A 24hr waiting period to use a competitor’s product has to be one of the most blatant anti-competitive behaviour in history.
I‘m curious I read the petition and didn‘t see mention of „24h waiting“ anywhere could you tell me what you‘re referring to?
The 24h wait period is a part of the so-called “advanced flow” which will become the only way to install apps not verified by google once their new rules go into effect, as described here: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html
Damn that’s so over the top.
If only the founding fathers had written the right to bear apps shall not be infringed in an amendment.
Oh well can’t change the ancient text now, just have to be governed by it forever. 🤷 (It’s a shame the ancient powder-wigged wizards that wrote the constitution weren’t clairvoyant.)
If only there were some way to change the ancient text. Some sort of amend-sion. Surely our benevolent leaders would have figured something like that out by now. I guess we’ll just have to keep voting and hoping every four years
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas
I am not from the US but can’t you interpret the first amendment in a way that would work here?
Code is just information and you could argue that a platform is infringing on private free speech.
i am American, and yes we have a long history of interpretation that is expansive. the problem is we have narrow minded people running the institutions now who don’t even want the narrow interpretations to be in effect so they do everything possible to limit them.
if you pay attention long enough you will see them use one argument to get their way, then later use the opposite to get their way on a different issue. there is no moral consistency because morality is just s tool to them.
What competitor?
please just make an android alternative
I want a phone that isn’t a closed ecosystem race to the bottom shit phone
There are, but the market is rigged by monopolists. And things like banks increasingly require apps that won’t even run on customer Android ROMs easily.
The regulators are needed here.
The problem with regulators is that they a) gladly suck corporate dicks, b) gladly opt-in for the same authoritarian methods of population control, and c) gladly ignore common sense altogether.
“a” has a name: regulatory capture.
Regulators have in the past fulfilled their role, they’ve just been hamstrung.
The issue is the hardware, we already have software
We already have the hardware too
Not ours, we depend on it
i hope linux phones succeed
I feel like that won’t be enough. Google is working on locking down the entire internet unless you can pass their reCaptcha with a verified device. See this article related to GrapheneOS and their reCaptcha concerns.
Sites need to stop using reCaptcha or we are all doomed anyway.
Don’t be such a doomer
All of the alternatives eventually run into the same “Will my banking app work on it?” problem. The absence of a healthy app economy is the one thing that can’t be fixed by throwing software engineers at it, and it is what caused the death of Windows Phone.
God I fucking LOVED my windows phone. Nokia body, windows OS, and no one fucked with making viruses because eleventeen people bought one in total.
There was nothing Windows about that OS but the name. For one, it was great UX. I miss mine too.
Lumias before Microsoft’ acquisition were adorable phones.
I’m pretty sure that custom roms will remove that 24hr wait period from their binaries. Android is still open source and removing a check isn’t going to be very hard for them.
The tech ecosystem is as open as you can. Use linux. Use SearxNG. Use graphene or other custom roms. There’s options out there, you just have to start adopting them instead of just complaining online about having no choice.
Not everybody has a choice. I’m currently on grapheneos, but it looks like I may be forced back to android due to national ID requirements.
If your country forces you on a locked down OS for ID requirements, something is wrong entirely. You should absolutely make some noise against that and urge them to allow custom OS. That’s a political issue, not a technical.
It’s not going to go anywhere in my country, unfortunately. Not even a blip on the radar.
Shit country tbh. You might be able to get a cheap stock android device for your ID and your “actual” device keeps living the good life on a custom rom. Idk how feasible that is for your lifestyle tho.
Name one country that is perfect. What a shit comment.
You’ve dug out a 2 month old comment which already tells me you’re clinically insane. Leave me alone you freak.
I switched to grapheneOS. Fuck Google.
will likely switch to a proper linux phone, when they get to a point of being actually useable
Maybe it’s already been said in so many words but I bought the OnePlus One when it was released and it was kick-ass compelling hardware that happened to have Cyanogen mod. I emphasize the hardware aspect because this is a draw for many people. People were talking about it. If you get a certain percentage of the public drooling over some eye candy they might be more openness to something like a Linux phone. Of course it’s always a spectrum and some people - like many here - are more swayed by software alone and that’s awesome too.
let’s get real…google isn’t going to stop. why would they? there’s zero repercussions for their aggressive strategy against their own consumers.
so stop using their products. cut google out, entirely.
The number of times that signing an online petition has prevented the plans of an evil corporation is exactly zero.
I agree. Doesn’t do anything it would be better to get people to buy stock in the company and vote on what you want. Get enough people and you can make change.
But that process is also… Gross. And expensive.
I am not so sure. It creats activity, being passive is worse. We should encourage all type of protests, even petitions.
It dissipates righteous indignation by making sure that people feel the satisfaction and the release of “doing something” (and thus not act any more forcefully) whilst said “something” is the least impactful thing imaginable.
It ultimately makes those who would do more do less instead.
I genuinely appreciate the cause, but to sign this, I have to provide PII, agree to their terms of service and privacy policy, and get automatically opted-in to their mailing list that I’ll have to unsubscribe from later.
So to petition against this shitty tech stuff, I have to go through this other shitty tech stuff. It sucks how normalized this all has become.
I don’t get it, how tf they gonna stop you on phones that already exist?
A. You can disable any new OS or device updates from Google.
B. You can keep your existing phone on Android 16 or prior (hell, I’m on 12)
C. Use alt OS like Graphene, Lineage, Iodé, /e/OS, CalyxOS (they’re back!!), etc
D. Sign out of Google on your phone, install F-Droid or something from APK package on FF derived browser.
I’m sure on brands new devices with that patch, plus anyone who doesn’t disable the auto updates will be blocked. But no way no how can Google stop us all!! 🖕🖕🏻🖕🏿🖕🏼
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Yep, just reinstall the OS so that’s removed, and you’re unimpacted. Easy.
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No, it doesn’t come back. Google will not be installed by default.
I’ve never had it on my phone because I never add gapps when installing Android.
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Nah! If they kill it Linux mobile will get better!
the year of the Linux smartphone
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Btw, do you know a dumb phone that can tether?
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All this effort going towards “saving” green fascism when we should be pouring these efforts into Linux
You do know that android is Linux under the hood right?
So we have a Linux phone now, it’s just got a crappy front end on it
It’s Linux-ish under the hood really. No Android device I’m aware of is running the vanilla kernel.
You aren’t going to keep Android open. Respond by shoring up Linux phones.
Not only would that solve this little problem, it would reduce Google’s power and remove one’s data from the claws of US authorities (were the Patriot and Cloud acts let them mass track everybody using a Google product).
Just make sure you chose a non-US Linux phone.
