It's unfortunate this comment was grayed out so quickly and I hope that changes.
The sentiment is basically correct. Enforcing a ban on stores being able to control who they do business with is a radical break with all precedent and violates freedom of association. All stores have always had the ability to kick out any buyer or seller for any reason whatsoever short of systematic discrimination against specific protected minorities. Whether or not any particular seller thinks this is a morally optimal situation or bad for their personal business isn't going to change the centuries of history behind this.
The actual problem here isn't the arbitrariness with which Google bans sellers or the false positive rate of their decision-making process. The problem is the device vendor, OS vendor, and app store vendor are all the same company, and there are, practically speaking, only two options for the entire mobile market. Solving this is basic antitrust enforcement. Force competition for app distribution platforms. At least Android allows you to sideload and has F-Droid, but the situation is still anticompetitive and bad for both consumers and sellers.
And yes, with all respect to mobile app developers, access to a selling platform is not a utility. You don't need to be an Android developer to meet the basic necessities of life. It doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do anything to make the situation better, but this drive to call everything a utility is not helping.
Companies originally were given charters by the government, and limited liability for their owners, in order to perform a public good. Over time that "public good" part seems to have been completely forgotten about.
So now do we say that companies have the innate right to make profit without any regard for the public good? That profits are more important than what voters in a democracy want?
The sentiment is basically correct. Enforcing a ban on stores being able to control who they do business with is a radical break with all precedent and violates freedom of association. All stores have always had the ability to kick out any buyer or seller for any reason whatsoever short of systematic discrimination against specific protected minorities. Whether or not any particular seller thinks this is a morally optimal situation or bad for their personal business isn't going to change the centuries of history behind this.
The actual problem here isn't the arbitrariness with which Google bans sellers or the false positive rate of their decision-making process. The problem is the device vendor, OS vendor, and app store vendor are all the same company, and there are, practically speaking, only two options for the entire mobile market. Solving this is basic antitrust enforcement. Force competition for app distribution platforms. At least Android allows you to sideload and has F-Droid, but the situation is still anticompetitive and bad for both consumers and sellers.
And yes, with all respect to mobile app developers, access to a selling platform is not a utility. You don't need to be an Android developer to meet the basic necessities of life. It doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do anything to make the situation better, but this drive to call everything a utility is not helping.