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this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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App developer here. Our company went through this exact thing, to a T.
After a lot of back & forth with Support we implemented another feature which requires full file system access and they suddenly accepted it. Such a bullshit way to do it, but hey, it worked.
What was it replaced with? I thought All files access already was full fs access
Honestly, phone users ruined a generation of computing.
None of this shit was an issue when there was a barrier to entry to using the internet.
Blame tech companies, not users
I'll blame both.
The users are willfully ignorant.
To blame someone is to consider them responsible.
Do you consider the average user responsible? Is it productive to try to hold them responsible for any of this?
The end-user has always been the bane of all tech development. It doesn't change the fact that the increasing tech illiteracy of end-users in the modern day is by design.
Nobody can fix the user, but we can fix the companies that build containerized little retail environments that encourage mindless engagement and discourage curiousity and experimentation.
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And not wanting to learn to do basic things on a computer made companies put everything on rails and then once everything was on rails, they could just take control away from you. I don't know how many times working in an office people would be completely ignorant of how to use their computer and be completely fine with it. Like this is your career and your livelihood and the tool that you use daily to get the job done. Learn how to use it and not just the steps to "point and click at certain things" and when it doesn't do exactly what you want you give up.
We need to stay far away from these restrictive platforms.
They don't care about their own rules. They will quietly ban anything that threatens their dominance, and if there isn't sufficient backlash then it will stay banned. (kind of like lemmy moderators)
The same thing happened to AdNauseam, an adblocker that blocks ads in addition to clicking them so advertisers get fucked over and website owners can still get paid. Google removed it years ago without justifiable reason, and because there was no significant pushback it stayed removed. It's what made me switch to Firefox. Seeing how chrome recently killed adblockers altogether, I'm glad I made the switch sooner rather than later.
They never explained why. We all know why. So thankful that I am not a gamer and as such I do not even sign up to Google on my phone via Playstore or even Google Play Services. I can get away with either Aurora or just FOSS apps.
Not for some apps; besides, we should exert pressure to make Google Play Services not a core part of aosp.
The GrapheneOS dev wrote a wrapper / sandbox for the Google core services that spoofs some "required" APIs, and it allows full control over permissions.
They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that's not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
And if you grant access to your own apps, but deny them to your competitors, that is totally a monopoly abuse
And it should be met with steadily increasing fines until they stop it or go bankrupt. Both is fine with me.
Was going to comment the same, this issue has existed for some time for other apps. LibreTorrent ran into the same issue and now the F-Droid version is their full-featured app while the Google Play version is restricted due to Google.
Interesting that Nextcloud managed to last this long on Google Play without running into the same limitations (until now that is).
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That and the process of being audited for your app to gain access to Google Drive is apparently a nightmare on top of being super expensive.
No wonder so many apps don't even bother adding the ability to sync files with like Joplin.
I hope the EU eventually crack down on that bullshit.
When I saw the process to add Google drive support to an app I thought: "wouldn't be easier to just discontinue the public APIs?"
If I was a dev I would immediately remove the integration instead of paying the required thousands (yearly!) to keep it. Then in the app explain the situation to the customer, add a referral link to Dropbox, onedrive or other competitors
Just switch to the F-Droid version.
Better: make sure all the apps you use come from F-Droid
This works very well for tech enthusiasts and people who self-host nextcloud at home.
The issue is when you are a government or university, it becomes harder to get all your users (which are probably not all tech savvy) to install a third party app store deal with the Android warnings about installing from third-parties, etc etc.
And this is probably the user base Google are targeting with this move (assuming it's malicious) . When the higher ups complain that their files are not syncing and need to install things with a special procedure they sometimes wonder why they are not using M365 or Google which seems hassle free.
Not to mention the "see this big alert saying this isn't safe? Well for this one time it /is/ safe so do so" While curbing the mentality of "oh it was safe last time so it must be safe this time"
I installed a few apps from F-Droid that the play store decided to just take over instead and updated them. I think antennapod and signal.
No way to stop it as far as I can tell.
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Get linage OS on your phone and stop fucking around.
Yeah I just moved to GrapheneOS. Stood up my own NextCloud server too. Fuck Google.
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EFF - is this the only org that fights these excesses? Anyone else in US?
This and the fact gallery cloud provider API stuff is locked down to whoever Google gives permission to should get a lawsuit.
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I use FolderSync. Works well and I prefer one app synchronizing files than 6. I still use the Nextcloud app for files I don’t sync that I need access to, but overall it’s really bad. The camera upload erased a ton of my pictures on a vacation. I deleted the synced pictures on my phone storage and the Nextcloud app overwrote the images as the new photos had the same file name.
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