The ability to filter information using proprietary devices and software in the kernel of all of these garbage devices is the core issue. Trusting the owners of that code is to surrender your right to unbiased and unfiltered information. I am not at all concerned about hacking or security by small insignificant players. I am massively concerned about the extremely powerful using the leverage they have normalized and embedded to become tyrannical neo feudal lords in a fascist society. Google IS the biggest danger by orders upon orders of magnitude. Trusting them is to give up democracy entirely.

All mobile devices are proprietary. Android is a scheme to make a Linux kernel that has everything ready to deploy except the actual hardware drivers for the processor and modem. Manufacturers take this kernel and add their proprietary binaries at the last possible moment. That source code is not available anywhere. The hardware documentation is not available anywhere publicly. Every device model is just different enough that reverse engineering one does nothing transferable to any other. The level of reverse engineering is extreme and requires destroying many devices using things like fuming nitric acid and fluorine solutions just to have a small chance at reading some parts of embedded memory. These are some of the most dangerous and hazardous chemicals humans make, and you still need xray equipment, special microscopes with stepping automation to stitch images, and a ton of time.

This is moving to a tyrannical surveillance state of fascist authoritarianism. Open source software is a major front on the line of real democracy. This is a nuclear bomb released on that democracy. You fear the wrong pirates and criminals. The biggest threats always come from within. Trust as a mechanism is fundamentally antithetical to democracy. Everyone demanding trust is a traitor to democracy. Trust is the key of the fascist kingdom. Once that key is held, democracy has failed regardless of whomever is aware of the situation. Democracy requires fully informed citizens with skepticism and the liberal right to decide for themselves even when they are wrong. This is impossible without full access to information. The source of that information cannot be filtered at any level. We already have the narrowest bottleneck of available information sources in the last 1000 years of history. There are only 2 relevant web crawlers. All search queries filter through one or both of these two and the results from these are not deterministic. Two people searching for the same thing at the same time will get very different and very biased results. This is individualized regardless of any protections people imagine they have in place. Outside of the internet there is no real unbiased media. A dozen people own it all. Even the garbage claiming to comb all sources is drawing the line and dictating what is center right or left is. Anyone at the grassroots level is impossible to find because there are no organic unbiased search results. The results are all filtered junk full of agenda and bias.

This is the real big picture abstract issue in play. When the maga traitors said this was a coup, they absolutely ment that. Mobile devices are all rental garbage someone else controls. Your computer likewise has a secret operating system running in the background that you do not control. In Intel it is called the Intel Management Engines or ME. This started with Intel VPro in 2008. AMD adopted it is 2013. Arm has one too.

All that is left is to steal your right to have a digital front door by eliminating DNS filtering and all of these devices will be controlled and connected directly by someone else that is watching and listening at all times. You are already in tethers as a digital slave that can be bought and sold for exploitation and manipulation without your consent or knowledge using your digital presence. You have not effectively realized the implications of that surrendering of rights to citizenship with full autonomy. The next step is to redefine the word citizen to be functionally equivalent to slave. “You will own nothing, and you will be happy about it” because if you are not, you will be dead. This is the death of democracy. My words will echo in your head years from now. The dystopia to come is beyond anything you can presently imagine and there is no way to stop it now short of taking up arms and playing Luigi if you are able.

The consolidation of wealth is what really made Caesar. That was the death of the republic. It was not Caesar. We are all a product of our time and environment. It was the consolidation of great wealth. All that wealth did not give a shit about Rome, it went to Constantinople for better opportunities at first chance because consolidation of wealth is treasonous. It is as it was, just look at outsourcing and off shoring, or the disgusting mismanagement of banking and housing that have made the American worker completely uncompetitive with Asian counterparts at the same standard of living. No, I have no fear of the boogie man or foreign state actors. I am terrified of the criminal that normalizes domestic trust, actively manipulates and exploits me, and steals my purchased property. That is a real monster.

For ads at least the argument can be made that the content you consume is not yours and as such you should not be allowed to choose how it is monetized.

Google unilaterally deciding this is like Firefox or chrome adding ads to websites. Which is like no… They’re the medium through which content is consumed.

Read the contracts you sign when you buy your phone

Contracts? Unless I’m buying a subsidized phone where a mobile phone plan is required, I’m not sure what other contract I’d be signing. I never got one from Samsung, OnePlus, Google, any used marketplace, or Amazon.

They get paid, and I get hardware to do what I like with it. If I can’t do what I want with it, then I’m renting, and I should be paying a rental fee, not a “full price”.

99% of those contracts are not enforceable. And I bought my phone used. No paper, no contract.

I didn’t sign a contract. Also just flashed the Pixel to GrapheneOS, and bye bye google

The minimalist in me would love that. But while I am paying for this shit, it’s mine to do what the hell I damn well please with it!

Google Pay is different in America, right? To me it’s just contactless.

Sorry I should have clarified. Google pay moved the payment features to Google wallet, but the biggest loss was the person-to-person payments are now gone. I never understood why they had multiple apps that did the same thing. I seem to also remember a time where there was a Google pay and gpay app that lived side by side, so there were a total of three apps when there should have been one.

I’m sure we all have a different perception, but my current view is that Google sells you a phone that they need to push ads and harvest vast amounts of data from you in order to make money on the phone, and Apple somehow needs to do this less.

Which company do you feel takes privacy more seriously? From what I understand, Google primarily makes their money from advertising.

Exactly this. Just left iOS and got a pixel8a and flashed grapheneos on it. Apple is doing the same shit. GOS might be a pain in the ass sometimes but I feel much better knowing that Tim Apple isn’t reading my texts and monitoring my bank apps so they can target me with ads.

And custom-built PCs are already getting priced further and further out of the market for everyone who isn’t rich; mini PCs are slowly taking over the budget segments, and even some of the mid-range as well.

Next step if it’s allowed to get that far would be locking out alternate OSes after upgradeable PCs are all but eliminated except for HEDT.

I didn’t fold. They are just reorganizing. Don’t spread misinformation.

I’ve gotta get a new phone soon (ol Pixel 3 is getting long in the tooth) and this is what I’m looking at too. I highly prefer the “default” Android UI, and the ability to install programs of my own choosing — but fuck Google, imagine getting locked out of your phone just because Google randomly unpersoned you.

Yeah; that’s totally fair. Mostly, I just want to get it more known; whenever Mobile Linux come up, people namedrop Purism, the Pinephone, maybe UBPorts and the general conclusion is that the spec.s, alone, of what’s available are pretty much a non-starter.

There’s definitely aspects of this phone that some people wouldn’t go for but I’d rather sales be limited by not-the-right-choice than just no one knew it existed; especially when any progress can get sent upstream and improve future projects, as well.

Yep but also 200 buck phones.

My current phone, a Pixel 7a, cost me around 350€ (let’s say it’s roughly the same in $). There is definitely cheaper options. And most of these options will give you a decent phone.

A $200 computer will bring you to basic office stuff and playing facebook games.

Also I live in a 3rd-world country

Because they are cool and build phones from scratch

Or FairPhone??