Well, it's going to be interesting, because I don't install any software from the paid Google repo.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Even if you don't sideload from the Google store, this is bound to affect anybody with an Android-branded device because Google covertly controls who gets to wield that brand.
I refuse to call it a store. I can't walk into it and pick up a box from the shelf with physical install media. It's a software repository with paywalls.
True “Leopards Ate My Face” moment. “I paid iPhone money for a phone 3-5 years behind made by an ad company, I didn’t think they’d come for my privacy!”
What? Most android devices are cheaper than paying the Apple premium.
I have him tagged as "corporate shill", so I guess he just does this type of shit.
This is true, but it just makes the point all the more relevant.
The Google Pixel 10 (latest/best; the 11 is coming soon) benchmarks similarly to an iPhone 11 from 2019. Sure, there are other factors, but the Pixel 10 costs the same as the iPhone, and the Pixel 10 Pro is priced competitively (if not the same) as the iPhone Pro.
Samsung Galaxy phones are more powerful than Pixels, and in some benchmarks, match or exceed the iPhone of the same year/generation. However, when they both throttle (due to heat), the Snapdragon chip loses more power. Granted, this only happens in top-end games, so for most uses, the Galaxy might be slightly more powerful.
If you're going for a cheap Android phone, you're getting a lot less performance. Or it's only available in China or some other weird restriction.
Either way, they all run Google's spyware. Google was recently forced to disclose how much money they make per year on the average Android user. It's something like $1700. According to George Carlin, half the people are below it, but conversely, half the people are above it. Google gave one example of a corporate suit making them tens of thousands of dollars each year. And yet, they're charging modern iPhone prices for 2019 iPhone performance, and they're double dipping by selling your personal information wholesale.
You can speculate that Apple does the same, or may in the future, but we know what Google makes per Android user, we know what power Google puts in their phone, and we know what Google charges per phone. So again, that makes me ask why you would use an OS from an advertising company when a computer company is making phones as well. Again, "Leopards Ate My Face" moment.
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First three android phones I found in a search proved you wrong.
Yeah, imagine in 2026 trying to argue that apple doesn't overcharge for their hardware. Maybe I missed some recent developments but that's been their business model for at least 15 years. Didn't think there were any apple fanboys on lemmy
I don't think this counts as a leopard-face moment. That would imply that Android users (or app developers) were somehow hoping that Google would only screw over non-Android users. No one was thinking that; everyone knew that Google was screwing you the hardest if you were using an Android phone. They were just hoping that Google wouldn't go this far and completely lock down the platform.
I've been an Android user since 2010 (and an iPhone user since 2016). There's always been an anti-Apple sentiment in the Android community. To be fair, this is almost entirely the fault of Steve Jobs, who swore he would wage "thermonuclear war" on Android, that he would bankrupt Apple to "right this wrong" and called Android "a stolen product". Steve Jobs was also an arsehole and possibly a pederast who made sexually suggestive remarks to his daughter (according to her, he asked her if she'd learned to masturbate yet, daily, and when she finally said yes, he told her she'd be real popular with men). There was a lot wrong with the guy. He then released his phone on only a couple carriers, so Android was kind of a necessity if you lived in an area where one of those chosen carriers didn't cover (like I did — the iPhone wasn't even an option for me until the 5s) and then attacked the competition for doing what he didn't or couldn't.
Still, there has always been this animosity towards iPhone users. To me, they served two different markets. Android was kind of the wild west back then. I never had an Android phone I didn't run custom firmware on until I got my Galaxy S10 (which cannot be unlocked). It was all about new experiences and "what can we do with the platform?". It was awesome. Meanwhile, iPhone was always just this handheld Mac you could put in your pocket, and it could also make phone calls. For people who just want their phone to be like their computer, boring but with whatever wallpaper, it's fine. iPhone is predictable. It does innovate and it has and Android has copied plenty from it, but of course the inverse is also true.
But no, the Android users I talked to didn't think Google was screwing them at all. They thought they were rebels for not using the iPhone. Like the iPhone was a "Fisher-Price" or "baby's first" phone for people not smart enough to use Android. They always acted like Google had their back. Even the "privacy focused" custom firmware GrapheneOS requires you buy a Pixel. So you have to pay Google to get into their ecosystem, though they're now expanding to Motorola (which has never been great with smartphones, and no, not including the one you think, though IIRC the Atrix was the first smartphone with a fingerprint reader?). So yeah, all these guys who said having Android made them better than the iPhone users who are now saying Google is trying to make Android into iOS — yeah, I think leopards ate their face.
F-Droid was a huge problem for security. I hate Google more than anyone, but they're totally right to make side-loading more difficult (they're not making it impossible). F-Droid lets software get abandoned with no warning. It offers no curation (you're taking the same risks as with the AUR or Flakes on Nix). The Play Store version of software is often better (sometimes they do add ads, but I'd rather have ads and support a dev along with peace of mind). -A dev making ad revenue in a curated repo is also a lot less likely to abandon a project.
Oh hey, it's the owner of the linuxsucks .world community who says he hates "FOSS commie garbage" while not only using, but moderating a community on a FOSS platform.
F-Droid was a huge problem for security. I hate Google more than anyone, but they're totally right to make side-loading more difficult
Does F-Droid have some security tradeoffs in its operation? Absolutely. But you're conflating a security decision with a market control decision. The restrictions target alternative app stores and payment systems that compete with Google Play, not specifically malware vectors. Google has a $300 billion advertising business and a vested interest in controlling what software reaches Android users. Using security as the justification for that control doesn't make the control itself a security measure. This is the same playbook being used to push surveillance. The goal is monitoring and data gathering while it's proclaimed to "protect children." It's using a moral panic while being used while the technical literacy is severely lacking. Something you're familiar with in our other thread, I'm sure.
It offers no curation
Plainly false. F-Droid requires apps to be open source and explicitly flags known anti-features like tracking, ads, and non-free dependencies. Just because you prefer ads doesn't mean its not curation.
The Play Store version of software is often better (sometimes they do add ads, but I'd rather have ads and support a dev along with peace of mind)
Sometimes true and sometimes the opposite. Play Store versions of apps frequently include tracking SDKs, mandatory account creation, and analytics outside of simply just "ads" that F-Droid versions specifically strip out. For anyone using F-Droid because they're trying to avoid exactly that (for peace of mind), the Play Store version isn't better, it's the opposite.
Google charging a gate fee from developers to reach Android users and then restricting alternatives to that gate is literally the opposite of supporting a dev.
And to highlight the irony of "better," if this was a security issue, as you claimed, is that a defensible position when Google's data shows they removed over 2.3 million policy-violating apps in 2024 alone, and that's just what they caught? Researchers have repeatedly found active malware campaigns running in the Play Store for months before removal, including banking trojans and spyware with millions of downloads. The stuff that slips through aren't just one or two here and there. It's a constant trough on the platform you're implying is the best place to get software.
The difference is F-Droid requires apps to be open source, meaning the code is auditable. Malware hiding in open source code is significantly harder to sustain because anyone can read it. Play Store apps are closed source by default, meaning Google's automated scanning is the only defense for users and whatever a developer decided to bundle in. Sounds more like a way to silence criticism and remove transparency than it is to "ensure security."
Shilling hard and probably not even getting paid for it.
Don't need to. I actually care about other people and don't like people getting fucked over by nonsense.
Oh I love this one! The guy who uses Hate every third word and call linux users names on the regular says "I actually care about people!"
Thats hilarious. You are an asshole, you don't care about anyone, as long as the trolling is fun!
I mentioned it in another post, but arguably the worst part of all of this is not that he's failing at arguing against FOSS (which he is failing spectacularly), but what he's actually trying to do is discredit the devs and their passion and effort that build all the cool, fun, and interesting solutions we have.
Standard capitalist bootlicker mentality though, steal ideas, repackage them as new products with a pricetag, a subscription, maybe an expansion, dlc, or microtransaction too. The only innovation they're good at is providing a worse product for more money.
I get the impression he is software dev of some sort, that is not very good at and doesn't make much money at it. So he lashes out and complains. Or he literally is just a troll.
Potentially, yeah. I saw he mentioned contributing to Osm and complained about all the rules they had to contribute. (Ironic considering he came at me trying to say FOSS and F-Droid projects are entirely unsafe and uncurated lol.) But seems like he's at least technically literate enough to mess around.
I wonder if there's a masochistic streak in there too. Looking through the profile he constantly posts and replies and gets trounced but still keeps coming back for more. Even weirder is the linuxsucks community he maintains is essentially just him. Making/posting memes, shitting on Linux and promoting windows with next to no comments or engagement...just downvotes. Yelling angrily into the void almost.
He seems to have particular hardons for:
- Anything Linux (obviously)
- F-Droid as an alternative
- Anything FOSS
- Communism - anything that doesn't have a profit motive or is about organizing/community effort gets classified as "commie garbage" or people who are "lazy commies" and don't want to work
Very capitalist, very conservative, he may be older, possibly if in the US he may be a Reagan republican if not an outright MAGAt. Which may have been his inspiration for his pejorative of LiGNUt. Which I assume is Linux + GNU + nut?
I really wonder how FOSS hurt him so. It's quite the grudge regardless of the circumstances. Or maybe a hyperfixation? Dunno 🤷♂️
Find a hobby dude you're wasting your life
You're wasting my time. -Mind just shutting tf up?
I'm sorry free speech is happening to you.
Really funny to say this with how much malware is on the official play store. If they actually cared abt security wouldn't they start with their own platform? That tells you this change is really about something else. I'm not your dad, figure out what it is yourself
You're going to need to enlighten us some because LiGNUTs will call just about anything malware. -But yes; there is a malware 'issue'. It's far from how dangerous and chaotic F-Droid is. The Play Store is still objectively the safest place to get Android apps.
The stuff that slips through gets quickly removed, they block millions of attempts, and are tightening policies.
Would be interested in your technical analysis of current F-Droid security vs current Play Store with examples.
No you wouldnt be interested. You are are a loud mouth dipshit. Nobody is going to take a wierdo who makes up names to call people seriously.
I do like responding to trolls, I dont know why. Shouldn't feed you I know.
Eat a dick. If you download a virus that's on you, don't ruin it for everyone else.
In 2024 650 million devices got infected with malware from Google play. Who has shit security?
Lol, did I ask for 2024, or a one-sided info? (Framed as propaganda)
If I say it it's true, if you say it it's propaganda.
Same mentality.
You are so incoherent its difficult to know what you are asking for.
Typical reply with no technical merit. -This is how LiGNUts with inferiority complex bow out of arguments.
You ran away from every argument when I thoroughly trounced you with actual knowledge while you kept moving goalposts. Anyone can check either of our histories to see it. I can't honestly tell if you're juat ignorant or a honest to god lolcow.
Case in point, you've STILL not answered my question that if FOSS is commie garbage that you hate, why are you avidly using, even moderating a community, on a FOSS platform?
It's like US conservatives that do nothing but complain about American progress ("it's too woke, people living authentically and stuff that has nothing to do with me, wah") and tell others to leave. If you have nothing but complaints, why don't you just leave? You'd be much happier, you could enjoy Windows and Android to your hearts content, blissfully unaware.
The only difference between malware and adware is the legality of bundling all your info and selling it to whoever wants to buy it.
IDC about your conspiracy theories, and love that my software is improved by telemetry, ads are made more efficient to keep prices down, and developers of my favorite programs get paid for their work.
Wait, wait, you believe ads lowers the cost of products? In this day and age?
Are you still waiting for that wealth to trickle down too?
Woosh -right over your head! They help ensure quality and lack of abandonment (a huge FOSS issue) through incentive.
Woosh is right! Anybody catch the license plate of those goalposts flying by? You said ads keep prices down. That's what I responded to. Now it's about abandonment incentives. Goalposts moving faster than the speed limit.
But since you've moved there: ad revenue doesn't prevent abandonment, it makes abandonment contingent on ad market profitability instead of user need. Google Reader, Google Stadia, Flash, Vine, the entire Google graveyard. All ad-supported or commercially incentivized. All dead. Users abandoned.
When a FOSS project gets abandoned the code stays available. Anyone can fork it, maintain it, or build on it because the license allows it. Ressurection is possible and happens all the time. When a proprietary project dies it just dies and takes your data with it. The abandonment argument actually favors FOSS structurally.
Once again, proving that technical illiteracy of yours across all your comments. You're doing half the work for me! It's easy when you use common capitalist cuck tactics like moving goalposts and just stating easily verifiable facts so confidently incorrectly.