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Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

voys.co.za

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Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#91

Post by Nextgrid »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #79
MaxikCZ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC: At least in Europe, they needn't ask for essential cookies. They need to ask for cookies used for tracking, profiling, fingerprinting and consent to share collected info with third parties. The rules also state that the path to reject those cookies must be as easy as it is to accept them, so if they have "accept all" button, they are required to also provide "reject all" button, that has similar visibility and…

That‘s what I thought. I just started a prolonged burnout vacation. How do I hold them accountable / sue them? I will look it up.

You can't sue them. That's the reason so many non-compliant consent flows are out there, and entire businesses have been built on providing them as a service.

The best you can do is to complain to your country's data protection agency (in the UK this would be the ICO, in France the CNIL, etc). The problem is that they aren't enforcing the regulation enough to deter non-compliance. It's cheaper (in fact, free most of the time, the worst you will get is be asked to get into compliance despite breaching the regulation for years) to breach it for as long as you can than to respect it.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#92

Post by somat »

squarefoot wrote: post #9

The mobile ecosystem has been built with the sole intent of milking users through targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription, so I find normal that corporations behind the OSes fight hard to maintain the platform as closed as possible (proprietary or seemingly open OSes, closed drivers, locked bootloaders etc). Their deepest fear is seeing their ecosystem conquered by Open Source, o…

This is why I say a little prayer of thanks to the internet elders every day that the internet was developed in academia.

I mean sure it is a hive of villinary full of corperate scumbags trying their hardest to steal your freedoms and make you into the perfect consumer. but when I think about how much worse it would be if it had been developed commercially I get this feeling of overwhelming dread and have to go lie down for a while.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#93

Post by gunapologist99 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #90
atriix wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the irony of that, is that all to many times, one must enable cookies to be able to dismiss the, often full screen takeover, cookie notice to "disable" cookies

Non-compliant & dumb implementations doesn't mean the law itself is bad. The problem is a major lack of enforcement.

A lack of enforcement is definitely not the problem.

Stated as the inverse, what would more enforcement solve?

And, even if it was a solution, what would this additional enforcement actually enforce? A poorly written law, apparently designed to introduce additional friction into simple web browsing, with porous and easily-evaded definitions and vague goals that only apply to a tiny fraction of planetary inhabitants? (Because that seems to be the actual problem.)

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#94

Post by lhobas »

donmcronald wrote: post #50

> We even sue governments for protecting the privacy of our users. Lost in translation?

No: Voys is a Dutch company with a South African counterpart. Their Dutch entity sued the Dutch government for not providing enough clarity on how mandatory call logs get processed on the government side.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#95

Post by Aloha »

squarefoot wrote: post #9

The mobile ecosystem has been built with the sole intent of milking users through targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription, so I find normal that corporations behind the OSes fight hard to maintain the platform as closed as possible (proprietary or seemingly open OSes, closed drivers, locked bootloaders etc). Their deepest fear is seeing their ecosystem conquered by Open Source, o…

Open Source cell phones is functionally a very very niche market.

They end up costing more than the phone with the big binary blobs from the other android manufacturers, and often have older hardware than the hardware makers are willing to give away specs for.

For what, I'd ask? The users don't care. 98% of Android and iOS users don't even know what open source is, and at least half of those who do know, don't really care that their phone isn't open source.

The people who buy most of the phones by volume and dollars, just want a phone that works well, and lasts 2-5 years.

This was true in the pre-Android iOS version too, I cant remember a Sidekick, PalmOS or Windows Mobile caring much about it either. Most users don't care much about how the sausage is made, provided the sausage is tasty, convenient and cheap.

I donn't think they're afraid of their ecosystem being threatened by Open Source, its not even in their field of vision.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#96

Post by betwixthewires »

mixedCase wrote: post #72
betwixthewires wrote: post #60

So put it in f-droid.

And nobody will use it because third party stores are discouraged by the operating system's UX.

Lots of people use f-droid. It's as easy as installing f-droid from browser and then checking a box in settings.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#97

Post by BoorishBears »

sangnoir wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before iOS, to be fair. Touchscreens got the attention but the use of the iPod’s popularity to negotiate a non-terrible cellular market was equally transformative. The carriers used to charge something on the order of $50k each to be listed in their app stores and their percentage of revenue was high and negotiated based on your perceived ability to pay: we had several clients bail on J2ME projects because they were…

> Before iOS, to be fair. iOS didn't move the needle on open source, open bootloaders or anything gp mentioned. All iOS did was shift the balance of power from telecom companies to Apple. Android was far more open than all that came before it: the source code was available,it used open source & contributed back, and brought a very "PC" mindset[1] to an industry that had always considered handsets to be appliances (sa…

Apple is indeed the driving force that improved "targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription" compared to the old "Open the Web Browser and Owe 10 dollars" days by leveraging their iTunes userbase.

Android would not even have launched without the iPhone breaking down those doors, you can hear it first hand from the Handspring/PalmOS/WebOS folks: https://youtu.be/b9_Vh9h3Ohw?t=1609

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#99

Post by happymellon »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #73
tsimionescu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, given their cookie policy, they claim that they are "very privacy conscious" is dubious at best (no button to directly reject all non-necessary cookies, navigation to a different page to configure cookie preferences, claiming that analytics cookies are required). I'm going to go ahead and say that probably they are misrepresenting what is happening.

To give the benefit of the doubt, knowing nothing else about this company: This is clearly a South African based company. GDPR and cookie may be important compliance but it's not top of the totem pole - the local South African equivalent law (POPI) is more about data processing than cookies. Plenty of sites have not updated their cookie UX for the newer regulations. I've even noticed some sites serve different forms…

GDPR is also nothing about cookies. It is about collecting tracking and marketing data about someone without their permission.

If you do any tracking and you don't use cookies, you still need permission and if you use cookies but you aren't using them for data mining then you do not need to ask for permission.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#100

Post by happymellon »

Nextgrid wrote: post #83
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give the benefit of the doubt, knowing nothing else about this company: This is clearly a South African based company. GDPR and cookie may be important compliance but it's not top of the totem pole - the local South African equivalent law (POPI) is more about data processing than cookies. Plenty of sites have not updated their cookie UX for the newer regulations. I've even noticed some sites serve different forms…

> the local South African equivalent law (POPI) is more about data processing than cookies . Plenty of sites have not updated their cookie UX for the newer regulations. The GDPR is exactly the same. Even the ePrivacy Directive (the so-called "cookie law") actually covers more than just cookies - any method of storage in a user's terminal (whether browser local storage, or an app's own database) is also in scope.

Indeed, and you can also use cookies without requesting permission.
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