The review process is broken. The stream of apps is enormous, the expense to review them deeply would be large, the cost of a false rejection is very low.
The expense to review them deeply used to be large, a few years ago. There should be a review process that consists of putting the source code in some escrow build environment and letting an LLM do a full audit. What would that be, a few bucks at-cost?
Okay, can you concoct some prompt-injection-like scenario where you can fool increasingly sophisticated agents about the presence of your malware? Sure, maybe. It's MILES ahead of where both major app stores are today, though, where you can find obvious scams that sailed through review just by looking at their description.
AI apps are flooding everything. No doubt they are using or planning to use AI to help manage the load.
And then of course all the apps will use some kind of AI, and because humans don’t care to wade through a trillion tip calculators or whatever, they’ll use AI to pick the app. And then have AI use the app for them through a voice assistant.
Apple releases numbers: 130,000 app reviews per week.
The human component to this doesn't need to do much more than verify it works, they say they churn through that with just 500 reviewers.
They could certainly do a better job, but maybe that means 2,500 reviewers?
If Google needs 2x as many that's 5,000 people. There are more people working at their HQ, and this is a job they can distribute between cheaper countries.
And they could reasonably have different tiers/levels of review triggered by use. A fairly basic automatic review, until you get 10 installs. Then something more complex, up to 1000 installs, etc.
I wonder if that'll be the future. This is something AI can actually solve. Write replacements for a lot of apps, slop but efficient slop, and use that as a distraction-free phone.
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
Not easily, assuming you even use any apps that are so trivial you could accept a straight up vibe coded replacement, side loading is becoming more difficult
Not really, unless paying users switch to alternative stores, which they don't just because I as a developer face friction in publishing to Google Play.
In fact, Google is making alternative stores even less convenient with their latest 'side-loading' hurdles.
Regulators need to wake up, issue record fines, mandate equal access and a 'Choose your app stores' screen on device setup.
Otherwise competitive third party stores and a fair market are going to remain a pipe dream.
Provided the rapture doesn't come, so what? Provided infinite things. It adds or removes nothing.
And yet trivial little alternatives like idk maybe you ever heard of Steam did actually happen, or the entire Android ecosystem itself when there was already an immense Palm app ecosystem that was like desktop apps where you got apps all manner of ways from physical sd cards to web sites to various curated stores. Or idk Epic, over a single app. They are back on the traditional stores now only because they called everyone's bluff and were suceeding, so the old stores caved rather than be seen to lose to someone so much smaller and newer, even in a small way that was more appearance than material.
There is no such thing as unthinkable. It's all not only thinkable, it has all actually already happened before and multiple times.
If something seems unimaginable, that only says something about your imagination not the reality.
You severely underestimate the market capture of the Google Play Store, the related network effects, their control over Android OS, and their power and motivation to use all of that to prevent any competition from ever getting traction.
F-Droid is not doing too bad. And yet, the vast majority of people will never ever use it after Google Play implenents their developer verification scare screens.
None of your examples succeeded in an environment that was even remotely as hostile, neither Windows nor Palm could have done what Google does today, without risking a fatal user backlash.
It's one thing for something to be thinkable and imaginable. Of course you can imagine Google Play getting dethroned. It's just so incredibly unlikely to happen without regulatory antitrust intervention that it is pointless to consider seriously.
Fdroid can never replace the main default because their strict rules rule out too much. I approve BTW, I like that a special place like fdroid exists, but it can only ever be this special niche thing.
But as time goes on and software tools become more powerful, there is just not much moat. I don't even mean AI, I just mean the ordinary power annordinary computer and the gobs of highblevel languages and frameworks and automation that just grows and grows all the time. It's not that hard to port an app to a new platform, or a new distribution mechanism, or a new clone source for an existing platform and distribution mechanism.
Big universal things with 100% capture get replaced overnight all the time. Everyone switched from MySpace to Facebook in like an hour one day. Other things like my Steam example took longer but they became at least an equal player, a real alternative that normal people could and did choose in numbers that Sony and MS couldn't ignore, pretty quickly.
Everyone switched from Palm to Android pretty quickly.
Google has a few extra levers which is agreements with all the phone manufacturers who in turn have to deal with the carriers, and google are doing the bulk of the ongoing os developement and security work so the manufacturers don't have to.
But they could just start doing that same work, or spin up a new 3rd party who's work they all share, easily, any time. They all actually already maintain half-assed backup plans they can switch to and go whole-assed if google gets that 1% too annoying one day.
There are really no easy robust moats any more. Even the biggest are precarious and have to be actively maintained through constant shenanigans.
No matter how big the capture, it's never actually very strong.
I really want open systems, but the “choose your browser”, “choose your app store”, “choose your email client”, “choose your ai provider” dance is a disgraceful user experience.
Companies should be allowed to set a recommended experience while staying open. Insisting that they offer choice as part of the UI is tangential to the OS allowing them to exist.
> Anybody who's ever tried to get through their review process can attest that the article writer's experience is far from outside the norm.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
> This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
Fair.
> It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google...
Ok you lost me. What is "the literature"? Published scientific studies about Google's app review process? Obviously there aren't any of those. Blog posts? You (presumably) just read one, and if you take a minute to search, you'll find tons more. News articles? Perhaps harder to find, but definitely exist.
The whole nudes thing is just a funny outlier; don't fixate on that. Who cares what randomly chosen reason the Google overmind decided it didn't like you. The point is it feels like a dice roll and you have no recourse when you suddenly and randomly fail it.
> This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
A much more charitable reading would be something like: Numerous people have all made this complaint, therefore the broader point is probably solid, even if this particular example might not be iron-clad evidence on it's own.
I've certainly heard enough similar stories that I don't have much trouble doubting this one, although I'd hardly consider any one story super-convincing on it's own
You know, personal anecdotes and all that, but a company I used to work with was applying for their b2b app as well and we got a denied with a screenshot of a completely unrelated app as well, and that was at least 5 years ago. We ended up just replying "That's not our app" and I think it got stuck in limbo after that as I don't recall hearing anything about it afterwards and then I left the company.
Yea I’m on over a month now of an app sitting in review, a couple of years ago it was much quicker. Apple approved the same app within a week. I can only assume it’s because it’s easier to vibecode android apps so it’s being flooded?
I don't understand how Google aka the company that famously automates all the things can't "vibecode" a review tool to handle the increased submissions. I'm sure they already have which makes the delays puzzling. With all that compute, and all those brilliant engineers they should should be cranking out reviews, security audits and approving new apps/updated apps quicker than ever.
Google has had automated reviews for a decade now, I think there's just so much volume (I read somewhere in linkedin there's 1000 apps per hour submitted in playstore alone) that is choking the system.
That's an average of 24,000 apps per day.
With that amount of volume, it would be safe to assume that there's more reasons why google just won't accept an app even if it works fine or fits all the public guidelines.
I've heard just as many horror stories for the Apple app store. I don't think there is real improvement or downfall for either. You are lucky, or you are unlucky, and the two app stores trade places for your own problems every couple of months (or years).
Are you an editor or involved with app review? I would rather read this honestly written, succinct blog post than a mountain of AI slop that half of the HN front page is.
I also recently acquired some free e-waste android 6 devices (like a galaxy note 4 pad and a moto 4 phone). Using some vibe coding I was able to setup a dockerized build system for java/kotlin apps and managed to make a number of custom applications for the devices like turning them into timelapse+mjpeg streaming cameras (or irc client, or ice thickness estimation from chirped sounds+dsp). Since they're ewaste I don't mind if they get destroyed or lost.
And for the testers requirement? Should every hobbyist developer be required to buy a dozen phones and set up one of those click farms that fraudsters use? Or are we fine with ending the era of hobbyist development?
I've written about this before on HN, but it's pretty clear that once the app stores courted the hobby developers and convinced them to publish their apps on the stores to get the marketplace flywheel started (remember all the discussion about the app stores competing based on the number of apps available in each?), that the focus wasn't going to be on hobbyist developers at all because they don't bring in the most cash. By imposing ever higher restrictions on app developers in the name of security, they are raising the bar to such a degree that typically only funded corporate customers will have an incentive to go through all the effort, since they can literally pay someone to do so.
In essence, while the app stores used to be about hobbyist software to some degree, they have become a place created by big companies for big companies, much like Walmart or Target. That would be fine if customers could choose when they visited Walmart or Target, but instead, we've created a regime where you must buy everything from Walmart or Target.
This has made mobile development a wasteland for hobbyist-built and community-built software. I know some people cheer this as the removal of amateurs and crappy software from the marketplaces, but I would counter with the observation that commercial software often doesn't have my best interests at heart, and I would, many times, prefer a piece of community-built or amateur software instead. This gets harder to procure with each passing day.
So, I think developers are generally better-served leaving mobile development and instead focusing on web development, which is not gated in the same ways. While you won't have the same reach that you would get through the app stores, you do have much more control over the platform on which you're developing.
I think it's fairly obvious that Google doesn't _want_ hobby developers in the play store at all. Their app development, publication, and review process seems quite intentionally designed to be penetrable only to those who are willing to make it (or already is) their full-time job.
There's just no money in it for them, and a lot of support burden. Hobbyist apps are either free, or a few bucks. For Google, the income is a rounding error compared to ad revenue for household-name apps or in-app purchases inside blockbuster mobile games.
(I will be first in line to buy the first working and affordable Linux smartphone.)
There is a lot of money in it for them, in creating and owning the ecosystem itself, which is required if want to make anything at all.
But they have just become shortsighted over time and, perhaps correctly, don't think they need to keep investing that way to get the payoff any more, they can just go 100% payoff now.
Because you are hobby developer. Thanks to this there are no so much junk in Play Store. When you open business account you don't need to do this closed test, you go straight to prod.
I mean that's the same argument as youtubers complaining about partner programme enrollment requirements being raised. Do you genuinely think your app should not have 12 testers? What if some youtuber picks it up for a promo, you get 1000 users in a day and all of them hit the same bug or someone finds a way to break the app and read everyone's actions done in the app?
Hobbyist are cool and all but I'm sure google got sick of one update publishers a long time ago and decided to only allow apps that can actually attract any sort of public.
If you can't get 12 people to test your app, how do you expect to get actual users? I believe this is a good change by Google to prevent slop on the store
The part where the author is aware that any missteps in "debugging" the review process can get their account permabanned is lovely. I'm sure I've read cases here before where a developer has lost all their emails and family photos because their policies.
If Google cares about some of the long-standing problems, I wonder whether they know how to fix them. (Assign OKRs, which may be conflicting, or get quietly triaged/prioritized?)
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
More generally, I think there should be a legally-enforced right of due process online. Much of the rules of modern society are enforced by these companies, rather than governments, and we should have similar rights.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why it makes sense for a company to have the ability to block spammers, scammers, and malware without proving a case in a court of law, but I feel like there's a spectrum of importance, where the more potentially harmful the action is to the user, the more process is due to the impacted user to make sure the action is justified. Examples from least- to most-important:
- removing individual content that has little real-world importance: comments, social media posts, etc.
- banning accounts on platforms that generally have low real-world value (other than sentimental value) to the user: reddit, HN, non-monetized Youtube accounts, etc
- banning accounts on free platforms that have a very high cost to the user of being banned: Gmail (keys to the user's digital kingdom, the rest of the Google account), Facebook (real-name policy means that it's difficult to start over), high-notoriety accounts on other social media, etc.
- removing individual listings/etc on platforms where the user makes money: eBay, monetized Youtube videos, paid App/Play store apps, etc
- Banning accounts on platforms where the user makes money and the account itself has some intrinsic value (reputation, following, etc): eBay, monetized Youtube accounts, App store accounts, social media accounts for businesses, etc.
- Locking up or taking the user's money: locking the user out of a bank/brokerage/crypto/payment platform account; rescinding money (or other things with monetary value): bank account balances, payment platform balances, unpaid Youtube/other monetization earnings, loyalty/credit card points, etc.
- Banning accounts that are essential for the user to participate in society: bank account, cell phone plan, identity providers, etc.
Alongside that, I feel like if there's a clear revenue stream to the platform owner from the account, then the case for due process is even stronger -- if the platform is making hundreds or thousands of dollars because of my presence, surely they can have a competent, empowered human look at things when necessary.
More generally, the state should be banned from shifting the blame to private monopolies. If there is a monopoly, the state should be responsible for everything it does.
Anyone can make a website and publish it but for some reason when it comes to apps there needs to be a store with a review process. Aren't apps, in a way, not just specialised browsers (not talking about webview apps here) that run in a sandbox? Why the need for all this "reviewing", does it make apps safer or better quality? Is it a device ecosystem permission / security problem? I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
If you have no gatekeeping, then all of the bad actors come in and you end up with a tragedy of the commons.
Apple did this correctly, IMHO, when the App Store first came out by both:
- reviewing all apps
- having it take 30 days to get the feedback
The 30 days seemed draconian or bureaucratic but it forced builders to be 100% sure that there app was working and ready for consumption. It probably also acted as major friction for scammers etc who figured it wouldn't be worth it.
The iPhone 1 only allowed web bookmarks. They aren’t as capable as real apps in dozens of ways. The fact that lots of Apps are just glorified web site browsers doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of apps that aren’t, and some that couldn’t be done with a web site at all.
What the fuck are you talking about? How is Disco Elysium a specialized browser? Or banking apps? What does this even mean?
Yes they all run in a sandbox, but there's a permissions system that they can exploit.
> I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't?
your browser is, in a way, the store for your websites. You're only as protected from the site's fuckery as the browser is. And generally modern browsers are very well protected.
One example where there are problems is crypto wallets - fake ones can steal all your crypto. Not that it's solved that well with apps - Apple has run ads for fake crypto stealing ones as no 1 in the list on its app store.
I can understand how they can't afford humans to chat to a million app developers but you'd think in this day and age AI could do a decent job of explaining what's up in a polite way?
> The plan is to equip them with some sms gateway software and ship them to some customers.
just a warning: if you're in the US, this runs afoul of 10DLC regulations the carriers self-police. carriers can and will smack your peepee if you try to use random phones for SMS marketing.
i do see you're using this overseas and encountered similar issues[1] running commercial GSM gateways, but just a heads up for anyone wanting to do similar in the US (even with programmatic systems like twilio).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadmaybe in the short term, and if thier app store is a loss leader.
Millions and millions.
The cost of false rejections is generally quite low.
Okay, can you concoct some prompt-injection-like scenario where you can fool increasingly sophisticated agents about the presence of your malware? Sure, maybe. It's MILES ahead of where both major app stores are today, though, where you can find obvious scams that sailed through review just by looking at their description.
And then of course all the apps will use some kind of AI, and because humans don’t care to wade through a trillion tip calculators or whatever, they’ll use AI to pick the app. And then have AI use the app for them through a voice assistant.
Of course I understand that they are not going to spend money on improving their review process for our benefit until regulators force them to.
Apple releases numbers: 130,000 app reviews per week.
The human component to this doesn't need to do much more than verify it works, they say they churn through that with just 500 reviewers.
They could certainly do a better job, but maybe that means 2,500 reviewers?
If Google needs 2x as many that's 5,000 people. There are more people working at their HQ, and this is a job they can distribute between cheaper countries.
Maybe that could even be extended to browser, OS, webpages (just have a bad AI rewrite every page you read, and in the future maybe every video you watch) ... everything people use. Everything you come into contact with.
Think about it: no ads, and no way for anyone to bring them to your devices!
In fact, Google is making alternative stores even less convenient with their latest 'side-loading' hurdles.
Regulators need to wake up, issue record fines, mandate equal access and a 'Choose your app stores' screen on device setup.
Otherwise competitive third party stores and a fair market are going to remain a pipe dream.
And yet trivial little alternatives like idk maybe you ever heard of Steam did actually happen, or the entire Android ecosystem itself when there was already an immense Palm app ecosystem that was like desktop apps where you got apps all manner of ways from physical sd cards to web sites to various curated stores. Or idk Epic, over a single app. They are back on the traditional stores now only because they called everyone's bluff and were suceeding, so the old stores caved rather than be seen to lose to someone so much smaller and newer, even in a small way that was more appearance than material.
There is no such thing as unthinkable. It's all not only thinkable, it has all actually already happened before and multiple times.
If something seems unimaginable, that only says something about your imagination not the reality.
This is very unlikely to change without regulatory intervention.
F-Droid is not doing too bad. And yet, the vast majority of people will never ever use it after Google Play implenents their developer verification scare screens.
None of your examples succeeded in an environment that was even remotely as hostile, neither Windows nor Palm could have done what Google does today, without risking a fatal user backlash.
It's one thing for something to be thinkable and imaginable. Of course you can imagine Google Play getting dethroned. It's just so incredibly unlikely to happen without regulatory antitrust intervention that it is pointless to consider seriously.
But as time goes on and software tools become more powerful, there is just not much moat. I don't even mean AI, I just mean the ordinary power annordinary computer and the gobs of highblevel languages and frameworks and automation that just grows and grows all the time. It's not that hard to port an app to a new platform, or a new distribution mechanism, or a new clone source for an existing platform and distribution mechanism.
Big universal things with 100% capture get replaced overnight all the time. Everyone switched from MySpace to Facebook in like an hour one day. Other things like my Steam example took longer but they became at least an equal player, a real alternative that normal people could and did choose in numbers that Sony and MS couldn't ignore, pretty quickly.
Everyone switched from Palm to Android pretty quickly.
Google has a few extra levers which is agreements with all the phone manufacturers who in turn have to deal with the carriers, and google are doing the bulk of the ongoing os developement and security work so the manufacturers don't have to.
But they could just start doing that same work, or spin up a new 3rd party who's work they all share, easily, any time. They all actually already maintain half-assed backup plans they can switch to and go whole-assed if google gets that 1% too annoying one day.
There are really no easy robust moats any more. Even the biggest are precarious and have to be actively maintained through constant shenanigans. No matter how big the capture, it's never actually very strong.
Companies should be allowed to set a recommended experience while staying open. Insisting that they offer choice as part of the UI is tangential to the OS allowing them to exist.
I don’t doubt the author, at the same time this is a serious accusation with no details and little context.
This could have been presented in a more organized way, with timelines and redacted content.
Part of the problem is Google not being transparent, having more transparency could help.
Although I must admit I've never gotten nudes from them. Up your game, Google.
This is an argumentum ad populum fallacy. "Everybody Knows" this kind of thing is true, ergo you should believe the example here without evidence.
It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google has rejected an app due to misidentification with NFSW content and then sent screenshots of said content as part of the review. Even not in combination I don't think. Like, has either situation every been documented on its own? "Far from outside the norm" indeed.
Fair.
> It's also kinda ridiculous in context. I mean, no, there are no cases in the literature where Google...
Ok you lost me. What is "the literature"? Published scientific studies about Google's app review process? Obviously there aren't any of those. Blog posts? You (presumably) just read one, and if you take a minute to search, you'll find tons more. News articles? Perhaps harder to find, but definitely exist.
The whole nudes thing is just a funny outlier; don't fixate on that. Who cares what randomly chosen reason the Google overmind decided it didn't like you. The point is it feels like a dice roll and you have no recourse when you suddenly and randomly fail it.
A much more charitable reading would be something like: Numerous people have all made this complaint, therefore the broader point is probably solid, even if this particular example might not be iron-clad evidence on it's own.
I've certainly heard enough similar stories that I don't have much trouble doubting this one, although I'd hardly consider any one story super-convincing on it's own
He's jotting down his thoughts, not trying to be a review process to distribute software on the most used operating system on the planet
That's an average of 24,000 apps per day.
With that amount of volume, it would be safe to assume that there's more reasons why google just won't accept an app even if it works fine or fits all the public guidelines.
I was able to share it on f-droid though, and I am starting to think that it may be good just to publish app only through it.
https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
A company that does not provide support to normal people and has a compulsive habit of closing services for absolutely no good reason? You don't say?
I also had my old dev account that I used during school permanently disabled.
https://cheq.ai/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/clickfarm6-1920w....
In essence, while the app stores used to be about hobbyist software to some degree, they have become a place created by big companies for big companies, much like Walmart or Target. That would be fine if customers could choose when they visited Walmart or Target, but instead, we've created a regime where you must buy everything from Walmart or Target.
This has made mobile development a wasteland for hobbyist-built and community-built software. I know some people cheer this as the removal of amateurs and crappy software from the marketplaces, but I would counter with the observation that commercial software often doesn't have my best interests at heart, and I would, many times, prefer a piece of community-built or amateur software instead. This gets harder to procure with each passing day.
So, I think developers are generally better-served leaving mobile development and instead focusing on web development, which is not gated in the same ways. While you won't have the same reach that you would get through the app stores, you do have much more control over the platform on which you're developing.
There's just no money in it for them, and a lot of support burden. Hobbyist apps are either free, or a few bucks. For Google, the income is a rounding error compared to ad revenue for household-name apps or in-app purchases inside blockbuster mobile games.
(I will be first in line to buy the first working and affordable Linux smartphone.)
But they have just become shortsighted over time and, perhaps correctly, don't think they need to keep investing that way to get the payoff any more, they can just go 100% payoff now.
Hobbyist are cool and all but I'm sure google got sick of one update publishers a long time ago and decided to only allow apps that can actually attract any sort of public.
Maybe they need personnel tasked solely to just go in, with the blessing of some high-up person, find any bad customer service or goodwill problem, bottom-up, figure out why it's happening, and work with the relevant teams to fix it, quickly. Then repeat.
To fit with ingrained cultural incentives for relevant teams, other managers and ICs might have to be convinced that their performance evaluations depend strongly on cooperating with this process.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why it makes sense for a company to have the ability to block spammers, scammers, and malware without proving a case in a court of law, but I feel like there's a spectrum of importance, where the more potentially harmful the action is to the user, the more process is due to the impacted user to make sure the action is justified. Examples from least- to most-important:
Alongside that, I feel like if there's a clear revenue stream to the platform owner from the account, then the case for due process is even stronger -- if the platform is making hundreds or thousands of dollars because of my presence, surely they can have a competent, empowered human look at things when necessary.Apple did this correctly, IMHO, when the App Store first came out by both:
- reviewing all apps
- having it take 30 days to get the feedback
The 30 days seemed draconian or bureaucratic but it forced builders to be 100% sure that there app was working and ready for consumption. It probably also acted as major friction for scammers etc who figured it wouldn't be worth it.
Publishing a crap app on the app store doesn't make anyone else's app worse
We need to put more money into human alignment research.
Yes they all run in a sandbox, but there's a permissions system that they can exploit.
> I.e. why do apps need stores and websites don't? your browser is, in a way, the store for your websites. You're only as protected from the site's fuckery as the browser is. And generally modern browsers are very well protected.
We really need an open source and funded OS for phones like we have with Linux for desktops/servers.
Also, with AI 100x'ing developers productivity it might be a really interesting time for phone OS's.
MAXS (Modular Android XMPP Suite) could also work.
http://projectmaxs.org/homepage/
https://bitbucket.org/projectmaxs/maxs/src/master/
https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Maxs&lang=en
> Version 0.5.19 (2000506627) suggested Added on Jan 22, 2025
>This version requires Android 4.4 or newer.
(Hope the author is doing OK.)
just a warning: if you're in the US, this runs afoul of 10DLC regulations the carriers self-police. carriers can and will smack your peepee if you try to use random phones for SMS marketing.
https://www.10dlc.org/en/verizon-tmobile-att-sprint-carrier-...
i do see you're using this overseas and encountered similar issues[1] running commercial GSM gateways, but just a heads up for anyone wanting to do similar in the US (even with programmatic systems like twilio).
[1] https://ciboulette.net/blog/2026-09-05-desactivation-de-l'en...