They probably would have to find accommodation for you, although I’m sure it’d be very inconvenient. But still technically there.

As to if you refuse to have your child be issued a Chromebook and Google account, probably not much you can do, as they are providing everything.

My personal answer to this question is the same as if it were an employer issued mandatory Chromebook; me the employee (or my child the student) is a different entity than me the individual. Me the individual refuses to have anything to do with Google, and that’s enough of a fight for me.

I’m bothered that big companies, especially tech right now, no longer see their customers as people they need to please to stay in business, but instead as something they’ll inconvenience and squeeze as much as they can possibly get away with.

They all got to where they are making, at one point, amazing products. Now? Fuck making windows useful, we can throw ads and AI at you every place we can think of. Fuck all of the parts of Android that made it stand out, we tell you what to install. You don’t want all of your data scraped and sold? Fuck you, there’s 3 of us and we’re all doing it. In fact we’ll never stop finding new ways to harvest data.

Phones have basically stagnated entirely in the US. Sure you get moderately better chipsets, but what else? AI? I haven’t had a phone struggle with anything in… maybe 10 years. Instead features that people didn’t use enough just get removed.

I feel like this is the new normal cycle of every software company. Once they become a leader, it's never enough. It replicates the rise of billionaires. Just as the billionaires being rich beyond anything they and all of their succeeding generations could ever spend is not enough, being the industry leader and producing an amazing product that people want is somehow not enough. It always turns to control and power.

I came here specifically to ask about alternatives to Android now that google is becoming too abusive in the relationship.

You can stop using all Google products. Now I understand their market share on the web means they’re going to continue to shape the web.

But make no mistake. There is something, however small, that you can do. De-Google.

if I don't use android or iOS, I can't use my banking apps, pay with my phone, access government services as they require an app to sign in, etc. it's just not doable anymore for me

Yep. There's no such thing as competition any more.

Tech companies are just gas stations across the street from each other.

This isn't a computer, its a phone.

Does !remindme work on Lemmy?

Thanks! I remember safety codes now: it looks at all your pictures and says it only blocks CSAM, but who knows if it is trustworthy or if it misidentifies something.

The other o e from what I can tell is trying to add e2ee to google message? How does it spy?

Edit: https://grouphowto.com/com-google-android-contactkeys/

Looks like it is mostly a good thing?

!remindme 1 day

I don't know myself, but Graphene OS (on Google Pixel phones) has a pretty impressive sandbox layer for the play store and the apps it installs. It might be worth looking into if you're not aware of it currently. (But if you're aware of the Fairphone, I'm guessing you probably know about Graphene).

I’m taking steps, slowly, as well. I’m getting off windows very soon, I’m working on getting off of various services these companies run one at a time. Depending on what really happens with Android and Google we’ll see.

I do, but as far as I was aware my Fairphone can't run Graphene? I would love to keep using my Fairphone over buying Google's hardware at this point

Then buy second-hand. You aren't giving Google any of your money, and you can focus on increasing your privacy.

Still, repairability is right up there with privacy for me, so I'm quite happy with the hardware right now

Another way of deGoogling would be to, ironically, use a Pixel phone and side-load a privacy focused OS like Graphene or CalyxOS. With them, literally everything needs express permissions to be used, whether it's your camera, location, microphone, etc. You can even sandbox the Play Store and other Google services so they can't access your deeper files.

CalyxOS is not hardened in any way and is in some ways less secure than stock AOSP. They are also on a hiatus and have discontinued updates: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24791-departure-of-calyx-calyxos-leadership-and-discontinuation-of-calyxos-updates

TIL this exists. Super cool.

Hvad koster det?

Huh... That's news to me. When I was first looking into it, that OS was mentioned here and there. I ended up putting Graphene on my phone and left it at that, so I didn't even bother keeping up with any of the other stuff.