You don't even need to audit a closed source app to know that Apple knows which devices its sending pushes to. It works because they know.

It's actually not possible to build a push service like FCM or APNS on Android and have it function at the same level as FCM. FCM has special permissions to bypass certain device states on the device to ensure message delivery that nothing else can match.

The best you can do is approximate it with an always active websocket and a foreground service always running with battery optimizations disabled, but good luck not having that foreground service shut down on occasion as well. Devices are hostile to them for battery saving purposes. You'd have the best luck with a Pixel device though for something like that. You could also do some sort of scheduled background polling, but the device can be hostile to that as well, and it would eat more battery.

I don't think everybody who makes a bad claim is a troll. A lot of people just are that stupid.

international VPNs are not immune from US subpoena

And condoms are only 98% effective.

A condom and VPN work on the same principle: a layer of protection. No protection is ever 100% effective, but you can at least try.

Remember, they’re already building the camps. It’s only a matter of time before “helping illegals” is a crime that gets you sent to the camps. I’d rather make the fascists work for it at least.

Think about that for a second. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by definition involves at least one border and 2 countries. Even if they only went after American citizens (which they're trying to do), they'd be deporting you somewhere else.

As it is, I suspect a significant number of at-risk people in the US and their advocates use Android.

Someone knowledgeable enough would be able to figure out where every upload is going, I'd wager. But that would take Someone that is knowledgeable enough, as well as willing to expose an app like that given the potential consequences.

Yes, I used web sockets for Signal for a while. It drained 30% of my battery when the phone sat idle for a day. Absolutely bonkers. Made the phone almost unusable so had to revert to FCM or disable notifications.

Federation is an overly complicated solution it's not required. It also wouldn't actually help, they can still take it off the app store there'd be another one but they would just play whack-a-mole and you can achieve the same thing with open source.

The best bet would be to have the database hosted outside the US and just have apps that pull the data from an API. There's no need for the app itself to store the data in fact that's a really stupid way to do it. You could federate it if you wanted but honestly that's probably unnecessary

Thanks for the heads up.

Saw it wasn't on F-Droid and was going to ask for source page (to get through Obtanium), but looks like they're allergic to android and derivates. Appreciate you pointing to references.

ICE also keep getting caught on camera lying about being threatened before they start beating some innocent

Honestly yeah, if we can just torrent the database and have it stored outside the U.S then it's good

...iOS forces uses Apple services including getting apps through Apple...

Can't speak to the rest of the claims, but Android practically does too. If one has to sideload an app, you've lost 99% of users, if not more.

It makes me think they're not talking about the stock systems OEMs ship.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2501/

...iOS forces uses Apple services including getting apps through Apple...

Can't speak to the rest of the claims, but Android practically does too. If one has to sideload an app, you've lost 99% of users, if not more.

It makes me suspect they're not talking about the stock systems OEMs ship.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2501/

We all know that cops will try to charge you with assaulting them if you so much as shrug while being arrested. And they'll contrive situations just so they can do that. I'd say that makes their statistics meaningless without specific details and proof.

And condoms are only 98% effective.

Your analogy doesn't make sense. It would be more apt to say "condoms from Walmart can be compromised!" but it makes no sense because they can be compromised anywhere. If you think shopping somewhere else means they won't be compromised, that's not logical.

It's not to say that you shouldn't use them, it's to say that you shouldn't judge them based on the geographical location they're acquired.

Ya, it can be brutal on battery.

I worked on an app once where delivery was critical, so we gave them the option of the active service+websocket, but for them the trade off was acceptable.

Pushes can be pretty flakey given all the shenanigans OEMs do on the device, even when marked as high priority correctly.

And the even worse part is when OEMs reset battery saving flags the user had set to help pushes get through and they stop working one day because of it.

It's true that FCM will result in more reliability and a better UX than other ways to implement notifications. Doing something else is still the right choice for certain use cases, such as those where privacy or keeping the entire codebase open source are top priorities.

It makes me suspect they’re not talking about the stock systems OEMs ship.

The developers of GrapheneOS, an independent, security-oriented Android distribution are probably not only talking about stock OEM Android. What they're saying is true about stock OEM android though.

That's a separate issue from whether users are forced to get all their software from a specific source, which is also separate from whether users will actually use other sources when given the option.

On Android, developers can offer users a way to install an app that isn't easily traced to their identity and on iOS they can't. Furthermore, an Android app can be both on the Play store and available from other sources; there's no exclusivity.

Fire works on Android and is meant to do basically the same thing. I saw someone post it in another thread, but haven't explored it in depth.

Ya, for sure. My beef was just with people saying you can roll your own, but glossing over the reduced user experience and reliability if you do.

With those trade offs it's absolutely doable and makes sense for certain situations.