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Comment by StLCylone | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like Google Play is treating Tor Browser like any other app. Randomly rejecting every 4th or 5th release of a long standing app for some random minor reason.

I get they need to keep trojans, spyware, adware, etc out of the store, but as a long time app developer it just seems like the algo says, "We have not rejected this app in a while, so let's do it this time."

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>I get they need to keep trojans, spyware, adware, etc out of the store

They don't keep out adware. Users have that benefit only when using the iOS app store. There are tons of apps on Android that just wrappers around ad SDKs

> They don't keep out adware.

Android, like all google products, is adware.

This comment deserves an award for the most uncomfortable truth of 2020.

It’s a bold statement, if no longer what I would call a “hot-take” for anyone around here.

So that comment is illuminating uncomfortable truths?

Really?

The #1 uncomfortable truth in a year built of them? Are you sure?

What's bold about "<advertising company> products are adware"?

On the other hand on my android phone I use firefox+uBlock and see no ad at all even on youtube...

You might test out something like Guardian VPN and see just how much stuff your phone is trying to send over the wire without your consent. (Guardian is iOS-only, afaik, but surely there must be Android equivalents.)

Netguard has per app blocking with logging/alerts, it's open source and on fdroid/play store.

People aren't going to like what they see. One that always annoyed me was a google services app pinging a geoip url everytime I connected to wifi.

No, only users fully owning their devices have this benefit which neither apple and google provide.

where do I buy such device?

Librem 5, pinephone

Sure, but those are still very far behind software/support wise and you need to be really patient. People who believe in this, like me, have sent them my money, but my daily driver is a modern Android phone which was not only (much) cheaper, but miles ahead in stability and hardware. I send my money and bugreports in the hopes I will have a stable and open phone in my pocket before my death, but there are many years to go as it is.

If we manage to get something like the samsung a31, at a similar pricepoint, with all hardware working before 2025, I would be happy. But I am skeptical when installing yet a newer OS version on my pinephone and start writing bugreports for applications we consider trivial for a daily driver phone.

Edit; being able to performantly and robustly run Android applications in Linux could (sadly but it is a reality) help adoption a lot a well because of proprietary apps (it sucks but I need whatsapp for instance). That is not that close by either I think; anbox is slow and unreliable last I tried.

Nowadays, what's exactly "Adware"? Apps/Games with ads is now usual (remember Opera is called Adware). Possibly an app that forcely displays ads still can be called as Adware, but it's not possible on iOS and need manual additional permission on Android.

Seems like a way for contractors to look like they're "accomplishing" something by catching things in reviews.

Exactly. Seems to be a trend at major corporations like Google. Create a fire, create enough noise to get your department noticed, extinguish it. Earn your paycheck.

That's essentially how "random checks" happen at the border crossings.

Everybody is going in sooner or later.

count down started : won't take long before it gets again repeated here that it's all just Goo hate

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