this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Android

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

and the most delicious kind of money of all: dark money! ooooh it's so good because the sources of the dark money offer you a lot of it, and they specifically ask you not to ask questions, which is so good for you because these bloatware programs make your device sell worse and provides no value as a sales platform because it turns out that billboards and radio spots are, surprisingly, the most effective form of advertising.

but! you have a sense of solidarity. you have faith that by never offering a phone without bloatware, your entire industry will ensure that all phones won't have bloatware. you rest easy at night knowing your phone won't sell poorly, at the end of the day, because every phone is like this. your contributions to a surveillance and propaganda machine that should punish you in the market because won't because all your peers are your allies in this.

and it gets better! every time someone else's phone gets more bloatware and more dark money attached, then everyone else appears comparatively better, allowing them to get worse. ooooh you love it so much when you get to take more dark money. and all it costs you are several thousand lives far away from your big mansion. you don't even have to see the suffering

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

adb device
adb shell
pm list packages | grep 'packagename'

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

you have to be careful what packages you remove, some can softlock your device.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

You get to feel like a super cool insider in a shadowy club secretly ruling over all the foolish little people who aren't clever enough to be deemed worthy of receiving dark money!

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For the same reason we have every fucking other problem in the world right now.

Capitalism.

You cannot align incentives towards growing the wealth of a microscopic yet astronomically lecherous group of monsters and expect society to not just crumble under the weight.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep, time zones. Some places are in 2025 already and the US is stuck in 1940.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

you suggestij we win this fight within this month?

press X to doubt

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Because it's profitable to include.

Why would companies care as much about the minor brand value decrease in the eyes of more technical users when they can make more money right now by making things shittier?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Because people keep buying Xiaomi and Samsung shit that's loaded with crap (at least over here, I understand this varies massively by region).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Base Android is also loaded with crap, directly from Google. Android is the worst mobile operating system, with the exception of all the others.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Base Android (AOSP) is not, what you probably mean is Google Android.

Look at GrapheneOS, that is a usable, privacy-focused Android without bloat.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

At least Samsung phones are only bloated with Samsung apps, which in most part you can uninstall or disable. Although it's still fucking stupid that when you buy a new phone you need to do a lot of maintenance just to make your phone work as it should, and not slow down because of shitty apps.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

My Samsung tablet had a lot of non Samsung apps, some even duplicating Samsung ones.

I disabled no less than 10, there are other 10 I can't

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I mind the Google crap more than I mind the Samsung stuff. At least Samsung's browser supports ad blockers since ages. That Chrome POS is just useless.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

And laptops, desktops, televisions ...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (10 children)
  1. buy a laptop/desktop
  2. boot up windows and setup with fake shit
  3. download and flash your favourite linux distro
  4. disable secure boot
  5. boot from usb.
  6. ???
  7. profit!
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (8 children)

ugh. wanted to get a oled tv but will not buy a smart tv.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You mean it'll all magically go *POOF!* come the new year?!? I'll wait until then to set up my new phone, then!

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

Basically, because we don't own our devices. We are allowed to use our devices by the good graces of the manufacturers that charge a premium for them.

This really needs to change. I remember the preinstalled app antitrust suit(s) in the early 00s. Those need to happen again, but likely the EU will have to as the US is entering a dark age, and the US will continue to have inferior everything to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's called enshitification. Deshitification isn't so much a thing.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is it really enshitification if it was like this from essentially the start?

Outside of like literally the very first few android phones when there wasn't even apps for the platform, they came bundled with all sorts of shit. I remember my HTC from 2010 drove me insane with the junkware bundled in, and that was about 2 years post Android's first phone. We're at like more or less steady state shitification. (varies by phone/brand)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I used to buy my phones with a specific eye towards avoiding bloat. It was still possible to avoid most of it 8-10 years ago, but not anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Facebook, Netflix and Spotify are bloatware.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Most people aren't - they've given up the fight.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (7 children)

The problem is that most phones don't support ROM's like Graphene or Linage, as people installing custom roms is a relic of years past. Next time you get a phone, think about if you want this option for yourself. Also, do keep in mind that some phones have HW backdoors on them, so even installing a stock rom/graphene does not save you from privacy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They made it very hard to install roms.

There is this orange warning on boot.

Then banking apps don't work.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (18 children)

HW backdoors

Tell me more!

And lil papa google now forces GPlay Integrity so custom Roms are fucked

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Time to load up some custom Android OS. Lineage, Graphene, seem to be the best at the moment. Any others?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Companies want to spy on you and make money, it's no secret. Just install stock Android or your favorite fork; it quite literally takes 5 minutes with a WebUSB installer.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

it quite literally takes 5 minutes with a WebUSB installer.

With a supported phone, on a Chromium browser on Windows. It takes much more than that usually, depending on device, to unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Doesn't' the fork like Lineage OS or Graphene also need to support those phone models first?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Yep, Graphene only runs on Pixels but (IIRC) Lineage runs on most mainstream devices. Otherwise stock Android should work fine.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)

...and then you're locked out of using your phone to pay for things, can't install banking apps and marginal ID apps, et cetera. 😢

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Unlocking bootloader took me few hours.
I must register new account, install Windows application (Linux not supported, but Windows Server evaluation is free and works as a VM),
have valid SIM card with Internet access.

But worth it, much better experience.

Unfortunately, average person won't do all this things.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That sounds like Xiaomi. The best price to performance ratio of any OEM, but at the cost of terrible software and this... experience... when you want to get rid of it.

Worth noting that not all OEMs are like this.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Anti-libre software steals our control. When you see a licence text file like GPL missing, 🚩

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Because we let them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Business people don't care what you want. They care exclusively about what they have to to do get you to accept what they want.

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