[jackstraw42]

Apple has made policy changes and changes to the app store to make it clearer which apps to avoid. Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them. I think they do because they know how important brand loyalty is to their customers. It's pretty much the thing Apple lives on, never losing the customer's trust. Google clearly leaves it more or less up to nature.

[UnreachableCode]

>Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

[jackstraw42]

I am aware. I've been around a while.

I'm not worried about nation-state surveillance. What I am worried about is all the keyloggers on kids' Android phones these days, since I've seen a shady game company or two in my day.

[dzikimarian]

What keyloggers? That would have to be keyboard replacement. Which is highly unlikely and can happen on ios as well.

[jackstraw42]

My impression is that the very first thing a privacy-conscious person would do with a new Android device is install a secure keyboard. Is that not the case? Why should people trust any old software keyboard the company selling it sets as the default?

For a very long time, Apple didn't allow installing custom keyboards. And I would still bet a bit of money that they are more restrictive than the keyboards Android allows.

[codedokode]

What valuable info can one get from a kid's phone?

[jackstraw42]

I'd rather not speculate on that, surely you understand? I'm not saying a general "save the children" but would you consider thinking of them, if that doesn't sound too trite?

[shakna]

And yet, SparkCat ran around on the iOS store for at least a year. [0]

[0] https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/malware-adware/malicious...

[jackstraw42]

I'm sure there are lots more, too. There's no way Apple kept a complete hold on this.

[Imustaskforhelp]

To be honest, Apple lives on their walled ecosystem and people fanboying them.

I am sure that you aren't a fanboy but I would be skeptical of any company saying that they value about your privacy when the recent debacle went on.

Like hear me out, Apple encryption was being backdoored and the only reason that it got leaked was by a whistleblower and it was illegal for apple to even discuss it.

So chances are, that if that whistleblower hadn't leaked, I am not sure if he's facing jail time or not and if Apple wanted to live in the UK which I am sure they are, then they most likely would've enforced a backdoor.

Would we be any better knowing it? Like when a company's profits incentives is affected because a country wants them to have a backdoor in secret closed doors and not even reveal to the public...

I wonder how many other backdoors there are that we just don't know of y'know.

So I wouldn't say that they care about your privacy. They show that they care about your privacy because that's become a USP to them and quite frankly, after this whole scene, I am not sure how they can prove that back.

The only thing that's literally not tracking you is open source for the most part. That is the only thing and f-droid takes open source apps.

There are even games on f-droid but yes I know that games are just a weird niche which has a lot of malware/exploitative. I hope that more people can create open source games and we can contribute to them along the way.

Whenever, there is a company involved, Deep down, they care about themselves and not you, they really care about the shareholders,everything else is temporary imo.

But there are some companies run by people who have a moral spine and we need to applaud them/use them but in my opinion apple is too big to have a moral spine when they can repackage the same Iphone for god knows how long, but they are still better than google whose literally an ad company but open source graphene os with f-droid is a better option and you are showing a false dichotomy of sorts.

I hope that I can point you into better direction with graphene os + f-droid, both are open source and they are the only one I would sort of trust with my privacy because its code and the code is generally neutral, it has no incentives to sell me anything most of the times yknow. It is like clippy of sorts lol.

[jackstraw42]

Listen, I don't disagree with any of that. I think a lot of confusion is happening because people think I'm talking about how to inform consumer choices better or what exactly about either OS to fix to make them meet the standards that I'm trying to describe. What I think is very important if not one of the most important things facing us as a species is that we need a better mobile OS option than what we have. And you don't have to convince me on GrapheneOS. I am in the process of moving to Android and F-Droid until I can afford a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.

What I am attempting and apparently failing to describe effectively is that this excellent option we have now (GrapheneOS + F-Droid) was in NO way accessible to any general user of mobile phones since their use has become widespread. What we have had since 2008 is two shitty options, and my point was that Apple has actively done more to keep users safe than Google has. No one seems to be arguing on that at all, but there are many people pointing out the failing of Apple's efforts over the years. Does that make them a complete failure? Absolutely not in my eyes, but I'm not going to tell you what to think.

So, I feel like Android's ecosystem set us up for a HUGE minefield from various entry points from an American's perspective by allowing such an open system into the wild. It has been Early Access level of quality up until recently I would argue. GrapheneOS + F-Droid is safe enough to protect idiots from themselves, probably. If not now, then with time.

How in the world anyone here is saying Google's hands-off approach was the way to go... well it is how we got our acceptable option, finally, but surely you don't think that every mobile phone company with a custom fork of Android kept its users more safe than Apple did?

[Imustaskforhelp]

Hm that is a fair argument in the sense that I also wish to move forward to graphene but I got a shitty redmi phone which barely works but it still has f-droid and I also want to move forward to graphene as I said.

I mean, yes, graphene is fairly recent getting traction and I can understand why you felt that apple did a better job at saving the end user than google did.

That is partially because imo google is essentially an ads company and there are lots of ads of spyware/malware that google does nothing about and also they are esssentially spying on you yourself for selling ads.

Apple takes a more on hardware approach in the sense that they don't want to spy on you as much because they have less incentives to do so because they don't have an advertisement system aaas much as google y'know, so they definitely took a bite at apple = privacy which has worked for many people.

Google bought android and android was always an open system and it had both its pros and cons. There is also an open system of marketplace called aptoid which was literally apt + android but it also might have malware sometimes and f-droid is the best option for most use cases.

Apple had never really had an open system and it had both its pros and cons and google is seemingly shifting into it which is like a nightmare because now we have very less choices of sorts.

And android has sort of innovated/transitioned into grapheneos for general public privacy imo.

So, yes I do think that we are in agreement that grapheneos is now here to stay and I can understand why you atleast appreciated apple for not being as privacy invading as google for some time which you were pointing out

We are in unison, I agree with your points. Its just that I thought that you were just fanboying over apple for the sake of it in the original comment and glad we understood each other points as really we are talking about the same thing and agreeing at essentially everything.

Thanks for explaining your original comment better through this comment and have a nice day.

[jackstraw42]

Thank you for taking the time to write your comment, too. I think it's extremely important that all sides of communication come together ASAP and discuss most of the things that might have been very polarizing in our near past. For the sake of not just our country (speaking to fellow Americans here) but humanity overall.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Agreed. Our differences are very little and we have a lot of similarities

Yet we fight over differences and brush over the similarities.

Why? because hate sells.. People are selling hate/internalizing hate/ragebaits.

I had actually written one shit post comment about something echo chambering of sorts or how or why we should love each other and try be discussing of sorts you could say while still bringing action towards thing.

I think that the one thing most people agree over is big tech's oligarchy of sorts and how they can somewhat abuse it and I can think of ways that I can make the right people understand it I suppose too, never tried it tbh.

idk I just want to bring you attention to the one shitpost I wrote which I intented to write a shitpost but I think I wrote really relevant things in there and I am proud of them

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45406430

We all need to be understanding of each other and enlighten us to the real issues that we have the power to solve but we don't because of numerous reasons. Lets make a world a better place because We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children.

Have a nice day.

[jackstraw42]

I think that's one of the most mysteriously insightful comments I've ever read anywhere on the internet. I can see why some might be dismissive without considering it further though, maybe like my initial comment in this thread that I feel like was misinterpreted, when really I wanted others to consider this same thing, their honest opinion about whether the last 17 years of mobile OS experience was worth it to get to where we are now. If we could avoid it, would we do it differently or would we do it all over again? After commenting in this thread all day I feel like we should be smart enough to avoid it, but I don't have an answer of how we would either, so it seems like it would just happen again how it did.

There were lots of excerpts from your comment that I highlighted and hit Ctrl+C, then thinking "well this would be better to comment on or this would be better or now maybe the other way....". It's not important how I would pick apart your comment (and in a really nice way, I don't mean "pick apart" like criticize down to the last detail... but right there's something that would get lost in communication normally, I expect). This was my favorite part of your comment though, and I was going to say something like, Reagan thought we needed trickle-down economics but what we really need is growth with love, all the way down to the roots:

"Yes we are human but dear reader, I feel like corruption only goes to top if it reeks from bottom too as well. Its messed up but maybe we can all try to acknowledge it and try to just know that we are all gonna die anyway and well, giving a other unique human smile and happiness might be the most precious thing."

Make sure you have a nice day yourself, dear reader.