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There is no excuse for how hard the permissions API is to use. Why can we not know if the user has "never show again " checked directly? It literally looks like the API and ui came from different proposals

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Because you don't need to know. Permissions are sacred. If you don't have the permission, consider the capabilities aren't there and move on.

How would you feel if Facebook or Instagram app refused to start if you didn't give it camera permission? Maybe I don't have a working camera in my Nexus 6.

The only real recourse against combat adversarial developers is to either trash the defective product in reviews or penalize the developers through other means. Holding functionality hostage in order to gain permissions should be instant grounds for rejection and/or further sanctions.

Unfortunately, this is what Google's own app for the upcoming Google I/O conference does if you deny it access to your contacts at startup.

If you grant the permission only to deny it later, the app won't start again until you grant the permission again.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.sam...

That sounds horrible. I can't see a reason why they'd do that. Can you think of anything why this behavior happens?

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