&gt; Disguising itself as the innocuously-titled “Android Developer Verifier” (ADV) process, this trojan horse runs surreptitiously in the background as a system service with full root privileges, quietly awaiting an activation signal. The service cannot be blocked, disabled, or removed. Unlike a commonplace bit of malware, this extraordinary strain won’t be detected and neutralized by Play Protect (the malware scanning and remediation service that is installed on all Android Certified devices). In fact, Play Protect is itself the vector through which this virus is transmitted and installed.&gt; That is because it is Google themselves who is propagating ADV. And once activated, this malevolent process has exactly one goal: to block you from running software by developers who haven’t been approved centrally by Google.The rest of the article is a claim that Google&#x27;s new terms of service amount to &quot;malware is any software we [Google] don&#x27;t like.&quot;It seems like Google is aiming for its own walled garden.

Much like the fallacy behind: &quot;The Y2K bug was was a total hoax, you can tell because nothing much happened on 2000-01-01.&quot;

Plus, it is not the bottom I fear, it&#x27;s the precedent from letting companies slide down the slope.Regulation may try to stop it but history has shown some have slid to the point of no return or past a point where people can care enough to build out of.Prevention is better than retroactively fixing stuff.

&gt; In almost every case, the feared &quot;bottom&quot; of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.Perhaps it happens because the slope is called out...

I alternate my thoughts frequently (which I believe is healthy), and sometimes I think we should let things take their course a bit more before reacting. It&#x27;s certainly tiresome and can be pointless (some people claim &#x27;hysterical&#x27;) to fight lots of changes, not necessarily this one but some like it.But I&#x27;ve come to realize there are serious downsides to letting things run their course too. Some changes are very hard to roll back (famous &#x27;cat&#x27;s out of the bag&#x27;) just taking a lot of time to reverse if ever. For example, once there is a long term contractual agreement, if one parties decides to roll back they may just not be able to until the contract expires (like renting land; or worse, selling). A change in software systems for example that need backward compatibility can be quite difficult in technical and nontechnical ways.I think people need to also keep some sympathy for the protests and let people protest more. I&#x27;m leaning more toward: if in doubt, provide visibility to a cause (even if not full support). It&#x27;s okay to save yourself some energy (in particular for the most important causes). Some things might have to run their course for people to understand they were valuable, and we will probably have to eat some frogs as a consequence. Don&#x27;t lose you sanity ;) (As the saying goes, &quot;Don&#x27;t you dare go hollow.&quot;)

This is a useless argument since there is no way to measure what case is this and what is not.You can say &quot;Classic slippery slope fallacy.&quot; to whatever seems like that to you.This is an antipattern to scientific thinking as you can frame something x and then say all x are like this, look I created this framework to think about x. But in reality there is no empirical basis for this thought. And it serves no purpose other than doing more argument or winning arguments.In the end what you wrote equates to &quot;I don&#x27;t think all of this will happen&quot;.Chaning many possibilities makes the outcome less and less likely obviously.Also the same principle applies to most religions I know of, for example:- Assume there is God- Assume it did create universe.- Assume x...Then this also fits the same pattern and be called the &quot;x fallacy&quot; but it is useless to create an argument like this. This is useless mainly because this thinking pattern is ubiquitous in any world view.More productive discussion might be to pick some steps in the theory they chained together and argue on that imo.

Is it a fallacy if you&#x27;ve said before that Google is aiming to create a walled garden, Google itself has already started saying it wants a walled garden and they&#x27;ve already implemented several such steps?

&quot;or the culture shifts to reinterpret the thing&quot;Yes. You see it already.&quot;Actually it is good that I can&#x27;t run programs that haven&#x27;t been approved by Google on my own device.&quot;

There is precedent of Google making changes in light of &quot;security&quot; that break
 ad blocking Chrome extensions. See chome extension manifest 3.So this concern cannot be dismissed with just &quot;slippery slope falacy&quot;, it&#x27;s a new vector of the same power grab strategy.

Just look at the world around you, the slippery slope &quot;fallacy&quot; stopped being a fallacy long ago.

I don&#x27;t know which timeline you live in, but in mine I&#x27;ve stopped counting how many slippery slopes ended up exactly where the critics said they would.

&gt; How long before they designate all ad-blocking software as malware, block installation on all Android certified devices worldwide, and permanently designate all developers of this class of software as malware creators?Classic slippery slope fallacy.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Slippery_slope" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Slippery_slope</a>History shows that when a &quot;slope&quot; appears... regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the thing.In almost every case, the feared &quot;bottom&quot; of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.

related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;</a> previously on hn- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47935853">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47935853</a> (2 months ago, 889 comments)- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47139765">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47139765</a> (4 months ago, 378 comments)- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47778274">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47778274</a> (3 months ago, 68 comments)

Checked my Pixel 7 XL Pro and the app is installed and running (Version 1.0.866414232
com.google.android.verifier). I was able to force stop it, and disable it. Will check later to see if reenables itself.

&gt; Ex means &quot;example&quot; here right?Yes. eg would have worked too. ie didn&#x27;t seem like a good fit.

Ex means &quot;example&quot; here right? Or do you mean ex as in the dictionary meaning of ex, as in, &quot;formerly&quot;?

My Android 15 handset doesn&#x27;t have com.google.android.verifier process. It could be a Ulefone thing. They&#x27;re especially pro-user (ex:root friendly).

Isn’t Google going to do what Apple has been doing since forever? Or is Google somehow doing something worse?

I&#x27;d usually say it&#x27;d be far fetchedbut I can totally see Google banning developers and removing their apps for political reasons, where some lobbying group bombs them with emailsbecause with this they&#x27;re explicitly saying they&#x27;re now choosing who gets to be in or out, there&#x27;s no way for them to say we can&#x27;t do anything about itI do think this would improve security, but I also think it&#x27;s sort of a Trojan horse to lock down the ecosystem

nothing guarantees the Microsoft&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Ubuntu&#x2F;RedHat will not push an update through their infrastructure to delete some software from your computerall OSes have malware level capabilities. it&#x27;s literally the definition of an OS

I thought the same thing but he apparently has a point. The stated purpose covers only a tiny sliver of the capabilities. The agreement points to the TOS where it (last time I looked) says service may be terminated at any time without stating a reason. Nothing guarantees it won&#x27;t be used for things other than security. And finally he has a point where it also doesn&#x27;t really do much for security.If we ask their fine search engine, the AI helpfully explains malware to be software designed to gain unauthorized access to disrupt, extort payments and&#x2F;or hijack devices.If you still think the shoe doesn&#x27;t fit, imagine what would happen if one managed to create an app with the same capabilities. Google would remove it immediately for being malware. Obvious malware.

I think the point they are trying to make is that in the terms of service Google says they get to define what is malware (halfway through article) so the author is trying to point out that exact danger: what happens when Google gets to randomly call things malware.

I have the opposite opinion, Google is doing a lot of garbage in the name of &quot;Security&quot;, time to play their game and report their control on Android as security vulnerability

The article provides enough evidence for that label. Unlike Google, who can arbitrarily call anything &quot;malware&quot;. This is the contrast the article attempts to point out.

I understand the frustration (I&#x27;m an avid fdroid user across many many devices). But this article comes off as childish with the virus&#x2F;trojan&#x2F;&quot;malware vendor&quot;.With such an article, many (including perhaps google) get the ammo to disregard what fdroid says, by branding them as childish&#x2F;not to be taken seriously. for eg: no reputable news org is going to post this.PS: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;</a> is better done.

Excellent, I emailed them too but no reply yet. Yeah, given that we should be able to choose what app store to install, this seems wildly illegal.

Do you have any pointers on how to find the correct authority and reach out? I&#x27;d like to inform my EU audience.

Since Apples App Store is DMA compliant, the EU won&#x27;t do anything against this far less restrictive change from Google.

I already contacted the DMA authorities and complained how this has an effect on German diabetes communities and they replied that I am not the first one who approaches them on this and they are already investigating it.Google is just trying how far they can push this.

I don&#x27;t get what part of that your think enables them to deny access to third parties distributing their apps on alternate stores. If you&#x27;re referring to the last paragraph, that very explicitly says that any such security must be an optional setting that is not default. So unless users opt into verified only apps, Google can&#x27;t force that, according to the DMA.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eu-digital-markets-act.com&#x2F;Digital_Markets_Act_Article_6.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eu-digital-markets-act.com&#x2F;Digital_Markets_Act_A...</a> Art 6 (4). Read it to the end. That&#x27;s how.

This is arguably required by Article 30 of the EU Digital Services Act.

The same way Apple is allowed to do it presumably.

I don&#x27;t understand how this is legal in the EU under the DMA, does anyone know?

Let&#x27;s call them anti-competition services since there&#x27;s nothing in these increasing security.

&gt; Well… you can run android without google?You can only run LineageOS on smartphones that allow unlocking the bootloader (which is more and more rare), and properly release the kernel source-code (many still don&#x27;t, especially low-end MTK-based phones...)

Yet on LineageOS you&#x27;re not affected. It seems you can build Android that isn&#x27;t affected by Google, at least if you&#x27;re willing to personally adjust the code to do what you want. You&#x27;d have to get exceptionally busy before it&#x27;s not recognisable as an Android distribution anymore

So true.Maybe a case for the EU? I mean, they like creating laws limiting the power of big tech. Maybe there should be a law that requires all services that are used by public institutions and commercial transaction providers to be transparent to the public and therefore open source. And as a platform provider, they should be required to offer APIs to let users install alternative implementations.Might require some fine-tuning, but you get the idea.

You are right. I feel much safer now! &#x2F;s
I really need to look into those other versions of Android or even Huawei. I have a feeling they might not quite work in Canada. Part of the reason I am incensed about this, is that right now there are all sorts of measures globally, under the guise of safety, that seem to be about something completely different.

Well… you can run android without google? The problem is that essential security services require apple or google devices and you as a member of society need the security services.

When a company does something that seems to be out of The Godfather...

That&#x27;s a nice digital content you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it...

I use Android because it lets me install whatever I want on my phone, which it does not seem to me, controversial. The phone is either mine or it is not. I don&#x27;t want Google&#x27;s protection. Particularly, if I can&#x27;t refuse it.

Would this not require some control over the hardware? Which would be difficult for the FOSS community?

I wonder if it makes sense to create an independent hard-fork of AOSP in the future. But probably the only option to keep this somehow maintainable is to replace many android-specific components with other userspace linux components that are already well maintained (systemd, networkmanager, wayland)

Correction: i did get bank access. I just couldnt log into the bank without a google or apple controlled device.

Graphene OS user here. Almost all of the apps I tried work fine. All the banking apps I use work. Have you tried reaching out to the app developer or the service and explaining what Graphene OS is and asking them to support it? I was able to persuade one app to do it.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;privsec.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;android&#x2F;banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;privsec.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;android&#x2F;banking-applications-compa...</a>

FWIW, I submitted an EU DMA complaint (Art 27 report) against Alphabet for unfair gatekeeping against third-party distributions like GrapheneOS via Play Integrity. More info: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlexAltea&#x2F;blog&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2026-06-25-dma-play-integrity&#x2F;_main.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlexAltea&#x2F;blog&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2026-06-...</a>Convincing developers, especially bank and gov apps, is near impossible and won&#x27;t scale well. Going after Alphabet for not meeting DMA obligations seems the easier path. Might not go anywhere but worth a shot.

lol, this problem stopped me from installing GrapheneOS early. 
But now.. I removed banking apps by myself because my state require room them to collect phone fingerprint and access to location EACH time they opened. 
So... looks like now nothing stops me

I tried. But then I didnt get access to essential services like banking and national resources.

Those reasons are explained clearly and openly. Ironically, your &#x2F;o&#x2F;OS is way less open than GOS on Google hardware.

Give it a year, we may have GrapheneOS&#x2F;Motorola then ...* (March 2026) Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS Foundation - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;motorolanews.com&#x2F;motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at-mwc-2026&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;motorolanews.com&#x2F;motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at...</a>

It&#x27;s because only Pixel devices have proper hardware security to build anything secure on top.

I bought a second hand pixel when I had to buy a new phone. Still better for the planet than buying a new fairphone anyway.

Pixels are consistently &quot;third party Android builds friendly&quot;, plus GrapheneOS has a list of required security features (beyond their control): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;faq#future-devices" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;faq#future-devices</a>e.g. first one in the list:&gt; Support for using alternate operating systems including full hardware security functionalityGrapheneOS wants users to lock the bootloader (≈enable Secure Boot) after install by providing user signing keys (avb_custom_key) -- that already seems to leave only Pixel, Nothing and Fairphone.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;chenxiaolong&#x2F;avbroot&#x2F;issues&#x2F;299" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;chenxiaolong&#x2F;avbroot&#x2F;issues&#x2F;299</a>

Sigh, &#x2F;e&#x2F;OS.Your phone is running proprietary Google DroidGuard blobs in a privileged process every time an app initiates a Play Integrity request.If you install some Google apps like Google Maps, they are run with more privileges than other apps (their microG fork gives apps elevated privileges when they match certain Google signing key fingerprints).Also, your device is running a firmware bundle provided by Fairphone&#x27;s Chinese ODM, including TCL image processing blobs. Your phone will soon run an ancient kernel and firmware tree with many known critical CVEs.But this all doesn&#x27;t matter anyway, because security hardening is only for spies and pedophiles according to the CEO of Murena (the company that makes &#x2F;e&#x2F;OS).

Is the bootloader locked and signed with reasonable keys? If not, you lose the secure boot, which defeats the point of the Android security model.Do you get manufacturer updates? My experience with &#x2F;e&#x2F;OS was that the Stock Android was up-to-date but &#x2F;e&#x2F;OS was 4 years behind, on a Fairphone.&gt; for reasons I do not understand, Graphene OS is very closely tied with Google hardwareOne of the requirements is precisely to be able to add custom keys and relock the bootloader, in order to keep the Android security model. Most other phones don&#x27;t allow that.

The only reason I have not switched Graphene is because for reasons I do not understand, Graphene OS is very closely tied with Google hardware.I bought a &#x2F;e&#x2F;os Fairphone instead.

That&#x27;s one of its primary arguments: besides the hardening against exploits, they&#x27;re considered such a safe OS because you cannot access your data either and give the wrong app root access. Everything lives in a sandbox. Whether not being able to grant full access to e.g. adb shell, Termux, or Restic is what you want is a personal choice, but it adds a layer of security against any malware that tries to get you to grant them root accessThis is also the argument they use to try to convince app vendors to add their keys to the allowlist, because the app makers can trust that their DRM will be active (if Netflix sets a &quot;no screen recording&quot; flag, you the user cannot circumvent it by e.g. reading &#x2F;dev&#x2F;fb0). It should have broader compatibility than other FOSS Android builds (when running the officially signed version of course, you can&#x27;t compile it yourself and expect such apps to run there)

It is not an OS with bubblewrap, you can still mess up your privacy &#x2F; security if you want to, that includes phishing and social engineering.

&gt; do you happen to know whether that includes anything wrt. phishing or social engineering?Yes. For example if you install an apk from an unknown source (like a random website via browser or messenger) it will warn you what you are about to do and what effects that has.You don&#x27;t need to block stupid behavior. Just make sure users are well aware of their actions as long as they actually read warnings.

my brother in Christ, people who root their phones don&#x27;t fall for &quot;Hello sir, I&#x27;m sir John from Microsoft, you have virus sir, please do the needful install antivirus and send gift card sir.&quot;

I know Graphene has innovative security measures, do you happen to know whether that includes anything wrt. phishing or social engineering?(For those who haven&#x27;t been following along: this whole affair started with phishing. People were social-engineered into installing an app and a little later their bank accounts were empty. A big issue in various poor countries.)

Honestly don&#x27;t think that would be so terrible, with how bad and locked down the mobile ecosystem has gotten.Rolling the dice on a new technology could wind up being much more favorable.

&gt; we&#x27;ll ditch phones altogether in 10 years when smart glasses will replace them instead.Billions are spend right now to make sure the glasses also run Android or iOS. So far, Google, Samsung, Magic Leap, RealWear and Vuzix are working with&#x2F;on Android XR, and obliviously Apple is working on AR&#x2F;VR iOS.Meta and a couple of smaller startups are doing something in-house, but I don&#x27;t give them much chances to get an ecosystem going.

I keep hoping for something more radical like Jolla and SailfishOS taking off or postmarketOS becoming a true viable alternative but as things are looking like now there&#x27;s a better chance we&#x27;ll ditch phones altogether in 10 years when smart glasses will replace them instead.

&gt; Doesn&#x27;t GrapheneOS supports only Google Pixel smartphones now?For good reasons. Most other devices arent secure enough to guarantee privacy. Especially not if loaded with a custom operating system (most devices don&#x27;t allow to verify the boot chain with a custom OS)&gt; And if we&#x27;re talking about common people (especially not in US), it&#x27;s not even everyone who can afford that.You can get a new Pixel 9a here in europe for around 350€ and it will be supported at least until April 2032&gt; Moreover, in my opinion, by buying Google phones you&#x27;re feeding Google, and I, personally, would like to avoid that.Google phones are surprisingly open and work well. Google takes a pro-user stance here that is extremely rare in the ecosystem, so why not support this product?

Yes but they have signed up with Motorola so that is changing<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;grapheneos-motorola-partnership-announced-3645710&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;grapheneos-motorola-partner...</a>

The vast majority of smartphones don&#x27;t allow installing another OS. Multiple Android OEMs have been restricting or fully phasing out supporting it. Among devices which do permit it, none have provided the hardware-based security features or driver&#x2F;firmware update support needed by GrapheneOS beyond Pixels. Our hardware requirements are listed here:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;faq#future-devices" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;faq#future-devices</a>GrapheneOS has an official OEM partnership with Motorola Mobility and a subset of their next generation devices will be provided official support for GrapheneOS. They&#x27;ll be providing us with a more minimal form of hardware support code close to the standard Qualcomm and other vendor code, so it will be cleaner than Pixels. Our partnership with Motorola is non-exclusive so we&#x27;re free to support other devices with the help of other OEMs interested in meeting our requirements, but no other OEM is working with us yet.We can&#x27;t use devices with an end-of-life Linux kernel, no firmware updates, no driver&#x2F;HAL updates and no support for important hardware-based security features we use. Several devices of a lot of the way towards providing what we need and several next generation Motorola devices will provide it. Other OEMs can do the same.

<pre><code> &gt; Moreover, in my opinion, by buying Google phones you&#x27;re feeding Google, and I, personally, would like to avoid that.
</code></pre>
I bought an iPhone based on that very decision. TBH, I regret it. The ecosystem is so locked down that I can&#x27;t even sync my photos to my NAS without a hacky constantly breaking shortcut, building my own app, or paying for an app. Just to replace a small &lt;50 line bash script that could do more than either the shortcut or any paid app I know. I&#x27;m constantly battling my phone.That would all be worth it, but it&#x27;s been a few years and Google did all the shitty stuff I was protesting anyways and Apple is getting worse.I&#x27;m hoping we get those moto phones with graphene pre installed so I can actually send the right market signal. But what&#x27;s fucked up these days is you can&#x27;t send the right market signal. Meanwhile I talk about fixing shit at work and my coworkers ask &quot;what&#x27;s the value&quot; or say &quot;there probably isn&#x27;t any money in doing that&quot;. Even for problems they are one liner fixes and that they agree we spent more time arguing over than it would be to fix it. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a top down problem, it&#x27;s a bottom up. Those are much harder to solve

&gt; Android users need to switch to Graphene.Doesn&#x27;t GrapheneOS supports only Google Pixel smartphones now? For most of the users, that would mean changing their phones beforehand. And if we&#x27;re talking about common people (especially not in US), it&#x27;s not even everyone who can afford that. Moreover, in my opinion, by buying Google phones you&#x27;re feeding Google, and I, personally, would like to avoid that.

Not really a solution at the moment if you do not want to give money to Google by buying a Pixel (hopefully the deal with Motorola will work).Long term I would probably have more hopes in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postmarketos.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postmarketos.org&#x2F;</a>

Korean manufacturers are even worse when it comes to privacy violations.I use a Samsung too. The bloat, dark patterns and enshitification with every update are even worse.

I get it,  but it really sucks that Graphene only works on Pixel hardware. I switched to Samsung with my last phone.

&gt; They are &quot;permitted&quot; to access to Google Play Services because their work hardening Android currently benefits Google.Very little in GrapheneOS has gone back upstream post-Copperhead.&gt; Once Google feels like there is sufficient stability and compatibility with hardened memory allocator and tagged memory (and when they can get Qualcomm to support it across their range), they will make harder, until impossible, for Graphene.What are you talking about? Google doesn&#x27;t use hardened_malloc, and they literally invented MTE.

Your claims about this don&#x27;t make sense. Google does not provide compatibility with GrapheneOS for Google Play services. They do not provide support for using it or fix the issues introduced in new releases.GrapheneOS doesn&#x27;t license Google Mobile Services (GMS), doesn&#x27;t include it in the OS and doesn&#x27;t have Google certification. It isn&#x27;t permitted by the Google Play Integrity API device and strong integrity levels because it doesn&#x27;t have a GMS license. Google doesn&#x27;t offer any way for GrapheneOS to license it.We&#x27;re legally allowed to provide compatibility with Google Play via our sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. Similar to APK mirror sites, we&#x27;re also allowed to mirror the freely available APKs.We&#x27;ve put enormous time into developing sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer and there&#x27;s ongoing work to continue resolving edge cases we haven&#x27;t covered. If Google wanted Google Play to be used outside of stock operating systems licensing it, they could make it work as a set of regular sandboxed apps without us needing a compatibility layer. Our baseline compatibility layer isn&#x27;t doing anything they couldn&#x27;t do themselves by making them apps handle being portable to operating systems not deeply integrating it into the OS with highly privileged access.

&gt;&gt; Google’s Android—and [Open Handset Alliance] members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices&gt;So to compete you&#x27;d have to create a compatible Google Play Services as well as find a supporting manufacturer. Samsung managed their own competing apps and store [2] for a while along with Tizen, likely for leverage or theoretical pivot. But has since dropped that effort.What&#x27;s wrong with the upcoming partnership with Motorola where they work with grapheneos to get it suppported, but it&#x27;s not preloaded?

GrapheneOS is currently the blessed child. Like CyanogenMod previously. They are &quot;permitted&quot; to access to Google Play Services because their work hardening Android currently benefits Google.Once Google feels like there is sufficient stability and compatibility with hardened memory allocator and tagged memory (and when they can get Qualcomm to support it across their range), they will make harder, until impossible, for Graphene.An old article [1] but:&gt; Google’s Android—and [Open Handset Alliance] members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devicesSo to compete you&#x27;d have to create a compatible Google Play Services as well as find a supporting manufacturer. Samsung managed their own competing apps and store [2] for a while along with Tizen, likely for leverage or theoretical pivot. But has since dropped that effort.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;googles-iron-grip-on...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2021&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-bought-off-samsung-to-limit-app-store-competition-36-states-allege&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2021&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-bought-of...</a>

I would say Ubuntu Touch + a Fairphone. Graphene is too reliant on Google.

The resason is that only Google bothers to put enough hardware security features to build software on top that allows to make a really secure device that blocks tampering.

&gt; Android users need to switch to Graphene.Which supports only Pixel devices.

yet another reason why the distinction between Linux and GNU&#x2F;Linux is important

&gt; Linux based mobile OSSo, Android?

The reality is that these types of problems affect too few people to matter. No appreciable amount of people will switch, or are even capable of it. And even if you made it a no-brainer, most people aren&#x27;t going to change the OS that came on their device, warranty or not.

&gt; Linux based mobile OS foundationAOSP is a Linux-based mobile OS. It runs fine on top of standard Linux kernels without downstream changes. Getting rid of the need for closed source userspace drivers for components like a modern Mali GPU can be done with AOSP and will benefit the most people that way. AOSP if many companies and others band together to do it. It could also happen due to government intervention due to Google&#x27;s antitrust law violations, but that could be done poorly in a way that harms open source.

Android users need to switch to Graphene.Someone needs to create a Linux based mobile OS foundation - Google&#x27;s domination is contrary to many large companies interests, and if Meta and many other such companies were approached, they may well donate large sums of money in their own strategic interests.

It&#x27;s Android but without Google&#x27;s services, there&#x27;s an alternative app store.The irony of Chinese vendors providing a breath of fresh low-DRM air.

No, Google is barred from providing any services to them by the US government.

not like that no, some US carriers don&#x27;t allow them though like AT&amp;T blocks you to google or apple phones. for them only pixel supports a way out with graphene.

Does Huawei not use android or Google play services?

If you&#x27;re building the APK, you&#x27;re probably installing via ADB, in which case none of the changes apply

This would be the line for me. If at some point I&#x27;m unable to build an .apk and install it on my phone without Google letting me, I&#x27;m moving to Huawei.

What are talking about? Android Device Verification has nothing to do with what websites browsers can access.

There is no spin here. Google is pulling up the ladder.There won&#x27;t be an open web, there won&#x27;t be user installs, there won&#x27;t be anonymity.Everything will be identified, attested, and allowed only when Google permits it.Nevermind them choking startups and small biz out of the oxygen they need to survive.

If companies play nice, people will stop making stuff up about them? I don’t believe that for a second, and it’s a poor excuse for making stuff up.

If the companies would keep their own word and never overreach maybe nobody would overreact. How many times did we hear in the past &quot;It&#x27;s just for...&quot;

I understand not being happy about what Google is doing, but it seems like F-droid can’t be trusted not to heavily spin things.

There was a more direct case where someone’s child had been interacting with Gemini inappropriately resulting in Google nuking the entire families Google accounts.

We experienced this with Anthropic, not the same blast radius obviously, but out of nowhere account was terminated. No support available.
It was via someone’s 30+ year old classmate via LinkedIn the account got reinstated.As a counterpoint to the right to the repair there should be a right to recover.

I don&#x27;t think &#x27;virus&#x27; is the right term, since it should self-replicate. &#x27;Malware&#x27; or &#x27;spyware&#x27; are probably better terms.

Malware on Android causes more harm, both to individuals and collectively to all Android users, than Google locking people out of their accounts. These aren&#x27;t even in the same order of magnitude. There are countless examples of people who have lost their life savings, all their data, etc. Losing access to your Google account sucks too, and I don&#x27;t necessarily agree with what Google is doing here, but you&#x27;re completely off base here.

Was this comment made by an LLM? i dont know anyone who drops &quot;blast radius&quot; in casual conversation besides claude.

The blast radius is far worse than any &quot;malware&quot; Google could protect you from.TFA is playing it up, but it is arguable that this is a real virus, except the shady hackers are Google.

It&#x27;s a great question to send to the DMA authorities: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu&#x2F;contact-dma-team_en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu&#x2F;contact-dma-team_en</a>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.

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.

If you&#x27;ve accidentally become a persona non grata, then obviously because you&#x27;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&#x27;ll leave it open to you whether I signed it.For developers relying on any type of Google services, you&#x27;d be in for lots of pain.

&quot;If you had learned to wash lettuce, you wouldn&#x27;t have had to pay court to Dionysius&quot; - Diogenes.

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.

At least we dont have a social credit system... hey wait a minute

You are right - now greedy corporations decide who is an &quot;acceptable&quot; 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.&gt; A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOSThe issue still is that so many services and functionalities are tied into private companies. States simply need to wake up now.

&gt; What happens if you &quot;accidentally&quot; become persona non grata with both Google and Apple?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;law&#x2F;2026&#x2F;feb&#x2F;18&#x2F;international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;law&#x2F;2026&#x2F;feb&#x2F;18&#x2F;international-cr...</a>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.

It&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s all that&#x27;s linked and that identity provider just decided you&#x27;d be persona non grata.

GrapheneOS is not shady at all, since when is wanting to use an actually secure OS that doesn&#x27;t sell your data to palantir or some other ACTUALLY shady shit like that shady?

What happens if you &quot;accidentally&quot; 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&#x27;t stop it at all.

Maybe service providers above some scale just shouldn&#x27;t exist, period?It would be a lot harder to erect walled gardens if you&#x27;re only serving a small subset of users - they would balk and leave at any attempt to prevent them from interacting with others outside of the ecosystem, and it would be a lot easier to do so.

All service providers above some scale should be obliged to create a transparent processes or be taken for external jusges.Even better: all providers of services with more than 100K users or 10% of country internet users should be forced to provide API to export &#x2F; import data in open format.

About to go down that route as well, just need to find a email provider with ideally servers in the EU

&gt; And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out.Unless you blog about it angrily enough that you somehow make it to the HN front page and some insider sees it and solves the problem for you.Getting my own domain and setting up email on it is one of the best things I&#x27;ve ever done.

It&#x27;s all good until your European bank starts requiring unrooted Android and iOS for their mobile banking app, then tries to force you to use that app instead of letting you sort things out at their building. Then the government starts requiring you use unrooted Android or iOS to sign into their website for administrative tasks, and so on.

Not sure Jolla deserves to be trusted, you&#x27;d be much better off with GrapheneOS. In any case, try out SimpleX for a messenger. You can also take a look at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xn--gckvb8fzb.com&#x2F;an-overview-of-privacy-focused-decentralized-instant-messengers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xn--gckvb8fzb.com&#x2F;an-overview-of-privacy-focused-dec...</a>

One of my best friend has a Jolla phone.He never had WhatsApp. He refuses to use google. Only till recently he started using signal. He has been using an old Nokia phone till he was forced to upgrade by his operator. He is European and here in Europe WhatsApp dominates. Despite all that and having a very social life, driven by work, he manages.I recently ordered a Jolla phone. I don’t want to know about android. I might tolerate iOS. But shelling thousands of $ for a phone that is controlled by an external company…I am looking out for messaging alternatives. I am at a point where I think linking your identity to a phone number is not right either.Let’s say we should all wake the fuck up. This is not right. Having a phone with such spyware is a potential attack vector I don’t want to have on the most important device I own.

I suspect this will happen to me soon, though all I do with it is occasionally sign in just to keep it registered. It now refuses to log me in unless I am on a specific IP address, no matter how many MFA steps it requests and I pass.

Same. Lost my 2004 Gmail because they silently enabled 2FA and the phone number on the account is a long lost one. I have the username&#x2F;password and the recovery email is set to me. The account also forwards all emails to me, so I still get the mail, but I can&#x27;t log into the account.Not yet found someone to do a SIM swap for me and get the 2FA code...

That happened to me, lost 16 years old gmail account, which is my main account for my digital life. It happened after I disabled some tracking, and Google was no longer able to recognize me, even though I had my phone number registered, it was not enough.

Holy crap that is scummy.I still use 2 Google services, of which neither would crumble me if lost (YouTube, and my old email which now acts as my spam inbox). I have lost accesses before, when I was still partially dependent, and had to give up my privacy to get access again, long enough to get off. It sucks but I do consider myself lucky that I was able to prevent the life crushing consequences that some people have had. Such a terrible company.

I&#x27;ve seen multiple stories of people buying phones from Fi, the phones never arriving, google refusing a refund, and on a chargeback, their entire google account gets shut down.

You go self-hosted and try to stick to real small alternatives, subset of technical standards, etc.I am not a US citizen, but a EU one (well, since we have seriously rogue and toxic EU states, I dunno how long it will last).And guess what, the handling of the issue of technical interop for administration online services is done... at the top of the top of the political power: in my EU country, only the president and prime minister do define it. Yep, you read well, it is THAT MUCH important: parliament, no power over it, &#x27;technical authorities&#x27; have actually no real power over anything, etc. It requires the same level of power than deciding to make more nukes.Basically, in 2015&#x2F;2016 our president&#x2F;prime minister at that time literaly gave all the administration (and dependencies) online services to big tech (a technical document which is basically &#x27;law&#x27; with a content &#x27;opening the gate&#x27; for big tech). Well, I say &#x27;they gave it&#x27;, but they could have &#x27;sold it&#x27;... we have a department in our DOJ to monitor past politicians who could have set up some public money channels in order to benefit from it, often indirectly, afterwards. The following president and prime ministers did change nothing... how deep the rabbit hole goes? Brain washing via hardcore lobbying? Corruption?IRL, you had country administration related web sites, working more that fine with &quot;any browsers&quot;, small and big, citizen made, small company made, now it is over, they were all broken for web apps which do work only with whatwg cartel web engines with their abomination of &quot;computer language&quot; requiring an even worse SDK. Same with file formats.There is light though, if this document of technical &#x27;law&#x27; is properly modified, the whole administration and dependencies have 3 years to restore simple web sites and support minimal and subset of file formats.

I would strongly advise using your personal account to access the developer-side of the Play Store.No, these services shouldn’t all be bundled under a single account…

Gotta move to the EU and sue based on right to be forgotten

really? I have to keep making useless updates (just a version number bump) on one of the accounts i manage, because i keep receiving thread emails every 6 months that the developer account sees no activity and if i don&#x27;t do anything they will remove and close.that app is a done project and need only to be udpated when the target SDK becomes too old for the play store

It&#x27;s not just google. Try removing an unpublished but uploaded iOS app. Wasn&#x27;t possible for decades and I guess it still isn&#x27;t. You eventually could hide them. The only way to remove it was to publish it, but that requires app validation, which a failed app is not suited for.

I tried to close my account, and got the response. But they closed it when I failed to verify it.

To avoid this, I tried to close my Google Play Developer account. A decade ago I published a free app on it, which was online for half a year.It was to no avail. They will not close the account.I received only automated responses about bringing my old app into compliance with current policy, to then transfer it to another developer account.Only then would Google graciously allow me to close my Developer account.Meanwhile, private Google services charge me the wrong prices, because I have a Payments profile in another country. It is associated with a Merchant account, which is linked to the Google Play Developer account.The support concluded that this can also not be closed, and that I should close my Developer account first.It&#x27;s hell.

Yep! One way, or another, we gotta&#x27; get people out of the system.

The vulnerability of your Google identity is terrifying.

I tried recently to create dev. account. I have not yet been successful. It is a painstaking process.I had to submit my ID, my phone number, email.Then to verify I had to give my address. They rejected my ID twice, so I had to submit driving licence.I am several weeks in, and could not even produce a single app.Their algorithm already rejected me, for no obvious reason.

This almost happened to me 4-5 years ago. I don’t recall every detail but right around the time I was deep into a new job interview process, Google Pay decided it needed to verify my identity. It may have been triggered by one of my cards expiring but I don’t think I had ever used the service to actually pay for anything at that point and just had a card saved. Anyhow, I was almost immediately locked out of my primary email account as well and got delayed in sending documents to the potential employer and had to explain that I got locked out of gmail. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson and still use that gmail account as my primary email but I did at least open alternative accounts on other cloud providers.

This is why I don&#x27;t mess with any of Google&#x27;s AI offerings right now. Losing access to my Gmail (technically a google apps for our domain) account would be devastating. I think the risk that some google ai decides I&#x27;m abusing their ai and bans me is too high.

This has been known for quite a while; when I published an Android app ~10 years ago I saw lots of people advising you to create a separate Google account to publish apps under, because a robot can just terminate your entire online identity for the crime of trying to contribute to Google&#x27;s app ecosystem.I left behind Android and as many Google services as I could in 2020 and so far I&#x27;ve only been more vindicated with that decision over time.

Leadership at Google should face prison time for this sort of practice. We wouldn&#x27;t accept it in the physical space, so why do we accept it cyber space?

Have a friend lawyer that will send them a proper letter. They will take you seriously that way. And if you live in EU, use GPT... Actually, use Gemini (!) to craft another great response invoking a number of articles etc that they are in violation of.

I think the most fun part with Google is that if some wayward algorithm decides it doesn’t like you, along with nuking your app and developer account it will probably nuke your 20 year old gmail, your kids Google Drive accounts, your wife’s YouTube premium, the Adsense account of some company you worked for in 2008, and disable your Nest cameras.And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out.

They&#x27;re allowed to do it &quot;to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate ... provided that such measures are duly justified&quot;.It remains to be seen whether the EU decides that this measure is strictly necessary, proportionate and duly justified. They sometimes do the right thing but I&#x27;m not getting my hopes up.

But they did. EU formally allows all these measures by Google in the name of &quot;security&quot; as described in Digital Markets Act Art. 6 (4) fourth paragraph.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eu-digital-markets-act.com&#x2F;Digital_Markets_Act_Article_6.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eu-digital-markets-act.com&#x2F;Digital_Markets_Act_A...</a>

Indeed. I wonder if it falls foul of labour law. Blacklisting is illegal and whitelisting (certification) is normally done with multiple competing third party certifiers.

this is something the EU would love, it&#x27;s part of the whole Transparency thing where you dox yourself to everyoneHNers (especially Americans) are super naive and think the EU is some bastion of freedom. no. it just wants to be a huge nanny state but in a wholesome way, where you can do whatever you want as long as it&#x27;s approved

They did? There is the whole &quot;alternative app stores&quot; kerfuffle going on right now between Apple and the EU.

They&#x27;d have had to start with Apple which is more locked down and has comparable market power. Apple fans (iirc like 30% of the voter population) already scream bloody murder when compatibility increases due to legislation and Apple pushes some marketing about how terrible this isWe&#x27;ve accepted that OS vendors can do this for decades. I think that was our mistake: relying on Google as the only available vendor. We can&#x27;t make a law that punishes Google for having been open all these years. Yes, of course I (like any &#x27;HN&#x27; hacker, I&#x27;d think) would be in favor of forcing Apple to be open as well, but then it seems that the powers that currently run the EU (and a lot of voters) kinda likes their remote DRM attestation for this digital identification project that you&#x27;ll soon need for anything not suitable for toddlers and not reachable via a darkweb

I&#x27;m still a little bit confused why the EU does not take action in this. This is definitely a monopolist overreach which has to be shutdown from the beginning

Ah so the Do No Evil wasn&#x27;t serious after all?! &#x2F;s

If you go back far enough, the original iPhone didn’t even promise to give you the ability to install apps.

Its worse in a different way.I mean when people complained about Apple, the standard reply was &quot;if you don&#x27;t like Apple use Android,it&#x27;s open! &quot;.Now when people complain about Android doing the same, the answer is how is it wrong if Google does it, when Apple has been doing this forever.

lol my god the apple shills are out in full force. this is implementing a tiny fraction of control over probably less than 1% of android users (hint for the hn crowd: you dont represent real people and you need to remember that) in an effort to stop a very real problem that far far far more than the people affected by this face. yet they are worse than apple who has been doing this since day one to 100% of users. you’re an unserious person

This is worse than Apple. With Apple you knew where you stood day 1.

Maybe we need an economic system where it is. Shame should come packaged with legal personhood.

Shame has ceased to be an applicable concept for anyone “important” enough to get free media attention.

Shame isn’t an applicable concept for a corporation.

This started with phishing, poor people being tricked to install apps that then drained their bank accounts. So to resist, maybe focus on that evil? Better international cooperation, better prosecution?

Not much one can do I fear...Install f-droid and all kinds of 3rd part apps now.Install GrapheneOS. (I&#x27;m guilty of not having that done that,yet :( )Sign the petition (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepandroidopen.org&#x2F;</a>).

Raise it at whatever level we can.I&#x27;ve seen more outrage on HN posts about license changes than those related to this. I mean we are in the midst of one of the biggest rug pull of our lifetime and the response was not even remotely proportional. I wish it was a atleast a fraction of what it was during the SOPA act.Not even businesses that could be hurt by entrenching Google more in the mobile space are acknowledging the issue.That makes me think may be all the outrage at the SOPA time was probably &quot;promoted&quot; because it aligned with their commercial interests or may be Google is all too powerful and too deeply entrenched that nobody wants to upset them.

If you are in the EU, send a message to the DMA Team. Be polite, explain how Google is using its oligopoly power to shut out competing app stores and applications that can be installed outside the Play Store. Explain how it affects you.An app becoming unavailable through remote attestation? New recaptcha? Document every case and send an e-mail to the DMA team.

I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s plenty of Google employees on here, some quite high up.Push back against these types of decisions internally.
Rally your coworkers against them.And if you&#x27;re brave enough, talk to a journalist, or pull a mini-Snowden.
Lord knows the company has secrets.
I bet there&#x27;s at least one email chain from some exec bragging about how this policy will squash Revanced, ad-blockers, etc.

Opt out of the duopoly by getting a freedom Linux phone like FLX1s from FuriLabs, or the Mecha Comet with cellular modem. Or if you&#x27;re technical, you can install postmarketOS on a Fairphone 5 or OnePlus 6. Sendero Linux sells refurbished ones with pmOS preloaded.

&gt; We need to resist this!I agree. What do you suggest? How can we contribute to the resistance?

How long before they take that option away?

An FDroid desktop client that adb installs APKs would actually be lovely. I pretty much exclusively use FDroid, but I gotta say I unfortunately find all their frontends to be rather buggy and with very little user feedback when things break (repo updates are hard to observe, downloads hang, updates mysteriously fail)

&gt; many stupid Apps check that developer mode is on and refuse to workDo you have some examples? I have developer mode enabled and have never seen any apps complaining (and I have used a lot of different banking apps).

I&#x27;m not aware of any apps that check for developer mode, that&#x27;s mainly root.

I&#x27;ve never encountered this or read about it. I believe you could toggle developer mode off after install.

AFAIK you can still install any random APK but the process will require enabling developer mode and one time 24 hour wait period. But the problem is many stupid Apps check that developer mode is on and refuse to work.

you think it&#x27;s shitty, but it&#x27;s a personal opinion that you&#x27;re phrasing as some kind of widely accepted viewbe sure that it&#x27;s not, lots of people actually PREFER Android

Pragmatically speaking, I doubt that the percentage of users currently choosing Android over iOS for this reason would add up to even 1%. Android dominates worldwide by and large because of cost, and unless Apple pulls another Neo this shall remain regardless of how locked down they make it.

I like Android a lot better. And I really, really like the fact that Android is open source, so that 1) I can read the sources and 2) projects like GrapheneOS can do it right.Apple does not remotely allow that.

It&#x27;s not just shameful, it&#x27;s stupid. Freedom was the whole point of tolerating the shittiness of Android. If they get rid of that, then there is no point, and I&#x27;ll just buy an iPhone instead. If I must be in a walled garden, I&#x27;ll choose the better kept garden, and it sure as hell isn&#x27;t Google&#x27;s.

Epic games sued both Apple and Google for anti-competitive behavior.Apple was found not guilty.Google was found anti-competitive.In the appeal, Google asked the judge why Apple wasn&#x27;t anti-comptitive and the judge told them that Apple wasn&#x27;t anti-competitive because there were no competitors on their platform to compete with.Google lost the appeal, an inflection point in tech was created, and Google wondered why the hell they tried being open when xbox, playstation, nintendo, apple, all get to do whatever they want on their closed platform.It&#x27;s incredible how little coverage that ruling gets despite how damning and detrimental to tech it&#x27;s implications are.

What Google is doing is shameful. One of the promises of Android was being more open than the restrictive Apple ecosystem.Now that they reached penetration they do the switch - under the guise of security.Just let me do with my hardware what I want to do it. Let it be my responsibility to install whatever I want (and stop calling it &quot;side-loading&quot;, as if I am doing something shady from the &quot;side&quot;).We need to resist this! Alas, from the broader response it seems that most people just do not care.

Too much hedging in this comment.Malware is something that maliciously breaks your computer.This maliciously breaks my computer so it&#x27;s malware. There&#x27;s no difference between this and the ILOVEYOU virus, except the delivery mechanism.

&gt;this malevolent process has exactly one goal: to block you from running software by developers who haven’t been approved centrally by Google.This claim is made by FDroid with no evidence. They make this scary claim which goes against everything Google has claimed so far. They are a biased party, and I can&#x27;t trust their opinion. I would appreciate if they shared a more in depth investigation or a way to verify there big claim.

It all depends on how you define malware. If malware is software doing something that is contrary to the user&#x27;s interests, then for many users it is indeed malware.

It doesn&#x27;t tamper with your installations.

The point is that it is said to tamper with your installations. If it does, it is malware.

it is malware when everyone is explicitly asking to not have it.

This is not malware. It&#x27;s an official part of Google Play Services.

How? I don&#x27;t see the address published.They can sue you and Google will give your address to the court, clearly. But swat? Send packages? How?

Not sure how well swatting works in the UK, and pizza deliveries are all pre-paid.But yeah, you could have a loony turn up.

well they can swat you, order pizza, send you packages (who knows with what inside), spread false info about you if you&#x27;ve given out more info etc...all it takes is one guy who gets too mad for some reasonand it&#x27;s gonna be a lot more costly for you to do anything about it vs. that guy who gets to be completely anonymous about it

There&#x27;s no such requirement for publishing a website

This is a somewhat good reason to make an US LLC with a mailbox rather than sharing your actual address. It can be much more privacy oriented.

This is so that you can be sued or prosecuted if the app is malicious.

It&#x27;s because of a law in California. Don&#x27;t remember the reason behind it, but Google decided to apply it everywhere. It&#x27;s also why I let my app die years ago instead of publishing the updated version.

You should not distribute apps via the Google Play Store. Using alternative means, including F-Droid as relevant. And it was a mistake of you to register, because you&#x27;re helping Alphabet exert more pressure and control on others.

I just launched an app in the Google Play Store. I did find it a bit weird that I had to provide my physical home address to get my app listed. Not sure what I would do if someone turned up to complain. Make them a cup of tea?

Does this mean that apks that i&#x27;ve built and installed through adb will stop working? That would be a real damn shame.

&gt; In computing, a trojan horse or trojan is a kind of malware that misleads users as to its true intent by disguising itself as a normal program. [1]Google is Trojans all the way down. What is the true intent of almost every Google product? Data harvesting.Every single product is spyware of some kind. They&#x27;ve even managed trojanize TVs by subsidising manufactuers to ship their spyware.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trojan_horse_(computing)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trojan_horse_(computing)</a>

I&#x27;ve already disabled Play Protect ages ago because it kept removing apps I had installed through F-Droid. Actually, I almost only install apps via F-Droid. I wonder if the ADV will install with Play protect disabled ?

This kind of speech will only go with fellow technical users, most folks buying phones at the usual phone operators won&#x27;t care less.

This is more than enshittification, it feels like purposeful brand destruction.Are governments going to institute more lockdowns? Is this some topdown control thing?I will root this POS android phone I have and forego any Google Play services and just use it as web browser and a phone. Fuck these guys!

They do also sell the data-hungry side-loaded app builder.

Or buying some crappy app off the app store, from which they take a cut.

Their interests shouldn&#x27;t matter. If they matter that much to restrict, then they are abusing monopoly power and need broken up.

What&#x27;s their interest in you building side-loaded apps instead of using their data hungry services?

We finally live in an age when I can tell a clanker that I want an app that does something that I need, connect the phone with adb and in half an hour have a working solution for my tiny problem while knowing little about android development. This is something google should embrace, not kneecap.

Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection