The automated system for detecting foul language, the famous swear word, ended up causing an app to be kicked out of Play Store, Android store. The expulsion happened not because of disrespect for the company's guidelines, but because of a big misunderstanding. The Just (Video) Player, an application developed by Marcel Dopita for playing and editing videos, ended up being penalized for something it literally did not do. All because of a file extension for subtitles offered, the .ASS.

For those who don't understand the reason for Google's blunder, we'll explain: "ass" in English isn't even a swear word, but it's as offensive as the Portuguese word "bunda". Even so, the Play Store's robots identified the word in the app's description as a swear word, and the result was that Just (Video) Player ended up being kicked out of the store for "not complying with the sexual content and profanity policy".

The .ASS in this case, however, is simply an extension used in certain files, and is the abbreviation for Aegisub Advanced Substation. Files with the ASS extension are generated by Aegisub, a multiplatform tool, to create subtitle texts in the Substation Alpha standard.

Shortly after applying the penalty to the app, however, Google, in contact with the developer, understood the misunderstanding and returned the app to the Play Store. The app is free and, in addition to offering users the “controversial” option to subtitle videos in ASS format, it also provides SRT, SSA (look there, Google… it's ASS backwards), TTML and VTT.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Android Police

Image: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay