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Comment by strunz | Hacker News Reader

Most "full ad-blocking" requires being rooted on an Android device too. And you've obviously not done very much research about what data Apple collects vs Google. Simply using each OS will show you a big difference in philosophy. Google makes you approve all permissions when you install an app without clearly stating what it means. iOS apps have to ask for specific permission the first time they want to use GPS, camera, microphone, etc. Default apps? Yeah that's annoying, but it's not like you can't use Signal. And Google is currently working with the US government on many projects, which has caused many Googlers to quit the company.

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> Most "full ad-blocking" requires being rooted on an Android device too.

Nope. https://blokada.org/index.html

> And you've obviously not done very much research about what data Apple collects vs Google.

I showed you exactly how Apple collects more data from iOS than Google does from Android. You're trying to Pee-wee Herman your way out of this with an "I know you are but what am I?"

> Google makes you approve all permissions when you install an app without clearly stating what it means. iOS apps have to ask for specific permission the first time they want to use GPS, camera, microphone, etc.

You're wrong — Android also asks for permission at the time the app wants to use a feature. More importantly, this has nothing to do with what data Google or Android collects, which is the whole point of this thread.

> it's not like you can't use Signal.

Moving the goalposts. You can't use Firefox. An SMS app is nearly useless if it can't be set to the default.

> And Google is currently working with the US government on many projects, which has caused many Googlers to quit the company.

Again, not by sharing user data with them, which is the whole point of this discussion.

Signal is not an "SMS app". Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, that just happens to also support SMS. Note that if you use Signal as your SMS app, to send SMS messages, they are not encrypted.

The whole point is that it falls back to SMS if the other party doesn't have Signal, so you don't have to think about it beforehand. It most certainly is an SMS app, and not being able to set it as the default makes it nearly useless.

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