https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/Android_privacy_report.pd...
> that personal data is being harvested by default en masse
You seem to be agreeing, at least to the point that a built-in app is usually granted permissions without requesting from the user. I think it would be more correct to say "bad implementation" instead of "bad design" but the point seems to make sense.
But ultimately it seems that you and OP both agree that this "bad implementation" (ask the user for permission instead of being granted by the OS) is the intended design (require unrelated permission for basic functionality).
No, I don't want Google or whoever else to have their alarm app scanning my contacts for no good reason¹ either, and perhaps I can't stop it whoever is doing it, but given how many apps are locked onto that phone, how often it finds a reason to start one of them up, what perms they want, etc., I'm pretty sure I trust Xiaomi less. They probably have all my current data already anyway (I'm sure this phone is using more data than the previous one, though I've not dug into why yet, perhaps sending my info home is why), but hey ho…
My last phone was from Xiaomi too, but that was relatively stock Android (on the Android One program) so didn't have so much extra junk forced into it.
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[1] they might have reason, I doubt I'd consider it good!
Unfortunately not surprising at all for Xiaomi, or any Chinese smartphone maker for that matter. Not that Korean or American Android phone makers like Samsung, Motorola, Google Pixel etc are privacy friendly, but Chinese smartphones are way worse.
Worst part was while I decided against using it, it still took a while before I found a replacement.
Seriously: Monthly payments, and not only $1 for an alarm app, and then they have the gall to try to get away with tracking me on top of it..!
But sometimes I feel myself slipping closer and closer to your much more cynical ideas.
In particular I remember donating what for me was a good chunk of money to Caddy right before they started "experimenting with business models" or whatever he called it. Same goes for happily paying WhatsApp, walking around like a living talking billboard for it only to have them sell out to Facebook shortly after.
Just two examples from the top of my mind.
History has taught us that an enforced rule of law is the only way to prevent scammers from being the dominate players (by number, not size) in a market.
Law makes cheating less adaptive. But even without law, cheats would not exceed some small minority.
They added ChatGPT and all sorts of other shit to it unfortunately but the core functionality is still good
You can't even buy your way out of it like people suggest. The fact that you want to do that signals you have money and makes your data even more valuable. Even companies that do not do this currently, assuming they are publicly traded, with eventual succumb. They just need a bad quarter or a few people needing to boost their metrics and they'll add the new revenue source.
People try to justify everything they do and this is one the worst of them. Some even seemed to use this as an argument against open source which is usually free.
Along the same lines there is "What is your monetization plan?".
The next one I wish would go away is the "but they have a privacy policy" line of thinking. Like that means anything.
>Permitted uses involve apps that must discover any and all installed apps on the device, for awareness or interoperability purposes may have eligibility for the permission. Permitted uses include device search, antivirus apps, file managers, and browsers.