After this initiative, it will be real easy for google to identify the ones who build those "track ICE" apps and others that the powers that be may not be happy with.
Yeah, this is most infuriating thing about this. Other countries could compel any apps they deem bad and ask for identification.
hopefully this will cause more hand support & financial support towards linux phone
I will not register any of my applications with this fascist garbage, I'd rather deprecate them and stop developing on android altogether.
As a developer of 4 FOSS android apps (both on f-droid and the play store): Does anyone know if there's an existing campaign by other devs to oppose this, and boycott the play store until they cave? I'd be happy to participate.
Google can go fuck themselves. I've at least started looking at Ubuntu Touch and potentially going to virtualize it and see how it works. I hope the accessibility is alright though because I rely on magnification and a screen reader to use my device. So I'm going to cross my fingers.
If most app developers comply and I can't get apps on lineage or graphene anymore, and Linux isn't accessible on mobile, I will just have to abandon mobile entirely and go back to my Linux laptop.
- Does this mean sideloading is going away on Android?
Absolutely not. Your sideloaded app will simply refuse to run if the developer has not verified themselves with Google. This will cause any older app that is no longer updated to fail, as well as any apps by developers whom dislike Google's repeated monopolistic behaviour, and opt-out of the program. In short, most apps currently sideloaded will no longer be able to. We call this 'sideload rightsizing'. We will also be keeping users safe by suing the developers of apps we don't like, such as Grayjay, FreeTube, NewPipe, Shizuku, and Magisk - this will be much easier with their government IDs showing their legal names and addresses.
Ftfy Google.
Isn't the Magisk dev working at Google now? Would be funny if they sued him
I haven't used Magisk in some time, admittedly wasn't aware of this. However I see that since he was hired, Magisk seems to no longer have a goal of bypassing SafetyNet or obfuscating itself. Any issue logged about bypassing it or failures using banking apps, etc simply get automatically closed on the GitHub issue registry. So while Magisk still aims to give root and manage access to it, it no longer touches anything related to hiding root access or obfuscating itself from detection since topjohnwu went to work for Google..
So yeah he's not gonna get sued, he has been bought.
I could be wrong though, this is only 20 mins of research, so take it with a grain of salt.
All I heard was is "COMPLY". Yeah, no thanks. I will keep my shades on.
- Does this mean sideloading is going away on Android?
No, but we have to approve it.
FTFY.
Or alternatively:
- Does this mean unverified sideloading is going away on Android?
Yes
I'm hearing this as:
every single apk you make needs to be registered with google so users devices can "phone home" to verify the app signature.
Talk about privacy.
Yeah, fuck that noise. They know exactly that this is the problem.
Because we love developers we want them free to not complying to big corp Google spyware. Please devs love the users back and don't comply!
Year of the Linux phone.
I've been looking at Ubuntu Touch and thinking that it might be time to attempt virtualizing it and trying it out before I need a new device.
I really hope that the magnification and the screen reader are up to par because I'm a low vision user who really needs the accessibility to work.
After all that outcry. They only wrote about devs demanding longer. Conveniently ignoring fdroid's post among others.
Even for hobby projects you would be required to create a limited developer account and submit government identification if you want to distribute apps to a larger audience.
Let’s talk security:
In today's digital age its not doable. You need a smartphone if you work, get medical assistance, access social media, do online payments.
Now, if you mentioned using an alternative OS like Linux we can agree.
(Coming from the US)
Getting off with just a wrist slap on their monopoly trial has embolden them. They think they're untouchable now. I wouldn't be surprised they have a backroom deal with the feds too.
Given the current corrupt and invulnerable administration, absolutely.
It's the whole "if a fine is less than the profit, the fine is just considered a cost of business."
"security" my ass
This doesn't fix anything
The problem is Google gate keeping the platform.
If this is adopted, soon github would require your SSN for writing hello world.
how does one start repressions and censorship? by saying "it's for your own safety"
You could do what I did and let them know via feedback that you'll be leaving for Apple since its the same thing now.
I won't actually be going to apple, but to a linuxphone, but saying Apple is probably going to have more impact so I went with that.
Edit: This is feedback to them linked in that page.
If you have a dev account, I recommend using it to give them feedback.
TLDR:
Yes.
I've been thinking about strategies to get Google to back down on this. And I think the most viable strategy is to let them know that we will all move to iOS if they go through with it. If they lock down their OS, then we might as well use the OG locked down OS and turn to Apple. We only have to make this convincing enough.
I don't want to go to the dark side either. But as the light is going out on this side: I'm gonna need a new phone within the next 12-18 months. For the first time since ditching my blackberry I'm thinking about switching again. And for the first time ever I'm seriously thinking about an iPhone. All my purchases and what not be dammed. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, GOOGLE!
This would not help us much at all, Google clearly doesn't consider iOS a completing platform because Google's core business is still advertising not selling phones or phone OS (which Apple does both since all iPhones are iOS devices and all iOS phones are iPhones). And on iPhones Google already have most of their ads delivery platform and services offered, you have iOS apps for YouTube, YouTube Music and all of them, while the closed nature of iOS makes it even more difficult for people to do things like blocking Google's ads with system-wide adblockers or bypassing YouTube ads with modded YouTube clients, like you can easily so on Android.
Not to mention iPhones such soooo much more than a locked down Android since on Android it's still much easier to root as long as you have a phone with unlocked bootloader, than to jailbreak literally any iOS device, since iOS jailbreaking actually requires exploits and Android still has mostly a Linux kernel so a lot of the tools work out of the box, while iOS does not at all and has a very different OS architecture.
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