Has my extension been shadowbanned?

[James Arnott]

Hi everyone,

I've recently encountered some issues with my Chrome extension. It has been mistakenly marked as "Mature," my featured badge has been removed, and my impressions have plummeted to an all-time low. What puzzles me is that I was not given any notification or explanation concerning the removal of the featured badge, or any indication to the cause of the all time low impressions.

Some of this might have stemmed from me incorporating additional functionality into the extension without explicitly mentioning the new site I made it compatible with in the extension description. To be specific, the extension is designed for dating apps, and I had added compatibility for Bumble. However, I have now rectified this issue by updating both the extension and its description to explicitly mention the Bumble compatibility.

Despite implementing these changes, I've unfortunately not observed any improvement in the impressions.

I would like to highlight that this extension is 100% open source. I've maintained complete transparency about this by providing a link to the source code in the description. Therefore, I'm at a loss to understand why the issues cited above have occurred.

Would it be a good idea to re-request my featured badge? I'm slightly hesitant to do that if the extension were to get rejected without giving me any feedback.

I'd appreciate any advice or assistance on what can be done to rectify this situation,

Kind regards,

James

Link to the extension

[Cuyler Stuwe]

I’m honestly a bit surprised that your extension would have been featured in the first place.

The “mature” tag does actually seem correct. Tinder and Bumble are adult hookup sites, and there has been precedent (e.g., with gambling-related extensions) that an extension that is specifically for a given type of thing is evaluated as though it were that thing itself.

Many “for ______” extensions have been served C&D orders by companies like Facebook who complain that those extensions help users circumvent the TOS of the sites they’re meant to operate on, which again suggests to me that you should probably feel lucky that your extension even remains available on CWS at all. See for example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-asking-for-unfollow-everything-to-be-scrapped/

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[James Arnott]

Hi Cuyler,

The docs say that dating apps for extensions are explicitly allowed. My extension is focused on dating apps which is why it is allowed and not marked as "mature".

Also suggesting all extensions for specific websites should be lucky they haven't been taken down is quite an interesting take, they are obviously allowed on the CWS.

Maybe there wouldn't be any extensions left on the CWS if everything was removed for "helping violate TOS" for any site, imagine what would happen to adblockers!

Perhaps it would be more productive to focus on the issue at hand.

Regards,

James

[Cuyler Stuwe]

“Allowed” and “featured” are two different standards entirely. Something doesn’t inherently deserve to be promoted simply because it’s allowed. Changing your status to “mature” also isn’t the same as “disallowing” it.

It makes sense that the type of extension which might end up in the crosshairs of a takedown/lawsuit might not be the type of extension that Google might promote within CWS. And it makes sense that Google themselves might eventually go so far as taking such an extension down if they’re asked to, rather than going to bat for you.

[Andreas Reinhold (surtic86)]

Just noticed my self that the feature bag was removed from my auto swiper (had quite a time with my newborn so i did not check on my impressions that much or did not find time to investigate it) 

I kind find it sad that we get not informed about such a change as removing the feature badge!