More anti-trusts lawsuits please. Just put a fine of no lesser than a 100 Billion $ on these parasites.
Damn America loves itself a duopoly.
Writing has been on the wall about what would happen with no adequate balances in place to prevent this kind of takeover.
We had our chance to buy a Windows Mobile phone 🤣
Unfortunately, that’s the lesson they learned from why monopolies are bad…
Graphene OS need to develop their own app store.
They do have their own App Store, it’s just only got like… 14 apps in it. Mostly just the stuff they’ve made them selves that they’re super confident in the security of, as well as a couple of other app stores like Accrescent
To start allowing submissions of any third party app to it would ether require them to do a ton of vetting to ensure it meets their standards, or for them to drop the standards for security and privacy for it. If you want more than that handful of defaults, Accrescent and the google play mirror are there ready to be installed
They need to start incentivizing developers to develop for their app store.
Why not just use F-Droid?
You need a lot of money for incentives. The bigger factor is large scale adoption among the corporate apps that others use (their privacy policies notwithstanding), which I realistically see never happening for Graphene, sadly. Sideloading is a decent alternative, I just don’t know how long it’ll be around for.
Sideloading only needs to be supported by the OS, and the developer. (am I wrong here?)
They already have one. Maybe they could partner with F-droid…
Google and the Open Web
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Embrace
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Extend
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Extinguish <-- we’re here
Ah yes, the 4X buisness strategy. Building an empire through four core pillars:
eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate
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I hope every de-googled os goes completely open source supportive. And i hope people choose these os’s over google or any other closed source/centralized company
And world peace and the end of hunger too.
Sadly most people will get slowly boiled like a frog. People got comfortably numb and they want everything spoonfed. They won’t learn new things, they won’t wean off big services that make everything convenient.
The issue is that a lot of everyday services depends on Google.
If your bank decides it integrates with Google Play Services, well fuck you, your degoogled device won’t work anymore and you’ll have to switch banks or forego using your device for banking.
Every corpo is pushing hard to interwind themselves with your day to day so that they become the gatekeepers of your life and rent seek.
It’s easy for us to find an alternative because we are tech litterate, but not everyone has the knowledge to do so and it is increasingly hard to do so.
Well DUH…
Well, yeah, we’re well into the stage where it’s not quality that sells Google products and services.
This is the Pillaging Stage of Google’s business: as they screw both customers and users (Google’s customers aren’t their users) for short term “growth” they can only hold market share by taking advantage of market barriers to entry, networking effects and their current market share to force both customers and users to keep on using Google products and services.
European institutions and apps should be banned from employing reCAPTCHA, Google’s Play Integrity API and Apple’s App Test API, if this is how they are to function. At the same time, Apple and Google need to be sanctioned for this approach, as I am certain that it violates fair competition laws.
Im just waiting for somebody to make a plan for resistance. So far the best I have seen is going to the doorsteps of google to cry and beg them to stop.
thats not my cup of tea
But I think the real reason nobody is doing this is the paradigm of reasonability.
Nobody want to step their foot down, because that’s not reasonable. We are supposed to make it work like the wife exposed to domestic violence.
But we need to stop being reasonable and start being assertive.
But for real, I think GrapheneOS could take this stand if they’ve got the balls.
GrapheneOS uses Google hardware and depends on Google publishing the Device Tree Blob to create their software over.
By branching with Motorola, it gives them more viability for when Google decide they won’t publish the DTB anymore (it will happen).
But GrapheneOS is still dependant on Motorola not being dicks.
Slowly bringing his palm to his forehead a raspy voice whispers “***No Shit ***MORONS”
I’m not sure if “rival” is the right term. Seems like Google would be very happy to be a monopoly.
The current US government is strongly in favor of corporations screwing over individuals, so we aren’t likely to get any help there. The EU and China are the only organizations that might be able to intervene. Unfortunately, they both seem more interested in the surveillance opportunities than in the good of their citizens.
We seem to be heading toward a two-tiered internet. One that will be accessible to everyone, but will be limited in terms of commerce and possibly content. One that will only be accessible to people who are willing to give up their privacy. That might actually turn out to be a good thing. Buying from the corporations could easily end up limited to the later group, which would encourage more people to shift their buying to other sources.
I may start keeping a cheap device that lives in a Faraday cage that obeys the corporate rules and only comes out when I absolutely need it, and then a graphene device of sorts as my daily driver. Ive almost completely de-googled otherwise.
was looking at phone options recently and, honestly, fairphone has become the only choice as a daily driver. I am now absolutely fine with the limited fairphone specs as a trade-off for a device I control as my own.
will keep older phones for any corp BS that I am forced to deal with. hopefully we can legislatively minimize the interactions.
Works, but if we think about it, it’s just a win for big tech, because we’re using their oppressive system and even buying an additional phone
I’ve done this ever since banking/financial apps became the norm. Something about carrying a small easily lost/stolen device containing access to every penny I own as well as possible credit/loans worth several years salary didn’t seem like good finsec. If it can touch money, its on my sim-less stock old android that lives in a Faraday bag for 99% of the year.
I completely agree.
…and as soon as OpenNIC takes their SSL/TLS Cert generator out of experimental and into something stable - we can start.
Privacy concerned people can start to rebuild the internet based on the original principles of “sharing information and ideas”, rather than " maximizing engagement ".
edit: a word
“I hate Google so much!” - typed from a Google Pixel phone. . . 👀️
you sound like someone that preheats the microwave
You are a normal user of sidewalks.
Yeah but what are you gonna do about it?
My sibling in Satan, there are two options and they both have lots of things to dislike. I’m not going to begrudge someone from wanting more and better options because they are using what they have to…
That’s an American thing, not just Google. They only believe in a free market when it’s their products and services. Theft is fine as long as it’s only them.
Something something… Capitalism
More like neofeudalism at this point.
And actual full on fascism to boot.
Same thing if it’s benefitting them
When it isn’t different story
this is just capitalism thing.
In a true Capitalist society a competitor would be fighting for same sales. What we see is lobbying of government to favour one monopolistic company.
No not really, this is how capitalism is supposed to work.
No, In a true free market competition drives prices down as each company aims to grab you as a customer and it forces efficiency in the manufacturing or development to cut costs. Since lobbying has taken over, there is no free market, it is manipulated to favour the bigger donor or other backend deals to eliminate competition.
For example in Canada we have a giant grocery chain that also has a property company, the property company will only lease to themselves, and they have agreements that no other stores can open a certain distance from them. It means that we overpay on all food
final goal of capitalism is to generate profits and thats what leads to lobbying and monopolies, thats why I said this is real capitalism.
When a Capitalist says “free market” what they mean is “free to monopolize.” It’s about keeping the pathway to feudalism free and open. The US is its temple, but Capitalism is a global cancer.
Most people don’t care.
Hell I’m even the “weird one” only because I tend to use FOSS options when I can.
Who the hell would use YouTube over NewPipe??
I did not know about new pipe. Thank you
Pipepipe is working better for me
Is there an advantage to using newpipe if I pay for premium?
You can stop giving Evil Inc your hard earned money
It’s like 5usd for a family plan in my country. I doubt that’s making a dfference. Also, I sincerely doubt you’re not using any Google services/products in your life. Not to mention that there are plenty of "evil inc"s out there.
Re: 5 USD. Google makes most of it’s money from advertising - which works by tracking everything you do and building detailed profiles of you.
Re: I sincerely doubt you’re not using any Google services/products in your life. Not to mention that there are plenty of "evil inc"s out there. This might not be intentional, but it sounds to me like whataboutism combined with “there is no perfect option, so we shouldn’t do anything”. 90% reduction in use of google services, is better than not doing anything. Heck, 10% reduction is better. Whatever gets you started on the journey. And as a lot of people have correctly identified, it’s not easy. It takes time.
Google makes most of it’s money from advertising - which works by tracking everything you do and building detailed profiles of you.
So the answer’s “no”? Gotcha. I do try to avoid using google products and I do use extensions to try to prevent tracking. So maybe they’re making less money off of me than others? Who knows.
This might not be intentional, but it sounds to me like whataboutism combined with “there is no perfect option, so we shouldn’t do anything”.
Not even close my friend. However, you can’t fight every single battle. I try to pollute as little as possible, selfhost everything I can, don’t buy things I don’t really need, etc. Regarding youtube though? I just wanted to watch videos without ads on my tv and it cost me next to nothing to be able to do that.
Pro tip :P you can use "> " to quote text. It’s easier to read.
“My small contribution to evil is meaningless “. Gotcha.
More privacy
I feel the days of free YouTube front ends is coming to an end. I’m honestly surprised they’re still alive. Didn’t they try to kill yt-dlp recently? Together with their playstore developer verifications, YouTube VPN restrictions, making life harder for Android derivatives, YouTube ad blockers, and on and on, I don’t see a bright future for anything that piggybacks off of Google’s back.
I’m still waiting for a mobile phone manufacturer to support a free OS. Until then I’ll stick to degoogled android.
i had to install Newpipe in my gf’s phone, she’d show me something in YT and need to wade through endless shit before getting to the content. I forget occasionally how shitty an experience YT can be if you don’t make some effort until i use someone elses device.
Ironically, the “weirder” option is more convenient in most cases. NewPipe sometimes breaks when there are API changes or some bs, and vids with age restrictions don’t work at all so I would need to look for another vid with the same content (or use a browser sadly)
I think spreading awareness about privacy would be the first step to move people into decentralized platforms
Getting more open hardware though requires more efforts unfortunately
Brothers in arms mate. I use FOSS whenever absolutely possible. I hear about a new type of service, and my first criteria before evaluating it is, can I run it as FOSS? If the answer to that question is no, then I immediately reject that new service until I can use it in a FOSS manner. Do not pass go. Do not collect one Monero.
