Android is Not Freedom (It Never Will Be, It's Only Getting Further Away From Freedom Over Time)
THE APPLE-controlled DRMed (Digital Restrictions-saddled) 'toy factory' is being emulated by Google. We see this in Chrome, ChromeOS, and Android, to name only a few famous examples. It only gets worse, not better, over time. Google got "drunk" on power and overzealous about controlling, even abusing at times, billions of users worldwide. "Users"... the same term used by drug dealers... what other industry even uses such a term?
What many people overlook or fail to grasp is that a lack of software freedom and Internet freedom (or "openness") begets an abject lack of free speech. It can dis-empower or disenfranchise billions of people, who are just "subjects" attached to some skinnerbox with a 5G (or whatever) connection, turned on and beaming inwards/outwards 24/7.
Yesterday this site turned 17 and it received "congratulations" over E-mail, IRC, and more. People notice and appreciate the ageing.
As we've said many times already (for about half a decade), the Web probably won't last another decade, at least not in a healthy form. It just won't last that long as a platform for information, hence our emphasis on Gemini (text or GemText), bulletins, and flat files for pages (static). They are means of preservation or a form of insurance (Wikileaks lost many pages in recent years; complexity contributed to the loss).
An associate has expressed similar concerns about the Web, noting that it will be gone only to be replaced by a locked-in, locked-down, DRMed replacement, which "will be foisted on the world in its place."
What already is happening should be a wake-up call. Just check a recent Android/AOSP build and an Android SDK to explore the options that have crept in. DRM, restrictions disguised as "security", centralisation and so on...
What does it all mean to publishers online? Well, feeds are turned into "apps" (a better name for these is "crApps") and then few companies or governments that oversee these companies (or sustain them with "stimulus" funds, "defence" contracts, grants etc.) get to decide which "feed" you are "allowed" to "subscribe" to (or what "apps" are made available in the censored, trigger-happy "store").
All phone "apps" are that restrictive, we're told, and it'll certainly get worse next year due to the seeds planted by Google in Android and in Chrome (WEI is one of several creeping threats still in hibernation mode). More and more restrictions of these kind also come to GNU/Linux, due primarily to Google and IBM pushing "sigStore" under the guise of vendor neutrality (Linux Foundation) and "security".
We need to encourage and support community-run projects, not those instrumental in asserting control over "users" (like drug users). █