[HN Gopher] New "Report a Problem" link on product pages
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New "Report a Problem" link on product pages
Author : keleftheriou
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-10-06 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| some_random wrote:
| It's absolutely unacceptable that it took this long.
| akersten wrote:
| Weird. I thought all the apps were already reviewed and approved
| by a specialized and trained committee before being blessed with
| a space in the App Store. What could we possibly need this button
| for?
| endisneigh wrote:
| This is a strange comment. Do you think people are infallible?
| lol.
| bagels wrote:
| I think the charitable take is that the comment is in jest.
| [deleted]
| actusual wrote:
| The comparison to HN is wrong. Moderators would first have to
| read the comments and let them through.
| endisneigh wrote:
| My point is that even if moderators did read the comments
| and let them through, that wouldn't obviate the need, since
| moderators aren't perfect.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Part of Apple's argument in the Epic case was that their
| screening process mitigated the need for things like this.
|
| This is essentially an admission that their review process
| has problems.
| etchalon wrote:
| Apple admitted that? They've never claimed it's perfect.
| Just that it's better than not having it.
| Closi wrote:
| Eh, it's pretty easy to hide things behind a feature flag
| during the review process.
| matsemann wrote:
| Huh, what's the value in the review process then..?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| To limit competition.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| I think their point is that the App Store review process is
| random and arbitrary.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Which is not to say that "Report a Scam or Fraud" is a bad
| policy.
|
| App Store review can be random, AND this can be a good
| policy. (Well, good for consumers. I could see it causing
| developers some issues if competitors weaponize it.)
| mcny wrote:
| I, for one, like the f-droid model or you could say any sane
| package manager model.
|
| When I download a package from f-droid repository, I know the
| folks at f-droid have the source code of the bits I
| downloaded. Same thing with Debian and Fedora. Why can't
| Apple do the same thing? Require developers to submit
| machine-readable source code along with build instructions.
| Build them directly on Apple servers. Sign them with Apple's
| certificates.
|
| I am not an Apple developer. As a consumer, I would welcome
| such a change.
|
| Now, it is true that you could have a web view that fetches
| application chrome/content from a web server but I would
| argue Apple should disallow such apps anyway.
| etchalon wrote:
| While that might be a great idea, Apple is a competitor of
| many of the companies in the App Store. I'm not sure how
| they'd feel about their largest competitor having access to
| their absolutely-valuable-and-secret source code.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Yeah, they did say that these processes were part of the value
| that developers _gladly_ pay 30% + $100 for...
| martimarkov wrote:
| They also don't force developers to pay $99 or 30%
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Will definitely be used to delete competitors.
| rvz wrote:
| more like 'abused' rather than 'used'.
| echelon wrote:
| Why not just allow web installs without the app store?
|
| You can report frauds against an app's signature, and centralized
| command and control can disable apps that attempt to harm users.
| (With opt-out if you care.)
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > You can report frauds against an app's signature, and
| centralized command and control can disable apps that attempt
| to harm users. (With opt-out if you care.)
|
| The only new thing here is that you can opt-out.
|
| Fraud/Scam is a real issue, and controlling your device is a
| real issue. But they're two issues.
| keleftheriou wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm the developer of FlickType and have been
| advocating for this change for months now, after being severely
| affected by scam competitors on the App Store. I have also filed
| a lawsuit against Apple, partly because of this.
|
| This is a welcome change, but what's most important is what Apple
| actually does with the reports - which I'm definitely going to be
| keeping a close eye on.
|
| Of note, this "New" Report-a-Problem button is _not_ actually
| new: it used to be there but Apple decided to _remove_ it years
| ago, while App Store scams were - and still are - running
| rampant: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/06/with-return-of-report-
| a-pr...
| bberenberg wrote:
| I am interested in what they will do around false reports. I
| hear about negative review attacks from competitors on Amazon
| listings, so it will be interesting to see how this is
| weaponized and how Apple responds.
| mountainb wrote:
| It works as sabotage on Amazon listings because Amazon uses
| reviews with certain keywords as lead indicators for product
| contamination or other issues. So if you want to sabotage a
| competitor's vitamin pill the day before Prime Day, you have
| an entire building full of people leave variations of "taking
| this made me feel nauseous" or "this gave me a headache" and
| "weird chemical odor" after purchasing the product. Either
| the automated systems will flag it or complaints will flag it
| for review.
|
| Software can't actually poison people in a physical sense, so
| generally the software marketplaces care less about signals
| from reviews like those.
| lowercased wrote:
| Why are those reviews included at all if they weren't
| "verified purchases"? I guess there's _some_ utility in it
| - you already own product X and want to let people know
| about something (positive or negative) but... this blatant
| sabotage from obvious non-customers /users is crazy.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Now App Store product pages on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS
| Monterey display a "Report a Problem" link, so users can more
| easily report concerns with content they've purchased or
| downloaded.
|
| It appears that reports are going to be attributed to actual
| accounts, which should enable Apple to identify abusers more
| easily.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| So if are fraudulent ripoff of your app gets uploaded by
| some one else, in order for you to report it, you have to
| purchase the fraudulent ripoff app?
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > It appears that reports are going to be attributed to
| actual accounts, which should enable Apple to identify
| abusers more easily.
|
| I don't feel X == Y in this case. Account creation is not a
| high enough bar to block abusers IMHO. Amazon reviews
| require accounts too, but that obviously doesn't stop the
| negative review attacks which GP mentioned.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm sure like most models, the weight of your submission
| will largely be determined by multiple factors, such as
| the age of the account, how much money you've spent,
| whether you've spent money on the app being reported, how
| many devices are connected to the account and for how
| long, etc. Not all complaints are created equal and it
| allows them to attribute a "trust factor" across several
| metrics.
| jrockway wrote:
| For a few thousand bucks and the right cause, I'll
| happily sell my vetted AppleID for this. I don't have
| anything important in there -- a ton of apps that I never
| use that I can't remove from my account, and years of
| history. It is of zero value to me, but apparently
| because of these checks, could be worth a lot of money to
| someone else.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I would assume that attacks similar to these could be
| checked against device ownership - for example if a user
| has been the first registered owner of an apple device,
| their reports may be deemed more trustworthy. If they see
| a device being reused to submit similar reports, that
| could be a signal that reports are fake.
| DelightOne wrote:
| Maybe correlate with regular spending.
| r00fus wrote:
| Quite easy/cheap to pass that bar - have your 100-1000
| sockpuppets spend a few $$ on a subscription (which may
| or may not be money coming back to you in some fashion),
| then buy competitor apps and report them as scams.
|
| Possibly negated with some form of (even Apple-internal)
| web-of-trust measurement of account validity.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like App Store accounts require a credit card
| number, and they do an authorization for a few cents to
| check if it's real. At least they did years ago when I
| tried to set up a relative's iOS device with a fake
| credit card number.
| eigen wrote:
| you can use an Apple App Store account without credit
| card or other payment info.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder if that changed or if they were not
| up front about it before.
| markrote wrote:
| This article gives more detail on the excellent work OP
| @keleftheriou has been doing to track down scam/fraud apps in
| the App Store.
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...
| keleftheriou wrote:
| Thank you, I really appreciate that.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| In other words, Apple has been ignoring blatant fraud like
| subscription fraud for years and something has now forced their
| hand.
|
| I wonder what it was. Maybe someone realized that Apple should be
| considered complicit if they pocket 30% of the proceeds of the
| crime and continue to enable it?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| It has always been difficult to do this.
|
| There's a particularly nasty type of scam that is the "Gazillion
| bucks a month subscription" app, that I have encountered a few
| times, but have been unable to report.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| i can only imagine the amount of trash reports they'll get.
|
| "I clicked on this ad on facebook and bought something that never
| arrived!" Help i've been scammed!
|
| "Why is this amazon product late??" Amazon App is a scam!
|
| "They messed up my chipotle order and the app doesn't allow me to
| report the order as missing something".
|
| I know none of these are really apple's fault/responsibility. But
| ask anyone who works in customer support - there is a really long
| tail of people who actually thinks all apps are by apple and
| apple should offer support.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This is why fraudsters do not fear report options. The high
| incidence of false positives and noise to signal guarantees a
| high threshold will of reports will have to be met before any
| action is taken, giving the scammers enough time to profit
| before action is taken.
| asperous wrote:
| In this case though it can flag a human review.. unlike
| something like Amazon where it's harder, more expensive, and
| takes longer to check if something is a scam
| ffhhj wrote:
| I used to monetize my Android apps with a well known platform
| that seemed honest. Until I started receiving reports from
| users that got scammed by some ad publishers using the
| platform, even got one of my apps suspended due to porn ads!
| This is not the fault of devs and it's really difficult to
| avoid.
| codetrotter wrote:
| They will be getting many trash reports for sure.
|
| The mobile carrier that I use has an app on the App Store that
| subscribers can install in order to view their subscription,
| change subscription plan, and view past and present
| bills/invoices. The app itself is pretty good, it's snappy and
| easy to use. Only shortcoming is that they have a widget that
| comes with the app but the widget doesn't work and they have
| been aware of this for a long time without fixing it.
|
| Anyways, I was looking at the reviews and most were positive.
| But then there was one review that stood out. A one star
| review, and get this - the review was complaining about
| something totally orthogonal to the app itself. They were
| complaining about the prices of the plans the carrier is
| offering. The pricing of the plans that your carrier is
| offering is not relevant to managing your plan through this
| app.
|
| These kinds of irrelevant complaints are sure to show up in
| reports too, like you say. But let's hope that the amount of
| those will stay relatively low.
| tlogan wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| You do not need to work in customer support to know that: just
| read reviews on trustpilot.com
| r00fus wrote:
| Bravo, this is true comedy. Punchline: Trustpilot is
| essentially a paid referral service.
| acheron wrote:
| I like the Amazon reviews of, say, a salad spinner that are
| something like "the delivery van ran into my mailbox! 1 star!"
|
| I miss worthwhile reviews.
| 404mm wrote:
| I just wish this was available to apps you haven't purchased yet.
| There are some obvious scams and I cannot report them until I
| purchase .. kinda defeats the purpose for this use case.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| They had this functionality before, but removed it.
| axpy906 wrote:
| I wonder what percent of users actually believe that all the apps
| listed are legit?
| paulpauper wrote:
| It will only matter if management is responsive to reports (see
| for example the youtube crypto livestream scam problem, which has
| been going on for almost 3 years).
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