Add a developer "remove my app from google play" pledge list. #115

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1. Brent-Sanchez commented on Mar 13, 2026

   

   Brent-Sanchez

   on Mar 13, 2026

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   This ia a winning idea. And I have personsl experience that supports that. In 2021 a man who apoesred to be lost, who claimed to be the President if the United States pushed an executive order to require federal employees to take an edtrenly advanced, but unproven injection in order to keep their jobs. Working for a contractor who served this customer our company made a blanket decision to (loose all it's employees), and the union we worked for seemingly forgot what their role was. Well, they roled OVER lol, but did nothing in the face if a rule that had nothing to do with us. We were not federal employees, even the people in salary positions were not federal employees, but the poijt being:

   I startrd a petition, of primis to quit, and folded the union, the company, and effrctively the posotion of the US Navy on this issue, INTO A PRETZAL..

   And got fired almost immediately. It took one day, exsctly 1 day of us standing across the street with signs lol. And Wayne Brently didnt even have to smack a hoe.

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2. TheTearMiser commented on Mar 21, 2026

   

   TheTearMiser

   on Mar 21, 2026

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   Trying to get a grasp of how we would want to do this

   Here's a rough idea of what it could look like:

   ---

   Developer pledge page

   "If Google enforces mandatory developer identity verification for apps distributed outside the Play Store, I will remove my app(s) from Google Play and distribute exclusively through open channels such as F-Droid."

   Add your pledge

   1. Fork keepandroidopen/keepandroidopen.github.io
   2. Edit src/data/pledges.yaml and add your entry
   3. Open a pull request
   4. Maintainers will verify and merge

   developer	app(s)	store	pledged
   dessalines	Jerboa for Lemmy	F-Droid + Play	Feb 2026
   example dev	Some App	F-Droid + Play	Mar 2026
   your name here	Your App	F-Droid + Play	—

   ---

   Would something like this do?

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3. dessalines commented on Mar 21, 2026

   

   dessalines

   on Mar 21, 2026

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   I like that a lot. Especially since it highlights the apps to be removed, and one developer can often have many apps. I have 4 or 5 I'd be willing to remove from google play.
4. dessalines commented on Apr 10, 2026

   

   dessalines

   on Apr 10, 2026

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   @marcprux I'd like to move forward with this, but would want your permission first before doing so.

   Developers collectively making a stand against against google by promising to remove their apps from the play store, could result in many large and popular FOSS applications with thousands of users going dark. This type of mass strike is going to make much more of a difference than easily ignorable emails to state-level regulators, or google itself.

   A link to these pledges could go in the How you can help - developers section.
5. marcprux commented on Apr 11, 2026

   

   marcprux

   on Apr 11, 2026

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   I've thought about this a lot, and still haven't come to any good conclusion. To start:

   would want your permission first before doing so

   No one needs my permission to do anything. I happen to do much of the maintenance for this site and write about it in various forums, but I am in no way "in charge", and I mostly just help coordinate the over 100 contributors that we have to date.

   While a Play Store boycott pledge may sound like a good tactic at first blush, I see a couple of risks:

   1. The aforementioned "target" could be a factor: the Play Store twiddlers could start down-ranking and de-monetizing developers that are on the record as being opposed to the ADV program.
   2. An insufficiently large list of pledgers might be viewed as evidence that there isn't much opposition to the program, when in fact the opposition is overwhelming. In think such a list would need to be assembled without being published at first, and then only once it achieves a certain threshold (both in number of developers, as well as the number of notable apps that would leave the store) would it be publicized.
   3. The people most hurt by the ADV program are individual users and those concerned about privacy and software freedom, not developers. Developers that have already made the choice to have a presence on the Play Store often have financial motivations to do so; they may be sympathetic to the opposition to ADV but still be conflicted in terms of their incentives.

   Anyway, those are my rather disorganized throughs on the topic. I do appreciate the discussion and I do think that the idea has potential, but it would need to be managed carefully in order to be effective.
6. dessalines commented on Apr 14, 2026

   

   dessalines

   on Apr 14, 2026

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   Even if we don't publicize it initially, we gotta start somewhere. The organization lists started the same way, with no names at first.

   Any developers worried about being targeted, or having their apps de-ranked, don't have to sign up. But everyone else who feels strongly enough about this can.

   We can at least put out calls to add devs names to the developer-pledges.yaml file I'm going to make soon. Once it gets a good number of names on it, then it can be publicized more.

   I hope if this goes through you'll boost it appropriately, so that enough devs will see it.
7. dessalines

   added a commit that references this issue on Apr 14, 2026

   Add a developer-pledges.yaml, for devs to pledge to remove apps from …

   ...

   This issue will close once commit feebe0c is merged into the 'main' branch.

   feebe0c