Syncthing Android App Discontinued

While I don't know about this developer's specific issues, I can comment on my own issues with Google Play as an Android developer. Google Play continues to become more and more stringent with app permissions and the approval of these permissions is very vague. With my own app, from one minor release the next, one day I'll receive approval for my app's permissions and the next week I will not even though only minor changes to the app have been made. When I reach out to Google Play support, the answers are always extremely vague, canned and repetitive and I never know if an update to my app will get approval or not. It's a horrible way to develop anything.

Sounds just like Apple’s stores!

The most annoying requirement is their Play Store delete account url. We have an API where we can delete the user’s account. But no, Google wanted a stupid url.

Is that so that users who no longer have/want to use the app can still delete their account?

How do users use the API?

Is it really that hard to set up a small proxy tool that calls your fancy api when it receives those requests? As an outsider, it does seem quite reasonable to me - Google couldn't possibly support all APIs there may possibly exist for every app there is.

how are you going to authenticate the user? now you need to solve that if you didn't have a web login before.

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Guess @dang decided to rate limit my account again so I can't post replies :-)

> Some token that every account gets generated? It's really not that much to ask honestly.

How is the user going to know this token when they visit the website on their laptop? Keep in mind that the Google requirement is that you link to this delete page from the play store, where the user is not authenticated with your app. You can't just generate an URL containing this token.

Some token that every account gets generated? It's really not that much to ask honestly.

> Guess @dang decided to rate limit my account again so I can't post replies :-)

There are automatic rate limits that apply to everyone. IME you can still click on the comment's timestamp to be able to reply.

If you post something the moderators don't like, your account can be manually rate limited to a max of 5 comments per X (24?) hours.

Source? What does this look like?

After you've written your comment and when you click reply you get the message:

> You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.

Yes we have a delete account option in our settings screen. But Google asking for url webpage for this scenario is just unnecessary.

Apple accepted it with no questions.

We can’t tell for sure since this url will be added to the Play Store. Problem is how to authenticate users.

That sounds like the automatic limit. Maybe there's a manual one as well with the same message though.

Yes, we've rate limited your account because it posts comments that obviously break the site guidelines, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41880814.

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended instead? I don't want to ban you but it's not cool when people keep posting like that.

Btw, if you (or anyone) don't want to be rate limited on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Yeah now it's just like developing for Apple. Have been suffering from Apple's vague and canned responses for years.

The triggering of the limit is automatic, but being subjected to the limit is something the moderators can turn on per account.

If I make a new account it'll be free of the limit until dang gets upset again.

It would be a good first step for you stop being sneaky about this. Very hard to respect you as a moderator when you employ underhanded tactics like sneakily rate limiting accounts and trying to gaslight people into thinking this is an universal limit. I suppose it's a (small) step up from the shadowbanning you used to.

Perhaps change the message to something like: "Your account has been rate limited. For more information email [...]"

And honestly, having people beg via email is just gross power tripping behavior.

It's just an attempt to manage overwhelming case load with limited resources. It's on my list to build a system that gives better feedback.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that it won't just make things worse, since not everyone is going to respond as well as you might to a message like "Your account has been rate limited."

Amplifying on dang's comment: from my own experience moderating, many people respond in a strongly negative fashion to moderation, up to and including prolonged attacks on the site itself and threats to moderators. Effective moderation on large sites is a careful balance between transparency and pragmatism, to the extent that even well-intentioned initiatives such as the Santa Clara Principles (<https://santaclaraprinciples.org/>) may not be practical.

Something I note having been caught up on both sides of this issue: as moderator and moderated.

HN itself is not one of the super-sites, but it is amongst the better discussion platforms on the internet here and now (boys), and has been for far longer than virtually any other instance I can think of (dating to 2007). Metafilter would be the principle other exemplar.

Usenet, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Google+, Reddit, Ello, Diaspora*, Imzy, FB, Birdsite, and others, would be amongst the failures IMO. Not all are now defunct (though about half that list are), none remain usable.