@daniel

😕Our free, award-winning, violence prevention games for teens were yanked from Google Play.

After several years, Google Play removed our #nonprofit program's #free games about #consent and #healthyrelationships.

#Google said we *misclassified* the games as #educational which was grounds for removal.

We sent Google the school standards showing these topics must be taught. But it is pointless to explain such things to bots and/or call center folks who are not experts...

We even have published research in peer-reviewed journals showing the these games are an effective intervention -- but Google kept fighting our efforts.

Eventually, we gave up.

We still have our free games in Apple's App Store. And online for free browser play.

Congratulations on your success & your decision to stop enriching Google!

@daniel I've not really considered XMPP in the past, but just downloaded your client (fdroid) and have decided to give it a chance since I came across your post.
Thank you for your years of dedication!

@daniel this is the way we users feel towards big-tech in general: "For years** I’ve felt like I was in a toxic relationship** with Google, *and the only reason I stayed was economic dependency." *
What else if not that is the main reason to use their products (or sell via their channels)? Thanks for sharing!

Hi @daniel, foremost: Thank you for your work! Congratulations to your career as well. I think it's very well an exemplary Open Source developer career. I'm glad it turned out for you so well. Last: Thanks for that present. Don't know if you are aware, but this step will allow many of teens who do not have any Google Play credits to use your software easily. For me that's a huge breakthrough in #a11y. (I know there's F-Droid, but that's not as simple for most.) So, thanks a lot!
#xmpp

@daniel I'm sad because revenue loss is not a good thing, but this will help in a lot of case when people use shitty phones that kills apps and don't want to pay to test a messaging sys...

I'm also very happy grant system recognize the usefulness of your work!

@daniel Wish you success with the changes to the business model. Love the app.

@daniel
"This effectively means I’m paying Google more than 1000 Euro per year for their service. [...] Apparently that amount of money doesn’t give me the privilege to talk to a fucking human for five minutes once per year."

Exactly. There's a "size" at which companies are inevitably crap. I'm so sick of support chatbots / ignored emails / looking for a bug report site that doesn't exist, when "open source" software shits the bed. Even when volunteering your help, it's closed doors.

@daniel
"This effectively means I’m paying Google more than 1000 Euro per year for their service. [...] Apparently that amount of money doesn’t give me the privilege to talk to a fucking human for five minutes once per year."

Exactly. There's a "size" at which companies are inevitably crap. I'm so sick of support chatbots / ignored emails / looking for a bug report site that doesn't exist, when "open source" software shits the bed. Even when volunteering your help, it's closed doors.

@daniel Here's hoping you get enough from donations to make continued development worth your time. It's an awesome project.

@daniel fantastic news, snd thank you for your work! ❤️

@daniel
@kuketzblog
https://messenger-matrix.de/ needs an update.

@daniel I still don't understand the difference between the free and paid Conversations app. Is it just to support you?

@daniel What will you be using instead of Google?

@daniel
Das fällt für mich unter "Lyrik der Moderne" ❤

@daniel
Lets all be honest. Conversations is the reason XMPP stays relevant. Since around 2019 I am hosting the communication of my family with prosody and everyone uses conversations. It's an app made for normal people, not for geeks. And that's essential to reach everybody.