Comment by zrobotics
21 days ago
I mean, I just did a quick look over the installed apps on this phone and ~1/4 of them would work perfectly well without an internet connection, things like a level or GPS speedometer that use the phone sensor or apps for Bluetooth control of devices [like 0] . Why would something like a bubble level app need internet access for anything besides telemetry or ads? I realize I have way more of these types of apps than the average user, but apps like this aren't a super-niche thing that would be on 0.1% of devices.
I just tend to give Google little benefit of the doubt here, considering where their revenue comes from. Same as when they introduced manifest v3, ostensibly for security but just conveniently happening to neuter adblocking. Disabling access to the internet permission for apps aligns with their profit motive.
There's plenty of actually problematic stuff Google does (like this change in the article), there's no need to make up whack ass conspiracy theories, too.
The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings. It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
> The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings.
That's not even a little bit true? There's a ton of 'normal' permissions, almost none of which are user-overrideable. Like, say, android.permission.VIBRATE. Or android.permission.GET_PACKAGE_SIZE. Android has an obscene number of permissions ( https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... ) and almost none of them have a UI to control them nor any ability to be rejected
> It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
How, exactly? How does Google benefit from random 3p apps having Internet access? And remember, Google has play services on every device to proxy anything it needs/wants.
1 reply →
Huh? Not sure how this qualifies as "whack ass". There's an internet permission built in to the OS that Google chose to not expose to the user. The parent poster was claiming there is no reason anyone would want that permission, I then pointed out a whole category of apps that don't need internet to function for anything besides ads and telemetry. All of this is factual info.
So rather than just dismissing the argument via insulting language, can you provide a reasonable alternative explanation for why this setting isn't exposed to the user?
The internet permission is exposed to the user, it just can't be revoked by the user. But that's true of like 100 other permissions, too. It's the default case that permissions are not revokable.
And I did provide 2 reasons why that's the case for Internet specifically, neither of which were even attempted to be refuted in this comment chain
2 replies →
Google relies on ad money is a conspiracy? ... isn't that just... their business model? Like actually?
I mean, would you chop off your own foot? No? Then we should all be in agreeance. Google is definitely forcing network permission for every app to maximize their ad revenue.