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by yaro330 90 days ago
You live in a bubble. The roles are inversed. This is "ruining" Android for the 0.001% of power users that install .apk files and improving it for the huge chunk of population that are still getting hit by malicious ads that try to push app installs onto you.
2 comments
basilikum 89 days ago
Who is hosting these ads? Might it be Google?
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yaro330 89 days ago
No real counter argument? Do better HN
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basilikum 89 days ago
Google is using scams as an argument for dismantling ownership and restricting the owner of a device from installing software of their own choice on their own device.

Yet they host the very ads that are part of these scams and profit from them. If Google wanted and actually cared about scams they would stop hosting these scam ads en mass.

It clearly is a pretense. This is not about scams and it will not stop with a ridiculous 24h waiting period to enable installing software. They will remove the option altogether.

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yaro330 89 days ago
Oh boy. They don't host these ads, there are plenty of ad providers that happily do though, outside of Google businesses (Meta). Google also isn't one homogenous business, Android people don't have direct access to the ads people.

This is about scams because 99% of all apk installs come not from basement power users installing cracked apps, but from the older people that are all too trusting to the internet that they're browsing.

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basilikum 89 days ago
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/07/threat-actor-... https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/scams/2024/08/dozens-of-go... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-use-g... https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/this-fake-windows-new... https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/labs/fake-claude-code... https://www.tomsguide.com/news/you-should-think-twice-before... https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2023/0... https://www.tomsguide.com/news/hackers-have-found-an-insidio... https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/malware-adware/dont-clic... https://www.techradar.com/news/this-painful-malware-targets-...

I can also tell you from experience that malware Google search ads are common. Anyone who used to use Optifine knows that without an adblocker it was common for fake Optifine sites to be at the top of the results with a tiny marker saying "sponsored" or "ad".

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grishka 89 days ago
So then let it be such that only 0.001% of people will use smartphones.
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