Exiting the Forced Mobile Duopoly

Previously, previously, and previously. We need a new mobile paradigm; with new hardware and new systems. I would prefer it be open, transparent, and equitable. At this point, Google and Apple are rent-seeking. They provide little to no added value for any new hardware nor software releases for their mobile devices. Tavi at Divested Computing wrote a nice summary of the state of Google's Android. What was once an open system has turned into a walled garden wholly and completely controlled by Google. Google is now making the mistake of equating crime with anonymity. Their attitude is if every developer just passed KYC (give us an ID) then all their issues with their Play Store would go away. As 2.5 billion gmail users are about to find out, all their data is up for grabs due to a third party breach at Salesforce. This dovetails into another rant that the KYC/AML industry is feeding their own demise (by creating a loop where KYC is mandatory, but not kept secured, so all this verified ID data is now available to criminals to pass KYC checks...ta da!) Anyway, returning to the core point.

You are telling me a multi-trillion dollar company cannot scan all the code, apps, and behaviors in their own storefront to find bad apps. With all of their "AI" and tens of thousands of engineers, this is a problem they cannot solve. It's not the openness that is the problem, here. F-Droid, IzzyDroid, and other open-source "stores" have done exactly this for a decade. Mostly run by volunteers, these projects have managed to keep their storefronts safer and more open than a multi-national, hyper-profitable company. All government apps paid for by tax dollars should be hosted on F-Droid compatible repositories with the source code available. F-Droid/IzzyDroid and the like should be encouraged over proprietary, closed-source systems.

I opted out of this system years ago. I don't miss it nor do I miss out on anything important. You can opt-out too. It's not that difficult and you'll be vastly more productive and happy far sooner than you may think. Use a website, not an app. Live life.

As I said previously, there is a multi trillion dollar market waiting for someone to disrupt and innovate in the mobile device space. I feel that Maemo, MeeGo, FirefoxOS and Sailfish were about 15 years too early for the market. Of the three, Sailfish is still around, but very limited in distribution. Ubuntu Mobile and PostmarketOS are still very much works in progress. If just 10% the developers for Android worked on these systems, we would have a real third alternative in the mobile device space.

Other than opting out, the best option right now, is GrapheneOS on an older Pixel without Google Play and using F-Droid/IzzyDroid repos and apps. Freedom can be yours.