Because you signed an agreement that lets them do that.
Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
Submitted 10 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-silently-removes-purchases-from-play-store-accounts/
Comments
hperrin@lemmy.world 10 months ago
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Also, don’t use Google. Wherever possible.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If you have an Android, they are increasingly making it impossible to not use them. They continue to punish users that choose to unlock the bootloader or root, and Google Play Services are an inescapable prerequisite to many apps, regardless of side loading ability.
firecat@kbin.social 10 months ago
Don’t buy games on Steam or Valve Corporation, they make you sign the User Agreement that legally waves your rights and ownership of games.
Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social 10 months ago
Read by almost no one. It is interesting because in many countries contracts are considered invalid if one of the parties is not properly informed and still accepts, affirmative consent is legally crucial. Everyone knows that EULAs systematically violate it, for some reason no one cares.
CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Whenever I see a checkbox or something that just says “Check here to confirm you accept our privacy policy” I think it’s funny because all I am legally agreeing to are the words actually in front of me. Sure, I agree with the standalone words “our privacy policy”. I’m not sure what that does for you, but i guess “our privacy policy” is an acceptable string of words.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Imagine how hard it would be to buy stuff or use free services if you actually had to read and understand the contracts every time.
Ok, I’ll quickly just check on Google maps what’s the capital of Mongolia. Oh, I need to read all that before seeing the map? Well, maybe later. Don’t really have the time for that right now.
If that’s what life was like, laziness would win nearly every time and companies would have hardly any users or customers. Eventually some companies would probably make super short contracts in order to lower the threshold.
Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Additionally, we can try to change the laws so we do actually own a copy.
Auli@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
But we never owned a copy of any software or movie ever. We always had a license to watch or use the copy we purchased.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
This is rage inducing.
Imagine if your car dealer was allowed to confiscate your car on a dubious claim such as “it doesn’t meet the latest emissions standards,” but not even telling you that.
Google needs to be fined twice the value of the apps that it stole from it’s paying customers.
MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com 10 months ago
“Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them”
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
This is so stupid. Why would a company put this much effort to lock down the seat controls, as if they didn’t already exist without limits on every other car? Not even with a toggle? These companies are really trying to destroy the “cars = freedom” association.
KingJalopy@lemm.ee 10 months ago
So revolutionary
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 10 months ago
One of the most important parts of purchasing a car is the title being signed over and that transfer being registered with the state. You never own the title to an app.
Klear@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
You don’t transfer title and register a hammer when you buy it. Are you saying you fan’t own one?
Coach@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Because they have more money than you and, according to the US legal system, that’s all that matters.
FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s purchasing ≠ owning, then piracy ≠ stealing
woodgen@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Piracy is never stealing, since you are not removing anything from anyone. This does not include actual piracy, the one with ships and rum.
ripcord@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t believe piracy is treated as stealing from a legal sense, already.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
That’s true. If I steal 20 copies of some avengers movie from Walmart and give them away on the street, I’ll pay a couple thousand dollars in fines, tops. If I’m caught seeding an avengers movie to one person downloading from me in Serbia, I’ll be fined more money than most people make in their entire lives
Dkarma@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ok but this isn’t purchasing outright it is basically leasing. It says so in the tos. The issue here is ppl don’t read tos or they don’t care and pay anyway. Ppl like that have zero right to complain.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Amazing how you can talk so coherently with that corporate dick taking up so much space in your mouth.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
How dare the average person not have the time or attention span to read a 28 page document in legalese that explains what exactly they’re doing
It’s not like purposefully dense and overlong TOS is a known strategy to hide bullshit that later gets thrown out in court or anything
d3lta19@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
The button to install a paid app literally says BUY. If that doesn’t mean purchase I don’t what else it could mean.
experbia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
OK but piracy isn’t stealing it is basically a harmless free copy. The issue here is corporations want to have their cake and eat it too, but to prohibit us all from either having or eating any cake ever. Corpos like that have zero right to my consideration or care.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Yeah, okay, except the iTunes and Facebook TOSes are longer than King Lear. Eventually a judge nullified a TOS on the basis that no-one ever reads those anyway.
Thanks to odious TOSes, the average American commirs three felonies a day, violations of the CFAA for which some whistle-blowers and journalists are serving sentences similar to [assassin] Scott Roeder (for the murder of Dr. George Tiller). The rest of us are not serving such sentences but for one officer or official who wants us to disappear.
In the meantime journalists continue to get charged with such violations, usually when their investigating something embarrassing to current administrations. The EFF has repeatedly raised a stink about this, but hasn’t yet been able to change the law.
psud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
TOS documents are designed not to be read.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 10 months ago
I recall a while back someone did a study that there are not enough hours in the day for an average person to actually read all the TOS documents they’re expected to agree to. The idea that people can or should be responsible for knowing what’s in a TOS is a legal fiction.
NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Some people don’t get how you can separate understanding the logic of something and not supporting it at the same time.
Don’t worry, that is normal. Im getting laughed at left and right for having my own root-server with all my services running on it, all FOSS.
Most of them were born with google already existing, it is part of nature. They haven’t seen a giant go down yet.
TwoGems@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Nice try, Google
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Hey look it’s the libertarian I was talking about in my other comment
cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world 10 months ago
!= is better
dukk@programming.dev 10 months ago
Outside of programming circles I’ve been surprised how little people now what != means.
Ad4mWayn3@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Partially agree, because if purchasing == owning (which it should), then piracy is still != stealing
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
You mean buying isn’t owning?
Well then…Piracy isn’t st…I mean Piracy is wrong an immoral!
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I remember my brother once telling me this:
How is it stealing if it’s still there?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Piracy is always justified. I don’t do it because I’m afraid of consequences and my fear of fucking up is greater than my desire to watch TV, but if you’re confident in your abilities, not only is it justified, it’s imperative. 50 cents out of every dollar you spend on media goes directly into some politician’s pocket. Another 40 goes to a new boat for a semi-sentient suit and tie. 9 goes to a company that provides the service of restricting access to that media. One cent is split between all the people who worked on it.
Ad4mWayn3@lemmy.world 10 months ago
's alright sweetheart, you can say it, there’s no longer a megacorporation to shadow ban or lecture you
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Honestly, as somebody who really loved the early era of Android gaming, I’m really disappointed how ephemeral it all was between the Play Store delistings and the absolutely atrocious approach to backwards compatibility in the Android OS.
aluminium@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yep I found out myself pretty quickly. With a simple App which was maybe 10K lines of code I started targeting Android 10 and so far every new major version caused some issue with the code as Google constantly messes around with files, permissions, …
I can’t imagine what a task it is to maintain a game.
atocci@kbin.social 10 months ago
Seriously, I can't run a 32 bit game on a 64 bit processor? How is that even a problem on newer phones?
yamanii@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yep, I never bought a game again after my CAVE shmups all stopped working when I switched phones, there’s also no way to try and make it work on your phone unlike any other operating system on PC since it’s so locked down, completely dependent on devs to care.
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 10 months ago
At least we have forums archiving the games themselves.
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Not only that. If you buy an app, you are at the mercy of it’s creator. If they decide they want to fill it with ads and tracking, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t rollback updates, you can’t install an older version from the play store. If they decide to remove it from the store, you won’t be able to install it any more.
psud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I had one of the flight tracker apps, used it to identify planes passing my work lunch room’s window, and paid $5 for it to get it ad free. Then it went to subscription and made it’s free tier time limited instead of ad supported, so now I don’t use it. I can’t use an old version as it doesn’t work on newer versions of Android
Piwix@lemm.ee 10 months ago
On that note, I bought a GIF viewer app’s full version via in-app purchase and about a year later, they updated the app to have ads again and my “full version no ads” app got ads again and now i had to buy a subscription per month to be “ad free” needless to say I didn’t lol
itsnotits@lemmy.world 10 months ago
mercy of its* creator
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The best thing is when someone makes legitimately the best application for its purpose (arguably the only good application for it), so you convince your friends to use it because it’s so useful, and then they cram it full of ads and bloat and make it borderline unusable, but your friends won’t switch to a different app (or even leave the app altogether) because it’s the only way they know how to do the thing
I’m talking about the 5e Companion app on Android. Anyone know any good alternatives? It used to be so good, but then they started adding Unearthed Arcana garbage to it, which almost entirely sucks ass, and when UA gets officially added, they have to add the official version separately because some people have already used the UA version to make characters. I want so badly to switch away from it, but I can’t find any good free alternatives that have all of the content from 5e.
I wish 5e.tools had a character sheet builder
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I got into technology because I loved it. Now, ever bit of news I get I hate it a little bit more. What happened with improving things, sharing information and making the world better?
FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Actually there’s websites with archives of old apk files for apps.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
There are usually archives of versions for most apks for android. App updated to be shittier? Uninstall and install an older version of it from IA.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yup, looking at you, Vocabulary.com
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
A “purchase” or “buy” option, especially when you get an invoice, should ALWAYS mean ownership of the product.
A “borrow” or “rent” option is one that you expect to have to return the product.
Google can’t have it both ways. They either sold people software or they rented it out. Since it was never advertised or marketed as the Google Play Rental Library, they should be forced to give people the products they paid for.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Yup, I’ve said it a million times, it needs to be made flatly illegal to use language that implies ownership if the company has any method of revoking your ownership of that product in the future. These threads always get the same libertarians that show up in discussions about non-functional slack fill saying “it’s not illegal, so what’s the problem?” The problem is that it isn’t illegal. Imagine if Toyota could come grab your car from your driveway, because even though you paid it off, subclause 74 of section G(2) says that the company retains the right to repossess property made by them at any time for any reason. You didn’t read a 200 page contract at the dealership when you bought the car, you just trusted that they wouldn’t fuck you. Toyota would get their ass reamed in court if they tried that, so why are Google and Microsoft and Sony and Steam allowed to do it?
iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Very shortsighted article calling repeatedly the GDPR a “crazy” law.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Because our government representatives are idiots and don’t care about us.
TheAlbacor@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Good to see more people are understanding how anti-consumer our digital distribution laws are. Sucks they had to find out this way, but people have been warning of this for years.
donescobar@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They have to promote piracy somehow
YeetPics@mander.xyz 10 months ago
So Google has no “app store” it’s a “rental lot” filled with a ton of malicious bullshit anyway.
Is there an easy and effective way out of their evil environment?
kworpy@lemm.ee 10 months ago
And these companies think piracy is unjustified. No, it’s just holding out an umbrella in the rain.
NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
It’s their accounts, you just have access to them. They can close the whole thing tomorrow.
I don’t even want to know what will happen when the valve guy retires. A publicly owned company that could just shut down tomorrow. Many gaming publishers are aware, having their own launchers. Are you?
I’m telling you, root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can’t do your things with that, it ain’t worth doing anyway.
Blackmist@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And on another note, why is it not backwards compatible with older apps?
I’ve got games and a bathroom speaker I can’t access because I got a new phone. Are we just expecting devs to sit there updating their apps forever to meet new stupid requirements?
Fuck the whole Android ecosystem. It’s completely broken from top to bottom.
Skkorm@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Digital purchases are not you buying the product. It’s you buying limited and reversible access to the license to download the file. When you agree to the TOS, you agree to this arrangement.
If you want to actually own something, you should be buying a physical copy of it.
topperharlie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
google claimed that they would start charging money for the gmail with your domain thing. when that happened I tried moving my account to a normal @gmail.com, but was not possible. So I created a new one and after manually copying all emails, files etc I contacted them to transfer my purchased apps.
Apparently it was impossible.
haven’t buy anything since then
Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They all do this. I’ve had games or dlc vanish off my PlayStation account. When I called to complain, since they lost the records of my purchases, they won’t return them. I lost the receipts so long ago. I still have save files that require the DLCs
aluminium@lemmy.world 10 months ago
As a hobbist App developer I can tell its probably at least to some extent due to the ongoing “cost” to keep the Apps hosted and working.
Every year when a new Android beta comes out you have to go through your App, check if everything still works only to then discover something broke and now you gotta figure out how to fix it.
With a small App I hosted starting at Android 10 every major update so far caused me some trouble. Now with Android 14 this is the last version I’ll support for the simple fact that I don’t have the time to keep up with it.
And mind you this was a rather simple small App, I can’t imagine what a headache it is to maintain a game.
CollisionResistance@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy
darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
This is why I stick to open source software.
BustinJiber@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s because we are buying access to product not the product itself. Many websites are doing that, I lost a few purchased albums on Bandcamp for whatever reason they see fit. With one band it was done so bad that I still see their albums in my wishlist even though they just one day went and deleted their whole band account apparently without stating reason or answering email.
BigTrout75@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Because it’s in the EULA?
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Harebrained Schemes’ critically acclaimed Shadowrun games disappeared from the Play store years ago – I played them back in the day on my Shield K1. The apps supported modding, and changes to the Google Play TOS meant they would require significant updates to make them compliant with new policies.
Harebrained worked on it halfheartedly for a year or two, but eventually decided not to bother updating them, so they were gone forever.
rivermonster@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Because when your legislators write laws (read, have them handed to them by the party with a direct interest) they do it for campaign donations because everything is money. Capitalism’s end stage is corporatocracy and oligarchy. Surprise, we’re there! Legislation in a healthy democracy/republic is written for the benefit of the citizens, but we stopped being a democratic republic long ago. In capitalism, legislation is written to maximize profit at all expense, including the health, welfare, and best interests of the citizens.
This isn’t new, study the history of the East India Trading Company. The difference is lack a monarch to dissolve the company (and it’s not just one company anymore). The founders remembered the lesson of East India Trading Company and corporate charters in the US used to be temporary, and you had to show a benefit to the citizens. It’s one reason conservatives, republicans, and capitalists don’t want strong education and history lessons. Corporations in the past were NOT people, and they better benefit society or they could swiftly have their charter revoked and dissolved.
This is a repeat, but even more successful than in the past. But when your populous has no education it seems brand new!
Gerula@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Because you rented it and you we’re happy!
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Because god is dead and the devil thinks its funny.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Usually distribution rights or breach of contract
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They’re not purchases, they’re leases.
LWD@lemm.ee 10 months ago
You’re correct, of course, but I think if a company uses the term “purchase” or “buy” up front and center, that it should be considered one.
FWIW, before posting this, I looked around on the Google Play Store and they are suspiciously hesitant to actually use those words. Their top charts are “paid,” going to a “Paid” app just shows the price, etc. But despite showing a link to their terms of service, they never state that it is a lease.
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
They’re not really leases either. Leases last for a defined period of time, like “one year,” or they renew at regular intervals, like “monthly.” “Pay up front and we’ll let you keep this license for either forever or until we decide to revoke it without notifying you” isn’t the same thing.
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Apple uses the word “Get” for free things and simply displays the price on the button of paid apps. No mention of the nature of the transaction. That’s in the Germa of agreement you “read” and agreed to.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Same thing that Sony did with movies on the PS. “You’re buying a revocable licence”
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
All they will do is call it purshaces or some other made up bs
NickwithaC@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And this is why you don’t see apps selling for a price but rather being used to syphon users into subscriptions.
yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Well, they’re “purchases” of a license that can be revoked at any time for any reason.
snaggen@programming.dev 10 months ago
Are they really? Didn’t you press a button that said “Buy”? Just because they want things to be something else, doesn’t mean that the meaning of the words changed.
MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They can argue that you “bought” the lease.
Patch@feddit.uk 10 months ago
I’ve just had a look on the Play Store, and they notably don’t use the word “buy” anywhere that I can see. The button to “buy” the app is just a button with the price on it, and clicking through that it uses the language of “install”.
Can’t help but think that that’s deliberate.
Exec@pawb.social 10 months ago
On some storefronts the relevant button is labelled “Get”
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
It’s also a private company and they can do whatever they want on their platform and their property.
It’s like renting space in an apartment … don’t be surprised if the landlord decides to change the agreements and do things you don’t like. You’re renting things, you don’t own anything.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
You can’t arbitrarily change agreements for renting without consent or lease renewal. At least not in civilized countries.
_number8_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
why would you defend this
grue@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Your argument is cargo-cult libertarian bullshit. There are lots of things private entities can’t do on “their property!” Murdering visitors, for example. Fraudulently claiming a sale isn’t really a sale is right up there with that in terms of how clear-cut the rule is.
What we have here is squarely a failure of the FTC to do its goddamn job. Nothing more, nothing less.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Does that single landlord control every apartment in the country? That is Google’s level of monopoly.