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Comment by rainforest | Hacker News Reader

Note that the smart feed "feature" is Taboola-provided adware[0] so it's par for the course. It's beyond comprehension Lenovo would trash the brand by shipping it on flagships.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/motorola/comments/1s61usi/edge_60_p...

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You're flabbergasted that Lenovo would trash a sub-brand? Lenovo? The company who trashed their own brand with Superfish?

The point where they trashed the brand has long since passed, tried the phones when they bought the brand and it was OK for a while but went downhill quickly.

Until now I waited for their GrapheneOS-based phones. If there isn't a plausible follow up to this injection I don't think I will buy I device from them.

I had the same reaction.

Who outside Apple/Google/Fairphone isn't? Samsung has been shipping the Israeli (IronSource) AppCloud on A series for a while now and people in some regions even spotted it on S-series phones (it'll spy on your usage and install apps). Nothing, which uses clean Android as one of their selling points, started installing something similar (AppServices, presumably also from IronSource given the Aura branding) on various devices.

Between these companies pushing adware/spyware and Apple putting Apple Creator Studio ads in former iWork applications, ads for Apple Intelligence in the system settings, and pushing ads for their F1 movie in Apple Wallet, smartphones have reached the mass enshittification phase.

The only safe havens are Pixel with GrapheneOS and Fairphone with I don't know what exactly (Murena sorta has ads for their own stuff and has many other issues, I guess LineageOS then). Perhaps ironically, given the context, Motorola with GrapheneOS too :).

OneDrive on some Samsung phones recently started uploading user photos on their own, despite user never granting apps the permission to do so:

https://www.reddit.com/r/samsunggalaxy/comments/1t7vqr8/why_...

I am getting tired of all these nonsense.

At this point, Samsung may be shipping more malware than anyone else on phones

Some 7 months ago there was this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45551504 (Microsoft's OneDrive Begins Testing Face-Recognizing AI for Photos (for Some Preview Users)).

I haven't noticed any further links regarding this topic. Thus I have no idea if setting was fully implemented or abandoned but with this thread here you linked, but I'd rather guess they're full after user's data. And from what users wrote there, MS is not even doing this with some elaborated darkpatterns scenarios but just ordinary stealing these photos. This should be announced louder.

It's sad. Samsung phones with just One UI + Good Lock and without all the crapware would actually be a pretty good phone.

But as long as consumers continue buying, nothing will ever change.

Sony as far as I know is not shipping additional adware on their phones.

Lenovo also shipped a Superfish backdoor on their older computers.

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