If they end up blocking f-droid I’m bombing them
They can’t even handle the apps on their store…
For your security we’re going to block your access to FOSS and apps that let you avoid our ads. This is totally not a business decision. Pinky swear.
and avoid our datamining capabilities, and the intrusive AI we keep pushing on unwanted customers. we knew thier android core app(spyware) was the first step. they probably want that to permanantly installed into everyones phone.
for the greater good
This good is gonna be so great after we lose everything to the worst of us.
Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport.
You’re not a fucking airport, Google!
Also we bought and own the fucking plane! Don’t tell us where we can fly to!
Better. We bought the airport. Google was paid to pave the runway and maintain it for a couple years after. And now they try to dictate that only planes they approve may start and land.
While stealing and selling all the data from the passengers.
i dont need to show id to fly domestic…
The android dream is over. It was fun while it lasted. My next phone will be linux
No one talking about how this could completely annihilate open source .apk development? First off the lead dev has to get identity verified to get a key, which will reduce the number of devs willing to push through friction to start a project. Then when the key is issued and it is posted to the repository, what keeps anyone from grabbing it and using it for another repo? We’ll they have an official app registration of some kind, ok, what about version control? Does every new version have to be registered before it can be loaded and tested? Same for forks?
This is about to be a terrible mess, Google is assassinating FOSS with this.
It will kill everyone that is playing around with the phones. I have done a couple mobile projects where I just sideloaded the package I created to quickly test it and to demo it to people. Now that I can’t do that why would I develop for your platform by choice.
You distribute the code without your key and a built package that is signed. This isn’t exactly rocket science.
Anyone who forks the code will have to use their own key to install a package they built.
It’s just unnecessary red tape.
It’s just unnecessary red tape.
Which will reduce the number of people using foss apks, which will in turn, reduce the motivation, and then the number, of foss apk developers.
How will fdroid work
Fdroid itself and every package they host will have to be signed.
Maybe there are still workarounds, like enabling dev mode on your phone, but still tedious.
So Android is pointless now?
No, really. If I’m gonna be dragged kicking and screaming into the walled garden, why would I go with Google’s joke of an ecosystem instead of much nicer and better integrated Apple garden?I might as well start carrying one of those weird branded ultra-tiny laptops from AliExpress and some used, older iPhone for the 2 apps I need.
Fuck it. Throw out the baby, the bathwater, the bathtub, the whole damn thing. Fuuuuck it.Wait, what the hell?
I can’t believe this, who the hell are they to decide what I should install?
They are welcome to curate their own store, but sideloading concerns only the user.
Hopefully, the EU and other jurisdictions block this.
Fucking corrupt American oligarchs.
Hopefully, the EU and other jurisdictions block this.
This is very similar to the notarization process Apple introduced to comply with the EU requirement of allowing third-party stores, and yet the EU doesn’t seem concerned (maybe because Apple did not allow third-party stores in the first place, will it be different for Google?)
Not an Apple user, so I didn’t know about this. Extremely disappointing.
It really does seem avoiding any and all American services/products (to the extent possible, with exceptions where reasonable) is the only way forward.
I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the US is a ethical, cultural and even economic dead end. Yes even economic, only a fool would believe intense corruption and broad support of criminality and corruption among the population will not have any negative effects in the future.
You think this wouldn’t happen elsewhere?
It’s not just an American thing, it’s an asshoke thing, and those people are everywhere, and will always find a way.
Of course it can happen elsewhere.
Just US has a massive influence on tech platforms, and they are currently under-going an oligarch takeover (oligarch influence was already bad irrespective of whether the far right or centre right was in power).
Mind you I am not anti-American. I have largely always defended the US as a matter of pragmatism (it is the largest and most influential democracy-leaning country with a measure of respect for human right). US has done really bad things, but they have done good things as well. I can’t say the same about say China or Russia.
even the OP phone is considering doing a soft-blocking of bootloader
Yes the largest economy in the world is an economic dead end. Do you know why so many countries are sucking off Trump? They want access to American dollars. And no diversification doesn’t work because what do you replace America with, there isn’t some untapped multi trillion dollar economy just sitting there. It sucks and I don’t get why the world let it happen but it is where we are and it we’ll hurt to change it and nobody seems like they want to do the work.
us has made every country dependant on it, which is why the brics was created o offeset it, but it isnt doing really good right now.
I clarified what I meant by economic dead end. It’s not going to happen tomorrow or even in ten years. But absolute corruption, rollback of democracy and a population where a large number of people support crime and corruption will have a caustic effect in the long term. It’s a straw man to suggest that I was claiming an immense collapse in American economic might.
At one point the “sun never set on the British empire” and now the British empire is no more. There are also examples of economies that were once top end, but are now closer to middle income.
I don’t think you understand the extent to which American “soft power” is being eroded right now. What countries have you lived in? What languages other than English do you speak? Do you have close friends in other countries?
Of course America is major economy, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Just look at the state of Chinese products in the early 2000s and where they are now.
People don’t like thugs and liars, especially ones who are constantly parroting polemics about “freedom for this and that” while engaging in criminality and opposing democracy.
The EU can’t even distribute their own apps without Play Integrity. Seems unlikely they will care.
How can that be legal?
Because Apple does it
Fuck.
Wasn’t it made illegal on Europe?
they saw how apple is profitable from being completely walled in garden.
So say you want to move to one of these other OS’s graphene or whatever. Do those work with modern banking apps? Pretty much the only reason they haven’t done The switch so far is because Bank of America would tell me to fuck right off as far as I know
Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport
What, and Google is now the TSA? Fuck that shit. I’ve paid for my device, I get to do whatever the hell I want with it!
Okay, let’s check ids wherever you leave the house, since that’s the sane as checking them at the airport.
Papers please, right?
I’d argue those aren’t the same. ID is checked at the airport for legal entry into another country and the security is on both sides. A lot of countries don’t require people to carry or present ID while walking around in their own country short of a crime having been committed.
google likely has that data already, use any of thier apps, they got it, searching on google, taking pictures, emails.
google is pretty aggressively trying to datamine people for a while, Reddit is thier playgound.
I can’t say anything for the Reddit part of what you said but I agree with Google’s unethical datamining. It’s no secret what Google has been doing. I remember when the tinfoil-hat-wearers were warning people about those nifty little Google speakers people were generously inviting into their homes, telling them to watch what they were saying in the general vicinity of the speakers, that Google could be using them to listen to every conversation. The naysayers said “They wouldn’t do that, that’d be illegal. The speaker only listens when I say ‘Hey Google’ and they wouldn’t be saving what I say anyway!”. Lo and behold, it finally got leaked that was wrong, that the speakers were listening 24/7 and Google was keeping everything. I could be wrong but I recall something going around that Google even admitted they were keeping the recordings. Suddenly the conversation died down, there was no lawsuit for espionage or any such thing and the naysayers suddenly converted to “I’ve got nothing to hide, I don’t care if I’m being recorded”. Ignorance remains forever blissful, it would seem.
Quick note for the pedantic: No, it’s not just Google. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are doing it too. If there’s a microphone in your house, be mindful of what you’re saying around it; you never know how an innocuous conversation might be used against you.
I’ve paid for my device, I get to do whatever the hell I want with it!
You bought a phone but is leasing the software. It’s not yours to do with as you please.
Have you considered using fully open source android versions?
The few options that exist (along with their negatives) can’t be installed on my phone. N20U is still pretty much locked down.
Then do what I do when buying your next phone, find a custom ROM you like, check their “comparability” page, find devices that are fully compatible, preferably officially supported (community build usually work fine as well) and use that as a shopping list when browsing for phones.
Open source Android is a thing??? TIL that might be my solution to this long term since I sideload apps regularly.
Just be mindful of what ROM you’re putting on your device. That ROM can still have access to everything you have on there so it should be a source you trust.
Search for your device name and “custom ROM” to see what’s out there. Some are completely Google free, others retain different levels of Google play support, including downloading existing purchases.
No custom ROM on a recent smartphone technically gives you a fully open source Android system when they rely on vendor-provided proprietary blobs in order for basic hardware functionality to work at all. Unless you want to go without a modem, GPS, and likely more depending on your model, at which point it’s functionally no longer a smartphone.
Open-source custom ROMs are at least far more open-source than the alternative in most of the ways that matter most, including the ability to change the code in order to remove app installation restrictions, to avoid Google’s telemetry, etc.
Would the proprietary blobs in the baseband hardware stop the end user from installing software, which is the topic of concern?
If no, is this a irrelevant “achtually”-reply?
I’d argue it’s worth knowing what you risk losing from your device in the name of sideloading software so it’s not irrelevant to point out your phone might not be a phone by the end of the procedure.
This a massive overreach and so stupid when nowadays apple even relaxed their limitations a little, I heard that iOS users don’t need to jailbreak anymore to use outside apps. What will be the point of android?
Time for a hard fork.
Yeah, need them hardware manufacturers too.
We would have plenty of Linux phones if drivers were open sauce or even just available closed sauce.
Google has been been cracking down on installing .apk’s on your phone for years and they’re getting more and more aggressive about it. It’s not a question of if they’ll disallow it completely, but when.
It’s already extremely tedious. Back in the Android 2.3 days (oh, good old Gingerbread) you could just get an APK and install it, but those times are long gone.
Years ago they threatened the developer of Total Commander to remove his app from the PlayStore unless he patched out an APK install feature, so he was forced to do that.
Now another example: Try to install eBay on a phone that is not passing device integrity. It is not listed on the PlayStore because your device doesn’t pass safety checks. You can grab an APK and install it, but the OS will check if the app has been installed through the PlayStore and if it hasn’t, it will complain and close itself.
GrapheneOS has patched that bullshit out, btw.
And this behaviour happens with all apps where the developer has enabled the “App Integrity” option, which is heavily pushed as a super-great security feature. So developers might just enable that feature, not being fully aware of the implications.
As you can see, it’s one method at a time, slowly but surely, until Google fully controls the ecosystem. The intention behind that is pretty clear: They don’t want people to have AdAway and Revanced, they want money and user data. And they also want you to login to the PlayStore, get hooked on their stupid daily points challenges and spend your hard-earned money on virtual crap.
This is textbook enshittification, it will only get worse from here on.
AdAway can be easily emulated using a DNS server…
Yeah I carry that DNS server around with me in the other pocket /s
Oddly enough your phone is more than powerful enough to do that.
Idk why you’re meming, it’s easy as hell to run it on device, or you can just use dns.adguard.com instead
To be fair, unless you’re using a private, controllable DNS with a frontend interface (like NextDNS, Pihole, etc) – DNS ad blocking is “all or nothing”. Those apps let you control which apps and services and domains come through.
I’m aware, I choose to use the adguard one but I’ve used the on-device ones in the past
