“Google says x, everyone else on earth (and in orbit) say that’s bullshit”.
I think I’ve heard this before
I trust anything from F-droid more than 95% of the junk that is available in the Google Store
Yeah I’d absolutely give a random APK from F-Droid contacts acess than any social media app from google play
A random open source app with a hundred lines of code that I can personally inspect vs closed source apps that sells every info about you the second you press install
I’d trust more an F-droid app to get my position than 99% od Google Play Store apps
The 1% is just open source software that also release on play store
Until you realize the Play Store versions of some open-source apps have trackers…
Some, not all
Nah F-Droid sucks. Not enough North Korean spyware, for a start!
Google hasn’t made anything better for the end-user in like 10 years or something.
I used to have a very high opinion of that company, now they are just like Facebook / amazon, assholes run by assholes.
Closed to my wallet lmao. If Android becomes nothing more than a walled garden then there’s no reasonable difference between ios and android.
Actually there is. iPhones have better, more powerful and more efficient processors and way better battery life and get more attention to their apps. Even Google apps work better and get more features than their Android counterparts.
The open nature is the biggest thing Android has going for it. And they’re destroying it. I’m sure they know most people won’t care though.
Can’t wait for my Jolla phone to arrive
It’s just all about captive consumers. Makes zero sense to just not have it a setting. “Do this and you are on your own” OK, and off we should go.
Okay, I get what Google is trying to do - Android is a mature OS, and thanks to its embedded nature, is considered a secure runtime, so banks etc. have released apps that have lowered security compared to a browser - such as, long lived logins (aside from the usual biometric/code unlock, how often do you really have to go through the full login sequence?), lowered security for secure actions (often you can confirm transactions and other potentially dangerous things with just your biometrics, because it’s a trusted device, on desktop etc. you’d need access to an OTP provider for every action), and so on. And that’s just banking…
problem is, Android is far from perfect and exploits that allow the exploiting process root access or even worse, well, those happen.
(what’s even worse? well… Android most recently runs essentially in a virtual machine, managed by a SoC-level hypervisor, which in turn is managed by the platform TEE. Basically, userspace is EL0, root on the OS is EL1, Hypervisor access is EL2, TEE is EL3. The higher the number the more access the exploit has. For example, an EL0-EL1 exploit can be detected by usual root detection - but an EL0 to EL2 exploit can’t be because the exploit happens to be outside what the OS can see, which is where the trusted boot chain attestation comes in)
So anyway, Google has been trying to curtail such exploits by various attestation approaches for Play Integrity. And now they’re trying to catch this from the other end by blocking app installs from unknown sources.
The main issue with this? A lot of the apps that contain malware or exploits, come from the Play Store. Basically Google is trying to play cop while allowing a select group of thieves to continue operating without any attempt to shut them down…
It’s just about control not security
It definitely is. And if we take the bank apps as mentioned, they got lazyvand rely on the google mafia to manage their security for themselves. And now those bank apps are trying to police how the fuck I use my own device. Thank goodness there’s still geto and sjizuku I can still hide Dev options and accessibility being turned on.
For the bank apps, I just straight up reviewed them saying they are hostile to disabled persons because they disallow accessing their apps with accessibility features turned on. It’s not much but it helps getting my anger out
