This post follows my latest experience with Play store.

I have been wondering for a long time what we independent developers can do to improve our position.

We certainly cannot go down the same path as large companies, which can afford lawyers and lobbying.

But it’s equally clear that we can’t every time we hit a dead end in dealing with the owner of the store where we are publishing our apps, on which we depend financially, to write posts after posts on every social platform to try to get the attention of someone to review our case.

And if you’ve never been in such a situation, it’s not because you’ve been smart, you’ve read the documentation, and you haven’t done something wrong. You simply were lucky that you didn’t do applications that are scrutinized by sloppily programmed bots, because you didn’t have the misfortune that an acquaintance of yours who was suspended was associated with you, because the person who reviewed your app had the skills to apply the rules correctly.

Every time I have a problem publishing an app because I’m being charged with a violation that isn’t there, I find out that I’m not the only one who has that specific problem at that time. Either a rule has been changed, a new rule has been added, or the programming of the bot checking a rule has been changed, and the result is that nonexistent violations are being contested.

In those moments if we were able to communicate collectively with a store representative we could have solved the problem for all of us in a single shot and with minimal effort, both for us and for them.

And that’s what I intend to do even though no one asked me to do it let alone elected me to do it.

If you have a problem involving the suspension of an app or rejection of a publication write a post on Kbin (https://kbin.social/m/androiddev) or Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/android_devs/)*. If the problem is common to multiple developers, I will email the person who handled my last case and solved it.

- What are the chances that you will be taken into consideration?
- Nearly zero.

- So why are you doing it?
- Because somebody has to do something if we’re going to get out of the vicious circle we’re in now. It is in our interest to move as a group and not individually.

- And why do you have to be the one to do it?
- If you want to do it, if you have a direct contact in Play store, if you think you can be helpful, no one is stopping you from doing it.

- Are you doing it for personal gain?
- Of course I do it for personal gain. If I’m part of a group that moves in a coordinated way, I will not need to make dozens of posts when the next problem occurs. If we can improve the app verification process for everyone, we will do it for each of us as well.

- There are cases where it’s clear that the developer did something terrible wrong, would we help them too?
- No. But even Google could consider whether it can handle these cases by not banning the developer for life, one could learn from his/her mistakes and never repeat them again.

- Won’t the stores take our initiative negatively?
- If they see our initiative in a non-antagonistic way they will see that it suits them as well. They will have a focal point with whom to communicate, handling with a single communication issues that affect many people and that they would otherwise have had to handle one by one.

- What can we offer to make them understand that we want to cooperate in good faith?
- Some of us (i am all in) can volunteer to serve as focal points when the store changes rules or bot programming, so that initially those changes are tested to apps that they have thoroughly tested in the past and know that they comply with the rules. If they see that the changes are rejecting applications that previously complied with the rules, they can contact us to see if these rejections are false positives, and if they are, they can tune the verification process and bot logic before extending them on everyone.

- I also want to be a focal point.
- Great.

- I could be a focal point but not on an ongoing basis.
- Working as a team we can divide the work to be done so that not all the burden falls on one person.

- I am not an independent developer but would like to participate.
- You are welcome to.

- I disagree in general.
- OK.

- I agree in general.
- OK, then join.

* If you prefer to participate in the Reddit sub follow the link. Otherwise, you might end up in the sub that deletes almost all posts that discuss anything Google might have done incorrectly (if Google knew how much negative publicity that sub creates for them, they would ask Reddit to suspend it :).