On 8/17/2012 1:05 PM, omoling wrote:
This information might be useless for you Nathan. This does not imply
> that nobody will find it useful, I prefer to let some larger group of > users decide on that.
But the way it's structured, your app spreads FUD about perfectly good apps, and then encourages people to gang up on ones they distrust for completely irrational reasons. Even if a developer were to remove a permission to satisfy the mob with the pitchforks, the developer would also have to remove the features that require that permission, which is likely to inspire an even larger mob to slam their application. So your prospect to developers is lose-lose. And the real bad guys can hide an exploit in the app and violate your privacy without asking for any permissions at all, so it doesn't actually even really protect users' privacy.
I don't actually object to the education aspect, if it's handled in a balanced way: If you really explain in detail why an app would require each feature, that's fine. There could be a real market for such an app, if users are concerned about what each permission can be used for. But if all you're doing is exaggerating the potential for privacy violations and ignoring the actual use cases for a permission, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I do object to the red/yellow/green rating system, because that implies a value judgment, and users will see that, not read the details, and post negative reviews even if the app only requests reasonable permissions that it absolutely needs to perform its function. You're effectively libeling apps, accusing them of being dangerous to your privacy, when they're working exactly as advertised -- that could potentially be legally actionable, if you ever had enough users to matter.
And I find the user "doubt" feature abhorrent. It has NO positive use cases (unless you count users feeling good about slamming an app that probably doesn't deserve it), and could (again, if you had enough users to be relevant) result in apps being destroyed just because a few people clicked "doubt," and it snowballed from there. Again, could be legally actionable, if you ever had enough users.
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