Love that some megacorp can just make decisions like this that affects billions of people.
Really just feeling the fucking freedom. I hate everything.
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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The megacorps can do anything they want with their product. The chef can change the menu anytime and he can refuse you service - it's his restaurant. Our problem is that it's a duopoly and there's nowhere else to go.
The only way out is open standards and platforms, enabling true competition.
Real quick.
Just imagine you order a plate of pasta. You're only two bites in, and it's DELICIOUS.
Then here comes chef. While making full eye contact, he tips your plate and dumps all of that pasta in the trash.
Chef proceeds to take a giant wet shit onto the plate. He brings a new set of silverware and a fresh napkin right before your server comes back with the check.
You insist that you didn't order a giant wet shit, but they won't take it off the bill.
Let's stop pretending this is an inevitable oopsie. This shit is egregious.
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Android was an open standard and platform, a LONG time ago. Then Google did a rug pull with all new features of android requiring 100% of their services to function.
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Please consider donating to PostmarketOS to build up a pure mobile Linux alternative that is completely free of Google's influence. It's the best option we have.
What about fairphone? Don’t they run a Ubuntu option?
Hijacking as I've done on other posts. In my country all 3 major tellcos needed to verify phones can call emergency on VoLTE.
FP5 does this. For whatever reason the telcos cant "conform" that (its not sold here but important and DOES work) so the device is blocked at a network level.
Not blocked just for calls but even data.
Phone is now a brick. Double brick once the Android changes roll through.
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The issue with Ubuntu Touch is that unfortunately it uses an outdated Android kernel (which is also usually not receiving security updates) and a Halium abstraction layer to access the closed source binary blob Android drivers for the phone’s hardware. It also requires that it be installed on top of an existing Android install, so in all it’s more of Linuxified layer on top of Android, which means it’s not truly escaping the control of the Android/Google ecosystem.
UBPorts also appears to inherit the use of CLA's from Canonical:
I'm very much not a fan of CLA's., which SailfishOS also employs.
The advantage of PostmarketOS (even though it is not ready as a daily driver for the average person), is that it uses the upstream Linux kernel with open-source GPU/hardware drivers, not an Android kernel to access the outdated proprietary GPU/Hardware blobs.
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At the end of the day, all you can really do is to start treating your phone more like a phone and stop carrying it everywhere and using it for everything.
The convenience of it has made it way too easy for people to spy on you.
No. You can do a lot more. You can develop alternatives and enforce anti monopoly legislation.
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This. Degoogling and using FOSS alternatives can only take you so far. We should drastically reduce smartphone usage. I got a dumbphone so I can be reachable. Outside of work, my smartphone is mostly powered off. I can't realistically get rid of it, as I need a bunch of banking apps, authenticators, Google Maps at times (and no, there's no real alternative to this, everything else sucks). But I only use it when I absolutely need it. It's gathering a lot less data than it used to. I'm striving to be as low value to big tech as possible. Reducing smartphone use has also done wonders for my wellbeing. I read more, I've regained my attention span, I have more time to do stuff I like. Stop scrolling, there's nothing but bullshit on the next screen, you're not missing out on anything. Stop trying to replace one app or site with another. Just let it go, it was never worth it.
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Yep. My disdain for the combination of fascist government where everything is surveillance, and sociopathic corporations and billionaires where everything is a cynical cash grab, overcame me excitement for tech "products" a long time ago. I'm in the US so it's especially bad.
I still have a smart phone that's 4-5 years old, and I do of course use it every day, but I consciously avoid using it every hour. I love when I misplace it in my own house, to then not look for it for hours. The only person who is going to message me anything urgent is my wife and she knows where to find me.
Constant phone addiction is one of those situations where when you remove yourself from it you can more easily see it in others. It's like there's a new form of body language where when you see that slight forward tilt of the head you know they are in the Phone Zone without even seeing the rest of their body.
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My wife would hate it, if I were no longer reachable.
No. I haven't used Google apps on my phone for years already. That includes Google Play Services and the Play Store. Most apps are open source and I'm self hosting my media.
We gotta claw this shit back.
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We need go start talking about the year of the GNU/Linux phone
Or the year of free (as in freedom) pocket computers, since the global telephony system goes against the freedoms.
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Concerning that this thread is overrun with bots telling me to download some super duper safe LLM
Yeah this whole comment section is weird as fuck.
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it's never been your phone, bruh
especially if it's using sim/esim card. Those mobile carriers can literally do whatever the fuck they want to your phone and there's nothing you can do about it.
Google doing this is just the equivalent of what Apple has been doing for a while.
People need to buy more Linux phones. It's the only way for the tech to improve.
I saw a Defcon talk about SIM cards a few years ago, really interesting stuff.
Most people treat SIM cards as just an ID to get on a carrier's network, but they are soo much more.
When SIM cards were developed, they were designed to be the core of your phone, your handset would be just that, handset that would only run the software on the SIM card.
SIM cards are small computers, they have a CPU, RAM and storage, they can run apps on the SIM card itself and only present the UI to the phone.
With my first phones, I remember the contacts being stored on the SIM card itself, it usually took 30-60 sec to load them after a phone restart. But bloody convenient when switching phones, this was way before iCloud and other similar services, and moving your SIM card moved all your contacts as well.
Since SIM cards are controlled by the operator, they can do stuff that might surprise you, they can act as a trusted source for signing/encrypting/storing data, the user does not have direct access to tamper with the chip, so security apps have been developed to run on SIM cards, I don't know the current status on this, but in countries with limited/older infrastructure, this was used for bank security apps, since the SIM is a locked down system, you can use it to securely store a key, and have the SIM use the key to generate a token, sign requests and even encrypt data, all without the key leaving the SIM.
Here is the talk I mentioned:
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People thinking this isn't a monopoly enforcement action in disguise are the same people who think banning Huawei was justified.
Google's one mistake was that they sold Motorolla to Lenovo, who ran it as low cost shovelware to make the mobile phone market in the US not look like a complete oligopoly. They kept their cost low by using complete stock Google ROMs while every other OEM exited the market.
Until recently when Lenovo properly built up their hardware lineup and started jumping ship to GrapheneOS the moment Google started clamping down.
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"Android fans"
Ok, so I might as well buy an iPhone then because this is the only thing android did better lmao. Fuck you google.
Use GrapheneOS. It's degoogled android. Currently you have to install it yourself on a Pixel phone but AFAIK Motorola is working on releasing device with Graphene pre installed
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I hate Mussolini, i'll side with that Hitler guy
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Love how every comment in this thread is just the same guy spamming some AI bullshit website. They are all 1 day old accounts from Lemmy.cafe instance. Blocked all of them.
I was just getting home picking up my new second hand Pixel 3a to install PostmarketOS on. Wish me luck :)
I got grapheneOS on my phone right now. Go fuck yourself, google.
I will also do my damn best to make sure my older Samsung S23 doesn't fall into that version. I have uses for that phone.
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-- sincerely Apple users.
About to...?
I currently run GraphineOS. I will probably buy one more refurb phone that can run it until Android is dead. Then I am switching to a dumb phone for calls and SMS, and a mobile hotspot connected to a pocket sized cyberdeck. I can still run the apps I want and no longer need Android. With a 3d printer, 25 years of being an electrical and software engineer I can easily make a device that does what I actually want.
Is this practical for the average person? Of course not. But this whole problem is something the average person can fix. STOP BUYING SHIT FROM COMPANIES WHO SCREW YOU!!! Use your power as a consumer and stop giving them money. Make them feel the pain of doing anti-consumer actions. None of this stuff is a requirement for life. If they see a hit in sales, if everyone who makes apps pulls them from the app store, they will change. But it requires everyone to act, and we damn well know most of yall will do nothing but complain.
This problem is a foot gun where we are all buying the gun, loading it, handing it to someone while sticking our foot out and we want to blame them for the bloody hole. Stop it!
This was just inevitable for Google. Google is no longer an open source company. Hasn't been for maybe a decade or more. They abused the good spirit of open source for their corporate benefit and are ending that relationship on their terms. Get used to it Android users.
We must all keep pushing people to go against this and to build up Linux mobile alternatives: PostmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch, JollaOS, and semi by extension, GrapheneOS
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