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Comment by queenkjuul

16 hours ago

At least with an Android i have the option of Graphene, and have access to a terminal, and for now can sideload apps.

With apple there's no choices, so I'll continue to take my chances with Android

Possibly... but the extension of this to Android and Apple is going to be the entire internet shuts you out. And everything else will be a giant Dead Internet crawling with bots.

  • The sites that require you to log in are precisely the same ones that are crawling with bots. The personal internet or "small web" is, and still will be, full of real content. There are also lots of bot websites that are trying to be small web, but since it's an actual social network and not a giant pool everyone pours stuff into, they don't get traction. If you do find a website that seems to be human but links to a thousand AIslop sites, you'll stop following that guy's links.

    • It's less about those sites than it is about government services, banking, healthcare, employment, etc

  • I have to see. As much as I don't like Murena and /e/OS, they seem to have some clout with the EU/EC. Given that they are using microG and also hit by this, they might be able to nudge the EC to act on this.

    Also, personally I care less and less. As long as my banks and government apps work, I'll just not use somebody's service if they put up barriers like this.

    • > Also, personally I care less and less. As long as my banks and government apps work

      If most people care less and less, the result would be that banks and government apps will also work less and less.

      Look, companies have to prioritise. And the obvious way to prioritise is to say "users are requesting X A LOT and nobody requests Y, so we will do X". Companies never, EVER say "it would be more ethical to do Y, let's do Y".

      As people, we can do two things:

      * Push our governments to regulate that shit. That means, complain a lot to the government.

      * Be vocal to companies and complain when they don't support your system. If enough people do that, it will be prioritised.

Can Graphene OS pass this kind of Google attestation challenge, though?

  • No.

    The hardware attestation (which is used by strict Play Integrity) checks the signature on your OS. It is totally possible to allow signatures other than Google, but Play Integrity doesn't do that.

    Companies could totally decide to use hardware attestation and accept systems signed not only by Google, but also other systems (like GrapheneOS). But they don't care because not enough users complain to them.

    Users of alternative Androids typically silently move to another service or stop using it entirely. Which is understandable but doesn't help the cause.