Phandroid
Media center app Mizuu falls victim to Google Play’s stringent ‘sexually explicit material’ policy
Developer of the popular video media center app Mizuu had a rough morning after waking up to find his app abruptly removed from the Play Store. News of the removal was posted on Mizuu’s Google+ page after finding an email from Google explaining that the reason behind the take down had to do with the app’s violation of Google’s recently updated sexually explicit policies. But how is that even possible given the app is little more than a media center app, only filling in movie covers and info taken from a users’ own media library? One word: porn.
Apparently, Mizuu pulls images and descriptions from themoviedb.org, an online repository of movie information which just so happens to include — you guessed it — porn. That means someone with a vast wealth of adult movies would cause Mizuu to essentially download sexually explicit images, a possible violation of Google Play’s terms of service. Mizuu already knew this, which is why they included the option to disable adult content which is already blocked by default.
Mizuu made a point about their app being like a web browser which can be used to view sexually explicit material. Sounds to us like a Google algorithm basically scanned apps in the Play Store for anything describing “adult content” in their code, then removing the app and firing off one of their rejection emails. We’re not saying Google was in the right, but it doesn’t help that the developer can’t actually get in touch with an actual human to get additional feedback/clarity and find out exactly what they could do to save the app.
Without any sort of appeals process, Mizuu says they’ll simply attempt to re-upload another version with a different package name to the Play Store, but we expect it wont be long before Google once again comes in with the ban hammer. Of course, everyone who already purchase the app gets left high and dry (probably the real losers in this story).
If nothing else, this highlights an ever growing problem in Google’s developer relations. It’s silly that we can all suggest a route Mizuu can take without ever knowing if it will fly with Google. We wish Mizuu best of luck, and hope everything works out.
[Mizuu]
OnePlus One Smash the Past winners receving phones without SIM tools, chargers
It looks like OnePlus was so fast to ship Smash the Past winners their phones that they didn’t have time to get the rest of the package together. An anonymous tipster shared with us an email explaining that his OnePlus One won’t come with the SIM ejection tool, as well as a USB cable or charging adapter.
They’re not being stingy for the sake of it, thankfully. Here’s their official explanation to one of the winners:
Those boxes were not ready when we had to ship the devices and as we didn’t want to make you wait, we apologize for any inconvenience caused.
The caveat here is that the device uses standard microUSB, so you should be able to charge it with any available USB cable and/or power adapter that you have. And the SIM ejection tool is typically just a very thin piece of metal that is used to pop the SIM tray out, so you can find a bobby pin to take care of that if you need to.
It’s annoying that these folks have to deal with this, but it shouldn’t be long until it’s all cleared up. OnePlus says the materials should be ready for shipping by the end of the month, so you can either put together your own home remedy for getting up and running with your device or wait to receive said package from OnePlus themselves. We imagine this won’t be an issue whenever the full launch begins later this month / early next month.
[Thanks anon!]
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