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What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple? If you want to participate in the society, you will forever have to res

• pimeys 3mo ago
  It's a great question to send to the DMA authorities: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en More of us ask this question, the better we are heard. Except if this is exactly what they want, then we need to vote better.
• Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
  Over the long term, we definitely need something like Linux phones. I find it bizzarre by how little companies support this mission of Linux phones.
  • echoangle 3mo ago
    I don’t want to be too pedantic but Android uses the Linux kernel. Degoogled Android is basically what you want.
    • eMPee584 3mo ago
      no, because screw all that java crap, they optimized for control and developer quantity, not for ux, customizability, performance...
  • microtonal 3mo ago
    Why do you need a Linux phone (as if Android is not a Linux phone), when there is also AOSP. If Google closes it up, it can be forked, but I don't see any fundamental benefit of throwing away decades of development done on AOSP.
  • birdsongs 3mo ago
    It's not Linux phones that we need. We already have alternatives, like graphene and other AOSP forks. We need corporations and governments to stop locking down and gatekeeping vital software to closed ecosystems. A Linux phone doesn't help me when my government's 2FA system (BankID) only runs on Android and IOS phones and can only be acquired with an app store account.
    • Avicebron 3mo ago
      > We need corporations and governments to stop locking down and gatekeeping vital software to closed ecosystems. If you can't get the government to do this for you in Norway the US has very little hope currently. We need some standard of minimal digital accessibility. Too much of our lives mediated by digital interactions with capricious systems.
      • hparadiz 3mo ago
        The irony is none of this is a problem in the US. We still have a ton of banks that you can use without a smartphone. Even my bank's app works fine on a rooted Android or GrapheneOS. Europeans are doing this to themselves.
        • vintermann 3mo ago
          Competing to be best in class at US loyalty, more like it.
        • ryukafalz 3mo ago
          I just recently, in the US, got bounced through a bank authentication system (Wells Fargo's) when trying to order something from Amazon that required me to use their mobile app. I don't use an Android or iOS phone; as best I can tell there is no way to successfully complete that authentication. I even have a hardware TOTP token from the bank now, but even that they won't accept. Now, my card info did in fact get compromised recently, and that's probably why I ended up needing that stronger auth flow. But the fact that I literally can't complete that stronger bank authentication without Google or Apple is... yeah. No. I have since signed up for a different credit card that I plan to use from here on out.
• dachris 3mo ago
  If you've accidentally become a persona non grata, then obviously because you've not exercised sufficient self-censorship. This is real already. Recently saw a petition for EU to rein in big tech (there are several initiatives advocating this). Had this nagging voice at the back of my head ... what if signing that gets your Google Account terminated. I'll leave it open to you whether I signed it. For developers relying on any type of Google services, you'd be in for lots of pain.
  • sixtyj 3mo ago
    Google had Don’t be evil motto just between 2000 and 2018. Other companies don’t even try to pretend it. You are owned by them. „Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.“ - Lord Acton, 1887
    • artisinal 3mo ago
      Like how Tony Chocolonely dropped their 100% slave free claim after finding out just how difficult that is to achieve. Nowadays they are using the slogan “Crazy about chocolates, serious about people”
      • unheardof 3mo ago
        [dead]
    • john_strinlai 3mo ago
      >Google had Don’t be evil motto just between 2000 and 2018. this is popping up a lot today for some reason. "don't be evil" is still in the code of conduct, as it always has been. it just isn't in the preface anymore after the restructuring under alphabet. https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of-conduct/default.aspx https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of... (its not like it stopped them, anyways)
  • devsda 3mo ago
    It doesn't even have to be censorship of speech. If you are wrongly charged a significant amount by either Google or Apple and their service is of no help, what would you do? Most people would weigh the options, then just eat the cost than anger them with a chargeback and lose their email/phone access. That's self-censorship financially too. What if Google reinstates their old G+ and YouTube real name policy for its accounts. We would protest but give them the proof grudgingly and it can position itself as one of the core part of online ID verification push currently going on.
• exe34 3mo ago
  "If you had learned to wash lettuce, you wouldn't have had to pay court to Dionysius" - Diogenes.
• artisinal 3mo ago
  iOS can be used without an account. iPhones can be acquired outside of Apple. The EU has the alternative App Store option that doesn’t require an Apple account.
  • pfortuny 3mo ago
    Wow, I did not know this and -despite its drawbacks, like not being able to install apps from the Apple App store- this seems like a great way to have a powerful dumb-phone.
    • malfist 3mo ago
      Why do you need a powerful dumb phone?
      • broken-kebab 3mo ago
        One can read it aloud in sarcastic tone, and it will become clear then.
  • birdsongs 3mo ago
    But I can't use my Norwegian BankID unless I have an apple store or play store account. This is required for every aspect of society. Heathcare, banking, taxes, driving, using my debit card online. They removed SMS 2FA options recently, the only non-tech monopoly method is a 2fa codebrick that's getting harder and harder to acquire (there are new ridiculous facial ID and passport scanning requirements, run by a private corporation, in order to get one). It's garbage and getting worse. And it seems no one cares our entire lives exist at the whim of two US tech monoliths.
    • BetterThanSober 3mo ago
      That's on your bank and not necessarily because of Apple/Google duopoly. I think it is crazy to put the whole banking system on foreign, private company though
• Grimblewald 3mo ago
  At least we dont have a social credit system... hey wait a minute
• shevy-java 3mo ago
  You are right - now greedy corporations decide who is an "acceptable" human and who is perma-banned. Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil. And other governments also need the US government responsible here, since they allow this to happen. In objective terms this can be called a fascist system. > A temporary workaround like using alternatives like GrapheneOS The issue still is that so many services and functionalities are tied into private companies. States simply need to wake up now.
  • DrewADesign 3mo ago
    > Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil. I’m not even being cynical — it would probably just increase the amount of government contract cash awarded to them. Control makes governing a lot easier, control is what tech companies have, and to varying degrees, it’s for sale.
  • nanis 3mo ago
    > Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil Governments are made up of people. People who have at best median level understanding of the things they are ruling about but great self-interest in following the biggest purse to which they can attach themselves.
  • broken-kebab 3mo ago
    As proven by history, it's convenient to have a big well-known external entity to blame as a source of any trouble, but in reality it's orders of magnitude easier to be a digital dissident in the US compared to the EU. And European Commission + European national governments are exactly the ones you should blame first. They are openly proud of how it works, they call it successful digitalization for a positive spin.
    • kmeisthax 3mo ago
      As an extra anecdote: one of the things Cory Doctorow has been bringing up as a counterweight to US tech hegemony has been repealing anticircumvention laws that the US insisted upon as a condition of tariff-free market access that has now been rescinded. This is a good idea, but at the same time, the EC is never going to do it. We're already seeing with Stop Killing Games how even tangentially related consumer protection issues can and will be shot down with an insistence that IP is sacred and untouchable. The reason for this is really simple: every pirate wants to be an admiral, and every client state wants to be an empire. We as tech consumers hear "sovereign cloud" and think "cutting out undue influence that US tech companies have in the EU". The EC hears "building our own tech monopolies to lock in other countries into our stack". Using SKG as an example again, the whole reason why SKG started was because of a French company, Ubisoft, killing one of their games. Why would the EC ever overrule their own industrial interests? The EC was specifically and expressly built to be an antidemocratic bulwark against popular sovereignty. The entire concept of dividing people up by nation-states is already an antidemocratic exercise - e.g. France has 69,000,000 residents and Malta has 520,000, but both get one seat at the EC. And because the EC is made up of nation-state appointees and not elected representatives, they have all the incentive in the world to stab their own people in the back. The EC is the designated villain that the """liberal""" side of Europe's government uses to shut down democratic control (and, sometimes, even liberalism itself). Some have pointed out that this is deliberate (and, supposedly, therefore good): that Malta would never have joined the EU if they didn't have veto powers over whatever France wanted to do. My counterargument is that veto powers are the last resort of the rich and powerful. You can either have strong protections[0] on national identity, or you can have democracy, but not both. [0] To be clear, the way we deal with democracy being a tyranny of the majority is with liberalism: we explicitly declare certain things to be "human rights" and thus more or less off limits to the democratic process. This list is generally fixed (or at least, difficult to change) and thus less ripe for abuse than, say, having an entire wing of the government dedicated solely to overruling the people that is active all the time.
• llm_nerd 3mo ago
  > What happens if you "accidentally" become persona non grata with both Google and Apple? https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr... The US made a Canadian judge a persona non grata for any firm domiciled in the US. All because she works for the ICC, and the ICC declared Netanyahu a war criminal (which is indisputible). Why is the US destroying worldwide trust in US businesses on behalf of a reviled nuclear armed hermit nation on the other side of the planet? Good question, but it is what it is. This example that the US will spuriously use sanctions like this is why many nations are investigating ways to purge American financial systems and tech.
  • imglorp 3mo ago
    That judge may be an outlier today, but we all know tomorrow they could sweep through all accounts and ban everyone that spoke against the regime. We have arrived.
• jerieljan 3mo ago
  It's terrifying, yeah. To some degree, the closest we have to these situations besides getting flagged with TOS violations (whether real or false-flagged) in these companies are residents of countries that are either trade or economically sanctioned by the USA. Thankfully we haven't seen something like an account ban and deletion incident for such cases, but the severe ones I can remember usually prohibit access entirely and that'd be scary if it extended to primary services that others rely on for auth. You will be effectively locked out to services if it's all that's linked and that identity provider just decided you'd be persona non grata.
• deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
• Limit5332 3mo ago
  GrapheneOS is not shady at all, since when is wanting to use an actually secure OS that doesn't sell your data to palantir or some other ACTUALLY shady shit like that shady?
  • empyrrhicist 3mo ago
    That was their point.