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Your phone is about to stop being yours

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Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#811

Post by orthecreedence »

rootusrootus wrote: post #281
orthecreedence wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iOS app store is like the craigslist personals of online markets. I feel incredibly dirty just going on there. I have to scroll down 3-5 options just to find the exact match for what I searched for, many of the prioritized options being look-alikes that could easily fool people into installing some malware-esque garbage. I love my 13 mini as a phone, but I don't understand how anyone could compare the two app sto…

I almost never go to the app store to find an app, but I can understand how that would be really frustrating. Sounds like they need to get serious about curating the app store content. From my perspective, the walled garden value I get is predominantly in the integrations between my phone, macbook, and watch. And to a lesser extent (because it's a bit buggy at times) the family integrations.

Integrations makes sense, but I'm 100% sold on linux/PCs at this point and I don't care about wearables so my phone is just a phone. Luckily I'm not on the app store much, but if the walled garden is a cesspool already then maybe opening the gates a bit isn't such a bad idea.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#812

Post by array_key_first »

left-struck wrote: post #512
array_key_first wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this mentality at all. Freedom is about the ability to do more stuff, not the requirement to do more stuff. Meaning, everything you want to do with a locked down phone, you can do with an open one. There's no, like, gun to your head saying you HAVE to side load apps. You can just... not... do that. If you think side loading is insecure. You can download 100% of your apps from the play store.…

Well people can be tricked into sideloading apps if it’s possible. To be clear I’m totally on your side and I think that’s a ridiculous reason to not have an open system, but let’s not pretend it’s not a possibility because doing so harms our otherwise very solid argument

It is definitely a possibility, for granny like I pointed out. Not for this person, who is aware of the risk and does not want to side load apps.

Like I said, they would have to somehow forget their own beliefs. Doesn't seem likely to me.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#813

Post by palata »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #797
palata wrote: post #732

Respectfully, I think this is the wrong fight. And I fear it may be counter-productive, because all the effort put into asking Google to make it a little less painful to install an unverified app is not put into the real fight. IMHO, it should be fine for Google or Apple to do whatever they want with their OS. What should be forbidden is to prevent people from installing an alternative OS on their hardware. But this…

Sorry but what a ridiculous take. There are two phone options in the western world: iphone and android. 99.99% of the people aren't' going to even fathom they could install their own OS on a phone or whatever. There is a clear MONOPOLY on phones and to even further take away the right to just install something on it is crazy. I already hate Apple for that, but there's no recourse in the monopolistic & capitalistic US…

When you buy an Android phone, the Stock OS you get is AOSP (the open source Android base) + Google stuff + Manufacturer stuff.

Now it sounds like you don't know about it, but if you take only AOSP and run it on your phone, you will not immediately notice that it is not "a normal Android you expect".

There are alternatives based on AOSP, e.g. GrapheneOS, LineageOS, /e/OS. To 99.99% of the people, those would count as Android. The difference between e.g. a FairPhone Android and a Samsung Android is not smaller than the difference between FairPhone Android and /e/OS.

What I am saying is that we should fight for those alternatives to run properly. Right now you may have heard that "it is not a full replacement because some things don't work". First, few things "don't work" (fewer than you may expect). Second (and more importantly), those few things that "don't work" are not the responsibility of those alternative OSes. It's precisely because Google + Android manufacturers prevent them from working that they don't.

I don't think it is such a ridiculous take. Rather, I feel like you just have no idea about how it works, and therefore you cannot imagine how there are alternatives to the situation you know.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#814

Post by drnick1 »

jordand wrote: post #51
drnick1 wrote: post #8

I don't care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine. Most Android apps just work, and the ones that don't are the kind of malware I am happy to do without.

I'm running GrapheneOS too and while I've experienced the same, I'm dreading the day any of my banking apps update and suddenly start demanding full Play Integrity API support (GrapheneOS only has Basic) causing them to fail to open. Hasn't happened yet but it could.

If that happens you could buy a cheap Android like a Moto G for that indispensable banking app and keep using your GrapheneOS device for everything else. Not ideal, but many of us have old devices lying around that can be used for that.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#815

Post by [deleted] »

TommyTran732 wrote: post #799
fsflover wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 100% free open-source is just marketing. 100% FLOSS is in the OS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641 . It is not the end of the road, but this is the only phone that can run such OS. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47943487

It's basically taking the blobs that would be normally shipped with the OS in a sensible manner, shuffle it around, then calling it "free" while the same blobs would still be there, just on different flash storage chips.

[deleted]

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#816

Post by drnick1 »

mmooss wrote: post #32
drnick1 wrote: post #8

I don't care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine. Most Android apps just work, and the ones that don't are the kind of malware I am happy to do without.

Google could lock out Graphene too, whenever they like, with no warning. I hope Graphene has a plan.

They could conceivably lock the bootloader, but Graphene now has a partnership with Motorola.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#817

Post by drnick1 »

brodock wrote: post #109
bee_rider wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are banks and e-commerce going to get rid of their websites? I imagine some will, but I can’t imagine using one that did. Dating… well, the goal for most people is to exit the dating pool anyway. Social media is bad.

In many countries it's already impossible to use just the web for banking. They either make you install rootkits on your computer or move you to their mobile apps

> They either make you install rootkits on your computer

I am aware that some banks require apps on "certified" phones, but I haven't heard of rootkits on PCs, yet. Do you have an example of that?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#818

Post by saintfire »

krieger_857 wrote: post #800
greenavocado wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, you can sideload it? Amazing. All grandma has to do is install Android Studio, enable developer mode, tap the build number seven times, flip on USB debugging, plug into a laptop, accept an RSA key fingerprint, and pop open a terminal. You know, the way normal people install apps.

>> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute i don't think we were talking about grandma use case

Its hyperbolic but hits the point.

I've helped multiple coworkers (in a non-computer related field) sideload F-Droid for a few spyware/ad free apps they liked the look of.

Id sideload my own phone using adb but I'd tell them theyre out of luck.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#819

Post by palata »

echelon wrote: post #810
palata wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you missed my point. I am fighting for the 100% (and you are not, as you say). We should all own our devices, and owning a device means that we can install whatever OS we want on it. The beauty of it being that if you can install whatever OS you want on it, then the problem raised by the article does not exist anymore. Today, if you own a Pixel, you can just install GrapheneOS and it will mostly work. Why…

> When we buy an Android device, we should be able to install an alternative OS That's not freedom for the world. That's freedom for you and ten people. The bigger thing to fight for is removing Apple and Android's power over what happens post-sale. And that can include your demand, but it also includes a whole hell of a lot more about vanilla/stock Android/iOS.

Only because you don't know what those alternatives are.

I can take a random person in the street, show them my /e/OS or GrapheneOS phone and ask them what it is running. They will 100% say Android.

I can ask them to use it for 10min (write messages, open the browser, swipe TikTok) and they will never realise that it is not running "the Android signed by Google".

It is so, so close to the Android signed by Google that it's not worth "improving" the Android signed by Google! If you want to remove the power of Google over Android, just use one of those alternatives and the problem is solved. The pain points with those alternatives are what we need to fight. And really it's just a few small things that need to be regulated.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#820

Post by luke-stanley »

kube-system wrote: post #334
luke-stanley wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the "opt-out" will not prevent ecosystem effects caused by the default shutdown of convenient app installs due to the policy. Not even for GrapheneOS users. It's a global policy by a body we never voted for. You can't opt-out of that different world by waiting 24-hours, the ecosystem could have permanent effects. This is coming from a company that doesn't even bother to expose a permission to disable Internet acc…

Is it really going to have ecosystem effects? Surely the small portion of power-users who are bothering to intentionally sideload apps can click a couple of buttons. Or just load via ADB and avoid the entire thing. The entire point here is to prevent scam actors from using a false sense of urgency to defraud people. That is a serious vulnerability that needs to be addressed somehow , and I think this is a good compro…

`Is it really going to have ecosystem effects?`

Will mandatory ID gatekeeping of developers have ecosystem effects? Surely the only question is how much? You may install apps over ADB every day, but APK installing is much more convenient and open-source F-Droid developers currently don't have to do a thing to be "allowed" to ship APKs.

`The entire point here is to prevent scam actors from using a false sense of urgency to defraud people.` The proposed architecture is a general developer gate, it is not a proportionate response to the problem - it isn't even proposing to gate specific app permissions, it's being able to install the apps from APKs at all under a regime they administer, with users forced to have this change with no prior consent, only opt-out, and distribution limiting work-arounds (that harm reach).

If Android were to ask the user if they wanted to disable installing downloaded apps from developers who haven't shown Google IDs for their own safety, and let end users give informed consent about what self-protection behaviour level they want for their system, at the point of roll-out, or device setup, that would be quite different.

Why should Google be trusted to gate what apps can be easily shared, when stock Android won't even allow users to toggle Internet access per-app? It isn't proportionate compared to other permissions they could mediate, and worse, it's a centralised architecture vulnerable to authoritarian pressure, and afterwards they will be well positioned to lock it down more.

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