I don't have Google Play Services or the Play store installed on my phone nor do I want to install them. Yes, it's my responsibility to update the app, whatever, just give me the file.
On Android, APKs are almost always signed by default (even if they're only self-signed).
If you update the application, Android will check that the certificate of the current version matches the one from the update before allowing you to install it.
On the store that you host you can also choose to enforce whichever rules you like.
Plus, they were talking about Gab there. If you think you're going to write the next Gab or... Pander or Flander or whatever that website was that allowed people to plan storming the US capital, then you can still have your own store.
Sometimes I get notifications, sometimes it may take hours for me to get the notification.
I rarely use instant messaging for important things, and when I do, I make sure to check my phone often so I don't miss the messages.
Is this stupid? Maybe, but I'm not going to install Google's closed source crap on a device that I carry almost everywhere. If that means I become a social pariah, then so be it.
Most importantly your app (and server) needs to be build to be able to fall back to a 3rd party message broker. But the common fallback is to just sync messages from time to time in background if the app runs as it's "good enough" for the case Google is temporary down or not available or you are one of the (from the App POV) view people which de-googled their phone.
Sounds heroic, but maybe does not help anyone? And if you really cannot tolerate closed source, than what kind of hardware do you use? As far as I know, they are allmost all closed and locked.
Pine64 is a fresh breeze, but they are also not free(nor stable) yet.
My workaround is simply, that I have a mobile, where I can remove the batterie, then I know, it is turned off.
The problem is that this requires a long running background connection.
And guess what Google tried to kill for battery saving purpose since a long time (long running mostly sleeping background processes). But then on Google in difference to Apple it's still possible (but less reliable) with the right setup and fully possible with a "proper" de-googled phone.
So depending on your setup you might either:
- not get notifications
- get them unreliable
- only get them if the app is open
- get them just fine
Also this might change from app to app, there clearly will be apps which will not have any 3rd party notification broker fallback, but given how Google doesn't have 100% delivicery guarantees they still should have (potential delayed) message syncing when the app is open.