We were promised a technological future with ways to search for things of interest, find out how to get to places on a map, etc. Instead the government can now track us in our daily lives anywhere and everywhere we go 24/7. That would be great in a world where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. However in reality they want to find us and send us to el Salvador. WTF!
Until things change, I am not buying a single electronic device. Not an iPad or a TV or an empty-tree player. This is ridiculous. And now we can’t even know anything because all news is coming from the Murdocks and they just killed off NPR and PBS. This is how the bad part of the story starts.
See you all in a fire pit somewhere!
Using open source software on lineage OS or graphene OS with no Google Play services solves the vast majority of the problems brought up in this article. It doesn’t solve all of them, but it solves most of them.
I moved over to mostly open source apps where possible. My main issue will be the banking apps that insist on safety net.
Graphene os is great on paper but I would like to buy a different brand than pixel like fairphone.
I would want to get on a de-Googled grapheneos phone, but I know some apps will be painful to give up (e.g. Google Calendar) and I can’t predict how many apps will not be installable or not work correctly without Google Play services.
Moving to GrapheneOS doesn’t have to be full bore. While it obviously wouldn’t be as private, you could run google services sandboxed. That restricts google quite a bit rather than giving it full rights to everything on your phone. Other features you can take advantage of are granular permissions per app and the ability to easily turn things on and off (such as mic, camera, location), restrictions to contacts, restriction to files/folders, etc… Youd be amazed how much you can clean up your exposure even with google services running. But yes, you’d need to give up using google apps like calendar for any of it to do any good.
Access your bank through your web browser. And if your bank does not allow you access through your web browser, get a new bank. That’s what I did.
The issue is that the web login requires their app. All major banks in my country have this requirement but I will have another look when the time for a new phone comes.
Don’t use a major bank then. Use a smaller bank.
Pixels are okay hardware-wise. Lifecycle is not much of a limit, since you’re relying on the upstream for patches anyway.
Barrier too high for the normie. We need a commercial Graphene OS offering.
But even then the normie will be compelled to install GPS. Can’t even fucking get an uber anymore 🤡
Install over browser is a really low entry bar. Commercial would see about zero users.
Yes the person who can flash ain’t never paying for lower speced pre loaded phone
However, I think you are underestimating the market for people who would buy it imho. They care about privacy but they need to come in the box and device just needs to load
not graphene but i know the company Murena offers phones of different vendors with i think e/os, maybe other OS too