Playstore woes

[evant]

There's particular challenges with publishing to the playstore that I think it would be worth documenting so we can stay ahead of them/know how to react. Obviously we could avoid these by choosing not to (say only publish to F-Droid instead) but I feel that would be limiting.

1. Asking for donations. TLDR: don't. There's been plenty of examples of apps being suspended for asking for donations or linking to a page that does for not using IAP. However IAP doesn't allow donations. There's language in place for allowing linking if you are officially registered as a non-profit, but otherwise would recommend avoiding it.
2. Content moderation policy. This one's iffy because we can't control the policy of every instance unless we have an allowlist which kinda defeats the purpose of federation. According to @ConnyDuck showing the server rules on signup/login may be sufficient though it's unclear. We may also want to consider an in-app blocklist for egregious instances.
3. Privacy Policy. This one's easy, have one. Here's Tusky's for reference.
4. Repetitive Content. Because the app is open-source there's nothing stopping anyone else from publishing it as well. This has hit other open-source projects with repetitive content/impersonation suspensions. Not sure there's much we can do about this but open to ideas.

[evant]

Would also be curious about the Apple side if we want to publish on iOS which I know less about. One particular concern I have is explicit content which seems to be generally allowed on instances (behind a CW) but not allowed according to Apple's policies.

[evant]

Note: looks like @digitalbuddha is working on setting up a non-profit so we may be able to link out to that for donations eventually (with permission of course 😉)

https://androiddev.social/@friendlymike/109314476066026798

[digitalbuddha]

Surely! I image it is about 6months out.