Keep Android Open (Stop Google from limiting APK file usage) (c.org)
from Duckling5746@lemmy.today to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 17:27
https://lemmy.today/post/56311226

#selfhosted

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curbstickle@anarchist.nexus on 10 Jul 18:04 next collapse

@duckling5746@lemmy.today as a reminder the reason this is related to self-hosting should be obvious, whether in the title or the post text.

For this one, I’ll note that this is key to self-hosting, and I think many know it. Many, myself included, use f-droid or similar 3rd party repos to manage the apps that we use with our self-hosted setup. With this change, many of the current apps we enjoy using will either need to register with Google, or essentially become unused. While there is a way to still do it, it is really messy, and requires an absolutely wild number of steps + 24hr “cooling off period”. Its ridiculous.

Personally, I’m leaving the android ecosystem one way or the other. It may be using an android phone and hotspotting for another device running PMOS or similar, or getting a Moto with Graphene, whatever, but this change is impactful and horrendous.

placebo@lemmy.zip on 10 Jul 18:16 next collapse

Petitions are useless.

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus on 10 Jul 18:30 next collapse

Eh, I wouldn’t say useless.

I’d say they only account for user sentiment at best. Which can have an impact, but I’d say incredibly unlikely that there will be an impact on this one.

Not using android as much as possible will have a much higher impact though.

Ooops@feddit.org on 10 Jul 19:04 next collapse

Petitions are useless

Protests are useless

Governments and corporations conspire to implement surveilance knowing what comes next

<-- we are here

Actual resistence

xSikes@feddit.online on 10 Jul 20:27 collapse

Well put

DandomRude@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 19:53 collapse

That is simply wrong. Public pressure can certainly be effective. In any case, it’s definitely better than doing nothing at all.

placebo@lemmy.zip on 10 Jul 20:14 collapse

Public pressure can be effective, but this isn’t public pressure. This is the “click a button if you agree” type of action. Online petitions are extremely ineffective unless they’re part of a broader, stronger campaign. This petition isn’t part of anything in particular.

From what I see, some student started it and there are no goals, and no planned actions. According to change.org, this petition mentioned in a medium.com blog and some tech website most of us have never heard of. That’s not much.

It’s just a place to vent your frustration.

it’s definitely better than doing nothing at all

It makes one feel better because it gives people a false sense of accomplishment.

Look, vote if you want, I just think this is off-topic and isn’t directly relevant to self-hosting. Hence the comment.

AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social on 10 Jul 23:32 collapse

The petition is only one part of the puzzle.

Keep Android Open also says to contact your regulators and fill out Google’s developer verification survey, both of which either directly affect Google by influencing internal processes, or put regulatory pressure on them to back off.

The Change.org petition is moreso just a way to count overall total supporters, and add one more lever of pressure that can be leveled against them. (e.g. instead of “we’ve had a lot of people contact regulators” it’s “218,000 people are actively taking the time to tell you they don’t like this”, can be cited by lawmakers, advocacy groups, etc)

That said though, I do agree that a change.org petition on its own is… generally ineffective most of the time.

Bristlecone@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 19:26 next collapse

Nah! If they kill it Linux mobile will get better!

lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org on 10 Jul 20:10 next collapse

Only if efforts can transfer over, which means devs currently standing on the paid side of Google!Android would have to move over to develop Linux mobile and develop for Linux mobile.

shonkyshonky@piefed.blahaj.zone on 10 Jul 20:11 collapse

the year of the Linux smartphone

anon_8675309@lemmy.world on 11 Jul 00:31 collapse

2047

lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 19:29 next collapse

All this effort going towards “saving” green fascism when we should be pouring these efforts into Linux

marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today on 10 Jul 21:07 next collapse

That’s great and all but the current linux phone offerings are… not suitable for general public use. The iPad generation will simply not be able to use them in their current state.

NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net on 10 Jul 21:12 collapse

We were so close to a phone usable by non-enthusiasts with the Nokia N1. The Nokia Linux phones were killed when Nokia hired a former VP at Microsoft to be their CEO. I’m still bitter.

DosDude@retrofed.com on 10 Jul 21:23 collapse

Jolla, ex nokia employees, just sent out their first batch of the Jolla phone. It uses sailfishOS, a Linux based operating system capable of running android apps.

I’m in the wait list for my own.

LostCarcosan@lemmy.today on 10 Jul 21:38 collapse

Unfortunately not available for in the US :(

I want one so badly

DeathByDenim@lemmy.world on 11 Jul 01:10 collapse

I’m in Canada. I got myself a Sony Xperia and bought a Sailfish licence for it so I could get the Waydroid integration and predictive text keyboard. Works pretty well. So if you are interested in the OS rather than the hardware, that could be a route to go.

Technically, the licence is not for sale in Canada (or US), but meh, it did work at the time. Probably still does.

Anyway, I quite enjoy Sailfish. Been using it for about 4 years now or thereabouts. There’s a fair number of native apps, especially with Chum and Storeman. With Waydroid, many Android apps work too, though definitely not all.

mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud on 10 Jul 21:45 next collapse

You do know that android is Linux under the hood right?

So we have a Linux phone now, it’s just got a crappy front end on it

undrwater@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 23:09 next collapse

It’s Linux-ish under the hood really. No Android device I’m aware of is running the vanilla kernel.

garbage_world@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 23:49 collapse

If android is linux, watchOS is unix

Zorque@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 22:42 collapse

There’s diminishing returns, and we have lives outside our phones. Well, most of us. We can put a limited amount of time and energy into this, but pushing Linux requires a great deal of effort and time.

Not saying we shouldn’t also do that, but in the mean time fighting to keep the options we do have less shitty shouldn’t be completely abandoned.

unitedwithme@lemmy.today on 10 Jul 19:43 next collapse

I don’t get it, how tf they gonna stop you on phones that already exist?

A. You can disable any new OS or device updates from Google.

B. You can keep your existing phone on Android 16 or prior (hell, I’m on 12)

C. Use alt OS like Graphene, Lineage, Iodé, /e/OS, CalyxOS (they’re back!!), etc

D. Sign out of Google on your phone, install F-Droid or something from APK package on FF derived browser.

I’m sure on brands new devices with that patch, plus anyone who doesn’t disable the auto updates will be blocked. But no way no how can Google stop us all!! 🖕🖕🏻🖕🏿🖕🏼

i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de on 10 Jul 20:01 collapse

A. It’s not an OS update. It’s part of Google Play Services.
B. I’m pretty sure this applies even on Android 12 because it’s Google Play Services. Years back, Google started moving functionality like this into Google Play Services so your phone could get new features even if you had a bad manufacturer and OS updates were months or even years behind. It was introduced as a feature then.
C. This does work, but some apps (notably banking apps) block non-Google Android, even if there is no legitimate security reason for doing so. This will vary by OS and even phones running the same OS. Official GrapheneOS builds for officially supported devices probably have the best compatibility with apps in terms of the apps not blocking your phone. Maybe there are some rooted phones that patch apps to bypass “integrity” checks. Some features of your phone just will not work, even if you have a third-party OS with official support for your phone (contactless payments). Hopefully the EU gets on this and at least Europeans or people who can trick their phones into thinking they are Europeans will get some of their control back.
D. Most people can’t live without the apps that are available only on Google’s store or that require Google Play Services. That’s most apps. Even if you don’t need those specific apps, you will need to deal with other stuff like setting up Unified Push if you want to receive timely notifications. My parents are not going to set up a Unified Push gateway.

yucandu@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 20:16 next collapse

A 24hr waiting period to use a competitor’s product has to be one of the most blatant anti-competitive behaviour in history.

aesthelete@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 21:09 collapse

If only the founding fathers had written the right to bear apps shall not be infringed in an amendment.

Oh well can’t change the ancient text now, just have to be governed by it forever. 🤷 (It’s a shame the ancient powder-wigged wizards that wrote the constitution weren’t clairvoyant.)

Bacano@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 21:49 collapse

If only there were some way to change the ancient text. Some sort of amend-sion. Surely our benevolent leaders would have figured something like that out by now. I guess we’ll just have to keep voting and hoping every four years

aesthelete@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 22:07 collapse

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas

epyon22@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jul 20:44 next collapse

Really starting to wonder what they signed with apple to get RCS. Seems to be they sold the soul of android.

ripcord@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 21:51 next collapse

Wait so you’re somehow trying to blame THIS on Apple too?

AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social on 10 Jul 23:33 collapse

In what way does this have anything to do with RCS or Apple lmao

aesthelete@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 21:07 next collapse

please just make an android alternative

I want a phone that isn’t a closed ecosystem race to the bottom shit phone

ripcord@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 21:49 next collapse

OK but that is about a 10000x bigger project

jabjoe@feddit.uk on 10 Jul 22:04 next collapse

There are, but the market is rigged by monopolists. And things like banks increasingly require apps that won’t even run on customer Android ROMs easily.

The regulators are needed here.

lemmysmash@piefed.social on 11 Jul 02:34 collapse

The problem with regulators is that they a) gladly suck corporate dicks, b) gladly opt-in for the same authoritarian methods of population control, and c) gladly ignore common sense altogether.

realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip on 10 Jul 23:29 next collapse

I’m pretty sure that custom roms will remove that 24hr wait period from their binaries. Android is still open source and removing a check isn’t going to be very hard for them.

The tech ecosystem is as open as you can. Use linux. Use SearxNG. Use graphene or other custom roms. There’s options out there, you just have to start adopting them instead of just complaining online about having no choice.

garbage_world@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 23:48 collapse

AOSP is open source, android isn’t

atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone on 11 Jul 00:03 next collapse

i hope linux phones succeed

rtxn@lemmy.world on 11 Jul 00:08 collapse

All of the alternatives eventually run into the same “Will my banking app work on it?” problem. The absence of a healthy app economy is the one thing that can’t be fixed by throwing software engineers at it, and it is what caused the death of Windows Phone.

anon_8675309@lemmy.world on 11 Jul 00:29 next collapse

They should work in a browser no?

PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social on 11 Jul 02:11 collapse

Not for things like check deposits, unfortunately

Shumina@lemmus.org on 11 Jul 02:28 collapse

God I fucking LOVED my windows phone. Nokia body, windows OS, and no one fucked with making viruses because eleventeen people bought one in total.

lechekaflan@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 23:30 collapse

Fuck you Pichai. They should be sued.