This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
App developer here. Our company went through this exact thing, to a T.
After a lot of back & forth with Support we implemented another feature which requires full file system access and they suddenly accepted it. Such a bullshit way to do it, but hey, it worked.
Honestly, phone users ruined a generation of computing.
None of this shit was an issue when there was a barrier to entry to using the internet.
Blame tech companies, not users
I'll blame both.
The users are willfully ignorant.
To blame someone is to consider them responsible.
Do you consider the average user responsible? Is it productive to try to hold them responsible for any of this?
The end-user has always been the bane of all tech development. It doesn't change the fact that the increasing tech illiteracy of end-users in the modern day is by design.
Nobody can fix the user, but we can fix the companies that build containerized little retail environments that encourage mindless engagement and discourage curiousity and experimentation.
And not wanting to learn to do basic things on a computer made companies put everything on rails and then once everything was on rails, they could just take control away from you. I don't know how many times working in an office people would be completely ignorant of how to use their computer and be completely fine with it. Like this is your career and your livelihood and the tool that you use daily to get the job done. Learn how to use it and not just the steps to "point and click at certain things" and when it doesn't do exactly what you want you give up.
We need to stay far away from these restrictive platforms.
They don't care about their own rules. They will quietly ban anything that threatens their dominance, and if there isn't sufficient backlash then it will stay banned. (kind of like lemmy moderators)
The same thing happened to AdNauseam, an adblocker that blocks ads in addition to clicking them so advertisers get fucked over and website owners can still get paid. Google removed it years ago without justifiable reason, and because there was no significant pushback it stayed removed. It's what made me switch to Firefox. Seeing how chrome recently killed adblockers altogether, I'm glad I made the switch sooner rather than later.
They never explained why. We all know why. So thankful that I am not a gamer and as such I do not even sign up to Google on my phone via Playstore or even Google Play Services. I can get away with either Aurora or just FOSS apps.
Not for some apps; besides, we should exert pressure to make Google Play Services not a core part of aosp.
The GrapheneOS dev wrote a wrapper / sandbox for the Google core services that spoofs some "required" APIs, and it allows full control over permissions.
EFF - is this the only org that fights these excesses? Anyone else in US?
Get linage OS on your phone and stop fucking around.
Yeah I just moved to GrapheneOS. Stood up my own NextCloud server too. Fuck Google.
That and the process of being audited for your app to gain access to Google Drive is apparently a nightmare on top of being super expensive.
No wonder so many apps don't even bother adding the ability to sync files with like Joplin.
I hope the EU eventually crack down on that bullshit.
When I saw the process to add Google drive support to an app I thought: "wouldn't be easier to just discontinue the public APIs?"
If I was a dev I would immediately remove the integration instead of paying the required thousands (yearly!) to keep it. Then in the app explain the situation to the customer, add a referral link to Dropbox, onedrive or other competitors
They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that's not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
And if you grant access to your own apps, but deny them to your competitors, that is totally a monopoly abuse
And it should be met with steadily increasing fines until they stop it or go bankrupt. Both is fine with me.
Was going to comment the same, this issue has existed for some time for other apps. LibreTorrent ran into the same issue and now the F-Droid version is their full-featured app while the Google Play version is restricted due to Google.
Interesting that Nextcloud managed to last this long on Google Play without running into the same limitations (until now that is).
Wait, why would libretorrent require all files access?
How do you think torrents work? They basically just download a file, but from multiple people instead of a single server. It needs access to the file system so it can save the files.
Edit: my bad, misunderstood. I thought the comment above was asking why it needed file access in general, not all file access.
It needs access to the file system. But why would it need access to the whole thing? Just download to its own storage, no? Then use something else to copy elsewhere.
Unless this is to support saving to any folder, or built in smb support or something.
Thanks for clarifying, I thought the comment above was asking why it needed file access in the first place, not all file access.
Wholesome thread. Acknowledged ones mistake, very rare on Reddit
I use FolderSync. Works well and I prefer one app synchronizing files than 6. I still use the Nextcloud app for files I don’t sync that I need access to, but overall it’s really bad. The camera upload erased a ton of my pictures on a vacation. I deleted the synced pictures on my phone storage and the Nextcloud app overwrote the images as the new photos had the same file name.
Just switch to the F-Droid version.
Better: make sure all the apps you use come from F-Droid
I installed a few apps from F-Droid that the play store decided to just take over instead and updated them. I think antennapod and signal.
No way to stop it as far as I can tell.
This works very well for tech enthusiasts and people who self-host nextcloud at home.
The issue is when you are a government or university, it becomes harder to get all your users (which are probably not all tech savvy) to install a third party app store deal with the Android warnings about installing from third-parties, etc etc.
And this is probably the user base Google are targeting with this move (assuming it's malicious) . When the higher ups complain that their files are not syncing and need to install things with a special procedure they sometimes wonder why they are not using M365 or Google which seems hassle free.
Obtaniun > F-droid > Aurora
What is the point of obtainium ? Over fdroid?
You get apps a couple days earlier
But it comes with a huge downside: if dev goes rogue or gets hacked, you could install a malicious version of the app that doesn't match the source
This and the fact gallery cloud provider API stuff is locked down to whoever Google gives permission to should get a lawsuit.
And not even eff interested? Or probably drowning with other issues
Google be Like : just use Google Drive
What if , no….
God I hate google
