WhoBIRD is now deprecated on certified Android devices
github.com
github.com
I think that most of the world is overdue to replace their ubiquitous computing devices with ones not controlled by the US, and the current administration's behavior must be accelerating those thoughts.
(BTW, if a platform were designed for security-first, rather than corporate-surveillance-and-and-passive-engagement-first, it wouldn't as much matter who wrote whatever "app" code ran on it.)
Security ? Which security ? All or nothing ? /s
If details are needed, actually verifying them rather than being any self-reported text seems fairly reasonable.
As always with Google policies, this means users will need to jump through more and more hoops (as today with custom ROMs and banking apps already). I really hope first and foremost that this policy can be reverted, and if not, that the community develops means of technological circumvention (examples mentioned by others include an "app runner" app or letting others identify the app).
It is a sad state the Android ecosystem is heading to.
Hopefully this means that a third player will join and provide a truly open android platform.
If an OS is owned and controlled by a single company, it's never truly open. No matter how much they claim it is.
edit: I should clarify, I'm talking about devs that develop for third party stores exclusively. Usually privacy conscious or devs whose apps aren't allowed on the play store for this and that reason like tachiyomi.
We're finally getting back to native on our computers. /s
Soon you'll live in a world where you are forced to own and regularly use a device certified and controlled by either Google, Apple or Microsoft without exception and no way around it.
[0] https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
Maybe I'll get a used Librem5. I'd get a Jolla phone, but they don't ship to the US. But honestly in my research, there's been no blogs I can find that compare these 3rd party phones to each other that aren't like 4 years old and outdated.
It’s a moat designed to protect the incumbents and raise the barrier to entry for any competitors in the mobile networking space.
Everyone is pissed at Apple for doing that sort of things, but personally I don’t blame them: they were clear on the restrictions from the start and there are literally no surprises when buying a device from them. If you don’t like that, just don’t buy from them…
That’s such a lazy argument. The restrictions shouldn’t exist in the first place. Or at the very least should exist in a way that can be disabled for those that actually want control over the stuff they own.
This would be understandable if there were real advantages to having phones hobbled in this way, but this is not the case. It's analogous to every car company putting spyware in. Most people don't know or care enough to care, but the spyware is still not meaningfully helping them. It's ubiquitous because it's profitable and you can't get a car that is not designed as profit seeking endeavor first and foremost.
On edit: By the way, that's the biggest reason I don't use Apple, and the biggest reason I haven't used Apple since "smart phones" became a thing. Otherwise Apple is superior in a lot of ways. I do realize that people who give a shit are a tiny sliver of the market...
This line of thinking only works as long as there are decent alternatives that exist. Now that Google is going this way too, the alternatives just plainly don’t exist at all, especially for those bank/government/security apps depending on Play services.