Google Play Bans Open Source Matrix Client Element, Citing “Abusive Content”

The latest app to intercept an illogical ban from the Google Play Store is Element, an end-to-end open-source encrypted email client for the Matrix federated chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban that Item says “is caused by abusive content somewhere on The Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a federated chat protocol, Element does not control Matrix content, so it’s kind of like banning a web browser from viewing web content. Element says he’s working with Google to “explain how Element works and resolve the situation.”

Google has cracked down on apps that display hateful content, but Element says that shouldn’t be part of the crackdown. “We also explained that the Matrix servers that we make running as Element (including the default Matrix.org home server, which we manage on behalf of The Matrix.org Foundation) have strict terms of service that we actively enforce, “Element said.” We abhor abuse, and Element is not an app for abusive content. “

Element says it has a full-time team dedicated to handling abuse reports

Element (formerly known as Riot.im) is often cited as one of the top Matrix clients. It looks a lot like – and is actually interoperable with – Slack and Discord. Element claims that it is used by “the French, German, British and American governments, countless universities, thousands of businesses and millions of people around the world.” The app recently saw an influx of new users after WhatsApp’s announcement on Facebook data sharing, so maybe that sparked further scrutiny from Google. At press time, many other Matrix apps – which by definition display the same content as Element – are still active on the Play Store.

Google takes a 30% cut on all Play Store transactions, which is supposed to pay for the cost of running the Store, but the company isn’t hiring humans to primarily review apps like Apple does, choosing instead to let the robots handle it. . Apple recently reduced its App Store tax from 30% to 15%, so Apple is actually charging developers less than Google while providing better human support.

Elements Last update On the situation at the time of writing, he waited over eight hours for an email response. Element says he was not notified of the pullout, which has now passed the 24-hour mark.

The interpretation of Google’s rules by bots often makes no sense, and as a result, Google routinely bans small, random apps from the Play Store because they can display content on the internet. We’ve seen Reddit apps, podcast apps, and other apps that display third-party web content to “win” the Weekly Ban Lottery on Google Play, simply because they can be designed to display content. third party content. The same goes for Google search, Chrome, Gmail, all chat apps from Google, YouTube, Google Drive, and Google Podcasts, but these apps are never banned. Earlier this week, Google banned a video app because it listed support for the standard “.ass” subtitle file type in its description.

The only advantage of the Play Store is that you don’t have to use it because Android supports side loading. Element is also available on F-Droid, a fully open-source repository of Android apps, though the version offered there has been out of date for a month. A more updated version is available on APKmirror, the largest app store for the Android hacking community.

These bans are almost temporary errors that are corrected after a few hours or days, but that gives little comfort to app developers who may suddenly have their business ripped off due to an app error. Element says “we can only apologize for the disruption caused by the disappearance of the app like this.”