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Comment by guywithahat | Hacker News Reader

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You don't need to feel bad for them, the Play Store is full of malware so what makes you think this change will help? This is a self-inflicted problem.

Agreed that it's a se-inflicted problem. Like others have stated, restore the network-access permission and have it disabled by default with a big warning shown when the user attempts to enable it (remove the warning if the app has been verified by google).

This has nothing to do with malware. The sleazy fucks at google just want absolute control over our devices. It's as simple as that.

I would be surprised if Android has a reputational issue among users. Maybe at the margins, but not enough to significantly affect market share. Most people have already sorted into iOS and Android camps already.

To whatever extent Google may be responding to an issue arising from the market, it is likely at the behest of large companies, especially payment processors, payment card networks, banks, etc. These institutions lately have begun to exert increasing influence over end-user activities, and it would not surprise me if they are playing a part here, too.

Why is there no sensible behaviour and knowledge around APK installation like there is about any piece of software on a personal computer?

It is also common for people to install things on Windows without thinking critically. It is perhaps less common on Mac OS, but I've seen someone get malware that way.

My position is that this is not the OS vendor's responsibility to prevent. A warning is fine. A scan for known malware by default is fine. Beyond that, it's my device and it's my choice to get software from wherever I damn well please even if it might be a bad idea.

Because only 5% of American adults are highly literate with technology, 30% of working adults self-identify as "never (ever!)" using folders and files for organization, and most people have better things to do with their time to be taught to perfectly analyze the safety of an App Store. Don't hope in the next generation either - only 38% of Gen Z could successfully complete tasks more difficult than moving an email between folders, while an IEA study found that only 2% of Gen Z had reached the anticipated "digital native" stereotype level of fluency.

I would argue that Gen Z is worse at computers than Millennials specifically because we put too many guardrails in place to make computing easy for the illiterate. Now we are all paying the price, as user agency is continually eroded away to further protect the dumb from their own unwillingness to gain a basic understanding of the very tools critical to their daily life.

Can you please post the source of the study?

Over 4% of working US adults work in IT [1]

[1] https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/economy/spotl...

Thank you. The number sounds impossibly high. Like I did meet people like it, but not nearly as often.

Firstly what is the source and secondly, the US is not the majority user of mobile phones and especially not android.

I don't really understand. These people would never download F-droid in the first place or go into settings to enable dev mode.

And besides if you really want to combat fraud stop using creditcards for fuck sake and make a modern payment system that doesn't rely on 1970s technology.

I have little to no evidence that there is sensible behavior and knowledge around software on personal computers.

The biggest difference these days is most folks don't even use a personal computer.

But there is far more education and knowledge that it is a bad thing.

What makes you think that people are sensible about installing shit on their personal computers?

This is just an excuse. Google doesn't care about these people, they already proved that by showing scammy advertisements, as long as they get their profits, they don't care. Don't fall for this "it's for your security" argument.

I'm not saying that Google cares, just that the claim that it's not a problem on PCs is false.

They're not, and Windows got decades of hate for it. Google probably wants no part in that, especially since Apple mostly avoids viruses and malware through their app store

It’s an excuse they use. The don’t care if your average grandmother gets infected by a virus.

This trust me bro, our App Store is safer is just getting on my nerves. Every day we get malware popping on both app stores.

Time to switch

Ok sure but at this point, what's the point in using Android? Google seems to just never stop adding restrictions, maybe for good reasons, but at this point Android is just going to be a cheaper, worse iOS for cheaper devices. There's no reason in buying high end android devices now imo, since they are more expensive than equivalent Apple devices. The freedom that came with Android was the only reason I bothered. Might as well use iOS and its much better official store's app ecosystem, with side loading functionally no longer being a viable option.

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