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Last night Organic Maps was removed from the Play Store without any warnings or additional details due to "not meeting the requirements for the Family Program". Compared to Google Maps and other maps apps rated for 3+ age, there are no ads or in-app purchases in Organic Maps. We h...
Does Google not currently have an anti trust lawsuit going on? Fine addition of them abusing their quasi monopoly position. But maybe they want to use this as argument "look people could just get it from fdroid" or something like that. IANAL
BTW does removal mean phones with enabled google protect will ask users to uninstall the app? I have this "feature" disabled.
This is a workaround for tech savvy people, but pretty far from the point here. This move is bad for the community and bad for the app. Play Store brings orders of magnitude more exposure and users
I tried f-droid just now but organic maps gives me a 404 when trying to install. Was it removed from there too?
Edit: It looks like it was an issue on my end. F-droid was stuck on v1.17 and couldn't update so I reinstalled it, and now I received a hundred update notifications from all my apps, and was able to install the organic maps app.
It's getting good. I keep it as an alternative to OSMAnd, but find that Organic maps are harder to read and missing a lot of detail compared to OSMAnd.
Organic Maps is also available via https://accrescent.app/ which is developed by a GrapheneOS community member and even hosted in the GrapheneOS App Store.
Accrescent is a private and secure Android app store built with modern features in mind. It aims to provide a developer-friendly platform and pleasant user experience while enforcing modern security and privacy practices and offering robust validity guarantees for installed apps.
Accrescent comes from within the GrapheneOS community and we're collaborating together.
A grapheneos community member is just a random person
A random person that is mentioned specifically by the official GrapheneOS account, not to mention that GrapheneOS has said Accrescent is their recommended app store above F-Droid. Maybe Accrescent dev is not a GrapheneOS core dev, but still a step up, with more credibility, than just "a random person."
@GravitySpoiled@FutileRecipe The one thing I prefer in F-Droid over Accrescent is that the former ensures open source and does their own builds while the latter allows closed source submissions.
Or "just get it from Accrescent and be done with it?" Are you implying if you get it from Accrescent, you're somehow not done with it? Sorry, I don't follow your logic.
Also, no thanks on F-Droid as GrapheneOS recommends against and there are multiple security issues:
F-Droid has far too many security and trust issues for us to recommend it. The vast majority of apps in the official F-Droid repository are built on their sketchy infrastructure and signed with their own keys. We're concerned about a future mass compromise of F-Droid users.
There's nothing you can find in open street maps that is not also going to have an equivalent in Google maps. There's no messaging capability in the app. There aren't even photos, except if you link it with Wikipedia. I can't think of a single reason why this would get flagged, even accidentally.
Well some Wikipedia articles could be construed as not appropriate for kids if you’re dead set on removing the app.
I’m thinking of things like Auschwitz or Hiroshima or the Twin Towers where content could be objectionable for children, but also that’s a terrible argument because it’s Wikipedia and it’s a fantastic educational resource.
This is not the first time the play store removes an app for absolutely no reason and then refuses to explain why it did so, and it won't be the last. Usually they don't just reinstate the app for no reason.
I don't think it was a mistake, but even if it was, they do not have proper communications to resolve such mistakes.
As much as I love fdroid and I love to be in a community where this recommendation is made repeatedly, the announcement suggests to download from https://cdn.organicmaps.app/apk/OrganicMaps-24081605-GooglePlay.apk while they appeal. From the way they wrote the announcement, I understand Android Auto won't work with the fdroid version.