I recently bought a phone from Volla that ships with ubuntu touch. Somewhat painful, but entirely possible to use. I also backed the liberux indiegogo for a more modern proper mainline linux phone again.
I’m just not using any google play and ios exclusive apps and services anymore. Yea it’s painful but if you want to see an ecosystem outside of google play and ios, you have to buy and use it. Just be prepared to be the 0.1% that literally nobody cares about. Like when traveling I can follow my ICE train schedule on the Deutsche Bahn website, but it will log me out and delete my entire state after 15 minutes or so of inactivity. Or a couple of years ago I saw that uber had a web app and at some point wanted to order one for a group. turns out when trying to finish the order (which you can’t dry run), I got a generic error and someone with the app had to order. After uber sent me 125 marketing mails after that, telling me to order discounted food with uber eats, I think I finally unsubscribed (I only didn’t earlier out of morbid curiosity).
Personally I live by just not using this stuff is better than being like “oh I need waydroid to run android in a container and use the reverse engineered reimplementation of google play, and also need to fake some stuff to pass integrity checks etc. to use an E-Scooter”.
Google is banned in china so 1/6 of the world population can bypass it automatically. You need state power to deal with oppressive corpos.
IMO the only reason tech world can be authoritarian is people’s negligence. Otherwise even if all major brands produce unhackable locked down hardware, people could boycott those and buy the one obscure open device (like pine64) and market force will force big names to revert.
Corporations do not have power by themselves. People refusing to think and understand gives them power. Same applies to mainstream politics.
So unless I can convince my mom to install Firefox we’re fucked.
…we’re fucked.
Well the idea of having attestation isn’t the problem. The problem is that apps requiring attestation (banks, insurance providers, ID-systems) use the most convenient solution. Slapping on Googles prebuild attestation. Graphene for example, provides alternative attestation for their OS and offers docs for anyone to implement a more fitting set of checks.
There are two approaches here: If you’re upset that your hacked-to-bits, rooted, unlocked and/or unencrypted device is failing checks: I’d say, tough luck. Until we can create provably untampered app-containers, that level of access genuinely breaks TOS on apps and regulations on handling personal data. Breaking those checks is then breaking those compliances in an unsafe way.
If you believe your setup is actually secure and compliant, just not in a way the allmighty Google intended: Try and get an attestation module for your setup. Fight for these apps to accept non-Google attestation and fight for devices that don’t artificially limit what can pass as secure.
I switched to a feature phone that has nothing to do with Android for calling (Mocor RTOS aka S30+) because I’m tired of fighting Android for the moment. I keep an unrooted smartphone at home for online banking. Kinda extreme but that’s one way.
If you can root your phone and use an xposed module, maybe. Or the EU forces them. Otherwise, there’s not much option.
I sadly believe we’re fucked
We where fucked when the internet got consolidated into what five companies.
And them being in the USA as well
We were fucked a long time ago it’s just the effects showing now. But I hope the rebels at Graphene OS and other custom ROMs will find a way.
Sadly I moved away from Graphene because of all the restrictions :(
Genuinely curious here, I but what restrictions?
No mobile payments, a lot of apps have integrity check which means I can’t really use them, no way to reset the unique device ID sent to apps so they can track you (why am I even using Graphene 🙄?), slow device, annoying to set up things like carplay’s android thingy…
I get it, but GrapheneOS is meant to “disallow” those things precisely because they invade our privacy.
If they really wanted privacy they wouldn’t just sandbox gplay services and would allow resetting advertising IDs and other unique identifiers sent to apps to track us
It’s a rat race. You can only win by not playing.
But if you don’t play, your pay with convenience and your time. You lose the freedom of installing a lot of apps. You lose a lot :( - to the point where it would make most people give up
Imagine I said that I would come into your house and install a new TV and entertainment system, re-build your bathroom, fix your maintenance issues, clean your floors, wash your dishes, etc. That’d save you a lot of time.
Now, I’ll even do it for free! But, you have to let me install a door that only I have a key to so you can’t stop me from entering your house and also to install cameras and microphones covering every square foot of your house and you consent to being recorded.
That’s the deal people are making with their digital lives.
Yeah, it was inconvenient to have to learn how to setup the software so I could have ‘cloud storage’ using my home server. It’s annoying that I have to deal with IP Cameras and ZoneMinder. But, because I do the work myself, I don’t have to let Google/Meta/FBI/Amazon have access to listening devices in my home (Oh, sorry Alexa, I didn’t know you were listening), footage from my security system or the contents of my personal files.
