It works great on Mac, and iPhone. I imagine as more people try this sort of user experience, they might wonder like I am "Why use a Google experience device at all?" Most of what I use these days is simple and the extra value-add AI features, attention driven designs that justify new OS and new hardware, and even app stores barely feel necessary. OK some people say "but banking software" but very rarely do I have to use my banking software in a way I couldn't get to in the web browser?
I believe we're very close to having a 80:20 experience designed out in both hardware and software for laptops, phones and smart watches. I can't see these monopolies holding out much longer.
Epic Games v. Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Google
GitHub Sponsors is another way to raise for an open source organization.
Which they do in fact use, with OSC as a fiscal host. Still doesn’t help here though – Google is unhappy with the nature of transaction (donation that is not tax-exempt in the U.S.), not with the platform on which it occurs.
If they instead made the donations go to e.g. the lead developer, it would probably be allowed (“peer-to-peer payments” can’t use Google Play billing, so the app can “lead users to [another] payment method” [1]). Whether this is a good idea is a whole another question.
[1]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
They must have updated their terms.
Google's AI can't even line up the facts of it's own TOS as laid out in the ticket. If it's covert AI running in the background, it should at least throw out a bone as a github issue or something to let people submit on it.
In a time where marketplace options are supposed to be opening up, an app for learning ends up in the crosshairs.
So you are still complying.
This is why software should not be subjected to an "app store" type distribution system, where a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes.
Windows added ads - well you can disable them, if you don't like it.
Chrome brought up mv3 - well you can still use mv2, it is only optional.
Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit
Android moving everything to playstore - there's always FDroid.
How many of these are still true and for how long?
If someone's country is a dictatorship, it doesn't help to tell them that there are 100 other democratic countries, just move. Not everyone can emigrate or want to emigrate for any number of reasons.
> Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
> Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
Please stop covering for Google. They're behaving badly, people are reacting, stop with the "Achucally..." which is pretty grating and cringe worthy.
I think it's moreso you lose all the users who don't realize anything outside the walled garden even exists.
> Note: 501(c)(6) is a tax-exempt status; donations are not tax-deductible for the donor. Google's communications explicitly state "tax-exempt".
Isn't it pretty obvious that the problem is the donations aren't tax-exempt, despite the organization being tax-exempt? Your note suggests you already understand this.
Logically, the payment processor (who deals with sales taxes rather than income taxes) should worry about the taxability of the transaction rather than the tax status of the recipient, right?
> Specifically, your app allows users to contribute donations to an organization that is not tax-exempt.
So whoever is writing their email is mixing these two up, but you're reading the policy itself and it is fairly clear-cut what it means for you, right?
> Because we are a 501(c)(6), OSC is not a registered 501(c)(3) charity; donations to hosted member projects are not tax-deductible. This is consistent with IRS guidelines — open source donations aren't automatically classified as charitable simply because they are FOSS.
> If your project has a clear charitable purpose, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor may be a good fit.
- https://docs.oscollective.org/welcome-and-introduction-to-os...
Knowing how big corporations do things, that document was likely written by someone who doesn't fully understand the jargon or even how pedantic you have to be about words when dealing with legal concepts, who didn't set the policy themself, and who is not responsible for enforcing the policy. So we should take its specific choice of words with a grain of salt.
The UE should make it mandatory to permit PWA install popups on all platforms.
Such problems wouldn't arise, because this app could be installable as a cached Web app. A native mobile application could be installed only for specific functionalities.
"It works better in the app?". No thanks. In 99.95% of cases the reasons for that popup are predatory, not in the interest of the user.
These donations aren't tax exempt. 501(c)(3) are tax exempt. If users are paying via Google pay these payments must be tax exempt to the *user*.
"Regulating" also doesn't mean "taking control".
And if such AI does something wrong (which it does) no matter what they WILL REMOVE your app. Because they don't care about you. Sometimes the only way out is to publish the app again with another package identifier, because once they flagged it even if you remove all reference to the offending feature there is no way that they will accept it (it unfortunately happened, fortunately before releasing the app to the public so we could switch without affecting users).
In some sense I prefer Apple (and I say it as an Android user), you surely pay an annual fee to publish to the store, but if you have some issues you can open a ticket where a fucking real human will look into it and answer you, and explain what to to.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
but make sure to "pay the relevant Play service fee, starting October 1, 2026."
Very cool, Google.
We were promised alternative app stores in the EU, but the European Commission does not stop them.
Our bank has just bumped the minimum Android level again to the point where the Play Store reviews are flooded with people complaining they can only access their banking via the web now.
I am sorry, if I am wrong. Happy to be wrong too.
Ugly and wrong. I am sorry.
I'm amazed to see the exact playbook be used here. Instead of people opposing Apple's horrible App Store, it seems that every other store is studying their strategies.
I think by the time of Apple's next court case on the App Store, the judge will pay them something back as they'll arrive at the conclusion of Apple doing nothing out of the ordinary.
Also - all those monopoly-stores need to be broken up. It can not be that these mega-corporations continue to be protected by a selfish US government wanting to install monopolies globally.
are we forgetting google already announced they will shut it all down in a few months?
As I understand it, there are ways to work around accepting payments or donations outside of the app stores.
It adds one more thing to have to do and explain to users. And even with that piece taken care of, we would need to be constantly vigilant about changes in Apple or Google policies that might eject our app from the storefront.
It's not clear given Google's policy wording and replies. We've removed the links, and can move forward once clarification has been provided.
From another angle: why/how do you feel the tax-exempt-mess of the recipient itself could sensibly be the determining factor here, rather than the taxability of the transaction itself? Is there any law or precedent or anything outside their emails that would suggests a payment processor should look at the tax status of the recipient rather than that of a transaction?
Or are you saying the key point is that the donation not tax-deductible for the donor, which is a different thing to being tax exempt (and does not have anything to do with the "taxability of the transaction")?
Having to deal with bookkeeping or paperwork for tax deductions could also make things harder.
In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
A donation is not a sale of a good or service. This is not a question of sales tax collection.
In this case they clearly have to exempt this transaction from sales tax in order to support it, when other transactions through their system do get sale tax applied. So the mere fact that they have to deal with sales taxes in general is likely to introduce additional complications for them even here, in cases where sales tax turns out not to be applicable.
I read your comments and what I ended up inferring was that it relies on a few premises:
1. Google states in their policy that their billing platform cannot be used for [special tax status]. 2. Google would be presented with an undue burden if they had to alter their processes to process donations with [special tax status], which may potentially involv extensive manual review manually. 3. Therefore, despite the wording, the rules and undue burden are clear that you cannot use Google Play billing for [special tax status].
I've read the rest of your comments downthread and I think that I'm representing your position accurately. Again, if I'm not, I legitimately want corrections.
The issue with going from the premise to the conclusion is that if you look at their actual payment flow to the Open Collective it seems to be just a webview to their donation page. I mean, it doesn't look like Google's payment flow at all and I'm pretty sure Google doesn't accept ACH payments directly.
If Google wants to avoid extra work, they literally just can do nothing about it and the donations on that page will go to a tax exempt organization.
I'm going to take a look at the rules right now and either update this comment or reply to it. (Sorry, I figured I would post it because I'm not sure when I would be able to post another.)
P.S. I probably should have out of this to the top, but I do want to mention that several people pointed this out in the comments but I wanted to be a bit more specific about the payment flow, and what we're actually debating.
This (rhetorical?) question seems to suggest that you have a level of understanding or have done the analysis required to come to such a meaning. It seems to me that it would be most beneficial if you simply shared that analysis.
To me, seeing this here for the first time, it is not at all obvious what the terms mean for someone seeking a donation, because of the past behavioral detail of WireGuard going through something similar. The terms you quote seem to me to state that since there is a tax exempt donation involved, the prohibition on routing to a non-Google Play billing workflow should not be in effect.
On my end the experience was more pleasant on f-droid than on Google. On f-droid I had to manually push some things, in repositories. That I solved in a week or so.
On Google end I had to verify my account. Which was not easy feat.
- had to provide my ID several times, because it got rejected multiple times
- I uploaded driving license
- the verification process was stuck
- only after help ticket google employee pushed it forward
- I had to provide many more details, also had to use banking to pay substantial amount of money
- I currently trying to create app, but it requires 14 testers, and it can still be rejected, if their involvement was too poor
I am wondering what more things Google will invent to make my life worse.
By the way my app: https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
You can go download a random, no-name app from F-Droid and be very confident it does what it says on the tin and won't be riddled with ads or spam you with notifications.
We need governments to mandate both Apple and Google to allow web installs of apps. No requirement for Apple/Google pay, Apple/Google login, or Apple/Google services.
Total freedom for users, for developers, and for competitors.
This duopoly has fucked over America and the EU by training us to think only these two companies have the right to decide what gets to be on your phone that you pay for.
They've created a moat so strong that it's impossible to compete with Android/iPhone, so the market cannot even have healthy competition.
F-Droid is not the answer. Regulation is.
And I'll have none of this fangirl/fanboy "but my grandma will fall for scams" nonsense.
Google and Amazon and all the platforms have scammy ads on their platforms. Nobody's doing anything about that.
Technology can be sandboxed, permissioned, signed, fingerprinted, attested, scanned, and blacklisted. It's easy to make this safe in the year of our lord 2026. Don't pretend we don't have a million ways to make this safe for your meemaw. She's more likely to fall down the stairs or get a scam call.
Regulate Google. Regulate Apple. Make our phones free.
Corporation like Google should have been fined to the edge of bankruptcy for such predatory behaviour.
Google has an alternative at least (can download other app stores, apks, and have been able to for 15 years), I have no idea how Apple has been allowed to get away with what they do.
Especially in the software community, overwhelmingly self-described libertarian, all voted for this.
It takes a big government to stop this from happening. (It also takes a big government to stop structural racism, etc., which means higher taxes, which means there's no such thing as a fiscal conservative who is also socially liberal. But I digress.)
The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education and language learning.
But it's registered as a 501(c)(6) non-profit, which is a designation for a "business league or industry association". This is what you use if you're a Chamber of Commerce, not a flash card app!
Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity, like most open source organizations, and it's just not. And the distinction is definitely impactful for tax purposes, something a payment processor is going to care about. Both organizations are exempt from tax themselves, but charitable donations are also deductable, and Anki isn't a charity. Likely Google isn't set up to record the distinction in an auditable way.
The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up. Or plausibly are running some kind of scam (e.g. they take the "donations" and then hand them over to a for-profit "member" company). They need to fix their registration if they want to take money from people, this isn't how you do it and this is surely not the only problem they'll have. Seriously, my Fraud Meter is dinging at about 19.6% here...
Other 501(c)(6) organizations you might have heard of include the Linux Foundation and the Rust Foundation.
This is an interesting rabbit hole if you bother to go down it, I encourage you to do some more research.
Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity and they have different owners, if you want to call it that.
Anki is owned by Nicholas Flint, a physician who sells med school-related decks online under the name AnKing, which controls Ankihub, which now controls Anki after the original founder (Damien Elmes) gave them control about six months ago.
Ankidroid is a non-profit project that arose when there was only an iPhone mobile version of Anki. Completely unrelated to Anki except that it was blessed by the original creator of Anki.
It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
> Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity
No, no one is reading it thinking that Anki is a charity.
Anyway, when you are going to harp on about HN not caring about the minutiae of tax policy, you should make sure you understand that you're talking about two unrelated entities run by different people as if they were the same entity.
To the point where it will cease to be a viable way of distribution for any app that wants to attract an audience larger than the handful of power users.
There is no reason at all to defend them.
... when I want them. Not when the site owner tries to cram them down my throat.
How would you like it if HN and every link you followed today from HN started with an "install me" popup?
The point is it's something the user should initiate, and no one else.
They are a blessing when auto updates were finally possible with the official F-Droid app.
I mean, come on. Just read their page. They're not a charity, at all. They're a "fiscal host" (which is a weird term right out of the gate) designed to solicit donations on behalf of other projects. They're literally a payment processor in competition with Google and Apple, and taking a cut of their own.
I mean, fine. They can do that. But that's not charity.
The US federal government has also played a major role in causing this by passing laws like DMCA 1201 and the CFAA which incumbents use to threaten competitors who attempt adversarial interoperability.
Moreover, the DoJ budget is ~$33B whereas e.g. the military budget is ~$1T, so arguing that the only way to allocate more resources to antitrust enforcement or similar is to raise taxes would imply that all of the existing spending is critically necessary and Congress never e.g. buys tanks the Army doesn't want or otherwise poorly allocates existing funds.
The US Government spends a preposterous amount of money, and the number only ever goes up. It doesn't need to be bigger, it needs to be less inefficient.
It's not "sideloading" it's just "installing software" don't help legitimize this stance that google is meant to be the official arbiter of what I do on a device I own.
Since they are public companies the shareholder's benefit is to society's benefit.
>"Regulating" also doesn't mean "taking shareholders' benefit
Technically true, but if the regulations are just suggestions then they won't accomplish anything. When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting, not just sending them a strongly worded letter.
Yes, but there can be other benefits than monetary ones. Besides, I find it rediculous to believe that wealthy people receiving more benefits automatically translates to improvements for the general society.
To add another point: The monetary value these companies create is often only possible because of their monopolistic market distortion. I don't think it can be a net benefit for society when competitors have little to no chance to offer a better product.
> When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting
That's true. In your original comment you also said "government taking over YouTube" which is why I thought we were talking about complete transfer of control à la planned economy, which is normally not the goal of regulations.
(As an aside, I have no idea if donations to OSC are subject to sales tax, but I would be surprised if they were given there is no sale or supply happening, and no one here seems to have suggested they are.)
> In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
I disagree, because it uses the loose term "tax exempt donations", and nobody, it seems, can agree on whether that means exempt from income tax (ie, recipient does not need to pay income tax on it), exempt from sales tax, or deductible for income tax purposes (personally I think this is likely what it is intended to capture, and the only real basis on which to distinguish between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organisations, but in fact is the least supported by a literal reading).
I'm not seeing "if not {this}... then {that}" implication anywhere that you're citing. i.e. I do not see anything that implies at least one of the billing systems must be permitted for any given app. All I'm seeing are some sets of conditions under which you can use Google's payment system, and other sets of conditions under which you can use an alternative billing system. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes neither applies.
What's clear to me is:
- Page [1] says that you can't use their billing systems for "tax-exempt donations" (however that is supposed to be interpreted).
- Google's last correspondence says "For more information about alternative billing and external linking options available in some countries and regions, see the FAQ", and does not claim that such options are (or aren't) available to them. Page [2] says that this varies by country, and it's not clear to me what countries apply to them, but they seem to be in Japan. I am unclear on what they have/haven't done here, but it sounds like they have not followed all the requirements in [3] (or whatever the relevant requirements are), as [1] says: "Developers serving users in eligible countries/regions may offer users an alternative billing system within the app if they enroll in the applicable program and agree to the additional terms and program requirements."
I'm not sure if you have more information beyond this, but that's all I'm taking away so far. Perhaps I'm missing something?
And obligatory disclaimer (because this is HN): none of this is to suggest I like these circumstances; I'm just discussing the facts as I see them written.
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
[2] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/topi...
[3] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
At least,that is how i read it.
And then the way google deals with these cases is the real problem: no communication, no recourse, just spam HN and pray.
And I am 99.99% certain they don't want such transactions for some other reason, perhaps they can't make as much money from them orso
I don't know every jurisdiction, but that's not the only relevant factor. If they are tax-deductible, they still introduce the need for paperwork etc. for the payment processor to let the payer deduct it from their own income. A 0% tax on some action doesn't imply you don't have to worry about tax law when performing said action.
Though I think you can just read the policy and take it at face value and not even have to know any of this beforehand.
> Nonprofits have strict tax regulations when accepting donations. The more a payment processing system can assist with these regulations, the better for you and your donors. For instance, donors need to receive specific documentation for tax-deductible contributions, such as donation receipts. Additionally, different types of donations may involve different tax considerations for the donor and the organization. Nonprofits also have to consider any state and federal regulations regarding their charitable solicitation and fundraising activities, which may vary depending on location and activities.
And there's of course also exemption from sales tax which they have to handle too.
[1] https://www.subsplash.com/blog/nonprofit-payment-processing#...
Also in the worldwide market it most definitely isn’t a monopoly in phones at all- which is exactly why the EU had to reform their laws (DMA ect)to get regulatory powers over them.
They also play this trick where they pretend the only market is "phones" and ignore all of the complementary markets they're tying together with their phones, like app distribution and browser engines etc., since the market definitions for those shouldn't be the same as it is for "phones" when an app store that can be used on Google and Samsung phones can't be used (and therefore doesn't compete) on Apple phones and vice versa.
The "App Store" is just a natural extension of the club. As far as I'm concerned, they can gatekeep and sloppify as much as they want. Apple users agree to this.
I've never felt slighted that I couldn't hack apart my iPad - though I will absolutely do it once somebody cracks the code and gets a proper Linux kernel running.
If by "club" you mean Apple's digital fiefdom.
Indeed, those are structured as corporate-funded consortiums of exactly the type you'd be very suspicious of if, say, your kernel or compiler logs started stuffing a donation link into the stream!
Note that GNU software does historically mention donations (not in the logs AFAIK), and indeed the FSF is a 501(c)(3).
"Phone apps" is irrelevant, because again, Anki was not taking donations via their app but rather via a link to OpenCollective, a separate website.
So the remaining part of your question:
> Do LF and Rust solicit individual donations (at all, really)?
Yep, the Linux Foundation has a PayPal donate button (with a simple note to U.S. taxpayers that it's not deductible): https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate
...Irrelevant? That's the whole point. "Taking donation via a separate website (emphasis in original)" is explicitly dissallowed in the Play Store (and App Store on iOS)! There happens to be an exception carved out for federally-registered charities. But no, you don't get to just hold out a link to a tip jar.
Does this link count as a charity? No, per the structure of federal tax law. Also no, per the set of rules of the app store it's trying to be listed on. Should it count? Well, maybe I guess? Open source projects are like charities in some cases. We should all want to support them. But doing it like this, through a middle-man organization that isn't a charity, just plain smells like fraud to me. Who's doing the auditing that this is just supporting development and not profit centers? Is the IRS doing it? Not as far as I can see.
Everyone is speed running towards a future where you need a permit to write software.
Try to run a binary that doesn’t have the right cert( or whatever it’s called on Windows) and you get a bunch of warnings.
Even if Android is open , normal people will only use the App Store. I can imagine China forcing Apple to allow 3rd party installations of software one day .
The EU did something where to my knowledge Apple still gets a cut of each sale.
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
I literally can't run non signed software in the job-provided computer even if I compile it myself.
I wish there was a 'ranking' feature that periodically (maybe daily?) pulled down star/contributor numbers so you could at least look at projects that are more likely to receive continuing support and have basic hygiene like Dependabot alerts
that said, migrating off so many of the Google-native or phone manufacturer apps has been such a liberatory feeling. I do some community organizing in my free-time and am a huge FOSS evangelist in those spaces. there's so many similar values, namely anti-surveillance, and but for resistance to change and preference for hyperpalatable UX, it's such a natural fit
The play store results were ATROCIOUS and user hostile, forcing account creation, full screen video ads and other BS.
I remembered I had f-droid and I found a perfect, no bullshit app that does exactly what I needed and no ads.
It "just works".
As opposed to play store apps requiring "play store services" meaning having to sign into play store. It refuses to do so on a FOSS principle so I am literally cut off from a lot of apps.
Aurora store helps but apps that "require play store services" don't work.
Not necessarily. Most apps that require Play Services should work fine even if you’re not logged into Google. You do, however, have to have the “gapps” installed. (Some apps would also actually check whether you’ve installed them from the Google Play store and not, say, Aurora, but from my experience most don’t bother.)
Also, perhaps look into microG? It reimplements the Play Services APIs, but is FOSS and only connects to Google servers when it’s necessary for some functionality (e.g. if you enable push notifications): https://microg.org/
Gapps is what exactly. I have stock android on oneplus, just don't have play store signed in.
Many apps refuse to work.
So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
> It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
"Just Some Nerd Programmers" don't, very obviously, have standing to solicit tax exempt donations. Rising further still...
I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path. They don't, on any such platform, and never have. There are specific carveouts allowed by the platform vendors for cases we all agree are valuable, like charitable donations. It's just really clear that Anki is playing games here and frankly I really doubt they qualify.
It's not... AnkiDroid was soliciting donations to AnkiDroid, via OpenCollective, which essentially "owns" them financially, for the purpose of soliciting donations.
This is all explained very clearly in the linked GitHub issue:
> AnkiDroid's donations go to Open Source Collective, a US non-profit which acts as our fiscal host.
> AnkiDroid is the Anki client for Android, developed and maintained by volunteers. Nothing is sold in the app and our Open Collective is the sole source of funding for maintenance and development. AnkiDroid is independent from Anki, AnkiWeb, AnkiMobile, and AnkiHub.
While some confusion is understandable, continuing to press on about your "Fraud Meter" just puts egg on your face when you're misunderstanding things through multiple replies explaining them to you.
no one here thinks that there is an "inherent right" to ask for money on a proprietary platform. That's a strawman.
You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid, and it's making you look silly when you're so confident and rude about it.
So were you though, if you're still standing by "just some nerd programmers". They want to take donations through an outside payment processor, which they simply can't do and you know it. Like, seriously, give me the one sentence summary of what Google is doing wrong here that wouldn't enable essentially arbitrary fraud.
Apps can't put up donation links except in extremely limited circumstances, and this isn't one. And, again, you know it.
Genuinely sorry for being rude, if this seems rude. Doesn't seem rude to me though in context. You were the one who started with the aggressive rhetoric ("harping on", yada yada). We're just flaming, things get hot.
The difference is that the default app stores require you to make an account to be able to use them. This would rightfully be considered insane on desktop OSs, yet is considered normal for phones.
A good way to sidestep all those issues is getting your “everyday” apps from F-Droid :-) I’m only using Aurora Store for things like banking, taxi, or food delivery apps, and those are usually working great. Some banks are more trigger happy (shame on you, Revolut) while others seem to be okay. I really only miss Google Wallet.
microG folks are working on Play Integrity, but it’s an ongoing battle: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2967
>> Wait 24 hours
>> Pick "allow temporarily" (7 days) or "allow indefinitely
Geez. I don't like what they're doing either but this fear-mongering is not helping your cause. So the "trap door" here is just that you can't buy a phone and immediately start loading apps from unverified developers onto it until 24h have passed? Of all the hills we could be dying on, that's the one we're picking?
- the "24 hours" is enforced by remotely-run code, meaning Google remains in control of it and can unilaterally alter how this works, any time they feel like.
Imagine you went to the shops, and found that one shop, while it had the goods on display, and could totally just let you pick them up and buy them, was required by the shop next door to make you go away and come back no sooner than 24 hours later. Meanwhile, the shop next door is right there, and it's open, and it has no such restriction.
On what planet do you think anyone other than the most dedicated of dedicated people would choose the shop that requires waiting a whole day to use it when the alternative has no such restriction?
> unverified developers
The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google. That's the whole fucking point. Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
I have no clue what you're referring to or worried about here, could you clarify? Are you worried Android is going to lose power users to iPhone? What are the alternative shops you're referring to here? We're not buying pastries.
> The developers in F-Droid are verified, just not by Google.
"Unverified" in my comment was a shorthand for "unverified by Google", not an insult.
> Google is not the be-all and end-all, but with this power-play, they are making themselves that.
The complain about that? Rather than wasting time complaining about the 24h wait?
I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer). The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it. (And yes, it could have been chosen for plausible deniability.) Is your actual problem the wait itself, or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
I'm sorry, I thought I owned the phone I bought, and had a right to decide what software I want on it whenever I want.
So we started with an OS (when Google still needed to gain market share and goodwill) which was opensource. Now Google is no longer developing Android source code in the open and decreasing the "opensourcing" to a couple of source drops each year (the interval has been decreased multiple times). Google Play was introduced (basically clamping down the app store ecosystem) and from there Google has only made it harder to get around Google Play. Introducing things like phone attestation. Supposedly a security measure, yet for some reason a Samsung phone which hasn't had an update in 4 years still passes basic level attestation. And now Google is yet again making it harder to get around the Play store.
And for some reason you seem to think it is reasonable to assume it is going to stop here?
I really don't. That is, actually, my entire point: people are going to roll their eyes at this right now. And then you're going to lack/lose the supporters you'll need when things really get bad.
Indeed I have not. In fact I haven't even heard of people doing this until your comment. And that's before unknown app developers coming into the picture. I assume you do this to avoid border phone searches? And you feel the (ostensibly) security-related mechanisms for the rest of the world to be centered around this use case? Meaning the rest of the world should pay the cost to their own security to cater to this flow?
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (based on Lewis Herny Morgan's work) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-fami...
NewPipe doesn't support it :(
Many of the things you're listing are the exact things the platforms would have to be banned from doing by the regulation you're proposing because they're the mechanisms used to exclude competitors.
If you put all apps in a sandbox then they can't perform certain operations (e.g. install other apps) which inherently means they can't compete in the market for doing those things. If apps have to be signed by the platform then the signing fee becomes the vig they charge to everyone even if they're using a competing store, and both that and scanning/fingerprinting provide a mechanism to revoke competing apps under arbitrary pretexts and otherwise grief their developers and users.
Attestation is the thing you would have to ban the most because it's not just subject to abuse, its very mechanism of operation is to prevent existing apps that use it from running on a competing new system at the point in time when the new system has too few users for all the apps to explicitly add support for it, thereby preventing the competitor from getting enough users for that to ever happen.
But attestation doesn't prevent grandma from getting scammed anyway. When the scammer calls pretending to be the grandchild who needs money for an emergency, they use the official signed bank app on the attestation-passing device to transfer money to the scammer. When the scammer is using a fake bank app to steal the user's credentials, the fake app doesn't require attestation.
The actual problem here is that you want to have someone vetting apps for grandma, but you don't want the platforms to be able to insist it be them rather than F-Droid or Aurora etc. Which the platforms will try to claim is chicken and egg (how do you know you can trust F-Droid?) while hoping you don't notice that they don't actually get you out of it -- how do you know you can trust Google?
And they should still be banned from forcing apps to do it under their arbitrary judgements in order to participate on their platform. That isn't the same thing as preventing them from doing it. Some people honestly think they love walled gardens (they don't), but some people honestly need walled gardens. There should even be competing walled gardens. Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma.
I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service. I'd ban it at the bank and merchant level. Attestation should be a tool for the user of the device (just like everything else on the phone they own.) They should be able to get it to attest to whatever they want to get it to attest to - if I'm a company and I issue my employees phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. If I'm a parent and I issue my children phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. The problem comes when arbitrary people are using it to make sure that the user hasn't tampered with their own phone since it came from some official list of blessed companies.
Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma. Let me be able to use attestation to make sure their phones haven't been altered since the last time I checked.
> If apps have to be signed by the platform
I'd like to get back to apps being signed by upstream, so we know they actually come from the author. I couldn't care less if the platform offers a service which verifies those signatures, and if almost everyone uses that service. That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
Just agreeing loudly. But the problem with F-Droid is that it is to be a store that has been blessed by Google in order to avoid legal questions. I know that this is not their fault, and that they hate it. I exclusively use F-Droid and don't even have a Google Play account, but if they started making decisions that I couldn't stand (they haven't, ever) I wouldn't have any alternative.
I remember the bullshit settlement of Microsoft antitrust is that they had to place a modal popup do select a default browser (that I never saw, once, in any context.) No reason why the platform's store can't be demoted to one of a number of stores other than that it is a profit spinner.
If they do it and it's enabled by default then they still get to grief their competitors because by default anyone who tries to use the competitor gets a big scary red box that deters adoption and has to jump through a bunch of hoops to get past it. It also thwarts adoption of competing signing alternatives because >90% of people will use whatever the default is even if the alternatives are at least as good.
> some people honestly need walled gardens
"Walled garden" is an Orwellian term. It's meant to imply that someone is curating what's inside it and not letting in things you don't want, and that is indeed a useful thing. But then people use the same term to mean a "garden" that locks you inside of it rather than locking bad things out. The only people who need that are small children and adults with mental illnesses severe enough to justify them having a guardian assigned to make their decisions for them.
> I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service.
It isn't a service at all. The device contains hardware to sign the state of the device using a protected private key. Solving the problem is very simple -- you ban the device from coming with any private key already installed that the user can't freely extract. Then the root of the chain of trust is the customer's public key, not the vendor's, and whether a device is authorized comes down to whether the user's public key is authorized rather than the vendor's, which in turn makes the system vendor-agnostic.
> That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
DNS is actually a pretty terrible model because the "competition" is a fraud. There are registrars and registries and the registrars compete with each other but the registry still sets the price the registrars pay and the registries have a monopoly over every name in that TLD, so the competition can't actually get you a lower price than the monopoly registry itself sets. And the registries only compete with each other to the extent that you think that example.dental is valid substitute for example.football (no, sorry, those are both the same registry anyway) and to the extent that example.co.uk is a domain you could get instead of example.com rather than needing both. Meanwhile ICANN charges an extortionate amount to anyone who wants to become a registry and the entire system is set up to encourage squatting, to the point that the registries are now doing it themselves rather than making any attempt to impede it.
In general if you want something to work well you need to make it a protocol rather than a service. As soon as you allow a central chokepoint to exist you'll have a troll jumping out from under the bridge and trying to collect tolls.
> Regulate Google. Regulate Apple. Make our phones free.
Result: F-Droid regulated out of existence by government agencies captured by Google and Apple.
Why on earth would they let anyone else participate?
Oh, and also they're rolling it back by adding additional hurdles. Directionally, they're starting to remove it.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of members who are fed up with big tech.
American labor unions are fed up with big tech and both parties are trying to court them.
She didn't "take too long," she did all she could as long as she could, and is still doing it. The problem is that she was opposed by both political parties and the administration, for whom she was a token to hand to the Bernie and AOC people so they could sell out without being called sellouts.
If Biden had promoted Khan not only would she have had vastly more success, but he would have won the election - demented or not. Instead, if you listened to his press conferences, you would have no idea that she existed. He did not support her. He was a tool for financial scammers his entire career. His tiny little state was to domestic financial scams as Ireland is to worldwide tax dodging.
> Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of members who are fed up with big tech.
Few members, with no power. All of the leadership is on the big tech payroll. It's the population which hates big tech, and their opinions don't matter.
https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
The public are also easily movable over time and under great pressure. The public have become aggressively pro-Big Pharma and Free Trade globalists in a single generation. Libs have become militantly pro-FBI and CIA anti-Soviet warriors. They literally revived the 50's anti-Commie language to describe everything they didn't like, and worship The Lincoln Project, David Frum, and even goddamn Bill Kristol which I never thought would work. It's literally the same generation that reviled them and anyone who would tolerate them just 20 years ago.
They didn't even have to die for success of the submissiveness revolution. They just had to keep watching, and consuming. And you had to threaten their jobs, all the time.
This feels like complaining about the color of the bikeshed, me saying you should save your complaints for when things get really bad, and you replying "things are really bad already, there is a rotten carcass in there and the roof leaks."
Okay, so let's keep complaining about the color then.
I don't see much difference between Android and iOS in terms of openness nowadays personally.
Why shouldn't people be free to install their preferred software immediately after purchasing a phone? How does it help anyone other than Alphabet shareholders to restrict that?
In this analogy, the alternative shop that is preventing you from buying stuff from its competitors without a 24 hour wait is the Play Store monopoly.
> but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
Then in this hypothetical world where there were a free market for verifiers rather than a single, monopolistic choice, I would choose another alternative verifier that doesn't make me wait 24 hours, or no verifier at all.
Are you 13 years old? Who in their right mind would even care that "all the power users" went and bought iPhones? Are thoughts like this keeping you up at night?
> I don't know if people's imaginations are lacking here, but there could easily be a world in which your 'alternative' verifier would still make you wait 24h (or longer).
It's your imagination that's failing; we don't want ANY verifier at all, whatsoever. Nobody should be able to reach into my phone OS and have a say regarding what I can install or not.
> The wait is clearly a security mechanism, regardless of who makes you do it.
"Security mechanism" to protect WHO from WHAT, exactly? And please don't repeat the drivel about scams that Google's pushing, we all know those are excuses, "It's for the CHILDREEEENNNN!!!!" sure.
> or is your actual problem the identity of the entity making you do it, or is your actual problem that the power is too concentrated in one entity, regardless of the entity? These are very different issues with very different solutions.
So you DO know what's going on! In that case I have no idea why you're arguing in favor of having a gate placed in front of our [personal, owned] phones to regulate what we do with our own devices.
Then you're not understanding anything I'm writing, and I don't have the energy to keep going.
All I'm saying is that you need to pick your battles carefully and be honest about your goals if you want to have a fighting chance of winning this war against general-purpose computing. I want to win this just as much as you. I don't want to lose it, and I certainly don't want to lose it in a dumb way. Dying on the wrong hill during the wrong battle because people on my side constantly lie, exaggerate, and otherwise misrepresent reality and turn away would-be supporters is probably the dumbest way to see this happen, and it should make you angry, if you actually want some success in what you're doing.
I will leave you with https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3818307.
This is not the same as being unable to affect it at all. It can very easily go from being hot garbage to being flaming toxic waste in a tornado when the only people who show up are the ones trying to steal from everyone else.
"Block[ing] every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID. Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out"
...would be "really bad" in my view.
Which is probably exactly why they worded it that way, despite knowing fully well they are (rather blatantly) lying. They literally explained how to avoid it themselves further down below, after you've already been angered.
Personally for me, a fake convoluted opt-out is the same as no opt out so we're already there.
Even Fortnite failed to distribute outside the Play Store, if they can't despite being famous, well you can't.
Convoluted, yes, but fake? Aren't you just repeating the same lie? That means it looks like it bypasses the verification but doesn't actually do so. What are you basing that off of?
'Why not both' is an argument, but clear as day what Apple does is worse. There's no alternative.
The mathematician in me wants to solve the problem of the duopoly by first reducing it to a monopoly, which we have known solutions for.
The problem with Google is that it may have started at 8 over the limit, but it advertised itself as sticking to the limit but always hovered slightly above it pushing the boundaries. This has skewed our perception into believing that Google's was acceptable and we have been gradually raising our threshold itself to a dangerous level.
Now Google is not too far behind Apple that it can't catch up.
'Just start somewhere, anywhere, please' is another argument.
It all sucks, and I'm not saying this is a good thing. But Google and Apple are both trying to position themselves as not having monopolies on store fronts, while still forcing notarization and verification to run through them independent of the store being used. And the EU seems fine with this for some insane reason. Google isn't trying to be worse than Apple, they're trying to match Apple.
Google is breaking fdroid in less than a month left for sideloading: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registrat...
old.reddit is now locked behind login as well.
I noticed that reddit was setting a use_redesign (I might have the name slightly wrong) cookie when I explicitly visited the old.reddit domain, and this caused old reddit to persist. Since I do occasionally want to use the new site for image posts and the like, I set up a bookmarklet to set/unset that cookie on command.
I've since found that setting this cookie bypasses the old.reddit login page, allowing me to view the old site while not logged in. No idea how long that will last though.
And the menacing messages of installed something from F-Droid. My mother would never do it. Even my programmers colleagues usually don't do it.
But it's a good thing, actually because: - when reddit is good it's way to addictive - reddit has become nearly as bad as most other social media sites
So if they force me to use an account, I'll finally be able to kick the habit ;-)
The real problem is that old.reddit.com and its ecosystem are all becoming worse and worse. Just off the top of my head, things like image galleries, message notifications, RemindMe bot, RES, /r/random, etc all have various problems and breakage.
They banned "VPN"
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-vpn-ban-in-k...
Then came arrests.
https://www.medianama.com/2026/01/223-jammu-kashmir-vpn-ban-...
Street level checks. Police literally stop you roadside and check your phone for VPN.
This is happening in 2026. RIGHT NOW.
I talked to some officials and "oh you know what happened in Delhi blasts? They were using signal. If we had only caught them before".
There is Samsung Galaxy store.There is Xiaomi store.There was Amazon app store which failed to gain traction as it was not pre-installed but had decent number of apps. This is even before we get to open stores like F-droid.
Now their viability is a question in the long term, if Google has complete discretion over what is allowed.
other times people share a problem and just want to feel validated ("yeah that sucks dude")
it sounds like you wanted the 2nd but got the 1st
Even in software, you can only patch so many workarounds without fixing the issue. Eventually fatigue sets in or we run out of workarounds and just publish the bug as "expected behavior" don't we?
I don't want the workarounds to distract from the need for a proper fix.
Stop making things up. Apple is garbage, too. This isn't an Apple thread.
Next will be USA deciding that it's illegal to use the new Chinese offerings that will pop up to work around Google/Apple shittiness, because unconstitutional market manipulation goes hand-in-hand with USA's Russian-style oligarchy.
How long before Linux is added to the USA regime list of software that 'shows someone is a terrorist'.
Here's the bookmarklet I use:
javascript:(function(){const old_or_new = prompt("[O]ld or [N]ew?", "New");if (old_or_new.charAt(0).toUpperCase() == 'N') {document.cookie = 'redesign_optout=; Path=/; Domain=.reddit.com; Expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT;';} else {document.cookie = 'redesign_optout=true; Path=/; Domain=.reddit.com';}window.location.reload()})();
But I deleted my account (or at least randomized my password) somewhere in 2016 or so, so apparently 10 years ago I decided I wanted out. But I'm still reading it at least as much as HN. So fingers crossed they screw up badly enough this time :-D
Google has essentially full control. Because they own security updates. Because banking apps already now often do not work without Google services. Etc. Etc.
It is a monopoly (regarding Android app developers), and is increasingly exploiting that to cash in.
They already have agreements for it anyway.