Speedy218

People change their tune extremely quickly when you ask them to show you their phone, ask them for the password and let you look through it to make sure you don't have anything bad on it. Every single message, every single app and every single social media. This is the world we are heading towards if we don't take a stand now, except instead of me checking your phone it will be the government and Google.

Me too, we'll see.

EU has proved that they are exactly just like the big corps pushing for control and less privacy.

Luckily you can't enshittify something that is already shit (not necessarily but you get what I mean) .

I think it can be company details if you're an actual company, but they'll probably still have you list some kind of primary point of contact (e.g. head developer or something).

I'd argue it's basically the same thing except added in a complication to make it sound less bad. Google still has the final say here on what apps you install and don't install on your phone because verified developer's app still have to follow Google's rules, and if you don't, you will no longer be a verified developer. I reckon soon enough they will tighten the restriction and make it so that you have to install everything through the play store, Google and big corps always love making changes like this in small steps so that the backlash is minimal and they get to test the waters to see if they can get away with it.

Can't you write apps in C++ or something alike on android if you really wanted to?

It's super convenient storing your payment card in your phone securely though and not having to carry around another card which can be stolen or lost at any time, it's nice simply taking your phone out and holding it to a reader than taking out an entire card, yet again another useful device functionality purposefully neutered under the guise of security.

Sadly "non-certified" phones come at a big consequence, I wrote a big article on it on HN but I'll give you the summary, Google has added in "play integrity" into all certified phones which detects if your bootloader is unlocked or your phone is modified in some way, and apps can (and do) request this device verdict on your device to choose to deny you service. Bank apps, basically all NFC wallet apps like Google Wallet, and games do this, and it's a massive headache. Good apps also make this a server-side check meaning you cannot bypass this without leaking your phone's special hardware attestation key stored in 50 different layers of security in the actual CPU with tamper detection.

The privacy and control implications this has is absolutely insane, they are control freaks just like almost every other big corporation. I'd fully argue that what they are doing to us is worse than the supposed stuff that happens to children that "Google" aims to protect them from. I'm sure our children would be thrilled to know that they are going to live a reality in the 1984 book where Google and major governments are big brothers. The "security" reasoning was just an afterthought in this so that they have a leg to stand on in court. ROOT YOUR ANDROIDS IF YOU STILL CAN!! Google is rapidly pressuring manufacturers to permanently lock bootloaders, I know all of this trips play integrity which means lots of apps stop working, but quite frankly it's a bad hand and it's all we've got.

It would be nice if Google cared, but sadly they're more interested in how this will make them more money and how seamlessly they can integrate it with existing verified developers. We as the users are quite frankly at the bottom of their shoes for lack of a better word, the only way to change anything is to go offensive at their brand.

This seriously pisses me off. We are literally watching the end of true ownership of our phones end right before our eyes, imagine if your laptop or new motherboard you purchased from MSI or whoever did the same and locked the bootloader to only allow booting official Microsoft-signed code (aka Windows only) and if you wanted to run Linux... sorry but no that's what we decided and we know better than you. Despite custom OS support being grainy in phones due to proprietary hardware and ARM chips, I really care about having the option to be able to do it (plus rooting with tools like Magisk is pretty universal across phones anyways since it lets you patch most firmware images).

It was already bad with Huawei stopping their unlock program and Google cracking down more on rooting by introducing strong integrity with their new Play Integrity API (which was an upgrade from the older SafetyNet API), basically meaning there is hardware security called the TEE (ARM TrustZone for most phones if you're interested in reading more) built into the ARM processor which "snitches? (lack of better word)" on you if the firmware booted no longer matches the manufacturer signed firmware, and causes you to fail strong integrity which means apps like bank apps can choose to deny you service (Google Wallet does this for NFC payments). There are workarounds which the custom ROM/root community still uses which mainly relies on older leaked cryptographic signing keys from the TEE being used which bypass the phone's TEE and sign the "integrity verdict" in user land to say "all is good" to Google, but Google can easily tell if these keys have been compromised since they track usage, and the storage of these keys just keeps getting better, getting as close to impossible as you can in a modern phone since to extract it would require you to quite literally de-lid the ARM chip and hope you don't break anything in the process while somehow extracting the key, in other words not feasible.

This is all great when it comes to security which Google and all manufacturers have been pushing on, but it comes at a serious cost of ownership, you cannot tell me we truly own our phones when we have literal hardware protection that, quoted right from wikipedia: "code integrity prevents code in the TEE from being replaced or modified by unauthorized entities, which *may also be the computer owner itself*". I don't know about you but a chip (and Google) that dictates what I can and cannot do with my phone doesn't sound like ownership to me.

All these recent changes and events sounds to me that Google is actively pushing and "encouraging" phone manufacturers to disable bootloader unlocking, we're constantly seeing manufacturers which were once before root and unlock friendly randomly changing their mind and quietly removing or severely limiting that feature in the background (Huawei, Xiaomi, now Samsung, etc). You have to remember these manufacturers won't back down from what Google tells them to do if it's for "security" since they're all in each other's pockets so they won't pushback without a good reason.

And if you want to use the typical excuse "allowing bootloader unlocking is unsafe", we've already proved it can work quite well while maintaining security as demonstrated by UEFI's Secure Boot which allows you to enroll custom boot keys (should you wish), while keeping some popular default keys such as Microsoft for Windows, and allowing you to lock the entire firmware config behind a password (which is stored in a security chip in modern motherboards so you can't use the old trick of removing the CMOS battery). That's more security than any regular citizen might need.

This TEE thing is all about control. Google and manufacturers don't like people installing custom firmware or rooting because then they can't keep you in their ecosystem to keep taking your data and hoping you eventually buy something from them. Some app developers also think this locking down of phones is great in order to protect their app against abuse than actually investing in good backend security which I just find to be hilarious.

I hope some laws get passed to protect us from the 1984 book that society is starting to become thanks to the government and corporate conglomerates themselves, although I sadly find that to be unlikely.

Important sentence is "..or at least not as often as they should" :)

I have no doubt most people brush their teeth in one capacity or another, but do you really think 98% of people brush them regularly and sufficiently? I reckon that drops down quite a few double digits at that point, and since we're talking about populations here that's quite a lot of people.

> but now it is “overmedicating” a vulnerable fraction of the population.

Makes sense, but the intention also is that many people do not brush their teeth, or at least do not brush them as often as they should, and so fluoride is added to drinking water to compensate so people's teeth don't start to fall out at an alarming rate.

They put in a lot of work to make it seem like they do believe it or not, I'm not sure how well it is working out for them though.