This shows me in a most certain way, that it is no coincidence that it is impossible to deactivate location services quickly in CC on iOS.
Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
341–348 of 348 posts
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
They paid for a phone advertised to include this service, so, in a way, yes, they did.
I'm afraid you don't understand the flow of money here at all. Google or others pay to be the default app for maps / search etc on things like iPhone. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-...
Yes, I'm aware of that, but that's search on iOS, nothing to do with Google Maps, which I'd say is a much much much smaller problem on iOS compared to Android, and getting more and more irrelevant as Apple Maps gets better. There's is a very large number of Android phones though, many of which at least historically have been advertised to include these Google services. Hence the "in a way" – whether or not there is money flowing into Google Maps directly or indirectly from that purchase, buyers of such phones pay for a device with that service. If that service isn't there, I can return it in most jurisdictions. I'm sure a large part of such users would have the expectation of not being producticized by that service on a phone they paid for, and I doubt anyone cares how exactly Google shuffles money around to make that happen.
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
iOS does very little telemetry. But it doesn't matter. OS telemetry is the least of your problems. That much bigger threat is that of third-party apps on your phone. And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this.
> And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this. Huh? Most mobile-optimized distros offer apps through Flatpak, which gives much stronger sandboxing protections than iOS through Bubblewrap. You can block access to the network, Bluetooth, filesystem (outside the app's sandbox), GPU, accelerometer, webcam, etc. Most distros a…
Mobian provides tenths of thousands of packages through the Debian repositories.
The amount of spyware and trackers allowed into Debian in the first place is very close to zero.
Also it provides firejail. There is no need for flatpak.
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#344Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#345Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…
The word advertising itself has been co-opted. It is like "freedom" or "justice" that is ambiguous and means one thing to advertisers and another to the public. I'm reminded of the vitamin water lawsuit "Coca-Cola criticized the suit as "ridiculous" on the grounds that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Brands#vitaminwater Th…
Reminds me of a video I'd seen on nestle chocolate drink/nutella being advertised as healthy foods[1]. Marketing/advertisers are the real villains in 2XXX.
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/ezrg8i/we_ha...
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this. Huh? Most mobile-optimized distros offer apps through Flatpak, which gives much stronger sandboxing protections than iOS through Bubblewrap. You can block access to the network, Bluetooth, filesystem (outside the app's sandbox), GPU, accelerometer, webcam, etc. Most distros a…
Mobian provides tenths of thousands of packages through the Debian repositories. The amount of spyware and trackers allowed into Debian in the first place is very close to zero. Also it provides firejail. There is no need for flatpak.
I agree that sandboxing should be decoupled from the distribution platform. Unfortunately, normal users aren't going to use bubblewrap or firejail directly until better GUI wrappers are made.
I also think that sandboxing is still a worthwhile pursuit for many FLOSS packages, since many programs--from moddable games to web browsers--run untrusted code. It also mitigates damage done by some forms of user and developer error (can't accidentally wipe a homedir if you can't access it).
It's similar to the rationale for not logging in as root unless necessary.
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, Youtube Vanced (which not only blocks ads but sponsor segments too, while iOS can barely even block the ads in a browser) and proper Firefox are the main reasons I can't consider iOS.
Yo may want to look into Newpipe
very different thing from vanced
Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm afraid you don't understand the flow of money here at all. Google or others pay to be the default app for maps / search etc on things like iPhone. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-...
Yes, I'm aware of that, but that's search on iOS, nothing to do with Google Maps, which I'd say is a much much much smaller problem on iOS compared to Android, and getting more and more irrelevant as Apple Maps gets better. There's is a very large number of Android phones though, many of which at least historically have been advertised to include these Google services. Hence the "in a way" – whether or not there is m…
Almost no services are guaranteed on the phone you buy. They can and do change. And if a service does remain free - then you are the product.