The latest app to record an illogical ban on the Google Play Store is Element, an open-source end-to-end encrypted messaging client for the Federal Matrix chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban that Element said “is due to offensive content somewhere on Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a federal chat protocol Element does not control the content on Matrix, it’s a bit like banning a web browser from displaying web content. Element says he is working with Google to ‘explain how Element is working and to resolve the situation’.
Google is blocking programs that display hateful content, but Element says it should not be part of the crackdown. “We also explained that the Matrix servers we use do as Element (including the standard Matrix.org homeowner, which we manage on behalf of The Matrix.org Foundation), has strict terms of use that we actively apply, “Element said. We abhor abuse, and Element is not an app that caters to offensive content. “
Element says he has a full-time team dedicated to dealing with abuse reports
Element (formerly called Riot.im) is often cited as one of the best Matrix clients. It looks a lot like – and is actually interoperable with – Slack and Discord. Element says it is used by “the French, German, British and American governments, numerous universities, thousands of businesses and millions of people around the world.” The app recently saw an influx of new users following WhatsApp’s announcement about sharing Facebook data, so perhaps it has caused deeper investigation from Google. At press time, many other Matrix apps – which by definition show the same content as Element – are still active in the Play Store.
Google cuts 30 percent of all Play Store transactions, which are supposed to pay the cost of the store, but the company does not hire people to review apps primarily as Apple does, but rather to have the bots dealt with. . Apple recently reduced its tax on the App Store from 30 percent to 15 percent, so Apple is paying developers less than Google, while also providing better human support.
Element’s latest update about the situation in this writing said it waited more than eight hours for an email response. Element says it was not notified of the removal, which has now reached the 24-hour mark.
The interpretation of Google’s rules of the bots often makes no sense, and as a result, Google regularly bans random small applications from the Play Store because it may display content from the Internet. We’ve seen Reddit apps, podcasts, and other third-party web content apps all ban a lottery on Google Play, but only because they can be made to display third-party content. The same goes for Google Search, Chrome, Gmail, all of Google’s chat apps, YouTube, Google Drive, and Google Podcasts, but those apps are never banned. Earlier this week, Google banned a video app because it supports the default title file extension “.ass” in its description.
The one benefit of the Play Store is that you do not have to use it as Android supports side loading. Element is also available on F-Droid, a full open source Android app, though the version offered here is a month out of date. A more current version is on APKmirror, the Android hacking community’s largest app store.
These bans are almost ways of fixing temporary bugs after a few hours or days, but they provide little consolation to app developers who may suddenly have their businesses snatched under them due to a bug bug. Element says: “we can only apologize for the disruption caused by the app disappearing like that.”