I remember reading an article where the government and Google were able to read notifications and record them from every android device. I wonder if Graphene might have patched this problem, and if not, do they have any plans to do so?

Thanks!

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Would you happen to know what WhatsApp and Signal use? I believe FOSS apps from F-droid do not use Google’s notification service

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Both default to FCM as far as I know. WhatsApp has a fallback notification system, but I don’t think Signal does.

      Edir: correction: Signal does seem to work without FCM, but if you set it up and then nuke FCM, Signal will show a near permanent notification indicating that Signal needs Google Play services because of a bug.

      FOSS apps sometimes use FCM, though that should be labeled in the app details as an anti feature, I believe. It’s very hard (almost impossible) to write power efficient notifications without centralising the notification flow.

      There are semi-standards, like Unified Push, that can help, and UP can even use FCM as a backend if you so wish, but I don’t think many apps use it at the moment.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        Thanks, I’ll go read some more. I’m trying to move away from WhatsApp and wanted to run Signal in my main profile on Graphene. I hope I can use it without FCM there.

        • dracs@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          Signal does have a fallback if FCM is unavailable. It supposedly uses slightly more battery, but I can’t say I noticed it. I’ve swapped to using Molly which is a fork of Signal which implements UnifiedPush (among some other features).