Besides, if you really care about this stuff, you bite the bullet, root your phone, and install an alternate OS that allows for permission faking and more graun

Besides, if you really care about this stuff, you bite the bullet, root your phone, and install an alternate OS that allows for permission faking and more graunular control. As much as people on HN seem to hate to admit it, the average consumer does not care sufficiently (or have enough to hide) for the ability to do fine-grained permission control to be valuable to them, so it's a niche feature. Most apps from big vendors can be trusted; the maximum-harm case isn't the common case. On the plus side, in a couple years (when the average Android comes with M pre-installed), users will have the ability to do fine-grained control whether or not they care. That's an improvement.