This sucks, and they shouldn’t have to do this, but could they make it a webapp?
Did you mean “web site”? Because, according to Cory Doktorov an app is just a website wrapped into enough IP to make it a felony blocking ads in it.
Everything is objectionable.
Are we ready to admit that giving 3 companies the ability to decide what everyone can and can’t execute on their devices is a massive international problem? This is probably the greatest threat to every country in the world, and the people of the US.
This kind of thing is coming for Android as well once Google has converted it to it’s own walled garden bullshit.
remember when Tim Apple gifted tRump a golden statue? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I remember him being gifted a golden pager and I’m still holding out hope that he gets the call.
Yeah, but are Apple users going to punish Apple for glazing Trump’s tiny manhood by not buying Apple products?
Tim Apple certainly doesn’t think so.
I mean I’m doing my best to only buy second hand iPhones and replace them 5-10 years. The power of Apple is the reoccurring revenues of software and the new phone buyers
It’s really not that bad a compromise, as far as bribes go. Some cheap gaudy bauble as payment for not interfering with billions of dollars in business?
It’s still a bribe and it’s still encouraging mango mussolini, but very efficient tradeoff
This is cowardice from Apple, but ICEBlock was not a good app:
Apps used only for criminal activities should not be on the store. It’s insane that they even let it get on the store in the first place.
The only criminality involved with ICEblock would be that of ICE kidnapping and detaining people, even people legally in the country and including US citizens.
Doesn’t matter if it was good or not.
Tech companies have never been our friends.
objectionable contentSheer fucking cowardice
From the heroes who bravely took away the headphone jack
I’m surprised it stayed up as long as it did. I thought Apple would have taken it down within days.
Anyways I’ve seen this as a non app alternative: https://www.stopice.net/
Would I be paranoid to use a VPN while visiting this site? (And others like it) god only knows if IP’s visiting the site could be uncovered…
Yeah, I’m probably being paranoid…
Would I be paranoid to use a VPN
Or tor.
Not a bad idea. Just make sure your VPN doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement or sell your data otherwise.
Additional note: check if the VPN does DNS or not. If not then use something like NextDNS, or get a VPN (Proton, Mullvad) that does do DNS servers. Plus they usually include better ad-blocking.
Back to the WWW just like the good ol days
I mean yeah honestly probably the best, but I’ll take any chance to rant against the idea of walled garden tech
This is why Android is far far better than Apple, despite its faults.
You mean less worse, but worry not, google’s catching up.
Ice block couldve been a web app
Not for long :'(
Yeah, fuck Google.
And this is why having 3rd party app stores is important. It’s why it matters that Google is killing side loading, if two fucking companies get to decide what you can do on your phone, we’re in a bad spot technology wise
Your phone is fucking you no matter what you do.
“Hurd OS? Isn’t that obsolete?” “Not obsolete. Just… illegal.” ~Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
Honestly, this thing should just been a PWA. Making this naive app was dumb.
Google is not killing sideloading. If the dev is willing to submit to Apple for verification, they’d probably not object to submitting it to Google.
Google is not killing sideloading. If the dev is willing to submit
I see…
Yes, and then they ban that developer and their apps. It doesn’t matter you can install apps outside of the Play Store, if Google still controls which apps you are allowed to install.
“Sideloading” is their term, invented to make it sound like something it is not. We should not use this word. The correct word is “installing”.
You don’t “sideload” on Windows when you install software outside of the Microsoft Store™️. There is no real difference or distinction with software on phones, so there is no need for a special word.
I can see Microsoft moving to the same sort of thinking as well. Apple already made Mac OS users jump through hoops when you want to install something from the internet or even through a third party package manager like homebrew.
Microsoft has been trying this for years already. That eventually led to Valve incresing their efforts in the Linux gaming front and releasing the Steam Deck.
See this
I wonder if Valve would ever get into the Linux Phone market.
But for the platform itself to be open, I wonder how much would have to be recreated.
Does anybody actually enjoy gaming on the phone or just do it because there nothing better to do?
I would perhaps buy a valve phone but I wouldn’t want to game on it which sounds weird.
Unless it was like a switch and had detachable joycons.
Oh same here. I’m hopeful that valve brings us a linux phone, not a gaming phone. I’ve never really gotten into gaming on mobile either.
However, if they DO make a linux phone, I’m sure it will be Steam branded and have all kinds of gaming-specific tweaks.
But again, to me that just sounds like it will have good hardware specs. So not a problem!
“Install” includes installing from an app store no matter how closed down and exlusive. The correct term would be “install from other sources than an app store” which is just clunky. Calling it “sideloading” won’t change that nor will calling it “your mom”. Considering how many corporate-speak terms are in use and how many braindead abbreviations and terms shortened to a word’s last syllable -completely distorting the original meaning- generally are in use, the term “sideloading” is pretty irrelevant. Either lose your mind listening to the bullshit people permanently are emitting or just live with it…
the term “sideloading” is pretty irrelevant.
No, it’s not.
“Installing” is innocuous and easily understandable (by those tech-illiterate dumbfucks that get spoonfed FUD by lobbyists); whereas sideloading is eerily similar to sidestepping and is prone to being interpreted as “working around a safeguard”.Words are not irrelevant.
Yes, yes. Reinvent language and everything will be fine. Just as the woirld is now so much better than before “political correctness”. Idiot.
Right, we should just completely ignore any power words have over people, because we personally don’t like it. Let’s also ignore all sorts of other manipulation tactics cause it’s more convinet to pretend they don’t exist. 🙄
Right? Anyone who has been paying attention to the healthcare thing in america should know that what you call something influences immensely what people think about something. Just look at the difference in support in polling when they call it the affordable healthcare act OR obamacare.
Not yet.
Not to defend it, but the first time I encountered the term was when BlackBerry released their Playbook tablet. It ran their bbos10 and they created an android emulator so you could run some android apps. The process of installing the apk into the emulator was called sideloading.
I miss BlackBerry is all I really wanted to say.
We’re in a bad spot technology wise
Just technology wise? I think it’s a little deeper than just technology unfortunately
Oh yeah, of course, but it feels like it’s never part of the conversation, even among people whose opinions I respect and are, for example, super critical of AI and talking about enshittification and other issues in the online sphere, they never seem to take the step to check out Linux, or get off Twitter or whatever.
And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the ‘left’ as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.
Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you’re just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.
Most people dont have values because they have values. They hold a perspective just to talk down on others.
I originally got introduced to sociallist idiology through Richard Stallman’s speaches. I know he had some, uhh… “interesting” things to say about Epstein’s victims (which I believe he has since redacted), but his speaches are absolutely still worth listening to just for the content alone.
Redacted or recanted? One of these is definitely preferable to the other in this context.
Recanted is the word I was thinking of.
Yeah, very disappointed by RMS’ creepiness (the Epstein stuff isn’t the only thing), but he was 100% right about software freedom.
Right? The collective dismissal of Mastodon from leftist influencers when the Muskening happened was eye opening.
Like, there’s a collaborative, volunteer-based platform right over there. You want mutual aid? Open-source is as mutual-aid as it gets.
But it’s nerd shit.
Because they are controlled opposition.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok and you saw how quickly both parties went to ban it in 2024 after normal people started talking about Gaza genocide in every day conversation. The American Congress worked together to ban it even though they couldn’t agree on anything else.
It went from an Asian platform where Asian people in the West connected with each other outside the mainstream blue pill/red pill false choice and shared culture as well as history that isn’t taught, to “here’s the truth about Jesus” and “the world is flat debate me” after that vote. Now it’s full on MAGA.
Mastodon is harder to control because servers can pop up organically, but I guess Threads was a hedge against that threat.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok
I’m not sure what you mean by controlled, but how I got to know it was as the malware that’s recommended to everyone on the front page of the google play store, and then even factory preinstalled on a lot of them.
It wasn’t doing anything that Facebook wasn’t already doing, but it got banned. The CEO was brought in front of Congress and racially profiled, gave strong answers, and then got banned anyway.
Wonder why?
TikTok hate was a bot farm. The algorithm was always a reflection of the user.
Also, on xitter are all these assholes I don’t care about. I can’t leave that platform. Pathetic!
Yeah it’s unhinged, FOSS is as communism in practice as it gets right now and the left just ignores it, dismissing it as “tech bad” because they can only think in AnPrim brainrot terms most of the time and judge only by aesthetics and make sweeping generalisations about social media that lack any and all imagination.
People will never understand intricacies like that. On the other hand, the big tech corps do. We are doomed
Yeah. And to think, it’s a fairly small amount of nuance - it’s very basic and intuitive and information about it is literally everywhere. We are hopeless when it comes to far more complex and nuanced social issues we face like rehabilitation or ethnocentrism or trans athletes or the what have you.
People seem to think socialism and any progress is like “be nice to each other” or some stupid aestheticism about “empathy”.
There’s basically no way to have a conversation with them most of the time, they are so far gone and their fully formed thoughts seem more like inaccurate shorthands, it’s like trying to explain astrodynamics to a dog when it’s actively trying not to understand them.
Normies are the death of us all.
Those same people are also still using Twitter or Instagram or TikTok.
No doubt. I’ve gotten to the point where I have like 6 apps on my phone and it’s in lockdown mode on iOS. And I’d be on grapheneOS if I wasn’t required to use iOS for work.
Can you have your job pay for an iPhone while you have a different personal phone? I’m a big fan of keeping a work device that’s separate from a personal device.
I do this. Highly recommended.
I probably could, but I’m also a recovering drug addict and my partner is pretty hesitant about a second device as it’s another way to hide things. However I’m the head of the MDM team so I’m not really nervous about what the company can see
I thought you were head of the MDMA team for a second and thought that could be rough as a recovering drug addict
Definitely got the experience required for the job
Oddly I’ve only tried MDMA a few times and it never really worked. There’s some anecdotal evidence that it doesn’t work for those with bipolar which I do have, that might be the one drug I could be in charge of with no temptation actually
We rapidly need to switch Linux Mobile. PostmarketOS and Mobian are the two most promising projects, and I would highly recommend anyone reading this to donate to them if you have the means.
Both projects directly use your donations to hire developers to build and polish the critical essentials to get this alternative viable as a daily driver.
While I full heartily agree with you, I’m pessimistic you will ever reach enough people with these alternatives. Even on privacy forums you hear people fervently defending how banking apps are mandatory. Those will never run on anything that isn’t locked down. The eID proposal for the EU is also dependent on Android and iOS.
how banking apps are mandatory.
This i don’t get, i’d rather use home-banking from my home PC.
A lot of banks require their personal apps as 2FA to access your account. I would never agree to that.
Yes but you can’t motherfucker, don’t you understand that? In most of the world you have to use the app, you CANNOT use online banking without the bank’s app on your phone, you have no sign-in details apart from the email and the bank app, it is the only way to sign in and you sign in via 2FA inside their app and authorize transactions exclusively via that, and no you can’t use Google authenticator or whatever, it’s a “tap to allow sign on” type 2FA and the only kind supported.
There is no “home banking”, and you are not even allowed to enter a physical bank location on the high street without being intercepted by a ghoul telling you to use the app or fuck off, you cannot call the bank because they have no public number, you do everything via the app or you cannot do anything at all.
That’s why even people without access to drinking water have the latest fucking smartphones, they’re a prerequisite and there are no alternatives.
Most of the time you don’t even have a bank card, just the bank card details in the bank app on your phone that are automatically added to Google Pay, and you use that because near everything is cashless and NFC.
Soon across EU and UK your very ID will be stored on your phone.
I love how you are getting downvoted for getting frustrated with people who can’t see beyond their own nose.
I fully agree with you, these people just don’t want to admit some of us don’t have the privilege of choosing since all the options end up on forcing a banking app one way or another.
Because it is a fucking privilege at this point.I don’t need to use an app to manage my bank account.
Sounds like you people have shitty banks. Maybe it’s time to switch?
Sure, come to México and tell me which local bank allows me to not use an app at all and I’ll switch
It doesn’t necessarily need to achieve mass adoption, it just needs to get to a ‘good enough’ point to make it viable for those who are willing or desperate to get away from big tech.
Linux still has plenty of people giving reasons why they won’t switch, but it’s now finally viable for many, including myself. I just want mobile Linux to get to that point too, even if there’s still rough edges.
Yeah, people should have listened to the people warning of privacy concerns with online services. Now that your data is valuable, companies will do anything to extract it from you.
Stop using those products, de-Google, install Linux, use self-hosted solutions.
It will take some effort to switch. You get to decide how much effort you’re willing to expend in order to not sacrifice all of your privacy and control of your digital lives.
If people were more aware of how to make and install mobile web apps it would be less of a problem.
At least on the iPhone you can still add a site to your screen that can behave a lot like an app, including camera access, location services, and even gyro. And it’s just a website like most “apps” are.
Most people don’t care about any of that. Firefox with AdBlock to surfe YouTube without ads? Nah, they want the app, which is basically the same, but at least they can’t block ads. I stopped trying to understand
Yeah, me too.
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Disclaimer: The app is closed source, so all we can go off is the developer’s word, although the fact the government removed it is a strong indicator they don’t have access to data from the app
The developer stated they do not even retain any identifying data, so the only data the government could get is public anyway. Through Apple they’d be able to see who downloaded it, and likely when it was used. Your defense would be easy enough though: “I just wanted to make sure the libs weren’t harassing our
fascistpatriotic ICE agents near me”It is impossible to send a (edit: true) push notification to a device without knowing which device it is going to. The developer may not know/have access to that information, but Apple/Google know which devices they are sending those pushes to. If it wasn’t a true push notification, then they would not arrive in a timely manner and potentially only when the app was opened the next time.
He was using true push notifications, so the government could just subpoena that information.
He could maybe obfuscate who initiated the initial message, but its impossible to do that for the receivers.
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Fuck Apple but honestly this app is like trying to stay warm with matches in Antarctica.
Fuck Apple and I’d prefer matches in Antarctica to no matches in Antarctica.
You might want to read Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne (spoiler alert : it doesn’t work).
I don’t want to read it either. Are you implying that ICEblock isn’t worth downloading? In your own words, why or why not?
If you don’t want to bother read a centuries year old classic of literature on human condition I don’t think I want to bother clarifying.
Forgot my silly opinion, read the 2 pages story.
1.) I can’t even read the title, 2.) I still want the matches. I’m not saying I’ll use the matches themselves, but who knows, maybe I find wood or whale blubber to burn or something. Just give me the matches, please.
Surprise you can’t search without speaking the language but OK, easier https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32571/32571-h/32571-h.htm#Page_117 about 2 pages. Also I’m not crying. /s
It’s about as useful as a canary in a coal mine.
So… Really useful?
Not for the canary cry emoji
😩
Exactly. It doesn’t matter too much what the app doesn’t. The fact it’s removed is the useful part.
A famously useful tool for saving miners from suffocation?
So if this
appcanary has just died, what does that imply…?it implies that it’s time to gtfo
I object to fuck-faced people who object to basic acts of decency, safety & freedom.
You see why Google attempting to lock down installing whatever apps you want is a bad idea? This is an example of what will happen.
I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);
ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.
One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.
Something worth noting, if you are using iCloud, advanced data protection is your friend. Apple doesn’t have the encryption keys, you do.
This is not on by default.
Advanced Data Protection does require all iCloud Ecosystem devices to be current.
Not every person can afford the latest and greatest.
Current or on a current OS?
Edit: I just enabled it and I have a iPhone 11 on my iCloud account.
So, just latest OS.
Which Apple gives you basically forever instead of maybe a year of old updates with android.
It requires iOS 16 and MacOS 13.
The devices that max out at those operating systems are 9 and 10 year old.
Or they removed it to keep up the appearance that it wasn’t actually a honeypot to begin with.
Money is always the answer with these “people”.
To assume otherwise is to feed the beast
You’re giving apple too much credit. Tim Apple literally gifted trump a golden statue. The press are reporting that this is directly in response to a request from the DOJ. This isn’t apple having a moral epiphany and thinking they’re doing ice targets a favour. Corporation’s don’t do that sort of thing unless it will make them $$$
Alternate take: Tim is a businessman doing what’s best for Apple and he personally might not support Trump, but we will likely never know.
Tim Apple is a billionaire, doing billionaire things. Supporting the people who give him the most power and not giving a fuck about anyone else.
Tim Apple
I love that his has just stuck, and I don’t even blink an eye at it anymore lol.
Same take my friend. I agree - Tim’s personal politics are kinda irrelevant in this context. Best for apple=compliance with whoever is in charge so they get to keep their money printer. Corpos gonna corpo
Oh, so you’re trying to say that Tim is so greedy that he doesn’t have values at all, other than his greed? That’s an interesting position, but I think it makes him sound even worse than the previous one.
It’s an inherent byproduct of capitalism.
If you rise to Tim Cook’s level you must be someone that is either willing to put your personal values aside or you do not have them to begin with. The growth of the company matters more and if you prioritize your values you will be filtered the moment you misalign with whatever prevents maximal growth.
Capitalism does not care about values, ethics, morals, social wellness, or anything besides growth. It is cancerous and leads to a toxic society that poisons itself and falls apart, which is literally happening
You don’t succesfully run big corporations by having high moral standarts, this was never an argument. Argument was about what makes businessman a good business man, and one major thing is seizing opportunities and “playing” important people like Trump. I don’t think he’s anywhere as (morally) bad as Steve Jobs was, but he’s doing his job as expected.
It’s certainly not altruism, but devil’s advocate: avoidance has been their go-to tactic in working around court-ordered law enforcement cooperation. If they can make it so they don’t have access to the requested data, then they can throw their hands up when subpoenas come and avoid taking sides.
Again, I don’t think it’s altruism. The legal and technical infrastructure required for law enforcement cooperation is an expensive, high-liability mess, and now they have the added risk of a fledgling privacy brand.
It’s not implausible they would delete an app hosting sensitive user data as soon as they suspect they may be forced to hand it over. In fact, what’s more weird to me is that they let it stay up until an official DoJ request.
You’re absolutely right. Economic motivations decide the trajectory a company may take. Ethics, green washing, queer rights and other factors take a back seat. If they come with financial benefits, the company will follow that path, but that’s always because of money—no matter what the marketing material actually says.
Remember when companies were supporting sexual and gender minorities? That was because financial incentives aligned with that at the time. Remember when those turncoats suddenly scrapped the DEI programs and removed all rainbow themes? Same motivation again. Facade changed, but the foundation is still the same.
