Trump’s app was suspended from the Google Play Store for a reason you can’t quite imagine

Google removed Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign app from the Google Play Store just earlier this week. However, it was not removed for reasons you might think. It had nothing to do with any of the reasons why the former US president was removed from Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. The reason why the app was removed from the Play Store was because it didn’t work, reported The Verge.

The app provided campaign news, an event schedule and ways one could donate towards Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, but at some point it just stopped working. And this prompted Google to pull it down.

The Android Police report confirms that the app was non-functional before Google removed it. When the app was being tested, it was unable to load content or report a network error - all you would see was an endlessly spinning, loading ‘T’ circle.

However, the iOS version of the app is still available on the App Store and is working.

Apps on the Play Store need to maintain “minimum functionality” as a part of the store’s policies - which means that they should load and be responsive. When asked about the app, Google said in a statement -

“The Trump 2020 campaign app recently stopped working and we reached out to the developer multiple times in an attempt to get them to address the issue. People expect that apps downloaded from Google Play provide a minimum level of functionality and our policy is to remove non-working apps from the store if they are not fixed.”

Also Read: Ban on Trump is permanent even if runs for office again, says Twitter

As much as one would be tempted to connect Trump’s removal from popular social media platforms with the app’s removal from the Play Store, the reasons here are apolitical and and have only to do with store policies and moderation at work. If an app is not working and the developers do not update it, it gets removed until further notice. And that’s what happened here.