this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
764 points (98.0% liked)
Privacy
47099 readers
396 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not much longer im sure. I have no reason to believe that they will continue making it possible to un/relock the bootloader considering their push for google certified only android.
This is what I'm afraid of too. I could see apps like fdroid and the ability to install custom roms being taken away within the next year or two. I hope I'm wrong but I don't have a good feeling. I need Linux phones to be a thing now more than ever.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum. If you're not already, find a project and contribute towards it some way.
I assume you either mean financially or in terms of general support and word of mouth. Trust me, I wish I could be a dev so, so badly, but as interesting as code and computers are, I'm light years away from getting in there and being able to fuck with shit. I love learning about programming, but I'm not the best at actually learning it. lmao
I say, as I sit in a first level computer science class, typing this because I'm totally lost in the actual lecture.
Yes, I said "in some way" because not everyone can contribute code directly. There are other things besides money you can offer to contribute (graphic design, community/brand management, communication, general organizational tasks, forum moderation, etc) but funding is usually the simplest and most necessary.
Wdym by "you could see" as if its not whats already announced to be happening. Fdroid will not cooperate with googles app verification process which means Fdroid will stop working on all google certified devices, meaning everything other than devices with custom ROMs. NewPipe also announced they wont get google verified meaning it will stop working too.
Is the "Nothing" phone product a custom ROM? Sorry if dumb question I'm a bit out of my element.
ROM basically is just another word for operating system so its about the software not the hardware. So only devices (phones) that allow you to install your own custom operating system (like a modified version of the original android that comes with it or even a proper linux OS) will allow you to install apps not certified by google.
Most of the time people talk about custom roms they mean open source software that replaces the pre installed closed source software. Nothing phones are closed source so they are probably not on the "good" side here.
If I recall correctly grapheneOS is going to switch to Motorola for their new releases
I never know what to expect from Google. They respect open source efforts to an extent, but play Calvinball with where they draw the line. In any case, Motorola will be an option soon, maybe more. And there are other custom ROMs, albeit not as thorough as Graphene. And for me? They can't take it away now that I already did it, so I'm good for up to 7 years unless my phone breaks.