Boycott doesn’t have to mean a total ban on using anything from the target (ie America). It means doing what you can to signify your opposition to the target.
Am I able to completely divest myself of American products and services? No. Have I stopped purchasing things from America that have a viable alternative from Europe or elsewhere? Yes. Have I cancelled a trip to America in favour of a European destination? Yes.
Yeah, I tried non-google forks, and I couldn’t find my food badda-bam-bam-tisch /s there’s a joke in there about AI ruining dining as well but I digress.
I have actually dabbled in 3rd party ROMs, but the trouble is that, at least in Denmark, I need my phone to be trusted. And unlocking the bootloader breaks the trust. All of a sudden I couldn’t use my phone to sign with the national ID app (mitID), I couldn’t use MobilePay (a ubiquitous Danish venmo-like app) or my banking app, and Netflix started to bitch.
The ID app is especially bad. I use Firefox as my default browser on my android phone. But most implementations of the ID app doesn’t work unless you have chrome as the default. And forget about not having google services running, that breaks all sort of official apps.
What we need is an EU founded android clone, that all government apps must support. Something that doesn’t require an overpriced Pixel phone(I’m looking at you Graphene). No google services, and the user must have admin rights.
An EU regulation, requiring that all phones, tablets and PCs, must make available methods to install an OS of your choice. That’s what we need. That would be a great way to fuck over both Apple, Google, and the US dominance on tech in general.
Why not Ubuntu Touch? Linux is European from the ground up and is an extremely solid foundation, UT even has features that Apple and Google have struggled with forever, like full compatibility with desktop apps. It just needs polish and app developers, and that’s where EU funding would come in, as you’re suggesting for Android. From what I read it also has a working Android compatibility layer.
Not that I’d discard the idea, but it just seems more likely to succeed with more phones, if we stuck with android, just in another flavor.
The desktop app argument may sound cool on the surface, but to me it’s almost a counter argument. But that’s because I used windows ce pocket (or whatever it was called) before smartphones became a thing. It was really just a PDA with a GSM modem, that could make calls. Anyway, at the time people hadn’t figured out the smartphone UI, and everything required a stylus. I mean, even the keyboard required a stylus, because the interactable objects were too small to reliably hit with your fingers. Running desktop programs on your phone requires some tweaking to work.
Running desktop programs on your phone requires some tweaking to work.
I‘m curious to see how Ubuntu Touch addresses this. Nowadays smartphones are just normal computers, so you have to wonder whether the historic restrictions of Android and iOS are still relevant. I‘m inclined to see it as a user-interface problem only (small screen, touch vs click), which is a fully solved problem on web, with responsive layouts. Not sure what happened to Windows, but that’s also quite old and maybe it was just not well designed.
Indeed, though you still have some dependency on Google as lead of Open Handset Alliance, which is the official developer (might not have much practical significance within open source context), as well as have to develop your own „Google Services“ on top of it, to match the user experience.
On Android, you could distribute the app in alternative open source stores like F-Droid, but of course this only addresses a minority of people. In this case I guess the developer just took the opportunity to make some money.
Google is about to impose a restriction on app developers even on F-Droid and the like: you must register and be approved by Google before your app will install on Android, no matter how you distribute it. This will give Google the power to identify and shut out any developer making politically inconvenient apps. And Google will jump to the demands of the US fascist regime too, so all your apps for boycotting the USA, thwarting ICE, chatting through unmonitored channels, etc., could easily be shut down.
This will leave us with no major mobile platforms that will run whichever software the user chooses to install.
I share your pessimism, but let’s see how it turns out. There is still time until the implementation and a lot of things can change. I hope the EU could do something as last resort…
Google is about to restrict all that, by preventing installation of anything they haven’t approved. Developers will have to register their personal information with Google no matter where they publish their apps. This eliminates developer privacy and gives Google the power to shut down any developer whose apps they don’t like. I don’t know whether there will be fees involved in registering With Google.
I wouldn’t be surprised if developers of “boycott USA” apps get shut out, along with anyone else whose apps do politically or corporately inconvenient things.
Wouldn‘t the same go for the only other mobile OS, Android? The software I mean. I am not sure where they‘re going with this.
Boycott doesn’t have to mean a total ban on using anything from the target (ie America). It means doing what you can to signify your opposition to the target.
Am I able to completely divest myself of American products and services? No. Have I stopped purchasing things from America that have a viable alternative from Europe or elsewhere? Yes. Have I cancelled a trip to America in favour of a European destination? Yes.
It’s not all or nothing.
These are people who are letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Ubuntu Touch is a thing btw, if one is serious about supporting an European ecosystem.
Android is also, in principle, open source. You can use non-google forks if you want.
Yeah, I tried non-google forks, and I couldn’t find my food badda-bam-bam-tisch /s there’s a joke in there about AI ruining dining as well but I digress.
I have actually dabbled in 3rd party ROMs, but the trouble is that, at least in Denmark, I need my phone to be trusted. And unlocking the bootloader breaks the trust. All of a sudden I couldn’t use my phone to sign with the national ID app (mitID), I couldn’t use MobilePay (a ubiquitous Danish venmo-like app) or my banking app, and Netflix started to bitch.
The ID app is especially bad. I use Firefox as my default browser on my android phone. But most implementations of the ID app doesn’t work unless you have chrome as the default. And forget about not having google services running, that breaks all sort of official apps.
What we need is an EU founded android clone, that all government apps must support. Something that doesn’t require an overpriced Pixel phone(I’m looking at you Graphene). No google services, and the user must have admin rights.
An EU regulation, requiring that all phones, tablets and PCs, must make available methods to install an OS of your choice. That’s what we need. That would be a great way to fuck over both Apple, Google, and the US dominance on tech in general.
Why not Ubuntu Touch? Linux is European from the ground up and is an extremely solid foundation, UT even has features that Apple and Google have struggled with forever, like full compatibility with desktop apps. It just needs polish and app developers, and that’s where EU funding would come in, as you’re suggesting for Android. From what I read it also has a working Android compatibility layer.
Not that I’d discard the idea, but it just seems more likely to succeed with more phones, if we stuck with android, just in another flavor.
The desktop app argument may sound cool on the surface, but to me it’s almost a counter argument. But that’s because I used windows ce pocket (or whatever it was called) before smartphones became a thing. It was really just a PDA with a GSM modem, that could make calls. Anyway, at the time people hadn’t figured out the smartphone UI, and everything required a stylus. I mean, even the keyboard required a stylus, because the interactable objects were too small to reliably hit with your fingers. Running desktop programs on your phone requires some tweaking to work.
I‘m curious to see how Ubuntu Touch addresses this. Nowadays smartphones are just normal computers, so you have to wonder whether the historic restrictions of Android and iOS are still relevant. I‘m inclined to see it as a user-interface problem only (small screen, touch vs click), which is a fully solved problem on web, with responsive layouts. Not sure what happened to Windows, but that’s also quite old and maybe it was just not well designed.
Indeed, though you still have some dependency on Google as lead of Open Handset Alliance, which is the official developer (might not have much practical significance within open source context), as well as have to develop your own „Google Services“ on top of it, to match the user experience.
You can buy an American Android phone, then degoogle it, cutting Google’s gain from you using the phone substantially.
There’s no way whatsoever to deapple an iPhone.
On Android, you could distribute the app in alternative open source stores like F-Droid, but of course this only addresses a minority of people. In this case I guess the developer just took the opportunity to make some money.
Google is about to impose a restriction on app developers even on F-Droid and the like: you must register and be approved by Google before your app will install on Android, no matter how you distribute it. This will give Google the power to identify and shut out any developer making politically inconvenient apps. And Google will jump to the demands of the US fascist regime too, so all your apps for boycotting the USA, thwarting ICE, chatting through unmonitored channels, etc., could easily be shut down.
This will leave us with no major mobile platforms that will run whichever software the user chooses to install.
I share your pessimism, but let’s see how it turns out. There is still time until the implementation and a lot of things can change. I hope the EU could do something as last resort…
I am not why you would only offer an App for Apple, when nowadays things like Flutter or even Kivy exist.
You could publish apps over F-Droid or as an APK-Download over your own website.
Google is about to restrict all that, by preventing installation of anything they haven’t approved. Developers will have to register their personal information with Google no matter where they publish their apps. This eliminates developer privacy and gives Google the power to shut down any developer whose apps they don’t like. I don’t know whether there will be fees involved in registering With Google.
I wouldn’t be surprised if developers of “boycott USA” apps get shut out, along with anyone else whose apps do politically or corporately inconvenient things.
https://www.androidauthority.com/how-android-sideloading-restrictions-may-work-3595355/
Worst case, you can still publish it as a web app.