Submitted 8 months ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/08/28/the-browser-wasnt-enough-google-wants-to-control-all-your-software/
they just want to confirm a malicious actor didn’t develop it
So Newpipe, SmartTube, Nintendo emulators…
Clones of opensource apps bundled with ads that violates license is OK, but restricting everyone to build and test apps from source so it can test new features and report any issues is too risky for the user
Literally anyone who simply wants their privacy.
This sucks for the average person but, well, everything tends to. If you don’t look for avenues around literally everything “default”, you’re being scammed. They don’t, so they will be.
I do, so I’ll be carrying a Oneplus 6T and slapping a mobile Linux OS on it for my needs.
that’s not usable!
For you.
If you don’t look for avenues around literally everything “default”, you’re being scammed.
This is unfortunately true. I’m glad some people realize it, but I wish we didn’t have to.
This abuse needs to end. Heads are going to roll.
If you don’t look for avenues around literally everything “default”, you’re being scammed. They don’t, so they will be.
And this is why the real solution we need is enforcement of anti-trust law, not mere individual boycotts.
What about flip phones?
There is an interesting new breed of flip phones that can be tethered to for internet access. I could imagine a flip-phone + laptop setup being perfect for a lot of users here.
Ive got the 7T. What OS are you gonna use?
I’m going to try all of them. I’ve always wanted to just go to ebay, buy a 6T and try some of these operating systems. It’s the target phone for about half of them. What interests me the most is Plasma Mobile on PostmarketOS. It looks slick and not too dissimilar from Android.
Linux on mobile is very specific. The 6T isn’t even perfectly supported by anything, it’s just supported enough to be functional.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I got into computers at a young age because it gave me a sense of control over something. I didn’t understand everything, but I could do a lot of trial and error, read things and experiment, and shared a sense of community with some random internet strangers based on that knowledge.
In a world where we are so powerless in so many other ways, why did we insist on bringing that power dynamic into the new bright tech sphere? Why did we have to do that? (N.B. this is rhetorical questioning).
This isn’t a computer, its a phone.
This isn’t a comment, it’s negative feedback.
Thanks for your low quality input.
Sadly the majority of normal people don’t want control. They just want it to do some trivial task without any fuss at any cost.
We, as in the average every day people, didn’t do shit. The corporations that make the shit we use are the ones who got us here. The only thing the people using the devices and software are guilty of is not making a fuss about losing control over the stuff becsuse the average person does not care that deeply about the tools and likely doesn’t even know about a good 75% of what was lost.
There are at least two generations of us who are disappointed at the contrast between tech’s possibilities as envisioned decades ago and the corporate surveillance crap we have to put up with today.
The thing that really gets to me is how we’ve gone from “Here, let us sell you a computer that you can push to its limits however you see fit” to “We will sell you a device and ensure you use that device within a given sphere of acceptability”.
I own this phone/computer/tablet/console/whatever, so why the fuck do I have to adhere to their rules? Rules they’ve changed since I bought the device, of course.
In the new Alien Earth TV show, 5 corporations basically run everything… unfortunately I suspect thats where we are headed as a species.
My university actually teaches about the “Meger Endgame theory” (yes, my professor had fun with that one), which states that industries will consolidate until 2-3 global market leaders dominate. So uhh, it’s not just you. Idk if that’s good or bad news for you haha
Its about time an open standard happened for mobile OSes.
the best outcome for the short term would be to forcibly take away android from google and give it to an independent foundation. as I heard antitrust proceedings in the usa were heading that way a few months ago
So basically remove Google integration from AOSP?
Such things are solvable with a bribe in the USA.
FuriOS?
Interesting. I’ve not heard of FuriOS, but if it actually can be used with US carriers, makes calls and supports SMS/MMS, and can do VoLTE that’s a actually a pretty big deal.
Whenever you see a linux phone advertise both security and android app support, you should be wary, since it’s likely waydroid or a waydroid fork, and their design goal of running android in a container instead of a VM has lead to some interesting security decisions.
Not bad, it looks like I have to buy their phone though. Which is not cheap, or performant guessing by the specs despite what the advertising says.
We need open bootloader and drivers for phones to make any real progress on this. Thin is what’s holding back all initiatives.
and many phone manfacterers, issuers(non google, samsung, or IOs) IS CONSIDERING locking down thier phones.
I wonder if the generic tablets with made up Asian sounding names that you see on the big marketplaces could work? They could have slightly larger or smaller screens if they’re cheaper than current phone screens, and could have Linux with something like Signal on them for calling.
They’d probably be lower quality to begin with, but could potentially get better if people start to buy them. They seem to have generic hardware, so might be able to offer the drivers and unlockable bootloaders too :)
That’s what Android was and they keep trying to undo that any way they can
I disagree. Google has always been a thinly veiled Microsoft. A wolf in sheeps clothing. They embrace, extend, extinguish. It’s the same thing.
Makes me curious if they think their monopoly or whatever they were called cases making them split their browser are going to go though. If you are going to have to sell parts of the company, now would be the time to hammer home any last minute bad things that would make the companies more profitable. Shows higher income for the sale, and gets it out of the way so the new purchaser doesn’t look like the ones who did it, but rather the ones who will make announcements on how they will review things to make them better for the user base.
We need a new one that isn’t made by a for-profit company that only was good to get total market saturation before flipping the enshittification switch to maximize those profits.
The infuriating part of the Google enshittification process is that there is nothing the user can do about it.
Literally the only thing that motivates Google is profit. Controlling side-loaded apps will almost certainly boost their profits by a infinitesimal fraction of a percent, therefore it will be done. Even if consumer uproar causes Google to back down in the short term, they’ll simply implement this a few months later. Late-stage Capitalism sucks.
This is not late stage capitalism. This is mid stage at best. The entire economy and world population could be shrunk down to literally pennies, as the wealth gap widens. It could have us ending up like district 9, or Elysium as broad examples. The govt and entities have not even started cracking down on illegal activities, loop holes, bank accounts, cash spending, crypto, and more in the super strict enforced fashion they could be.
While rightly fucked up and enshittified. We could be so so much further down the capitalism rabbit hole of hell. Everyone should be boycotting and avoiding the largest companies as a whole. No change you make goes unnoticed. You might be less than 1 percent but the snowball effects happen. Movements, parties, resistance, change, software, everything adds up.
So what you can do. Don’t go mentally insane about it. Most things don’t require THAT much effort. A simple tweak here or there makes an impact.
I think they are more conscious than to be driven by small margins (another example of such underestimation is Lenin’s “they’ll sell us the rope we’ll use to hang them”).
It’s like boiling frogs - a very slow process of attracting users, slowly killing competition and diversity, slowly making the ecosystem more and more controlled, then slowly making “neutral” systems not neutral anymore (like those features of Chrome making security exceptions for Google services found a few years ago), and slowly desensitizing people to leaps of faith they do trusting Google (and other companies), while the trust accumulates into total control.
You can stop using all Google products. Now I understand their market share on the web means they’re going to continue to shape the web.
But make no mistake. There is something however, small that you can do. De-Google.
if I don’t use android or iOS, I can’t use my banking apps, pay with my phone, access government services as they require an app to sign in, etc. it’s just not doable anymore for me
The only people who can de google are basically single shut ins with a job that doesnt use anything google.
If you have kids or a company that uses google products. It’s a bad fucking joke to talk like it’s even a realistic option.
Google is basically shoved down your throat. In most cases by the law literally.
De-googling will break banking apps, since most baking apps rely on Play Integrity checks and bootloader status.
That’s barely a viable option without using apples own walled garden.
You can stop using all Google products.
My public school – that my children are basically required by law to attend, remember – is badgering me to sign a consent form so they can have Chromebooks.
This fight is a lot fucking larger than mere individual boycotts!
Honestly Googles products are terrible these days. I have been pretty lax about my privacy but after so much enshittification I switched my services to something that works and doesn’t harvest my data for the privilege.
When they kill off Graphene/Custom ROMs I’ll switch to a linux phone or brickphone.
You can stop using all Google products.
That may be true for you, but other people face different realities. When Google implements the sideloading block it will eventually be pushed to everyone who doesn’t use a custom ROM.
I was thinking of switching to Proton. I pay $2 a month for 100gb and unlimited photos on Google. It’s a good deal. The fact that I would have to find out out to make a server, buy storage, piece meal a bunch of open source software that will inevitably not work without tinkering all makes it so easy just to pay the $2 a month.
De-Google
The complaint is side loading is being restricted and the only long term alternative Apple. Google already began the process of shutting down Graphene by cutting drivers out of AOSP.
Uhh… how do we stop using Android? I mean, these recent attacks by Google seem like they’re going to break GrapheneOS and friends, no?
Now that AOSP is closing, what are we supposed to do?
I will help hand hold anyone who wants to build servers or services (to the best of my ability) to replace Google services with their own.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
People voted for this with their wallets.
As an iPhone guy, I know we already have it like that, and our keyboard has always sucked (and none of the third party keyboards help, they all suck compared to Gboard on Android), but while we dread the day that Apple becomes a data broker like Google… that day is not here yet.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
I have bad news for you: they already sell your information to advertisers.
pluralistic.net/2024/…/reality-distortion-field/#…