store.

<comment><USER35> fdroid periodically automatically checks and notifies of updates to apps. You can also "Update all", using the button of the same name, but you will have to press install for each, due to the way Android works, which is a bit of a pity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ah yes, the multi-billion dollar megacorp trying to prevent goodwill donations. Dear regulators: BREAK UP GOOGLE.

<comment><USER37> To play devil's advocate, I'm sure Google's intent is to prevent garbage apps from spamming or tricking users into paying money and the resulting PR backlash from having an app store full of shady apps.

As evidence of this, Google _does_ allow donations if the publisher is a 501(c)(3) (see [https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/75724?hl=en](https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/75724?hl=en)).

<comment><USER38> Nothing like opaque, zero due process take downs which change day-to-day unexpectedly until you wake and find your app is no longer in the Play Store.

There has to be a better way to handle these sorts of things.

Were they even notified beforehand?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> $50 sent, thanks Jason, no thanks Google.

A small amount relative to the value that you're giving to the world, but hopefully a few pints won't go amiss.

Fuck gatekeepers.

<comment><USER40> I too made a "fuck Google" donation to the WireGuard project today, after seeing an update and then the app disappearing entirely.

I'd love to use the F-Droid version but it's not up-to-date, and isn't published by Jason, so it's not signed by him either.

Publishing it on the website with a built in update-check might be one solution I'd be happy with, it'd only need a text file hosted on the website and a check, perhaps each time WG is activated to see if there is an update. Modern Android versions can be toggled to allow installing software from external sources, so the app could "install itself".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am not sure why it needs to be called a donation. Just let the in-app purchase unlock some cosmetics in the app like games do. You weren't going to deduct the donation from your taxes anyway.

I am curious how this ends up working out. Google takes a cut of the donations now... but the process of buying is probably easier. So maybe it will increase donation revenue, and make it easier to support free software.

(Taking a step back; it _is_ pretty weird to have apps opening links to web pages that take your credit card number. The app store operators are right to view that with suspicion because I'm sure that for every legitimate open source project, there are a million phishing scams.)

<comment><USER6> Open source developers shouldn't be forced to lock away additional functionality in their apps, or resort to special tricks just to be able to receive donations for their projects.

Google could make a positive impact by introducing new features that help users seamlessly fund their favourite open source apps, right from their Google accounts. GitHub has recently introduced a similar initiative called GitHub Sponsors [1].

> Taking a step back; it is pretty weird to have apps opening links to web > pages that take your credit card number.

There is nothing weird about accepting payments outside of Google Play, and it is allowed if the payment does not result in buying a product that is used within the app. Buying a movie ticket, or operating an online store with a third-party payment processor are perfectly fine use cases which are allowed on Google Play.

[1] [https://github.com/sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors)

<comment> _-david-_ >Open source developers shouldn't be forced to lock away additional functionality in their app

The additional feature can just be text that says thanks for the money, feel free to give us more money in the future.

<comment><USER42> Better yet, just charge a dollar for the app. Link from the primary website to the app store, so people can buy the right one.

<comment><USER43> No thanks. If I'm donating to a good cause, I don't want the App Mafia taking a 30% cut. That just reinforces this bad behavior.

<comment><USER44> so the App Mafia is supposed to host your app for free? provide the bandwidth to download it for free ? give visibility to your app thru search in the store for free ?

at some point someone gonna pay for the datacenters, the wires and all these stuff needed for software distribution.

Try running your own site on your own servers and paying for the data traffic and then do the math.

30% is ok

<comment><USER45> Ok, let's do the math:

Say app has 10MiB, 100,000 downloads is ~1TiB, 1 have a 1GiB/20GiB VPS with that monthly bandwidth which I pay $1/month.

So distributing 100,000 copies costs $1.

I'll give Google $1 for distribution of 100000 copies of my app. Fair?

Yeah, I'll give Google a bit more for payment processing, perhaps. But actual distribution costs nothing really, for most apps.

<comment><USER44> you completely ignore the #1 cost: human cost to setup your vps, manage it, backups and whatnot etc. you gotta take all costs into account.

not every developer is willing to learn and spend time configuring & managing a server. that's not the same skill set.

<comment><USER45> Human cost is not really very well measurable.

First we're talking about the free app for a good cause, so you're already providing an app for free, so you've assumed some sacrifice for others for whatever reason, and setting up a website for it may be comparatively negligible part of the whole cost to you in terms of time.

In my case I would have already had an infrastructure and knowledge how to host things, so it might take a few minutes to put some new files up on a machine used for other projects. Additional costs being pretty much 0.

And there may be benefits (even if I didn't have the knowledge and infra) like learning something new, or now having an infrastructure and knowledge that helps you save expenses or time in the future. So that would offset the costs. You can't just look at costs alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The problem of donation links from Google's perspective is that they are not getting their 30% cut. You might think that this is unfair, but the app is using their distribution platform.

It's possible to make open source applications and still ask for payment on Google Play, either as the asking price, subscription or by adding in-app payments for donations. This is the right way to do it, and will probably also have a much better return since the payment workflow is much easier.

<comment><USER13> I can even go along your last point. But it's a different argument to say "going through google is more efficient" or to say "you can't _not_ go through google". Frankly, they're using their market dominant position to force free developers into a distribution model that serves them as the payment processor. I'd not go so far as to argue those are separate businesses, but it's really a blatant abuse of their power.

Arguing that this is somehow related to software quality, safety or whatever is pure BS> There is simply no other explanation for this than "it will make us money and we can get away with it."

<comment><USER47> Why is it an abuse of their power? Google and Apple are essentially saying that if you use their store as a sales funnel then they take a 30% cut, and they enforce that by being the sole payment processor on the store.

Basically Google and Apple both know that people will make more money by listing in their stores and taking a 30% cut than not listing at all.

<comment><USER13> 1\. most open source software is not even _close_ to breaking even via donations. so "making more money" really is a misleading way to portrait the situation. 2\. I hope we can agree that "if you use their store as a sales funnel then they take a 30% cut" is at least a _use_ of their power. The fact that there's no recourse, no (practical) competition for the distribution, and that they're not acting in agreement with their "official" stance on free-as- in-beer or free-as-in-speech software makes it an _ab_ use in my book. The thing is, they don't officially say "we only host apps that make _us_ money, not at all. They say they're just platforms, facilitating exchange, blabla. Also, see point 1: "sales funnel" for projects that maybe (!) manage to break even on their hosting costs is not the right term to use here.

This is an old claim by now, but these platforms matter a lot today, and since we only have two of them, and they are not in direct competition (users cannot switch at will) they really should be treated as the monopoly infrastructure that they are. What that means concretely is subject to negotiation within society. In _my_ opinion blackmailing the devs of an application that is essentially written and maintained as a service to the public, for free, by volunteers, is a shit move to say the least.

<comment><USER48> > In my opinion blackmailing the devs

I don't know what you think the verb 'to blackmail' means, but nobody has been blackmailed or anything like it in this situation.

<comment><USER49> Correct, the more precise term here is extortion, and I can speak to that having had to face that exact criminal charge before. It follows pretty much every required element of the crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I like the way that the author of Simple Mobile Tools [0] made donations. Applications are free and open source, but there is a paid app Simple Thank You [1].

That's also how I was thinking about doing "donationware" on a mobile app store.

Side note: They are also available on F-Droid.

[0] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/cluster?clp=ig...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/cluster?clp=igM4ChkKEzkwNzAyOTYzODgwMjI1ODkyNjYQCBgDEhkKEzkwNzAyOTYzODgwMjI1ODkyNjYQCBgDGAA%3D:S:ANO1ljIN7-U&gsr=CjuKAzgKGQoTOTA3MDI5NjM4ODAyMjU4OTI2NhAIGAMSGQoTOTA3MDI5NjM4ODAyMjU4OTI2NhAIGAMYAA%3D%3D:S:ANO1ljIS1ys)

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobiletools.thankyou)

<comment><USER51> This is against policy. Not sure if it is enforced though

[https://play.google.com/about/spam-min-functionality/min- fun...](https://play.google.com/about/spam-min-functionality/min- functionality/)

<comment><USER52> I think it's pretty common though, for example buying a "key" separately from the main app. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackupPro)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm sure many users are just as annoyed as I > am. In the interim, luckily F-Droid has our app.[1]

Thank heavens there's an alternate way of distributing apps on Android. Say what you want about Android vs. iOS, but at least there's an alternative if you as a consumer have a beef with Google Play.

[1]: [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.wireguard.android/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.wireguard.android/)

<comment><USER54> Even if the Play Store and F-Droid both disappeared, the replacement could be a community-run open directory of APKs sorted by version. At least we have options on Android.

<comment><USER55> > directory of APKs sorted by version

Something like that already exists. I had to use one of these directories once to install an older release of Signal on a relative's phone (newer releases of Signal don't work on older phones, older releases of Signal aren't compatible with the current Signal server, but there's a single version in the middle which both works on older phones and is compatible with the current Signal server; unfortunately, that phone hadn't yet updated to that release before a newer release went out).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> A general comment: the need of the hour is to educate the billions of 'ordinary' computer users about the basics of software, privacy, security and trust. We must not fall into the narrative being parroted around off-late that considers end-users as pretty much dumb content consumers who should not be expected to ever know even the minimum about the underlying tech and therefore every decision needs to be made for them by a small minority of corporations, govts, and the tech elite acting as gatekeepers and overseers. This is a dangerous road to go down unwittingly. Too much de facto power is concentrated in the hands of the few while the rest are gradually trained into normalise being helplessly manipulated and told to defer to authority.

<comment> orbital-decay I've tried to educate many people on a personal level and failed miserably almost every time, being perceived and dismissed as an evangelist for some weird ideology they don't care about (and I took it very slow and tried really, really hard not to sound as one). Maybe they are right, after all? Who am I to dictate or even influence what they should care about, especially if they don't experience that clearly. People never become tech literate until it bites them in the ass. They have to face the consequences, that's how it works.

Meanwhile in 2019, most people still find "nothing to hide" attitude perfectly reasonable.

<comment><USER57> But it is actually an ideology... It's the same as why people don't care about climate change or other far removed things from everyday life.

For the normal, everyday non-tech user, they see that all their friends use these apps and nothing has ever happened to them. The FBI didn't come knocking, they weren't fired from their jobs or anything like that.

From their point of view, why should they care about repositories, digital signatures etc., when they just want to use Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp and so on for some after-work (or during-work) fun / brain-swithoff. They just post some silly pictures or watch some Youtuber videos.

All these concerns about privacy just don't reach the everyday reality and real-life concerns of people and is in effect an ideological thing, similar to rejecting proprietary software on the desktop due to moral and political beliefs.

> They have to face the consequences, that's how it works

The consequences (app creators changing their practices and policies) will be spread over everyone, not on individual users. As long as their friends and society keeps using it, most people will as well. If it slowly dies out, people will use whatever is new. Most people are not that much attached to using these apps, just use them out of boredom or to interact with others. They'd easily move on if that's how things evolve.

<comment> orbital-decay Funny that the same could have been said about actual literacy several hundred years ago. Who ever needs to be able to read and write in their everyday life? Why should I care? It's a thing far removed from everyday life, unless you're a trader or a priest or a scholar or some other expert. Today you can't imagine an adult person being unable to read, in most of the world.

Except the tech is already there, and you use it with or without understanding. You use a credit card, electricity, Internet and other communications, some kind of computing device, your entire life depends on it. And IT shapes your life way more than any other tech, so it probably makes sense to get a grasp on the general concepts at least. No need to become an IT expert, similarly to how there's no need to become a Shakespeare to be literate. And yes, being tech illiterate can fuck you up very visibly and personally, for example by losing money from a stolen credit card.

<comment><USER57> I think a better metaphor is driving. In many countries, like the US, driving is extremely widespread and most adults cannot function in the job market without being able to drive.

However only a minority of them knows how cars work under the hood. Most people understand the pedals and the steering wheel and that's it.

Same in tech. People understand there are screens, there are buttons you can click, text input fields you can type things in with the keyboard, on/off switch, sleep/standby, etc. All the things needed to operate it.

> for example by losing money from a stolen credit card.

I'm in Europe and I don't know anybody who had this happen to them, nor is identity theft a thing here. And this is mostly about phishing and social engineering anyway, not about understanding the tech background of package managers and digital signatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I guess this will get lost in the noise, but a few years ago Apple relaxed its restrictions on IAP donations and allows developers to offer a "tip jar" where IAPs don't unlock any specific features. I've been shipping a free and open source app with a donate button on the App Store since mid-2017 [1].

1\. [https://chatsecure.org/blog/sustainable-open-source- starts-w...](https://chatsecure.org/blog/sustainable-open-source-starts-with- you/)

<comment><USER59> Does Apple take their customary cut? I am not interested in "donating" to Apple.

<comment><USER60> Ever use a credit card to make a donation anywhere?

<comment><USER61> Apple's cut is a hell of a lot more than 2.9% + $0.30.

<comment><USER60> Never said it wasn't? Just pointing out how silly this stance is.

<comment><USER62> Balking at the difference between 30% and 3% is just as silly to you as balking at the difference between 3% and 0%?

<comment><USER60> Yes, because the balk is at the concept not the amount.

<comment><USER62> Busting somebody's balls because they're not abstracting away something as significant as 27% seems unreasonable. It shouldn't surprise you that somebody who dislikes giving 30% to apple would be proportionally less concerned about giving 3% to Visa.

<comment><USER60> It's hardly unreasonable; if their problem is, as they've said, "giving money to Apple", then it's not the amount, but the fact that Apple gets a cut at all.

And none of this is surprising, merely inconsistently applied logic. I fully understand what is happening here, clarifying statements will not help.

<comment><USER62> > then it's not the amount

Says you, but obviously that's not how most people approach matters like this. Most people can reasonably be assumed to think that differences in degree, particularly an order of magnitude apart, are very relevant. At best you're being a pedantic pain in the ass, hassling people for not explicitly stating that a difference in degree is being considered, when such considerations should be reasonably assumed even when not explicitly stated.

<comment><USER60> Says me? No. Says the person I replied to. Their outrage wasn't sparked by the size of the payment, but that payment went to Apple at all.

Nothing is reasonable about what you're writing, not one thing. At best _you 're_ being absurdly pedantic yourself, and hiding behind a throwaway no less. At worst you're trolling. I'm guessing it's the latter, so stop trolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Quote: "They said it was because we're in violation of their "Payments Policy", presumably because we have a link inside the app that opens the user's web browser to wireguard.com/donations/"

C'mon people, is Google we talk about, you know, those who bow to might $$$ only. You should've made a donation link INSIDE google, so they can charge their 30% before you get the money, that's how you keep your app in their store </sarcasm>.

<comment><USER47> I mean you're being sarcastic but this is how basically every other app accepts payments to support the developer. There are plenty of "buy me a coffee" buttons in free apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> My social-network/IM app ([https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/)) got also removed from the Play Store because I had a link to the F-Droid app.

The Android app is basically a web-view pointing to one of the many instances of the social network [https://nl.movim.eu/?login](https://nl.movim.eu/?login).

Regarding the time (and also money) spent to publish the APK on the Play Store and the hassle it is to discuss with the Google moderation team I didn't bothered putting it back.

<comment><USER65> That's interesting — not a donation page, but an F-Droid page (which as far as I know doesn't accept donations)? When did this happen?

<comment><USER66> That's probably due to the "can't link to other stores" clause. There's a reason you have to manually go to Amazon.com to download their app store, you can't advertise or link to a third-party app source via a Google Play- delivered app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> As far as moneitisation is concerned it really feels as though Google want you displaying _their_ ads or have you funnel your users through _their_ checkout process. Anything else seems to result in apps getting flagged for violating policies around payments or deceptive advertising.

</comment><comment><USER68> A lot of people justify Google and Apple's 30% because they provide an app store and distribution.

But Android is Android because of these apps. Without them it would be like the Windows phone which was nice but didn't get enough apps on it and so it failed.

These companies depend on our apps as much as we depend on their app store for distribution.

Fuck apple for starting this walled garden and creating a parasitic relationship rather than a symbiotic relationship.

<comment><USER69> "Android is Android because of these apps" but "Fuck Apple"?

I don't understand.

<comment><USER68> I said:

> Fuck apple for _starting_ this walled garden

IIRC apple started it and now all the big players are following suite.. including even Windows 10 which has it's own app store and similar cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I would like to point out how the PPSSPP project circumvents this problem. It's an open-source PSP emulator.

They have the a free version available on the Play Store here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.pps...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.ppsspp)

They also have a "Gold" version available: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.pps...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.ppssppgold)

These two apps are functionally identical, only difference is the logo and that the "Gold" version costs money.

So if you want to contribute some cash to this project, you just buy the "Gold" version. Other open-source projects could adopt this model too to evade this policy.

The price you pay however, is that a part of the money goes to Google. Which is obviously the reason why donation links are not allowed in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is really unfortunate. If Google is ready to arm twist a popular project like Wireguard, smaller indie open source apps stand little to no chance than to bend over. This App store gatekeeping should be illegal. Selling the hardware/OS and marketplace by the same person is more like online dictatorship at this time.

<comment><USER72> Honestly. I'm fine as long as sideloading 3rd party shops is not actively sabotaged. I tend to search stuff on fdroid first and Play store later, and that's something I just can't do on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> One of our apps ([https://Yang2020.app](https://Yang2020.app)) were rejected by Apple for the same reason - having a Donate link. Ultimately we removed the link on native apps (kept it on the Web) and the app was accepted.

However, before doing this, we corresponded with Apple Developer Support / App Review Team and asked them about the Acceptable Business Models of their developer guidelines, which states:

 _(vii) Apps may enable individual users to give a monetary gift to another individual without using in-app purchase, provided that (a) the gift is a completely optional choice by the giver, and (b) 100% of the funds go to the receiver of the gift. However, a gift that is connected to or associated at any point in time with receiving digital content or services must use in-app purchase._

They scheduled a "specialist" to call us from Apple and discuss this. However when they called a few days later, _they repeatedly declined to give a single example of how this paragraph would ever apply_. We tried asking many different ways, but they kept saying we would need to submit the app with the business model to get it reviewed. They would not give a single example of an app they approved with this business model. I personally was on the phone and said that we simply wanted to be compliant and it was very expensive to build something just to be rejected, so we wanted guidance about their policies. But the representative did not know anything. I asked if anyone else on their team knew but they basically said no.

So Apple seems to have certain "platitudes" in their Guidelines which companies can't take advantage of.

Has anyone here seen a single exception to the 30% cut? I know ApplePay may be used to purchase "real-life" items and where you can't afford to pay 30% less to the vendor. But what about services, like booking time with a teacher? What about digital services such as hosting a videoconference? Apple takes a 30% but you have to pay Twilio. That means any web-based app would cost 30% less!

We were hoping that maybe there can be some link to buy things with Ethereum and since Apple doesn't offer that facility we can try to argue that we need transactions to be non-reversible etc. Doesn't Apple allow apps that allow the user to send and receive bitcoin payments to some address? BOOM!

Another thing we can do is micropayments, maybe, and tell users how they can purchase credits elsewhere. But that last part is against Apple's rules, isn't it?

<comment><USER73> Screw the rules, I have cryptocurrency!

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Who do you trust more, to secure their infrastructure? Google or F-Droid / a bunch of volunteers who may or may not be very security-conscious?

Not to downplay the effort that F-Droid contributors (or any Android FOSS groups) make, but it's a very legitimate concern.

Would an attacker have an easier time infiltrating Google or a member of F-Droid the development community?

Are users of F-Droid higher value than users of Google Play, to warrant a direct attack? If one wants to pick off users who are fairly technically inclined, other developers, system administrators, etc...F-Droid is a pretty good place to start.

<comment><USER75> At least read up on how f-droid does their reproducible build infrastructure before you spread FUD.

<comment><USER74> What about my comment is FUD?

Regardless of the fact that builds are reproducible, F-Droid has infrastructure. How is that infra secured? How are the servers that store signing keys secured? How are the build servers accessed? How is the access secured?

Okay, so the builds are reproducible -- is someone maintaining a concurrent system that verifies reproducibility and provides notification of a collision when things don't match up with built and served binaries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> After reading so many similar stories, here is what Google/Apple/etc should, in my opinion.

If an automated process blocks/bans/rejects something, then the message to the developer MUST say "Our automated scanner discovered..."

Any time something is blocked/banned/rejected, the message to the developer MUST explain exactly why. In the case of this article: "Your update was rejected due to a link to a third party payment system. This violates section N of our terms. The link we detected was <insert link here>."

There should be two kinds of appeal processes. Automated, and manual. You should be able to appeal or resubmit to the automated process as often as you need to.

The manual process should involve real time communication between the developer and an appeal agent. Via phone or chat. To prevent the system from being overloaded, only allow developers a few free appeals, then start charging a fee.

Developer accounts should only be fully banned after multiple manual appeals and the appeals agent determining that the developer is operating in bad faith. Automated processes should never be able to fully ban an account. It must involve a real person. Full bans also must include a detailed email to the developer explaining exactly why they have been banned.

The biggest, and most important, change these companies really need to make is including exactly WHY something happened. No more of these general "you violated our TOS" without any explanation of how the TOS was violated messages.

</comment><comment><USER77> If only there was an alternative to the Apple app store like F-Droid is for Google Play...

<comment><USER78> AltStore is a thing, assuming you have a Mac...

<comment><USER79> Apple can still shut it down, and you can bet they will if it gets any sort of popularity.

> Testut imagines Apple could disable the ability to sync over Wi-Fi, but that > would just mean plugging in your phone once a week to continue using > AltStore

How about limit the number of disable WiFi syncs and force you to plug in once every 8 hours?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I have been disappointed in the Play Store for a while now. Last I checked, they don't display licenses either, so you can't easily tell what's free software. I get everything from F-Droid these days, and on my primary devices I never even install the google apps after flashing LineageOS.

</comment><comment> ur-whale One thing I've found to be true throughout my career: the culture and ethos of organizations is usually a _direct_ consequence of the culture and ethos of the leader who built it initially, and remains as such loooong after said leader is gone.

Well guess what ... the android team at google and the entire android ecosystem is the brainchild of Andy Rubin, who has recently been outed publicly as a total asshole (and who everyone at Google knew was a total asshole since pretty much the start of Android).

All the things wrong with Android, including the iron-fisted management of what can and cannot run on the platform ("I know, I'm squeezing your balls til you pass out, but don't worry, it's for your own protection") can easily be traced to him.

</comment><comment><USER81> All of these really motivates me to push for decentralized projects. If the future Is basically full of gate keepers choosing what apps can be used or not and we don't have any platform allowing freedom then it would be a very sad future indeed

</comment><comment><USER82> Donated via PayPal. Thanks for your work, would be great to see it in the kernel soon.

</comment><comment><USER83> And yet games with hundred dollar microtransactions stay up fine. It's almost as if Google turn a blind eye to that which makes them richer. oh wait, that's exactly what it's like. The bastards.

</comment><comment><USER84> Though easy to phrase it as a moral problem, I think the matter requires an unemotional analysis. At first hearing it looks like shutting down avenues by which open source app developers can gather donations, but perhaps the measure was targeted at shady money laundering operations.

Perhaps the right thing to do is for Google to offer a discounted cut to legit open source apps, from the usual 30% to a lesser value or entirely waive it off so that they can still seek contributions through Google play billing.

</comment><comment><USER85> Just link to:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=wireguard+donate](http://www.google.com/search?q=wireguard+donate)

Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER86> I've been a regular Wireguard user for the last year and love it. Google just gave me the motivation to finally make a donation.

Thanks for the great work!

</comment><comment><USER87> No idea why, but this app offers purchases via good old Bank Cards, without any Google mediation.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navigation...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navigation.offlinemaps.gps&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER88> Recently, new versions "Simple ..." line of open source apps from "simplemobiletools.com "on the F-Droid app store have started popping up requests for donations. Those now need to be checked.

</comment><comment><USER89> For anyone else publishing mobile apps: Neither Apple nor Google allow bypassing the store's purchase system by linking to external donation pages. No matter the app type, it will result in rejection.

<comment><USER90> I wonder what would happen if you link your your home page and you have a donation link there.

How deep does it have to be before they cut you off? Can you link to a page that is only linking to another page where the donation happens? How much extra text would you need to "pass inspection". I find these kinds of arbitrary rules very unsettling. It's definitely time to break up the tech giants.

It is odd that they remove this though, I use at least two more open source apps that asks for a donation and will send me to their donation page if I click.

<comment><USER91> Break up the tech giants? How is that going to result in having 5 Androids and 6 iOSs? The nature of the technology and market is what drives consolidation. It's a testament to the quality of both platforms that we even have two options.

<comment><USER90> It was a generalised statement of how they now have too much power to decide what can and can not be put on our devices.

And before the "android can sideload" argument, how many normal people are going to do that with all the dark pattern warnings that google displays when you try to enable the feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of- conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct/)

"Do the right thing"

</comment><comment><USER93> > I appealed using their website appeal form. Thirty minutes later (was this > automated, unlike the manual app review process?), I received a rejection of > the appeal.

Google in a nutshell.

</comment><comment><USER94> Again making a case for alternative app stores. Yes having a centralized software repository has its benefits, but it's starting to show it's limits ...

</comment><comment><USER95> This is Google wanting their 30% cut. It's that simple.

</comment><comment><USER96> Now, if only Google can remove the apps that can be downloaded and installed on youtube video interface. Those pesky apps can be install even by little children.

</comment><comment><USER97> I would much rather donation links than the horrendous ad spam that comes with most apps.

But of course this impact googles bottom line so the sane approach goes out the window

</comment><comment><USER98> So if a Facebook profile or article inside an app has a donation link it should get de-listed? All of Facebook fund raising should get burnt as well?!!

</comment><comment><USER99> So... what is next? Mentioning/linking patreon profile in YouTube videos could also be bannable if one disable ads in their videos?

</comment><comment><USER100> Uh oh, we have open-source app on Google play with Patreon banner. Seems like we have to expect trouble soon. Thanks, Google!

</comment><comment> ur-whale It's really time for a decentralized / distributed version of the play store to replace the Google provided one.

</comment><comment><USER101> What is a FOSS app even doing on the Play Store ?!? Didn't these devs get the memo about the GAFAM boycott ??

</comment><comment><USER102> Can we just stop distributing "donation-ware" FOSS and use F-Droid for that instead? It is not as if Google Play Store is a credible source anyway given all the hostile content (for both privacy and security). Today I learned they even remove the orig. signature [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268717)

<comment><USER103> Why? Google Play Store has a much larger audience and so the apps will be seen by many more people. Many people use Android and they also should be able to use FOSS apps, regardless of the platform's privacy and security issues. Is there a reason to not join the Play Store besides something philosophical?

<comment><USER104> This OP is about an app being dropped from the Play Store because they're asking for donations. That's a pretty good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> Totally right move! I'd rather see genital enhancement ads than those disgusting, immoral donation links.

</comment><comment><USER106> In other news, my Pixel 3 with Google Fi keeps reconnecting to Google's VPN without asking me permission.

</comment><comment><USER107> It's one thing if a government regulates a market, yet another thing if a company regulates it ...

</comment><comment><USER108> A bit of a tangent, but does anyone know how Netflix gets away with not doing in app payments?

</comment><comment><USER109> Does patreon link count?

</comment><comment><USER110> Would linking to Patreon also be against terms and conditions?

</comment><comment><USER111> Please make wireguard available in App Store China region.

</comment><comment><USER112> in the same time there are dozens of free "Zodiak" and "Calendar" trial apps that charge 100+ usd a month after the first week....

</comment><comment><USER113> The title reads like a not the onion post

</comment><comment><USER114> How does AndOTP compare to FreeOTP+?

</comment><comment><USER115> And so... What ? They removed some of my apps to for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER116> Our freedoms are being taken away one by one by those who say they are protecting our freedoms just because of capitalism -> money -> greed.

<comment><USER116> Because "there's no free lunch" in capitalism.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/dhir1i/in_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/dhir1i/in_the_us_we_design_our_public_facilities_with/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> The question should be: When will society accept that capitalism always will kill any form of "don't be evil". There is no choice.

</comment><comment><USER118> The Apple/Play stores are essentially a totally broken implementation of something that had existed for over a decade before: package repositories. It's embraced and extended Linux/BSD package/ports trees, except without things like the ability to add a 3rd party repository with other authors signing keys, pin certain versions, etc.

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android- fragmentation/#packag...](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android- fragmentation/#package-management)

We could go on about how regular users wouldn't understand or care and blah blah blah and we'll keep getting software that's neutered, tracks us and becomes more like the proverbial car with the hood welded shut; where people who know about cars have to attach several sidecars just to keep our vehicle doing what we want it to do.

<comment><USER119> Don't conflate Apple's monopoly with Google's store. Anyone can go install F-Droid or Amazon or whatever on their Android phone. The only thing stopping people is satisfaction with the status quo and/or ignorance.

However, Apple totally rules their walled garden, with some added gross exploitation to boot (recent "Sherlocking" story for Luna Display).

<comment><USER120> I have to say, I'm really disappointed how few open-source projects are even _on_ F-Droid. It feels like every time I hear about a new OSS android app, I look for it on F-Droid and find it's only on the Play Store.

<comment><USER121> It's partially on fdroid.

It's not always trivial to submit new apps and ensure it compiles correctly on their build servers. Same goes for updates, which can be silently dropped due to any number of tool issues.

If you are a front or backend developer please consider investing a weekend or two helping fdroid improve their systems.

<comment><USER122> Are these issues documented anywhere? Otherwise it's kinda hard to fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> Deleted. Wrong thread.

<comment><USER124> Wrong thread? :)

<comment><USER123> Yes. Absolutely. Let me see whether I can delete it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Unsurprising - Google obviously wants you to be within their walled garden. You could probably add an in-app purchase but this has been a known thing for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER126> A lot of these threads feel like complaining that McDonalds doesn't offer more sauces, or that they don't let you leave their store with the sauce. It's their store, it's their sauce. I don't think you can even claim monopoly, because nobody _needs_ to use these devices. We can still use dumb phones for voice and texting, and regular computers for the internet.

You have to accept that these are commercial products for commercial gain. They are not a product of or for a community. Massive corporations use these systems to create products that drive their revenue. They will do whatever works for the _majority_ ; the fact that a minority wants certain kinds of changes does not impact their bottom line, so why should they consider it? They do not care about your outrage or opinions, they care about cash.

</comment><comment><USER127> When is an alternative Android play store coming?

To all the entrepreneurs reading this: please create one. To all the VCs reading this: please fund one.

It's badly needed. I heard Huawei is working on one but I wouldn't bet on it.

<comment> phoe-krk F-Droid already exists.

<comment><USER127> Yes but none of my friends and family who own an Android device know about it.

I'm talking about a mainstream alternative android store. The design of f-droid is not appealing enough.

<comment><USER128> 1\. F-Droid can't be published on Google Play Store, because they're an "alternative market".

2\. Please, make it appealing for you and others! [https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient)

<comment><USER129> FTP was fine. Plus it was easily mirrorable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> Google (Or Apple) is pretty serious regarding their app stores rules and regulations.

Google owns the app store. So, developers should abide rules imposed by Google although the rules do not seem reasonable all the time.

My suggestion is, developer can still implement in-app billing, removing "donation" wording. For the in-app item, make it as good-to-have feature like "unlocking additional app color theme".

With such, he will still abide the rule, yet able to get his monetary reward.

<comment><USER131> > Here are some examples of products not currently supported by Google Play > In-app Billing:

> One time-payments, including peer-to-peer payments, online auctions, and > donations.

Source: [https://play.google.com/about/monetization- ads/](https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I know this will be against deeply against HNews but I'm open to discussion.

I don't see anything wrong with this. Charging vs Donations, I don't see what the difference is. It's people paying money for good/services/software. The primary difference is the open ended pricing model.

Google, Apple put up networks and there's value in that network. Whether someone chooses to release their app for free or charge money for it, that app is dictated by the network fees. This network is extremely powerful in terms of its distribution reach. Does it warrant 30%? That's what the market is willing to put up with, but if we're debating 30% - it should be for the whole network not just because someone has an open ended pricing model.

If this app is registered as a non-profit (which it did not look like based on the website?) then I am 100% in the wrong and do believe the app should be able to operate under different pricing schemes.

At a philosophical level - what is the difference between a free-to-use app that has open ended pricing vs a FOSS with donations?

If there is a difference, let's discuss it.

<comment><USER39> You're stating, essentially, that anyone who wants to publish FOSS software with a donation link should be forced to go through some convoluted procedure and register as a charitable organization. (where? in the US? in their specific region? does it matter? how much time will it take for them to figure out? is this even possible in all regions? does this require ongoing effort e.g. accounting, document submission, general bureaucracy?)

This is simply not how the real world works. If it ever does, you've created a dystopia.

Google are being bureaucratic twats here. There's plainly and obviously a difference between WireGuard and the 10,000,000th iteration of some bullshit F2P casual game, and there's obviously a distinction between donations and purchases - the intent of the user, for one.

That they put prole-tier support on the case and 'accidentally or otherwise' sling the banhammer at pivotal pieces of software is their problem to figure out.

<comment><USER132> True, I'll agree that going non-profit is a nightmare.

But again, what is FOSS with a donation link vs free-to-use software with pay- as-much-as-you-want.

One sounds like a non-profit while the other sounds like a for-profit.

Perhaps if you can directly show your software is FOSS via licensing etc that there should be a special exemption?

Seems like there needs to be a sole-proprietier non-profit... but man that seems like rife for abuse.

<comment><USER39> Sure, there is very little distinction. I'd argue that both are donations. Pay-as-much-as-you-want (if $0 is an allowable price) represents a donation with a slightly different funnel.

The for-profit vs non-profit distinction is immaterial to me; the distinction is between actually paying for products (e.g. buying an ingame item or support or a subscription or whatever; some sort of 'contractual' thing), and literally giving money away with no strings attached.

Google's particular funding model for their App Store is a different kettle of fish entirely - they can decide that apps beginning with the letter A pay a 90% fee and that's just how it works.

<comment><USER132> To purely play devil's advocate, there are a number of 'home restaurants' (operate out of my home) that are pay-what-you-want and operate quite profitably. I believe 100% they should be taxed (i'm totally conflating taxes and apple/google profit share but it's a form of a network fee?).

Through this discussion I do wish there was an exception for FOSS for individuals at a legal level.

I can 100% agree though that the fees which google/apple charge are extortionist.

<comment><USER39> How taxation is collected is a completely different issue and has a trillion nuances.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cause of global warming hiatus found deep in the Atlantic Ocean - <AUTHOR> http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/08/21/cause-of-global-warming-hiatus-found-deep-in-the-atlantic-ocean/ <comment><USER3> This is the problem as I see it from TFA:

>> More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots.

>> "Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus," said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung

First of all, a hypothesis is NOT a theory. Secondly, they have a goal indicative of an agenda - they're looking for a plausible explanation and publishing speculation as "theory". If you don't have data you're just speculating, and by data I don't mean "yeah, volcanoes erupt and emit stuff". You need data that supports your hypothesis, and if you really want to claim a theory, IMHO you need some kind of mathematical model. If all these weekly explanations had data and models to back them, I don't think there would be nearly so many.

To me this resembles the folks who blame every weather event on climate change. Even if I accept the premise, they look like fools trying to tie warm, cold, erratic, extreme, and calm, all to the the same cause with nothing but simple high level hand waving.

Never mind my views on certain topics, doesn't all that speculation out in the public view damage the perception of science as a whole? That bothers me.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't this tie into the idea of falsifiability? All these "theories" cannot really be disproven, only re-modeled. They're so focused on tying _everything_ to human-caused climate change that they're leaving behind scientific rigor. As you said, bring on the accurate models and data!

<comment><USER5> Falsifiability is just a lot harder at a macro scale like the planet. It's more like astrophysics than classical physics. Perhaps even harder because you don't have discrete bodies and large spaces, you just have one heavily intertwined body of interactions.

I don't think that makes it strictly non-falsifiable, it just makes it a little fuzzier where you have to accept that there are too many variables to isolate, and you need to take clues and relative changes to be worth something even if there isn't a controlled scenario that science would prefer.

The worst part of climate change science isn't the uncertainty, it's the fact that any uncertainty will be grasped upon by the oligarchy to create FUD in favor of the status quo that generated their fortunes. That systemic bias could well be the end of the species as we are collectively unable to pull our heads out of our asses.

<comment><USER6> _any uncertainty will be grasped upon by the oligarchy to create FUD in favor of the status quo that generated their fortunes_

Ah, but it will _also_ be grasped by researchers to create FUD in favor of sensationalism so they can get more grants and maybe become famous for Saving The World.

 _That systemic bias could well be the end of the species as we are collectively unable to pull our heads out of our asses._

Sure. Or equally unlikely, the opposite systemic bias causes the end of the species as a result of banning all effective telephone cleaning chemicals since they react with water to produce greenhouse gasses.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they want to save the world for the world's sake. I am generally in favour of the world.

<comment><USER8> There is a war against Terra.

Or terror.

Can't be terror though.

You can't have a war against terror.

That's obvious.

Must be Terra then.

We surely aren't led by idiots.

After all.

I too am generally in favour of the world.

\---

satellitecat:

 _Release the kittens._

I repeat:

 _Release all the kittens._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent > from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and > is part of a naturally occurring cycle.

It's acceptable to rush to the conclusion that temperature patterns from the 20th century are driven by anthropogenic influence and declare the matter settled, but when the warming trend doesn't continue I'm supposed to patiently wait for these folks to formulate all manner of alternate hypotheses?

<comment><USER10> Ha! But the difference between their modeling and your bull is, they do the math?

<comment><USER11> You don't need to do the math to point out an inconsistency in reasoning. A few equations and a big computer simulation doesn't mean the rest of us have to turn off our brain when your conclusions seem inconsistent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's the actual article: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897)

There's also a short review of the state of the literature in this same issue. Well worth a read: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/860.full)

(I'm not sure how much of this content is limited to ivory towers)

<comment><USER13> Without a subscription, you can only read the abstract before hitting the paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe this is cause #31: others cited include

[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for- th...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/30/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause- now-up-to-29/)

Main thing is to keep the show (and funding) ticking along nicely. I'm sure it will.

<comment><USER15> They just need to hold out until there's finally - after a few decades - <USER2> uptick in temperatures, hurricanes, or tornadoes. The last decade has been such a never-ending embarrassment of wrong predictions, anything would be welcomed to recharge the base at this point. Seems like every global warming proponent I know has lost faith at this point (with faith being the ideal word for it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there really a hiatus, then, regardless of cause? How does that square with every new year being the "hottest on record"?

Edit: I ask because as a casual observer, I had always thought this "hiatus" was denier-speak. But now it seems to be being taken seriously in the articles I see.

<comment><USER17> Here's the trend for the last ten years - it's flat:

[http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/ha...](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:120/trend)

The trend has been flat enough for long enough to falsify all the model predictions that assumed CO2 was the primary driver and nothing else really mattered. Those predictions looked GREAT in the late 1990s but don't work now, so the hunt is on for new explanatory factors. Everybody's got their favorites.

The main thing to consider with regard to new years being dubbed "the hottest on record" is selection bias: When a new year looks like it MIGHT be "the hottest on record", that makes for big scary newspaper headlines. Then when it (often) turns out that it actually WASN'T the hottest on record, that's not considered newsworthy. Nor is it newsworthy when the following year is only the 6th or 10th or 12th hottest. If you only see headlines about it when there's been a record or somebody has predicted that there WILL be a record, due to availability bias you are left with the impression that records are happening constantly.

(And even when the whole year isn't the hottest, the same dynamic applies to hottest summer, hottest winter, hottest in the northern hemisphere, etc.)

Another thing to consider is that although the current trend is essentially flat (and has been for over a dozen years), it's flat at a relatively high level. Since the temperature plateaued but hasn't yet significantly _decreased_ , people can still claim it's a hot _decade_ or invent silly "X of the last Y years" constructions to make it seem like the warming trend hasn't stopped.

<comment><USER16> It's like how box office numbers are reported... "This movie was the biggest opener ever!... on the Tuesday after Labor Day"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unlike real science, where a scientist would say, "you know what, we thought our model of X showed promise, but we couldn't reproduce our results in reality, so we moved on", climate scientists seems to say "hmmm, reality isn't following our model, where did reality go wrong?"

<comment><USER7> If I throw a ball and suddenly it stops, contrary to what I expect, I don't go "oh, I guess the ball just stopped of its own accord, naturally," I go, why the hell did it stop?" and look for reasons. Who knows, maybe it really did just stop naturally, but maybe it was something else (wind.. hit something.. ball burst creating a backwards force..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't believe anyone actually buys into this idea that there's a significant pause. Here's a temperature graph of the past couple decades:

[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming- pause/?wpmp_tp=1)

There's a long-term trend with a lot of variability year to year. We happened to have a big temperature spike in the late 90s. That doesn't mean we had a pause afterwards. Measure from the years just before or just after the spike and it doesn't look like a pause at all.

<comment><USER20> That chart is missing 5 years of data. Please link to the actual data: [http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/) Before you see the data for 2009-2013, maybe you should make a prediction of their values.

<comment><USER21> >maybe you should make a prediction of their values.

4 years is a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. However, here is what you asked for up to 1998, with a continuation of the linear trend in red, and a 'pause' in blue (I only have a 'before' graph for HADCRUT4 rather than GISS, but there isn't much difference - GISS and other temp records can be seen at the link).

[http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg](http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg)

Maybe you would like to make a prediction?

Here is what happened: [http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg](http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg)

Some 'pause' eh.

Source: [http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature- th...](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the- post-1998-surprise/)

<comment><USER22> 25 years is also a really tiny meaningless sample in terms of climate. Are we forgetting that we have a solar cycle of 22 years? We can't tell shit from such small periods.

<comment><USER23> I thought that I remember the solar cycle being claimed as 11 years. Is this new?

<comment><USER24> The OP might be trying to say that 25 years conflicts with two solar cycles. Because it is in fact an 11-year cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> But, doesn't it follow that lower temperatures would mean less ice melting, therefore less cold freshwater added to the ocean?

</comment><comment><USER26> Not a very scientific approach. The article starts with a conclusion and then tries to leverage the findings to explain it.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand your comment - this is a _news_ article. They tend to lead with the most important information, and explain that information as the article goes on. When a news article is about a scientific article, it will tend to start with the conclusion.

But I also don't understand your comment when compared to actual scientific articles. The high-level conclusions tend to be in the abstract and the introduction. Scientific papers aren't structured as mysteries, they try to front-load the important lessons up front.

Don't confuse articles about science, or papers by scientists explaining their findings, as the scientific process itself.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for your point. You're right. My fault</comment></comment></comment>


A categorical view of computational effects – Emily Riehl - Avi-D-coder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssx2_JKpB3U <comment><AUTHOR> A bit over my head, is this proposing a more flexible replacement for monads?</comment>


Masculine culture within the computing professions (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/682955 <comment><USER2> Such a narrow view. There are all types of men working in IT. Only a small percentage of us went to MIT!

</comment><comment><USER3> Very true. We need to promote a mixed and diverse culture.

</comment><comment><USER4> (2015)</comment>


College conundrum: Less out-of-state students - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30870925/

<comment><USER2> If you really want to go to an out-of-state school, move there and work for a year and take a couple of courses at a JC. After a year you'll be a resident and eligible for lower rates. Most schools will allow you to defer entrance for a year after you are accepted. If you have a couple of AP's and some JC credit, you may not even miss a year. Of course check the local residency requirements before you leap.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you notice the random embed

"Date All Within the last week Within the last 2 weeks Within the last 30 days Within the last 60 days Within the last 90 days Within the last 180 days Within the last year Within the last two years Custom Type All Articles Podcasts Slide Shows Video Channel All Asia B-Schools Europe Innovation & Design Investing Lifestyle Magazine Managing Small Biz Technology Top News Author Search Cancel close "

the 2nd to last paragraph on the 1st page. weird.</comment>


Science, Now Under Scrutiny Itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/retractions-coming-out-from-under-science-rug.html <comment><USER2> The rise of 'scientism' \- until a few years ago I considered myself a 'science type' (excuse the phrase), immersed in logic all my life.

Recently the depth of negative influence, corrupt findings, blind faith and religious-style zeal within the scientific community and pseudo scientific communities (like Reddit) has become absurd and embarrassing.

Science is a method, not a conclusion. I hope it becomes 'open', and fast.

<comment><USER3> Science has not changed, nor has bad science. There gave always been incentives to produce bad science, just like there has always been a moral incentive to produce good science.

The religious zeal I think comes from fan boys/girls not from scientists themselves.

<comment><USER4> True, there's always been bad science.

The increase in retractions can mean either that (1) there's more bad science now than there was before, or (2) we've got better at spotting bad science. Without further evidence, it's difficult to tell which one is the case. Perhaps it's a mix of both.

<comment><USER5> I'd go with (1), caused by funding pressure. If your career can't survive when you do good science, you'll do bad science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder whether a 'GitHub' for Science wouldn't help things along, just as it's helped the open source software community.

Scientist could have repos with full version control, so you could go back and look at their experiments from day one. All their data would be accessible, as well as their statistical analysis, and you could see the evolution of their written paper.

The repos could start off private, and then opened on the day of publishing, so others couldn't take credit for their work.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER7> Very little of what is actually needed to reproduce an experiment goes into academic papers. What you'd really want is a more formal, digital version of the "lab book". Experimentalists are taught, from their earliest days as an undergrad, to keep notes on what they're doing. The idea is to put everything useful in there. Got a new piece of gear with a long startup procedure? Put it in your book. Designing an experiment? Put the design in there. Ordered parts? Make a note of it. Running an experiment and finally found a way to do things that works? Write down the procedure. Got some results from your experiment? Print them out and paste them in your book. Saw something odd? Write it down. The result is a linear log that tracks a lot of stuff, both useful and useless. With experience, you learn to make use of tables of contents and margin notes, but searching through them for something dimly recollected can sometimes be time consuming. Lab books are where the gory details of how to actually do things is stored. The procedures, diagrams, and details in them are simply not conveyed in papers because there's no space for them, and many are viewed to be "common knowledge", although this kind of knowledge is probably only common to a small number of labs in the world.

The problem with these lab books is that they're often the personal property of the scientists and, as such, almost a sort of diary. They're written with yourself as the intended audience and can sometimes be impenetrable for anyone else. If you're working in a commercial lab, as opposed to research in academia, these books might be considered the property of your employer. In this situation you might try to make them more friendly to other human beings, but that often isn't a priority.

Putting things into a digital form would, in general, take a lot longer. Even with good proficiency in LaTeX, complex equations are quicker to just write on paper. Hand-drawn diagrams are also very common in lab books, and the software/hardware to draw easily in a digital form is not yet ubiquitous. Finally, digital storage occasionally dies. A lab book is a precious possession whose loss can cause months or years of difficulty. Physical hard- copy is easier to store long-term. Some people have undergraduate lab books from half a century ago sitting on their office bookshelves.

There is nothing that is technologically insurmountable to moving to a digital lab book format. Microsoft's surface tablets make digital drawing pretty painless. Cloud storage could be maintained long-term. Etc. The benefits of digital lab books could be considerable. They'd be easier to search and distribute. You could include copies in a digital appendix to an experiment (currently, most journals discourage large attachments because they don't like to pay for storage). To my knowledge, nobody has actually put everything that's needed together into a single cohesive program. You'd want a note- taking program with full LaTeX and freehand drawing support. You'd need to be able to paste in tables, graphs, and data files easily. It would need to have a long-term archiving solution and a really good interface. It would need to be as fast or faster than writing on paper for pretty much everything. It would also probably need to be open source, as scientists would probably not trust proprietary software that might make their notes difficult to access at some point in the future. Finally, the hardware to run it on would need to be ubiquitous.

<comment><USER8> >The problem with these lab books is that they're often the personal property of the scientists and, as such, almost a sort of diary

Further complicating things, individual researchers don't actually own the books. Often, an institution or the lab owns the rights to the book. This can make individuals who are otherwise keen on "open science" hesitant to place copies of this information in a publicly accessible place.

See page 4 of this manual from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) about the ownership of notebooks.

[https://www.training.nih.gov/assets/Lab_Notebook_508_%28new%...](https://www.training.nih.gov/assets/Lab_Notebook_508_%28new%29.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Everything on that page is stuff you're going to find in a grad student's lab books, which are their property. This document is basically a primer for people transitioning into paid research where the lab-books become lab property. A huge proportion of research, especially in less commercializable areas of fundamental science research, is done by students (because they're cheap). This means the kind of lab-book described in your link is probably less common that you might expect!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I think increased accountability is a good thing for the world of science, I'm concerned this will fan the anti-intellectual, anti-science rhetoric.

Science, like every human institution, is flawed. That's not a reason to reject everything about it.

<comment><USER10> It is annoying to see a retort "scientists always end up being wrong". But I don't think science should sink to the level of fake-confidence "everything going according to plan" of non-science, I think it should embrace its honesty about its mistakes.

Over time people can't help but depend on science's results, and new generations take it to heart. It's actually similar to how people can't help but depend on open source tools/platforms, as much as they hated "free-tards" and said "you get what you pay for" in the past.

<comment><USER4> Well, the whole point of science is to falsify past theories and produce better theories. So of course the majority of scientific theories will end up being wrong at some point.

So it's pointless to try to rebuke the "scientists always end up being wrong" like of argument. If anything, I think scientists should just bite the bullet. Theory proven wrong? That's proof that science works!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The internet is eating the world. People perhaps aren't realising that yet. Everything has changed.

Just a Google search can reveal plagiarism (by accident even).

A bot can find issues with made up numbers (Benford's law for starters)

It's all pretty cool stuff for science.

</comment><comment><USER12> The outstanding line from the article (quoting Mina Bissell)...

> But it is sometimes much easier not to replicate than to replicate studies

I wonder in what cases its easier to replicate studies. Probably when the study involves doing nothing...

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi In computer science, the case where the easier thing to do is to replicate something does happen sometimes.

For example if you create a natural language parser that you claim is more accurate than another, you may need to replicate the other in order to compare accuracies. Sometimes you can just take the authors' reported accuracy, but often it's not that easy (maybe they just tested on English and you're interested in performance in other languages, maybe you want a different metric, maybe you want to compare on some standard set of features, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This all seems to be 'as it should be.'Science is after all a human endeavor with all the frailties that implies. Errors and fraud are to be expected. What matters is that the process is reasonably efficient at catching such things.

And the push for open data repositories and open science to increase accountability has to be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Many of those journals charge very high prices, 4 figures per year IIRC. Perhaps they could earn some of that by verifying and vouching for the integrity of what they sell.

<comment><USER14> I think those journals charge high prices for the same reason that niche software vendors charge high prices. Namely, the product takes a goodly number of highly educated (and thus highly compensated) people to produce, and they don't have that many customers. So if the business is going to work at all, the prices have to be high. Furthermore, they _are_ taking steps to verify the integrity of what they sell. And of course, the more steps they take, the more the journals are going to cost...

<comment><USER9> I don't know about that industry, but generally prices don't depend on the sellers' costs. Prices are set to maximize profit, that is to maximize (volume * net profit). Sometimes that's a huge markup (e.g., the $5 soda at the movie theater), sometimes that works out to a loss (e.g., the 2-year-old smartphone on clearance). There are many complexities of course, such as loss-leaders, regulated markets, public goods, exploitative pricing, etc.

I've read that the journals realized that they had a captive audience, i.e., that college libraries had no choice but to subscribe in order to support their faculty, and the publishers raised prices dramatically. There was a backlash from some schools at the time.

<comment><USER15> These days, scientific publishers are bundling everything together into one package, commonly known as the "Big Deal". Institutions pay a single fee for access to hundreds or thousands of journals.

Here's a paper that explores the idea and its impacts - [http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/faculty/Wooders/APET/Pet2004/...](http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/faculty/Wooders/APET/Pet2004/Papers/Exclusion%20or%20efficient%20pricing.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Like cable TV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any chance that there will be some sort of google-books-style centralization of experimental datasets from researchers which will then be subject to scrutiny from machine learning models trained to suss out faked data, at which point we'll uncover lots of shenanigans from our scientific past?

</comment><comment><USER17> > It also includes moving the goal posts: that is, mining the data for results > first, and then writing the paper as if the experiment had been an attempt > to find just those effects. "You have exploratory findings, and you're > pitching them as 'I knew this all along,' as confirmatory," Dr. Nosek said.

Why is this a problem? If the experiment's design is not in conflict with the new findings, why complain?

<comment><USER18> Let's say I flip a million different fair coins 20 times each. Then I analyze my findings and see that coin number 54 of them was heads all 20 times. I present my results to my peers saying, "Coin #54 is defective! The chances of this happening by chance are on in a million!" But I'd expect one of them to be heads every time flipping that many coins. It just happened to be coin #54.

The problem is we're not matching up our statistical analysis to our testing when we look for findings then naively test hypotheses based on those very findings.

<comment><USER19> Would using Bayesian statistics fix that? If the prior for a coin being defective to produce only heads is more than one in a million, then 54 is probably defective. If it's less than that, then your analysis doesn't conclude it's defective anyways.

Bayes can be hacked by ommitting info, but not by things like this, I believe.

<comment><USER18> It's not a bayesian versus NHST thing, it's just about doing the right test. You can do this kind of thing easily enough in a NHST kind of way. But yeah I think doing it in a bayesian manner is much easier to interpret and explain, and so requires less training, which is a HUGE boon for the crisis at hand.

<comment><USER19> You can do the test with NHST only if you know what the researcher had in mind when experimenting. That can lead to absurd results at times, such as your example. With Bayes, as long as no lies are told, your inference doesn't depend on the researcher's private thoughts.

<comment><USER18> You only need to know how the experiment was performed, same as you do for bayes. If they present the whole dataset, nothing is changed. If they cherrypick and only show the data for the coin that happened to be all heads saying that was their whole experiment, no amount of stats will help you, bayesian or otherwise.

<comment><USER19> No, if the coins are independent, the Bayesian is not fooled even when seeing only that coin. The argument was in my post above.

The inference in Bayes only depends on the data, and the flips of other coins doesn't make a difference if independent. Frequentist testing can depend on things like stopping rules and hypothesis tested, which aren't correlated to the actual truth and therefore should have zero effect on inference.

They can cherry pick and only show some flips of that coin, but then they really need to be outright lying or you'll ask why only some flips were reported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love the article, hate the headline :( What the is wrong with these editors?

<comment><USER20> We updated the title to a less bait-ey phrase from the article, and we're open to suggestions for a better one.</comment></comment>