A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
I mean, getting verified as a developer is a similar pain in the ass in other ecosystems. I recently got an LG smart TV and the developer mode there automatically runs out and deletes all unofficial apps after 9999h if you don't manually go into the developer app and extend the time.
My hot take is that you shouldn't have to claim that you're a developer to sideload content. It should be allowed for normal users ๐คท
Okay so why not fork android and do everything foss?
If some company did this with computers 20 years ago they would probably go bankrupt the next year. This is what happens when tech oligarchies are allowed.
This is almost what apples infrastructure is....
The main difference is they (Apple) have been clear with their design choice since the beginning and they had their own market. Google is imposing this change on many users who did not want such an ecosystem to start with. But I suppose the market share of people who won't care about this will be large enough that they will survive, because they are a tech monopoly.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy comparing this to some of the stuff Microsoft got in trouble for with Internet Explorer back in the '90s.
Openness was the primary reason I always stuck with android. Without that, fuck them. If I have no options I'm just gonna use Huawei.
And then after doing all that you still need to confirm a scary warning every single time you install an app. As if it wasn't enough.
Don't be cartoonishly evil?
You have a very low bar for what evil is apparently.
Can anyone explain how this isn't an illegal monopoly? I'm genuinely curious
The public institutions responsible for tearing apart monopolies would have a field day with google if they were even remotely as powerful and willing as they used to be.
Because there are more iPhones in America.
Ignore that Apple also makes it impossible to side load apps.
I'm not criticizing you because that's the typical term, but we really need to stop calling it side loading. It's just installing. Calling it that makes it sound like something special and different.
Aren't there alternative stores for iPhones in the EU and Japan?
Apple was the canary in the coal mine for this behavior in the EU. Apple was forced to allow third party apps, so Apple mandated that everyone had to register with them, and pay them their yearly fee, and then developers had to pay Apple another fee (core technology fee, still double dipping), and governments were completely fine with that. (And developers will happily jump through more hoops to develop on iOS).
Google saw this and decided if they can, so can Google. And this technically is the easier of the two as at least this doesn't require every developer to register with Google this way.
Really good point to illustrate how liberal reform efforts just redirect capitalist control into an increasingly contrived legal system.
I'd be interested in seeing a statistic of how much this reduces the impact of intentionally malicious apps. I know it's not the real motivation, but still.
Given that the official Google Play store has distributed intentionally malicious apps in the past, I'd say it reduces it by approximately none.
De-googled Android ROMs:
Non-android, non-apple smartphones:
And pretty much every feature phone out there (way too many to list)
Confirm with biometrics... WTF?!
People should have the universal right to live a cellphone-free life. In my country, it is assumed that everyone uses an iPhone or a Google Android phone as if it was part of your own self.
Stolen from elsewhere:
You are not getting screwed on this. Google is just applying lube.
With these steps, you might as well unlock your bootloader. WTF.
