Comment by devsda
10 hours ago
What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple?
If you want to participate in the society, you will forever have to resort to shady tactics. Shady can be defined something as arbitrary as using GrapheneOS.
A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOS for those affected will only delay the inevitable but it doesn't stop it at all.
If you've accidentally become a persona non grata, then obviously because you've not exercised sufficient self-censorship.
This is real already. Recently saw a petition for EU to rein in big tech (there are several initiatives advocating this). Had this nagging voice at the back of my head ... what if signing that gets your Google Account terminated.
I'll leave it open to you whether I signed it.
For developers relying on any type of Google services, you'd be in for lots of pain.
It doesn't even have to be censorship of speech.
If you are wrongly charged a significant amount by either Google or Apple and their service is of no help, what would you do?
Most people would weigh the options, then just eat the cost than anger them with a chargeback and lose their email/phone access. That's self-censorship financially too.
What if Google reinstates their old G+ and YouTube real name policy for its accounts. We would protest but give them the proof grudgingly and it can position itself as one of the core part of online ID verification push currently going on.
I was in that situation a few years ago. I started a hemp related business in 2019 and Ad Sense didn't like my ads and gave me an error message saying I couldn't run my ads because of certain keywords being banned. I forgot about it until a couple of years later when I saw a $300 charge on my credit card bill. Google changed their policy as CBD/hemp had become more mainstream and started running my ads. By this time my business had already failed so I did not want those ads running. I couldn't figure out how to contact a human, so I ended up just paying because I didn't want to risk getting my account closed.
> What if Google reinstates their old G+ and YouTube real name policy for its accounts.
G+ was a failure; people refused to provide real names. Even Facebook's "real name policy" wasn't (and still isn't AFAIK) enforced at all. At one point, I had multiple phantom Google and Facebook accounts. Now I just self-host and eschew social media.
Google had Don’t be evil motto just between 2000 and 2018. Other companies don’t even try to pretend it. You are owned by them.
„Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.“ - Lord Acton, 1887
Like how Tony Chocolonely dropped their 100% slave free claim after finding out just how difficult that is to achieve.
Nowadays they are using the slogan “Crazy about chocolates, serious about people”
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>Google had Don’t be evil motto just between 2000 and 2018.
this is popping up a lot today for some reason. "don't be evil" is still in the code of conduct, as it always has been. it just isn't in the preface anymore after the restructuring under alphabet.
https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
(its not like it stopped them, anyways)
This has been true for many years: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26876681>
It's a great question to send to the DMA authorities: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en
More of us ask this question, the better we are heard. Except if this is exactly what they want, then we need to vote better.
At least we dont have a social credit system... hey wait a minute
It's terrifying, yeah.
To some degree, the closest we have to these situations besides getting flagged with TOS violations (whether real or false-flagged) in these companies are residents of countries that are either trade or economically sanctioned by the USA.
Thankfully we haven't seen something like an account ban and deletion incident for such cases, but the severe ones I can remember usually prohibit access entirely and that'd be scary if it extended to primary services that others rely on for auth.
You will be effectively locked out to services if it's all that's linked and that identity provider just decided you'd be persona non grata.
iOS can be used without an account. iPhones can be acquired outside of Apple. The EU has the alternative App Store option that doesn’t require an Apple account.
But I can't use my Norwegian BankID unless I have an apple store or play store account. This is required for every aspect of society. Heathcare, banking, taxes, driving, using my debit card online.
They removed SMS 2FA options recently, the only non-tech monopoly method is a 2fa codebrick that's getting harder and harder to acquire (there are new ridiculous facial ID and passport scanning requirements, run by a private corporation, in order to get one).
It's garbage and getting worse. And it seems no one cares our entire lives exist at the whim of two US tech monoliths.
We need all countries and the EU govs to mandate companies to provide the same vital access via a Web page that works on the 4 major browsers (not an issue anymore) as via the app. All my banks have it; I need an otp device but thats fine; it works well. I wish EU would mandate that plus an EU made hardware device on which all seeds can be stored and otps generated. That can be the size of an USB stick you can put on your keyring. Add NFC/qr so you don't have to type the otp and there we go.
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That's on your bank and not necessarily because of Apple/Google duopoly. I think it is crazy to put the whole banking system on foreign, private company though
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The App Store account doesn’t need to be the same as the Apple iCloud account. You can create an account without a credit card associated to it.
That's much worse than I expected. Is it a hard play store requirement or can you install the apk? Are there really no other workarounds?
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What Norway has sounds pretty crazy to me. If I am reading this correctly, Trump can disable the entire Norwegian healthcare system by calling Apple and Google and having them block BankID.
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> The EU has the alternative App Store option that doesn’t require an Apple account.
I cannot install any iOS software without being logged into my Apple account, not even an alternative app store.
It would be perfect on my older iDevices, but they don't let me log in anymore “because the OS is too old”. And guess what: I cannot update the OS without being logged in. I never logged out of those iDevices, Apple did that from their end.
I tried to install onside.io through Safari and it doesn’t seem to use my Apple credentials.
Have you tried updating your older iOS devices through a Mac?
You can update the OS using a Mac or PC.
You can't install anything without an Apple account. Just tried installing altstore.io to repeat my previous unsuccessful attempt.
Only users based in Brazil, Japan, or the European Union are able to install apps through alternative app distribution. The country or region of your *Apple Account* must be set to one of those countries or regions, and you must physically be located there. [0]
UPDATE: Also tried to install onside.io. No luck. The same popup:
Cannot Install App: You are not eligible to install apps from "onside.io".
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/117767 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110
Wow, I did not know this and -despite its drawbacks, like not being able to install apps from the Apple App store- this seems like a great way to have a powerful dumb-phone.
Why do you need a powerful dumb phone?
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Over the long term, we definitely need something like Linux phones. I find it bizzarre by how little companies support this mission of Linux phones.
It's not Linux phones that we need. We already have alternatives, like graphene and other AOSP forks.
We need corporations and governments to stop locking down and gatekeeping vital software to closed ecosystems.
A Linux phone doesn't help me when my government's 2FA system (BankID) only runs on Android and IOS phones and can only be acquired with an app store account.
> We need corporations and governments to stop locking down and gatekeeping vital software to closed ecosystems.
If you can't get the government to do this for you in Norway the US has very little hope currently.
We need some standard of minimal digital accessibility. Too much of our lives mediated by digital interactions with capricious systems.
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Speaking from experience, it's not only ID systems but if you run non-Android (some AOSP) they might still require you to install an App only available with Play Services or on iOS to do business with government agencies or even apply for funds in some European states. In other words if you are using GrapheneOS, from gov. agencies point of view you might as well be a criminal. Actually given how frequent ID-theft is nowadays, it's actually easier for criminals to launder their money than privacy preserving individuals or companies to pay taxes in EEA.
I'm not familiar with that system. Here in the US I can go to the bank and do anything I need personally with an ID. Is that not doable where you are?
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I don’t want to be too pedantic but Android uses the Linux kernel. Degoogled Android is basically what you want.
no, because screw all that java crap, they optimized for control and developer quantity, not for ux, customizability, performance...
Why do you need a Linux phone (as if Android is not a Linux phone), when there is also AOSP. If Google closes it up, it can be forked, but I don't see any fundamental benefit of throwing away decades of development done on AOSP.
GrapheneOS is not shady at all, since when is wanting to use an actually secure OS that doesn't sell your data to palantir or some other ACTUALLY shady shit like that shady?
That was their point.
"If you had learned to wash lettuce, you wouldn't have had to pay court to Dionysius" - Diogenes.
> What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple?
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
The US made a Canadian judge a persona non grata for any firm domiciled in the US. All because she works for the ICC, and the ICC declared Netanyahu a war criminal (which is indisputible). Why is the US destroying worldwide trust in US businesses on behalf of a reviled nuclear armed hermit nation on the other side of the planet? Good question, but it is what it is.
This example that the US will spuriously use sanctions like this is why many nations are investigating ways to purge American financial systems and tech.
That judge may be an outlier today, but we all know tomorrow they could sweep through all accounts and ban everyone that spoke against the regime. We have arrived.
You are right - now greedy corporations decide who is an "acceptable" human and who is perma-banned.
Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil. And other governments also need the US government responsible here, since they allow this to happen.
In objective terms this can be called a fascist system.
> A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOS
The issue still is that so many services and functionalities are tied into private companies. States simply need to wake up now.
> Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil.
I’m not even being cynical — it would probably just increase the amount of government contract cash awarded to them. Control makes governing a lot easier, control is what tech companies have, and to varying degrees, it’s for sale.
> Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil
Governments are made up of people. People who have at best median level understanding of the things they are ruling about but great self-interest in following the biggest purse to which they can attach themselves.
As proven by history, it's convenient to have a big well-known external entity to blame as a source of any trouble, but in reality it's orders of magnitude easier to be a digital dissident in the US compared to the EU. And European Commission + European national governments are exactly the ones you should blame first. They are openly proud of how it works, they call it successful digitalization for a positive spin.
As an extra anecdote: one of the things Cory Doctorow has been bringing up as a counterweight to US tech hegemony has been repealing anticircumvention laws that the US insisted upon as a condition of tariff-free market access that has now been rescinded. This is a good idea, but at the same time, the EC is never going to do it. We're already seeing with Stop Killing Games how even tangentially related consumer protection issues can and will be shot down with an insistence that IP is sacred and untouchable.
The reason for this is really simple: every pirate wants to be an admiral, and every client state wants to be an empire. We as tech consumers hear "sovereign cloud" and think "cutting out undue influence that US tech companies have in the EU". The EC hears "building our own tech monopolies to lock in other countries into our stack". Using SKG as an example again, the whole reason why SKG started was because of a French company, Ubisoft, killing one of their games. Why would the EC ever overrule their own industrial interests?
The EC was specifically and expressly built to be an antidemocratic bulwark against popular sovereignty. The entire concept of dividing people up by nation-states is already an antidemocratic exercise - e.g. France has 69,000,000 residents and Malta has 520,000, but both get one seat at the EC. And because the EC is made up of nation-state appointees and not elected representatives, they have all the incentive in the world to stab their own people in the back. The EC is the designated villain that the """liberal""" side of Europe's government uses to shut down democratic control (and, sometimes, even liberalism itself).
Some have pointed out that this is deliberate (and, supposedly, therefore good): that Malta would never have joined the EU if they didn't have veto powers over whatever France wanted to do. My counterargument is that veto powers are the last resort of the rich and powerful. You can either have strong protections[0] on national identity, or you can have democracy, but not both.
[0] To be clear, the way we deal with democracy being a tyranny of the majority is with liberalism: we explicitly declare certain things to be "human rights" and thus more or less off limits to the democratic process. This list is generally fixed (or at least, difficult to change) and thus less ripe for abuse than, say, having an entire wing of the government dedicated solely to overruling the people that is active all the time.