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Received — 2023年4月26日 ⏭ ガジェット系

Google Play Has Created a No-Win Situation For the Creators of Icon Packs

✇Slashdot
著者: BeauHD
2023年4月26日 09:45
Jules Wang from Android Police reports on the cases of two icon pack artists who had their products taken down from the Play Store for supposedly violating the platform's Repetitive Content policy. Despite both creators' products being reinstated, they revealed that Google's opaque application of its rules has caused frustration and hopelessness among developers. From the report: All this heartache stems from Google Play's Repetitive Content policy. While on its face a well-meaning effort to reduce spammy apps and keep quality up, there's a core problem with compliance when creators find themselves forced to use apps to distribute content: "If these apps are each small in content volume, developers should consider creating a single app that aggregates all the content." If you've browsed on the Play Store, you'll immediately know this guidance isn't universally followed: many artists like JustNewDesigns will have multiple designs in their portfolio and each of those designs will come in multiple colorways or shapeways -- whether they're changing out an accent in a line design or are implementing some sort of adaptive element. Not only are there so many apps, but they also look so much alike -- artists, many of whom might not consider coding their strong suit, tend to use open-source templates to create the actual app. You'll likely see them credited to Sarsa Murmu, who runs a GitHub project called CandyBar, or Jahir Fiquitiva, the maintainer of the Blueprint repository. These resources take care of the "packaging" for the assets. They include integration compatibility with various popular launchers, a license scheme to prevent those who sideloaded the app for free from having the icons applied, and all sorts of other functionality. In addition to the icon assets, the apps may also house wallpapers and links to other apps. [...] What is Google's role and what should it be? Wang writes: Artists would have much to gain from a new or revised API. Adding and adapting new icon designs to existing products would be much easier. New designs may be able to take advantage of changes to the Adaptive Icons API as Google lays them out. There would be unease as to how the business model could shift -- should publishers charge by the app, through in-app purchases, or both? But as it stands, the biggest benefit with such a change is that it would presumably get Play's "RoboCops" off their back. Of course, we can't be sure of that with how Google's enforcement apparatus operates, but the notion of unfairness lends credibility to those supporting the status quo unless the company is willing to come to the bargaining table. At the end of the day, Google is certainly within its right to build regulations around apps to respond to emergent scammers and distressing content. Automation is meant to render manageable the sheer volume of content the Play platform sees published on a daily basis. But so long as icon artists sit under threat from a rulebook that can be arbitrarily thrown at them at any time, if nothing changes, we may be on a road leading to the degradation of a core Android tenet that even the most casual tech consumer associates with the platform -- user customizability.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Received — 2023年4月25日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月24日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月23日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月22日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月21日 ⏭ ガジェット系

Jack Dorsey's Bluesky App Is Now On Android

✇Slashdot
著者: BeauHD
2023年4月21日 10:10
Bluesky, the Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has now rolled out to Android users. TechCrunch reports: The app, which promises a future of decentralized social networking and choose-your-own algorithms, initially launched to iOS users in late February and remains in a closed beta. The exclusivity is driving demand for the newer social network to some extent, but so is having Dorsey's name attached. Bluesky aims to give users algorithmic choice, letting them eventually choose from a marketplace of algorithms that let them control what they see on their own feed, instead of having it controlled by some central authority. At launch, however, Bluesky remains a pared-down version of Twitter without many of the features that make the social network what it is today, including basic tools for tracking likes or bookmarks, editing tweets, quote-tweeting, DM's, using hashtags and more. It's also building in decentralization with its own protocol -- the AT Protocol -- instead of contributing to the existing work around ActivityPub, the protocol powering the open source Twitter alternative Mastodon and a range of other decentralized apps in the wider "Fediverse" -- the name for these interconnected servers running open software used for web publishing. That puts Bluesky on the outside of where a lot of the current activity is taking place around decentralized social networking. You can download Bluesky on the Google Play Store here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

マルウェア Goldoson 感染アプリ、Google Play で 63 本見つかる

✇スラド
著者: nagazou
2023年4月21日 07:15
headless 曰く、

McAfee の Mobile Research Team がマルウェア Goldoson に感染したアプリを Google Play で 63 本発見したそうだ (McAfee Blog の記事、 HackRead の記事)。

同チームが Goldoson と名付けたマルウェアはソフトウェアライブラリの形で提供されており、インストール済みアプリの一覧や Wi-Fi・Bluetooth デバイスの接続履歴などを収集するほか、広告クリック詐欺の機能も備えるという。感染アプリは主に韓国のユーザーを対象にしたもので、Google Play で総計 1 億回以上ダウンロードされているほか、その他の韓国向けアプリストアでも提供されていたとのこと。

主に韓国向けということであまり見たことのないアプリが多いと思われるが、過去に PC 版のマルウェア感染でスラドでも話題になった GOM Player が含まれている。Google Play では感染アプリ 63 本のうち 36 本が削除された一方、27 本は非感染バージョンにアップデートして引き続き提供されているとのことだ。

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関連ストーリー：
Google、マルウェアがGoogle Play外のアプリで見つかったことを理由にアプリの公開を停止 2023年03月23日
Google Play、VPN サービスを使用したアプリ内広告のブロックを禁止へ 2022年09月03日
Google Playにある古参アプリ、マルウェアと誤認される。マルウェア化したアプリと同名 2021年02月12日
Epic Games、人気ゲーム「Fortnite」をついにGoogle Playで配信 2020年04月25日
「GOM Player」のアップデート機能を利用して感染するマルウェアが確認される 2014年01月23日

Received — 2023年4月20日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月19日 ⏭ ガジェット系
Received — 2023年4月18日 ⏭ ガジェット系
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