cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/24787719
Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the actual fuck, Google‽
I swear to Hephaestus, at this point I’m considering switching to UBPorts or Sailfish OS or something…
The terrible risk that you install apps which don’t use google-tagmanager, googleanalytics and don’t send logging and user data to Alphabet.
Is this just a signature check when installing? Could it be bypassed by getting your dev cert and just signing everything you want to install? Things like obtainium and fdroid could even have a “load your own cert” option and automate this.
shit like this really should be illegal
Custom ROM usage is gonna explode
Probably why Google is also taking steps to make custom ROM development significantly more difficult. They evidently want to kill off all Android ecosystems except the ones they control and watch.
Wish we lived in a world where open source was funded even at a single percentage of what this oligopoly pulls in each year. We’d have a viable alternative to the duopoly by now.
The world is ruled by force and not by justice which does not exist, so soon we will most likely live in a dystopia.
Sounds like another lawsuit waiting to happen
Yawn. Guess more people will just have to not install gapps…
To be clear, developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or to use any app store they prefer.
They’re fucking with us
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-android-security.html
iOS has had this same system for forever and nobody’s ever (seriously) claimed you could sideload on there.
You’re free to distribute your app wherever you like, but no one will be able to use it.
Apps that use dark patterns (aka almost everything in the play store) are more harmful than apps commonly flagged as malware.
Harmful to who? People? Perchance.
Googles bottom line? Give them all the dark patterns in the world twice.
Wow thanks for posting this. I read the whole thing but what I’m not getting is the fact that their started concern is apks “side loaded”. This is aimed directly at the foss community as normal people already won’t I stall anything outside of the play store. No non tech enthusiasts go straight to git hub …
yup, they are closing in. i wonder why the surveillance wing of the fascist regime wants to control everyone’s digital life that more tightly.
you guys may have the power to protest this before it goes worldwide. i wonder if there will be real pushback.
It is unlikely that there will be a real resistance, the majority will resign themselves like submissive cattle and only a few will try to fight to the end, I have already seen this in history.
ELI5 if this will affect the use of F-Droid?
If you have the stock OS from the manufacturer, it will affect you. If you flash a custom ROM, it won’t.
Edit: You can still use F-Droid regardless of which android you’re running, but if you run stock you can only install the apps that have developers registered with google.
Let Google know what you think about this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewform
Love it!
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS etc but also bridges like Waydroid until we can use e.g. PmOS and avoid Android altogether.
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS
no.
those are just android with some modification. two years from now google can easily disrupt them too.
phones need a copyleft new OS. not a foss one, an actual copyleft one. with an independent group managing it.
an OS that a company can decide what app I can run on it is just a surveillance apparatus gadget.
google never wanted user to have control of their phone even 10 years ago.
the easiest way to check this is to see if you can stop an installed app to ever do stuff without you explicitly opening it. they are so many “triggers” that apps can register and run based on them that user cant do anything about them. “wifi connected” “wifi disconnected” and so on.
if an app can “listen” to these triggers and I cant disable it from listening to them (even for non-system apps) them I don’t really own my phone. then android is just a attention stealing spam machine at best and spying and terror gadget for world’s supremacist regimes too.
I think even apple iOS has that option (disabling backgournd refresh per app ) and in that regard is better than android. If I wasn’t against non-foss software and I didn’t live in Iran, at this point apple iOS is not that different fro google and is more polished too.
Sure I’d support that, is there such a project or starting one? If not what’s the closest?
