this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
1522 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
74735 readers
2748 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Doesn't upset me, why? Because it's not about controlling what app I install, but who wrote the app I might install. If my understanding is not correct of this change , I'm happy to be shown I'm wrong.
I think that other guy's comment about the ICE tracker app really highlights the most important problem: If only signed apps can run, governments can pressure companies to remove access to certain apps. Even if Google allowed posting the app, the author would have to de-anonymize himself, and Google would have to comply with the law if they were subpoenaed. They would definitely give up the author's name. It is an issue of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to do with your device what you choose to do with it. You might not have a use for it (right now) but it's not necessarily something you'd want to give up.
And, honestly, I would personally be affected by this, eventually. I use an app called NewPipe to watch youtube. It already isn't available on the app store (violates google's ToS), and I doubt they'd let people install this even if the author properly identified themselves, because I use it to avoid watching adds and to be able to "subscribe" to channels without an account. I could just borrow my husband's premium subscription, I guess, but I really only use NewPipe to watch certain things, and it lacks the algorithmically driven feed (which I am actively avoiding, Google tends to suggest things that make you angry for clicks).
I don't know about America or to be honest at all what ICE tracker does, but if I was to assume that it somehow tracks government agents where they go, there might be laws against that.
I don't want to drag this conversation into American politics, but I will say ICE has been doing things against USA law. Things are not great here. Even noncitizens have rights that need to be respected, and ICE is failing to do that. They have also arrested lawful residents, citizens too, in their sweeps.
The ICE tracker app is a protest app/ direct action sort of thing, not a tool for criminality. Surely you can see the value of being able to use technology to resist a tyrannical government?
By the way, do you want the USA government to potentially control which software can be installed on your phone? Google is an American company. USA courts could decide (international company) is violating (American IP law or something else) and instruct Google to disallow their app from being installed entirely.
They can pull apps off the app store now, and they do that, but currently you can still side load stuff.
If the ICE app is breaking the law, and ICE itself is breaking the law, two wrongs don't make 1 right. There are legal ways to protest.
Like I said, earlier if you aren't breaking the law then if someone asks you to ID yourself , what's your fear? Loss of privacy?
You can't use privacy to hide the act of breaking a law.
Unless you're a developer it doesn't affect you anyway, you can still sideload apps. You just can't use a public highway like the internet to break the law and expect nothing to happen. I know it's not what any of you want to hear.
Tbh I'm not even sure the app is breaking any laws at all. Reporting on the presence of law enforcement is (not always but sometimes) protected speech here. I don't use the app, and I haven't heard that they are trying to arrest anyone in regards to it.
Honestly though... Have you thought through everything you're saying? Sheltering Jewish people during the holocaust was illegal in Germany.
Anyway, have a nice day, those are my thoughts.
I'm not a lawyer , but common sense dictates if you are going to make an app that's possibly illegal, you won't do it unless you are satisfied that it is legal. As far as comparing the sheltering of Jews illegally who were facing extermination and people who entered a country illegally is like saying I broke all the speed limit rules to attend an exam because I saw a person doing the same for a valid emergency. I'm not saying what Trump is doing is right at all, it's reprehensible, but don't try to equate it with the attempt to delete Jews from existence. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous .