> Gosh, it’s almost like Apple serving as the exclusive gatekeeper for what software can be installed on the iPhone (and iPad, and Apple TV, and Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) is a bad thing that creates a single point of failure which can be abused by increasingly authoritarian governments.
Apple should not be able to decide which apps their customers are allowed to use. It's one thing to make decisions about which products are allowed in your store, and quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer.
There should have always been a side-loading switch. It doesn't have to be easy to find, it just needs to be available in the event of an emergency. Any possible security arguments to the contrary pale in comparison to the importance of maintaining a free society.
We live in a digital age, and software is a form of free expression. We would not (I hope) find this situation acceptable for eBooks, and we should not find it acceptable for software.
I am horrified that Google has decided to move in the same direction on Android, and I urge them to reconsider before it's too late. Right now, these apps can still be sideloaded on Android phones, so to be honest I don't care that much what Google does with the Play Store. But what happens next year?
What e-reader doesn't allow side-loading books?
I also haven't heard anything about Europe being excluded from the upcoming Android crackdown, so apparently Google has decided it's DMA compliant. Which makes sense given what Apple is doing.
Apparently armed, masked thugs covered in body armor dragging people off the street for the federal government count as a "vulnerable group" now?
So many powerful people are the former.
They have choices and they are consciously choosing this.
Don't let them pretend that they are innocent in all of this. They're all polishing their jackboots right now.
Google, name your non-vulnerable groups. Could those being taken away be considered a "vulnerable group" or a non-vulnerable group?
This is pure hypocrisy in the wild.
In 2025 in USA?
TikTok's initial rise predates the protests by about a year. But it explodes and overtakes other social media apps starting in 2019 and into 202.
Am working on a mobile app that requires in person keygen/sharing via Bluetooth, syncs selected data between devices once keys exchanged and new local IP is shared (over something like Signal; discovery is hard/expensive so I am going with a low tech manual option to notify peers how to reconnect)
Flood the field with alternatives to keep The Man on his toes and distracted.
The main problem with hyper normalized and streamlined society is it just makes it easier for The Man to spot and squash dissent. What is dissent when the people are peacefully not following orders by making passive surveillance difficult.
I've long thought people should just fork DNS. This already sort of happens with ad blocking commercial services, but I'm thinking it might be time for something that runs over a mix network, where devices have multiple trust roots for DNS services, and run a quorum computation when there's disagreement.
Ideally, disagreements between the roots could be escalated to a web browser UI.
As an unbannable alternative, Make the web app trivially hostable, and use IPFS as a data backend maybe?
The CEOs were all there at the inauguration. Is anyone really surprised that they're taking orders from this administration?
But absolutely start a project under a permissive license. That's a great idea.
There's precious little reason to distribute as an app, except for exploiting the user. If all you wanted to do was show things on a map then the web is already well set up for that. In fact the apps are probably just embedding a web browser anyway (haven't checked).
I'm no fan of ICE, but I wouldn't trust these developers either.
This is a very Hacker News centric perspective; most of us probably use the browser on our phone for hours every day. But a lot of normal people simply don't - if it isn't an app, they won't really use it. I find it strange, but I've seen this over and over again.
ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way | https://micahflee.com/iceblock-handled-my-vulnerability-repo...
Maybe a PITA to use compared to a app, but at least it could not be banned.
Doxxing of federal employees' personal information in certain circumstances is technically illegal (but many people think it isn't): https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/doxing-arrested/
But publishing location information of where authorities happen to be in public at a certain time... I don't think is actually illegal. The Apple app author also believes he is 100% legal and is seeking to go to court over this.
https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/10/03/lega...
These restictions will give governments total control over what apps you can run on your phone.
Is a quote often wrongly attributed to Mr. Fascism Benito Mussolini himself, but whoever said it had made a damn good point. Be aware that what you are seeing now fits the exact and precise definition of fascism.
It's amusing seeing the US descend so quickly in pure unadulterated fascism and the amount of denial and attempts to sugar coat it or window dress in places like HN. Then forums like this will go dark, and next thing you know, the brownshirts from the modern Gestapo/Stasi/ICE would be knocking on your door.
Make no mistake about Google and Apple: moderating anti fascist apps or content is abetting fascism (that applies to HN mods as well).
Seems to be something else in this case.
No, the "first amendment only applies to government" is cope of the highest degree, it was always a cope.
You accepted that an oligopoly could dictate what you could do with devices you owned because it suited your preferences and now that you are on the other side of the sword you squirm.
The correct answer was neither all along.
It could possibly be found that the government illegally pressured or "coerced" a company like Apple/Google to remove "speech" (an app) they didn't want.
https://robertslaw.org/1st-amendment-protection-against-usin...
IMO, we need to stop thinking in this broken paradigm of "-opolies" (with its loaded requirement to define what constitutes a given "market") and look at the actual coercive power they wield through market stickiness. Apple and Google both wield much coercive power with regards to software running on mobile devices.
Entertainers are a kind of contemporary secular faith healer and tribal shaman, imo.
To mix metaphors, stopped clocks who can be right and worth listening to only in very specific situations.
I also think there's a little bit of quid pro quo happening here - in exchange for giving into Trump's whims and kissing the ring they've had antitrust investigations watered down and patent disputes solved.
The principal obstacle to fair, enduring, and prosperous governance is that the built in perverse incentives are much, much stronger than the aligned incentives, and only are held in check by the ratio of coercive power of the perverse vs aligned incentive holders.
When a population becomes to compliant, obedient, or distracted in the presence of a strongly misaligned state, disaster always follows.
Fascinatingly, we can presently watch this unfold in real time on a global scale.
Most > 50 were born into a more traditional and religion-centric life and only adopted technology. The first generation educated along vaguely scientific lines.
In the US at least, born after 1980 is roughly when opinions begin to veer into favor of empiricism and less "anything goes" new age woo and post world war extravagant capitalism due to being the only functioning manufacturing economy after the war.
Funny how perspective on things can change depending of the amount of boot licking people enjoy.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/24/dhs-issues-statement-tar...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Dallas_ICE_facility_shoot...
> What you're talking about is _not_ something the 1st amendment was designed to prevent.
Yes, in fact I explicitly acknowledged it as a "shortcoming of its implementation".
What I'm taking issue with is your whitewashing corporate censorship as "exercising the first amendment" in your first comment.
It read more as equivocating completely different things, one of which is much more serious. The fact is "corporate censorship" is not a 1st amendment issue.
Incidentally it's also a textbook presentation of the Manufacturing Consent Propaganda model, except it's not only propaganda, it's an outright authoritarian coup.
But is this a valid assumption? Or is it mere wishful thinking? If almost half the US population revoted Trump into power, it's logical to assume the same proportions apply to the managements and employees of A and G too.
I'm against granting any management any benefit of the doubt without solid proof they deserve it.
All Trump has to do to destroy eg. Apple is get rid of the exemption from the tariffs they've been given for electronics manufactured in India.
Today isn't that day alas.
Everyone here was totally fine with the “gay cure” apps being pulled.
yes, the web exists, and while it's not functionally preventing all possible phone access to the app, it's increasing the barrier to entry in a way that meaningfully massively reduces its use
This madness is straight out of Right to Read [0].
On Debian, compiling software from source or installing a deb you downloaded via a web browser would be "sideloading".
Freedom of speech should not require living in the woods secluded from society. It is the responsibility of all of us—especially major institutions—to work to preserve that. I can't do it on my own.
Keep an old android phone in a drawer somewhere. Take it out when you do laundry.
> mark student attendance
If your workplace requires you to use an app then your workplace can issue you a phone that you keep at work. I don't use my personal devices for anything work-related and you shouldn't either.
Streaming services which lock you into DRM won over the slightly inconvenient but free thing.
Your time will always better be spent getting government to make the convenient thing more free than trying to move a river by gathering people with buckets.
There are limited choices if you want to keep it in mind.
the idea behind the ICE agent tracking is to avoid them. you don't need to avoid abortion providers, they're not sneaking up on people on the street and giving them abortions.
someone doesnt need ICE tracking apps to attack ICE agents, they're wearing vests with giant "ICE" text on them. that someone allegedly misused the app in this way is like saying we need to ban knives because someone used one to stab someone else
This admin isn't all powerful, as much as they try and project that image. Apple and I think Google have a pretty big reservoir of good will among the public at large.
These folks won't be in power forever, but the cowardice of people like Tim Cook will always be remembered.
It doesn't really matter that the administration keeps losing in federal court, because the justice department doesn't really care and keeps doing the thing they were told to stop doing anyway, because there's nobody to enforce the ruling.
The executive branch is being actively purged of anyone and anything that is not aligned with and loyal to Trump and the vision of Project 2025, and the institutions that might be used to halt or reverse the damage are being specifically targeted and attacked.
Not only that, but all the other major industry players have already bent the knee and kissed the ring. You don't want to be the only one who doesn't, otherwise you will get singled out and targeted for extortion or worse. Several very powerful law firms were successfully targeted for political extortion by executive order. Major universities have conceded to demands. Conservative news media is in lock step with the administration and can push any narrative at any time. Threats might've already been made privately to begin antitrust enforcement, for some other form of targeted corporate punishment.
Moreover, it's obvious that one of the goals of this administration is to destroy consumer protections and employee protections, creating an environment where powerful corporations can do whatever they want in the name of profit. As the CEO of a large corporation, you might be actively under pressure to cooperate and collaborate. So there is a large downside to resistance, and a large upside to playing along.
Tim Cook will be remembered as one of dozens and dozens of cowards, but only in private whispers, because if they say it in public they will be blacklisted or worse.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/democrats-must-embrace-war-m...
> This is the thing: dooming is itself a liberation from the burden of choice. If everything is ruined forever, if your allies have already forsaken you, if the battle is already lost, you aren't responsible for your choices. They can't affect the outcome. You're free. Dooming is another escape from the burden of war mindset. Clausewitz knew this as well: "As a rule, most men would rather believe bad news than good,"
I put PostmarketOS on a spare phone and spent a good bit of time playing with it. It would be painful to try to daily it at this time, and completely unusable for many of the common smartphone use cases.
On this very forum, people (not you) argued it was perfectly acceptable because the government was only "asking", not requiring.
Unfortunately, the civil libertarians have been drowned out for years by people who believed that it was right to do whatever it took to shut down right-wingers/misinformation/disinformation/hate speech/Russian propaganda/conspiracy theorists/Hunter laptop posters/whatever. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they are shocked and outraged, even as they built the tools, institutions, mechanisms, and political support used to do this.
Never, ever use your personal phone for work stuff.
...but frankly, I am such a geek that it doesn't really matter for me. I have a tiny 11-inch laptop that I usually keep somewhere nearby, or I can VNC into my home desktop computer from my phone.
The thing is that normal people shouldn't have to do this! I say this as someone who does believe that everyone should become more tech-literate and capable with computers. One of the subjects I teach is 5th grade computer science. I don't expect all or even most of my kids to become professional software engineers, but I want them to know enough that they'll be able to make computers work for them instead of the other way around. This is one of the reasons I became a teacher.
I don't expect all of my students to buy and carry around multiple phones in order to protect democracy.
Request that your work phone be this: https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star
If all it is doing is taking attendance then you don't need a large phone.
> normal people shouldn't have to do this!
I agree, but this is what's happening. Google and Apple are taking away the freedom, it's time to put up or shut up.