Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.”
Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.”
bsky.app
Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com)
Comments
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I’m surprised it stayed up as long as it did. I thought Apple would have taken it down within days.
Anyways I’ve seen this as a non app alternative: https://www.stopice.net/
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I mean yeah honestly probably the best, but I’ll take any chance to rant against the idea of walled garden tech
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Would I be paranoid to use a VPN while visiting this site? (And others like it) god only knows if IP's visiting the site could be uncovered...
Yeah, I'm probably being paranoid...
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Back to the WWW just like the good ol days
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I don't understand why society accepted that the hardware maker gets to decide what software you run.
That'd be like your car deciding which roads you can take, or your blender deciding you're not allowed to use strawberries in your smoothie.
Are you nuts? Why the fuck would your phone decide which apps you can run?
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Maybe our phones are their f’in phones too
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Apple welding their phones to their own store, exclusively, is just like paying workers with scrip instead of dollars. This used to be a common practice for capitalists. The scrip is spendable only in the company store.
We have to stop all such anticompetitive practices.
Just a reminder, to stop the practice of getting paid in scrip the American workers had to take up arms and shoot some people. Look up Battle of Blair Mountain. It's not like the capitalists stopped the practice just because it was unpopular, lol. Nor did the anticompetitive practice of paying wages in scrip stop because people called their senators and wrote angry letters.
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That’d be like your car deciding which roads you can take,
It's a feature for the next release, don't worry.
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The scumbags got a headstart on setting the standard for phone users so the freedom that was given to PC users never happens again.
It worked and everyone with an iphone is an actual moron.
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And for what reason do you not think we're headed in that direction?
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That’s the key difference between mobile devices and actual computers. You are merely a user, not the administrator who can do anything with the hardware.
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What's objectionable about it Apple? Hmm?
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They can only buy a politician so many gold statues.
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Does anyone remember how the Devs from there didnt want to release for Android because ApPlE iS sOoOo mUcH mOoOrE sEcUrE
Get rekt.
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There's a similar app for Android.
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In terms of security alone, iPhones easily beat most Android phones. Which may be a fair argument in favor of iPhones. However, to ignore Apple's policies and long history of delisting similar apps is delusional.
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In regards to security, Apple does have three upsides, and only those:
- No sideloading and no unlocked bootloader means you can't sideload malware or install malware-preloaded ROMs. No root also means you can't just install malware that uses root access.
- Long OS support means fewer people run around with iPhones that are 5 OS versions behind.
- There's no tiny boutique iPhone manufacturers who sell phones that come pre-loaded with malware.
The solution for the first one is "don't sideload untrusted stuff" and the solution to the second and third one is "buy an Android phone from a trusted manufacturer that has long term OS support".
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You say that based on what?
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Always funny watching apple users think they know something.
pinches cheek
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In terms of security alone, iPhones easily beat most Android phones
That's not how security works in the modern tech landscape. No major OS is going to meet a high security standard out of the box. All of them have to be configured to the desired security level, then be added to ongoing security efforts. Every major OS can be secured to the highest security standards
The primary difference is how much effort each takes, but even then there isn't much of a difference. You'll find tooling and in-house expertise makes a much larger difference than the OS
The myth that some OS are inherently secure really needs to die off
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"Good thing I got revenge though on Google's sideloading ban by buying a phone that never allowed it to begin with"
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We should make webapps for everything. When done properly they are as fast as native apps, can work on any device and do not require a dev license or account.
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They're now supported on Firefox on Android, so good news!
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Completely agreed. Nowadays we even have WASM that can run more advanced things, and may even give webapps sandboxed capabilities, and can be run natively on any device with a WASM runtime.
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Funny thing: before the App Store, the original plan for the iPhone was that all third-party apps should be webapps.
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Sweet solution
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there are technically alternative marketplaces on iOS in the EU, but they do the exact thing google is now copying off apple: apple still has to give the green light. apple "notarizes" every app, even if it goes through a third party app store. this changes the app irreversibly, and ios/ipados devices can only install notarized apps.
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remember when Tim Apple gifted tRump a golden statue? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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Yeah, but are Apple users going to punish Apple for glazing Trump's tiny manhood by not buying Apple products?
Tim Apple certainly doesn't think so.
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It’s really not that bad a compromise, as far as bribes go. Some cheap gaudy bauble as payment for not interfering with billions of dollars in business?
It’s still a bribe and it’s still encouraging mango mussolini, but very efficient tradeoff
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I mean I’m doing my best to only buy second hand iPhones and replace them 5-10 years. The power of Apple is the reoccurring revenues of software and the new phone buyers
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I remember him being gifted a golden pager and I'm still holding out hope that he gets the call.
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I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);
ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.
One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.
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You're giving apple too much credit. Tim Apple literally gifted trump a golden statue. The press are reporting that this is directly in response to a request from the DOJ. This isn't apple having a moral epiphany and thinking they're doing ice targets a favour. Corporations don't do that sort of thing unless it will make them $$$
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Alternate take: Tim is a businessman doing what's best for Apple and he personally might not support Trump, but we will likely never know.
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You’re absolutely right. Economic motivations decide the trajectory a company may take. Ethics, green washing, queer rights and other factors take a back seat. If they come with financial benefits, the company will follow that path, but that’s always because of money—no matter what the marketing material actually says.
Remember when companies were supporting sexual and gender minorities? That was because financial incentives aligned with that at the time. Remember when those turncoats suddenly scrapped the DEI programs and removed all rainbow themes? Same motivation again. Facade changed, but the foundation is still the same.
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Or they removed it to keep up the appearance that it wasn't actually a honeypot to begin with.
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Money is always the answer with these "people".
To assume otherwise is to feed the beast
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Disclaimer: The app is closed source, so all we can go off is the developer's word, although the fact the government removed it is a strong indicator they don't have access to data from the app
The developer stated they do not even retain any identifying data, so the only data the government could get is public anyway. Through Apple they'd be able to see who downloaded it, and likely when it was used. Your defense would be easy enough though: "I just wanted to make sure the libs weren't harassing our
fascistpatriotic ICE agents near me"-
It is impossible to send a (edit: true) push notification to a device without knowing which device it is going to. The developer may not know/have access to that information, but Apple/Google know which devices they are sending those pushes to. If it wasn't a true push notification, then they would not arrive in a timely manner and potentially only when the app was opened the next time.
He was using true push notifications, so the government could just subpoena that information.
He could maybe obfuscate who initiated the initial message, but its impossible to do that for the receivers.
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When I had an iPhone 3GS I got in a hot tub with it in my pocket and it died. I let it dry out. Then I very carefully took it apart and found all the little white stickers inside that turn from white to pink when in contact with water. I used a razor blade to remove those stickers without damaging them. I then placed a drop of bleach on each which turned them back to white and let them dry out. I used very tiny amounts of super glue to re-apply them to the exact same positions within the phone and then very carefully reassembled the phone.
Took the phone into an Apple store. Guy disappeared into the back for about 10 minutes with it. Came back out and said it must have just up and died but he doesn't know how and gave me a new iPhone.
Only Apple product I've ever owned.
Fuck you Apple.
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nooice
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This is why the web is way better than any app store, yes even with the problems of DNS (DIDs becoming more prevalent cant come fast enough though). Any future phones should have a first class web experience imo.
Edit: I wanna add that browser monopolies are a real threat too. Ladybird is legit on Charlie Kirk's side aka nonpolitical so not a fan of the outlook there. Would love to see KDE fork chromium/blink with valve money and recreate Konquerer and bring back KHTML (I like irony). Valve even has a fork of CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework, electron uses this as well) because of Steam and its ui being a big web app. KDE then has web apps and add them to Discovery, or you can build qt apps. Make it happen valve! And hire me to help lol
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It's how I browse Lemmy - I sometimes forget that my home-pinned app, Voyager, isn't actually from the app store.
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Removed by Moderator — Modlog
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What the fuck is a DIDs?
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I had to look it up too
Apparently it stands for “decentralized identifiers”
From what I’m gathering it’s a client based web protocol That works in conjunction with DNS
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Direct Inward Dialing, or basically a VOIP phone number.
I know that's not what they meant, but DID is already an established term in IT.
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I’m only just learning about this, but don’t the encrypted DNS protocols solve the privacy problem?
Or do you mean more like not being able to trust a registrar or public DNS server?
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Usually when people complain about DNS, they're talking about stability issues. In this case I think he's pointing out how centralized it is, and how a bad actor could cause significant issues
At a local level, the most common issue I know of is ISPs blocking sites at the DNS level by feeding in fake information that redirects you to one of the ISP's blocked/parked domains. Usually implemented to prevent customers going to piracy sites. It's not much of an issue to subvert currently, as you can simply use any public DNS provider
That being said, much of that has been consolidated into a dozen or so tech companies. In the current political climate, I could see a coordinated effort happening between those tech companies to block sites deemed non gratis. Obviously there's still ways to subvert it, but the vast majority of user's won't be able to
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Removed by Moderator — Modlog
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It's really sickening that every corporation has thrown in with the new fascist regime.
At least these assholes used to pretend to be "not absolutely awful". Now they're just mask-off oppressors.
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It's no accident that capital is aligned with fascist. Line must go up.
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Line must go up.
It's such a stupid axiom but it explains everything perfectly
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It's not that it's not profitable for them.
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Google's sideloading restrictions seems almost like its perfectly timed... 👀
Anyways, Google can gargle my:
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google also recently removed thier similar anti-ice app.
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How to choose between this and GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, etc? I feel ready for the switch too.
Edit: Plus is it possible to get banking apps and Google Wallet to still work (easily) in these Android-based alternatives?
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Mostly: Price
Are you willing to, either: (a) spend $500-$600 for a new Google Pixel? (the 9 that is, I don't think 10 is ready for GrapheneOS yet), or (b) willing to dig into the second hand market and potentially get not-unlockable phones? (those run rampant in the used market, note that Carrier Unlock does not equate to Bootloader Unlock, and Verizon ones are guaranteed to not allow bootloader unlocking, I'm unsure about other carriers)
(Also you are kinda supporting google if you get a new one btw.)
I personally don't wanna spend $500 since if it ever breaks, its hard to replace or even repair. And I hate dealing with the used market.
So for me, Graphene isn't an option.
I went for the cheapest new Moto that has custom ROM support, Moto G 5G 2024 for $140 (carrier variants do not unlock).
I'm basically still testing to see what wouldn't work, haven't really be using it as a "daily driver"
I've also come across the CMF Phone 1 which is OLED and supports e/OS its about $300
TLDR: Get Graphene if you can afford a pixel or willing to look for a used phone from a reputable source. I personally do not like used phones because I think there's too much risks IMO, you might assess the risks differently. Other options are Moto G 5G 2024 for $140 which runs both LineageOS and e/OS, or CMF (by Nothing) Phone 1 which runs e/OS and is an overall much better phone, but its more expensive, at $250 for 128 GB and $300 for the 256 GB.
Oh one last thing: Even "New" "Unlocked" cheap Pixels on sites like Amazon aren't guaranteed to unlock. I was looking at older pixels like the 6a, 7, 7a and checked the reviews and some comments indicate they are locked to Verizon because the reseller didn't unlock it for some reason, so I'm get the vibes that its unsold stock previously owned by carriers, so I don't know if they'll bootloader unlock, even if its SIM unlocked. Where as CMF never has carrier variants, so they all should unlock.
Edit: Also, the CMF phone needs the IMEI added in to carriers such as ATT and Verizon, since they use IMEI whitelisting, Tmobile is fine. For some countries like, Australia they also does nationwide whitelisting. Custom ROMs can break VoLTE, rendering it not work with cell service for csrriers that require VoLTE, Might wanna research about that.
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The corporate sector will always back a fascist government.
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Call me a conspiracy nut job , but I honestly think we live in a new age where it's the other way around. Megacorps are creating a situation where governments are set up to fail and then swoop in to save the day "alien earth" style, so everyone can be forced into lifetime indentured service.
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Who could have seen this coming from the company whose CEO gifted Trump a literal gold plaque in celebration of his reelection?
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Hey, you know nothing about the absurd pressure billionaire CEO's are unde/sr
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This is cowardice from Apple, but ICEBlock was not a good app:
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Doesn't matter if it was good or not.
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Removed by Moderator — Modlog
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The only criminality involved with ICEblock would be that of ICE kidnapping and detaining people, even people legally in the country and including US citizens.
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This kind of thing is coming for Android as well once Google has converted it to it's own walled garden bullshit.
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the USA Goverment probably forced them to remove it
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not probably; the doj forced apple to remove it and apple caved: https://www.404media.co/iceblock-owner-after-apple-removes-app-we-are-determined-to-fight-this/
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ofc
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I keep seeing things about how x, y or z company "caved" to government pressure, as if companies have ever made value judgements in the modern era. What this decision would have come down to, the only thing it could legally come down to, is shareholder value. Considering Apple secured a reprieve on tariffs, it's absolutely within reason that Trump and/or his administration threatened them with cancelling said reprieve. At that point, the decision would be based off the loss of sales for taking it down, against the loss of sales of devices due to tariff price increases.
Apple has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders first and foremost. There is nothing stopping this batshit insane administration from enacting tariffs, and then using the SEC and DOJ to investigate and bring charges that they aren't upholding their responsibilities to their investors.
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They probably just hinted. These companies are eager to please Trump. Remember the trophy Tim Apple gave Trump? Capitalists love fascism.
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oh yeah,makes sense tho
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not even a solid gold base, a cheap gold base, with a "glass sculpture"
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No, they don't have to. The corporations are the ones who want to control everyone. The U.S government is just a tool for them. The politicians are basically just actors at this point.
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It's a bit more complicated than that and trump also isn't as easy to control cause he is a member of the billionare class. It's why there was that movement to try and replace trump with DeSantis. There's also multiple factions. of billionaires as well. Some of them are idealogical fascists. Some only care about money. Some are technofeudalists. Corporations or more accuratlely Capitalists control the government yes. But the billionare class isn't a monolith. There's also a cost benefit analysis. Morals aside there is little benefit for apple to oppose trump unless they think opposing trump will significantly impact their sales. Which reasonably don't think will be the case. especially if the competitor is also playing ball.
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They also caved into PRC government and they removed the apps that reported on HK police activity and added restrictions for airdrop to make information sharing harder.
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no shit
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Keep on buying, y'all. Show 'em we mean business when we're appalled at their actions. Giving them more money will surely let them know how much we want change!
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Oh we are way passed the point where "voting with your dollar" means literally anything. These billionaires are making more money than they ever have in human history. They have literally turned all of society across large swaths of the world into a gigantic personal capital generator. It makes literally not a single difference if all of us here boycotted them or not. It's meaningless.
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Tell that to Disney.
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...and it happened in a vacuum, just all by itself.
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Every revolution famously begins with everyone giving up completely.
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Defeatist subservient take
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It makes literally not a single difference if all of us here boycotted them or not. It's meaningless.
Just lemmy users? Sure, but you don't stop with just lemmy users.
These billionaires are making more money than they ever have in human history
Honest to god do you think that money magically appears in their pocket. We can still claw it back. Unionize, boycott, collective action is our strongest pressure against them and IT DOES WORK.
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Im sure thats why disney quickly reversed gear with cancelling kimmel after loosing 3.8B overnight
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Tech companies have never been our friends.
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Fuck Apple but honestly this app is like trying to stay warm with matches in Antarctica.
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Why not just make it a website? We're not doing censoring yet, right?
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'cause most people are tech illiterates stuck in the walled garden.
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The creator used Apple (iOS) exclusive privacy features to run the service. They commented on it publicly a few times. Also why there was never an android version.
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You see why Google attempting to lock down installing whatever apps you want is a bad idea? This is an example of what will happen.
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objectionable contentSheer fucking cowardice
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From the heroes who bravely took away the headphone jack
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Something sensitive like this really should be a PWA (and web app for iOS users)
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Between Apple walled garden and the new dev signature thing from Google, those big players sure do like control over what we can do as users.
I agree with you, PWA is the way but Apple has been slow walking integration for years now (see https://brainhub.eu/library/pwa-on-ios)
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Except PWAs are heavily limited on apple devices so Apple could get that 30% cut.
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It's only objectionable to fascists who are getting their sensitive little fee fees hurt
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apple and the us government and ice can all suck a dick
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Apple CEO Tim Cook recently gave Trump a 24 carat gold bribe.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-cook-trump-gift/85555805007/
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That is just so sad that it's the way you have to do business. Constant praising and sucking up.
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Was this ever even available to non-US accounts? Was there ever an explanation for why it was georestricted?
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I wish we could use a “regular” app like Waze and start reporting “icy weather” as code for ICE. I mean we can, but idk how to make it a thing. Kinda how they were using “winter boots” as code on TikTok for ICE to get around the censors.
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This sucks, and they shouldn’t have to do this, but could they make it a webapp?
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Did you mean "web site"? Because, according to Cory Doktorov an app is just a website wrapped into enough IP to make it a felony blocking ads in it.
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FAANG is today as VW Adidas and Hugo Boss was in the third Reich.
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Everything is objectionable.
Are we ready to admit that giving 3 companies the ability to decide what everyone can and can't execute on their devices is a massive international problem? This is probably the greatest threat to every country in the world, and the people of the US.
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Fuckers.
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I miss my Blackberry Curve. ☹️
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I object to fuck-faced people who object to basic acts of decency, safety & freedom.
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Oh no
Was likely a honeypot the whole time..
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Oh no, our precious Apple is really a shit company. Tim Cook, is just like every other Tech CEO, a Liberal POS (or just straight republican).
They don't care about LGBQT+ or the enviornment. They care about money and how much they can make from stupid people.
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I get the outrage, I really do, but the app broke many privacy rights for users and also the app did technically break ToS by definition being a “doxxing” app.
Regardless, there are websites out there that do it far better than the app, and have universal access Apple and Android devices, which makes sense, because the developer of ICEBlock made it exclusive to Apple, and hispanic communities are overwhelmingly Android users.
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Switch soon or you will be beholden to fascists.
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ICE is objectionable... did they got "confused"?
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Tim Apple gifting Drumpf a 24 carat Apple logo.gif
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This is why Android is far far better than Apple, despite its faults.
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Not for long :'(
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Yeah, fuck Google.
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Ice block couldve been a web app
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You mean less worse, but worry not, google's catching up.
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Somebody missed the recent announcement 👀
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Apps are just browsers that can only visit one website. Who cares about them?
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And websites are just little programs you can download at will, so who cares about them?
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And this is why having 3rd party app stores is important. It’s why it matters that Google is killing side loading, if two fucking companies get to decide what you can do on your phone, we’re in a bad spot technology wise
We're in a bad spot technology wise
No doubt. I’ve gotten to the point where I have like 6 apps on my phone and it’s in lockdown mode on iOS. And I’d be on grapheneOS if I wasn’t required to use iOS for work.
And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the 'left' as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.
Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you're just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.
We rapidly need to switch to Linux Mobile. PostmarketOS and Mobian are the two most promising projects, and I would highly recommend anyone reading this to donate to them if you have the means.
Both projects directly use your donations to hire developers to build and polish the critical essentials to get this alternative viable as a daily driver.
Yeah, people should have listened to the people warning of privacy concerns with online services. Now that your data is valuable, companies will do anything to extract it from you.
Stop using those products, de-Google, install Linux, use self-hosted solutions.
It will take some effort to switch. You get to decide how much effort you’re willing to expend in order to not sacrifice all of your privacy and control of your digital lives.
Just technology wise? I think it's a little deeper than just technology unfortunately
"Sideloading" is their term, invented to make it sound like something it is not. We should not use this word. The correct word is "installing".
You don't "sideload" on Windows when you install software outside of the Microsoft Store™️. There is no real difference or distinction with software on phones, so there is no need for a special word.
I can see Microsoft moving to the same sort of thinking as well. Apple already made Mac OS users jump through hoops when you want to install something from the internet or even through a third party package manager like homebrew.
Not to defend it, but the first time I encountered the term was when BlackBerry released their Playbook tablet. It ran their bbos10 and they created an android emulator so you could run some android apps. The process of installing the apk into the emulator was called sideloading.
I miss BlackBerry is all I really wanted to say.
Not yet.
Windows laready has something like this it's called S mode i think. IT makes it so you can only instlal stuff frmo the windows store, but you can disable it pretty easily.
"Install" includes installing from an app store no matter how closed down and exlusive. The correct term would be "install from other sources than an app store" which is just clunky. Calling it "sideloading" won't change that nor will calling it "your mom". Considering how many corporate-speak terms are in use and how many braindead abbreviations and terms shortened to a word's last syllable -completely distorting the original meaning- generally are in use, the term "sideloading" is pretty irrelevant. Either lose your mind listening to the bullshit people permanently are emitting or just live with it...
Your phone is fucking you no matter what you do.
If people were more aware of how to make and install mobile web apps it would be less of a problem.
At least on the iPhone you can still add a site to your screen that can behave a lot like an app, including camera access, location services, and even gyro. And it’s just a website like most “apps” are.
Most people don't care about any of that. Firefox with AdBlock to surfe YouTube without ads? Nah, they want the app, which is basically the same, but at least they can't block ads. I stopped trying to understand
Mm
Mm
There is a great app called 'hermit' on android that gives you a better wepapp experience. Basically a browser tuned to make webapps act native.
“Hurd OS? Isn’t that obsolete?” “Not obsolete. Just… illegal.” ~Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
Honestly, this thing should just been a PWA. Making this naive app was dumb.
Webapps for the rescue!
Google is not killing sideloading. If the dev is willing to submit to Apple for verification, they'd probably not object to submitting it to Google.
E: downvotes for facts, I guess? 🤷
Yes, and then they ban that developer and their apps. It doesn't matter you can install apps outside of the Play Store, if Google still controls which apps you are allowed to install.
I see...