Cool. So what happens if I run a version of Android that doesn't inherit Google security theater cruft? That is to say...what if the user simply...does not...upgrade the Android version to be affected by this (eg: uses an old phone or blocks OS version update?).

My phone is going on 7yrs old. Perfectly happy with it. When it breaks, I will get a phone of the same era (2nd hand or new-old stock) or investigate other options.

So, it seems to me, the winning move is not to play the game (in any one of 100 diff ways).

Or am I missing something here? Is there something that will prevent older tech from working? Because if so, I am happy to YOLO my phone and switch to a dumbphone if I have to.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago

Almost time for me to switch to UbuntuTouch. It's well supported on my phone.

[–] CptHacke@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to stop using Android. I don't need my phone. Sure, it's convenient and often helpful, but it's not something I can't live without. Fuck these assholes.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Are you sure you can't? Because when my phone was stolen last month, I came to terms with how much the modern world needs one to have one.

[–] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

You mean how others need you to have one.

I put a clause in my contracts, and I also do it for social interactions: if anyone needs me to have a Google Party-approved phone, or a Google Surveillance-approved application, it's their responsibility to provide it to me.

[–] CptHacke@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I guess we'll find out. If a viable option that isn't Android or iOS comes along, I'll use that. Until then, I refuse to play the game anymore.

[–] jcarax@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I have almost no apps on my phone now. Breezy Weather, Firefox Focus, Comaps, Stratum for MFA, Signal, and a few other things. I rarely use any of it, except I check Breezy Weather once a day (better than anything I've found on the web). Signal seems to finally be removing the phone requirement, and I could move MFA to my password manager. I rarely turn on mobile data, and I get 6-8 days battery on my Pixel 9a running Graphene.

But, it's really nice to have if I get lost when I'm in town. I can go from ruining my day, which being autistic, tends to snowball into a week or so, to pulling out my phone and getting everything back on track.

That said, I used to constantly have my face in a reddit app, have YNAB and all my banking apps, and rely on it for just about everything. I don't need all that. I take my receipts home, I bank from my laptop, I bought a DAP for my music, Pocketbook for reading, etc.

That said, I'd like to move music back to it once I get a phone with an SD card that will run an OS I'm happy with. I'm optimistic for the Motorola phone with Graphene support. And I'd like to use it to control MPD or Navidrome at home, start getting some Home Assistant stuff running with it for control, and spin up an open source alternative to YNAB that I can run an app for.

It took me years to get to this point where I feel like I can start using it for actually useful stuff, and not be tempted to have it take over my life. Of course, now RAM and disk are too expensive for me to build the little hyperconverged cluster I want to run those services.

[–] doctorflynt@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

introducing ubuntutouch and sailfishos. (never used one myself, but bought a jolla phone which arives this summer/fall this year)

[–] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Didn't europe fine the shit out of apple for doing this same thing?

[–] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ooooh wow! A fine! That sounds just as useful as a strongly worded letter.

The amounts that are fined are just a piss in the resources those companies have. And even a more serious fine is still just money, and can be written-off as operational cost.

Call me when it's jail time, with an extradition process and/or an international capture order.

[–] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It got them to change didn't it? But I agree, this whole never jailing ceos for the crimes their companies commit is bullshit and is why America is a corpo shithole now.

[–] ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org 1 points 10 hours ago

I think with how current economics work it could also be useful to fine all shareholders when a company commits a crime. Ideally fines in percentage of the current stock value, and perhaps even in two parts, half applied immediately to affect all current shareholders, and the other half applied a week or so later to maximise panic-selling and make the stocks undesirable to force stock prices to make a nosedive.

It's often mostly shareholders that actively push for enshittification, and they often don't feel any of the financial consequences of fines on companies as long as the line still goes up. So if you fine in a way that shareholders are negatively affected and stock prices (which is what holds most of the wealth of many shareholders) to plummet then I think that'd be much more effective.

Though jailing CEOs for crimes of their company would still be effective for private companies (though they seem to participate a lot less in enshittification as they focus on long-term strategies instead of maximising quarterly growth above all else). For public companies a CEO is often mostly just a scapegoat for the decisions made by the board of directors and shareholders.