Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Time for a hard fork.

Google says it's no different than checking IDs at the airport.

You're not a fucking airport, Google!

No one talking about how this could completely annihilate open source .apk development? First off the lead dev has to get identity verified to get a key, which will reduce the number of devs willing to push through friction to start a project. Then when the key is issued and it is posted to the repository, what keeps anyone from grabbing it and using it for another repo? We'll they have an official app registration of some kind, ok, what about version control? Does every new version have to be registered before it can be loaded and tested? Same for forks?

This is about to be a terrible mess, Google is assassinating FOSS with this.

Google has been been cracking down on installing .apk's on your phone for years and they're getting more and more aggressive about it. It's not a question of if they'll disallow it completely, but when.

It's already extremely tedious. Back in the Android 2.3 days (oh, good old Gingerbread) you could just get an APK and install it, but those times are long gone.

Years ago they threatened the developer of Total Commander to remove his app from the PlayStore unless he patched out an APK install feature, so he was forced to do that.

Now another example: Try to install eBay on a phone that is not passing device integrity. It is not listed on the PlayStore because your device doesn't pass safety checks. You can grab an APK and install it, but the OS will check if the app has been installed through the PlayStore and if it hasn't, it will complain and close itself.

GrapheneOS has patched that bullshit out, btw.

And this behaviour happens with all apps where the developer has enabled the "App Integrity" option, which is heavily pushed as a super-great security feature. So developers might just enable that feature, not being fully aware of the implications.

As you can see, it's one method at a time, slowly but surely, until Google fully controls the ecosystem. The intention behind that is pretty clear: They don't want people to have AdAway and Revanced, they want money and user data. And they also want you to login to the PlayStore, get hooked on their stupid daily points challenges and spend your hard-earned money on virtual crap.

This is textbook enshittification, it will only get worse from here on.

any good replacement phone OSes out there?

My phone is not an airport. It's a garbage collection machine found in a trash, with a battery so it looks portable. I don't need an ID to use it, nobody will ever need.

The current trends and direction of tech is making me want to become Amish...

I'm getting so fucking sick of everything turning into shit, what's even the point of fucking point anymore? This is borderline kernel level enshitification

Hve linux nerds invented a new OS for phones yet? I think I'm gonna need one

I'm probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don't seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I've heard) pretty decently: https://furilabs.com/

Biggest drawback is it's based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn't worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.

Collection of different experiences I've variously seen online over the last year or so:

• https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839326
• https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1j46f2w/flx1_linux_phone_display_out/
• https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/furiphone_flx1/

I don't own one, myself, so I can't give any personal experience but I've seen it around for a few years now but most people don't seem to even know about it. Maybe there's a reason for that? But none I've ever seen anyone say.

It also becomes no different than iPhone, so.. what's keeping me to android if they do this? Or hey, maybe I'll commit to de-googling. I have CoMaps, I'm planning to setup nextcloud soon... Hell, I don't even buy anything on Google play anymore since it's so shit, i have no purchases tying me to the OS. Maybe I'll buy a cheap old iPhone so I can finally use imessage with everyone that's been bitching about me and use other tech for everything else.

(I'm not going to iPhone, but the point stands)

Wait, what the hell?

I can't believe this, who the hell are they to decide what I should install?

They are welcome to curate their own store, but sideloading concerns only the user.

Hopefully, the EU and other jurisdictions block this.

Fucking corrupt American oligarchs.

Google says it's no different than checking IDs at the airport

What, and Google is now the TSA? Fuck that shit. I've paid for my device, I get to do whatever the hell I want with it!

only malware i have read about on android have came from google's oh so safe store.

Google can get fucked. I feel like there will be a nontrivial market for de-googled or older and unlocked Android phones after this. If they manage to kill off custom roms with their previous AOSP rug pull I'll go back to using a (subpar) Linux phone or maybe even one of those cheap flip phones.

How about we abandon proprietary locked-down launcher sandboxes on our phones and just run regular old Linux on them like we do on the desktop?

Isn't that what PostmarketOS is? Is there some bullshit firmware issue in the way of that? What exactly is stopping us?

Any developer of piracy or emulation related software will not apply for the registration, because the trail will point to they official identity, opening a flank to legal actions. This will kill piracy in Android.