 #Google is known for its "wisdom" when it comes to #privacy, right? Currently they seem to pressure Marcel to state in the privacy notes that #NetGuard "collects and shares email addresses", what it definitely DOES NOT. Result: Should Google unlist NetGuard, Marcel sees no motivation to develop the app any further. Understandable, but really sad. And of course it's absurd to think Google does this to get rid of an app "threatening" its business model, right? 25 comments
@IzzyOnDroid yes, but every time there's a problem with Google who threatens to remove one of his apps from playstore, he threatens back (the users) to abandon that app. But I understand all of his reasons. @IzzyOnDroid Does he think about it? Tell him that he takes his app out of the Play Store and to celebrate we put the hashtag #escapefromplaystore to his app. @IzzyOnDroid @Bodo #netguard is worth and effort to save. They same goes for #fairemail . Should we start a public pledge to pay again (as you suggested)? I müßt admit that I am not sure whether this is a good idea, but I am prepared to go ahead. If it's necessary, I'll be there and support marcel's great work again and again! @IzzyOnDroid @IzzyOnDroid @IzzyOnDroid NetGuard is available on F-Droid. So why stop development, and not just say goodbye to Google? @Billie I agree. Recently I have pulled my watchface from the Google Playstore. They were constantly nagging me that something was wrong with a screenshot, but didn't explain what. After a couple of resubmissions (all rejected) I eventually gave up. I have to find out if watchfaces are suitable for F-Droid. But I won't publish any non-commercial apps at Google anymore. It's a waste of time. @shred if you can give me a link to your repo with the sources, I can take a look. "Watchfaces" is a bit generic; F-Droid.org might be unable to add it if they are using Android Wear (proprietary), for example. @IzzyOnDroid Thank you! The source is not public though, and also uses Android Wear. However I am thinking about doing a rewrite with only open source components, if possible. I am not sure though if a watchface can be done without using Android Wear. You can also ask @IzzyOnDroid if he can include it in his repo. His repo is well-known and includes many apps that fail #fdroid inclusion criteria. Perhaps this is possible? However, not sure what the requirements are. @shred Depends on the type of Watch. My Pebble does not need Wear 😉 I don't remember if @gadgetbridge might have some code on that; they support many "gadgets" (including smart watches) so they're definitely worth a visit! @IzzyOnDroid While I can't really understand Marcel wants to stop development everytime something happens on Google Play (looking at the reviews, not sure if these are the people one wants) this of course sucks. Rather than, you know, taking down malware, adware and other fun things, open source software is where the danger lays!  @IzzyOnDroid If #Google kills #NetGuard, I'm going to switch to #GrapheneOS for my pixels without Google services, cutting as much as possible from their ecosystem. It's a drag that Google never introduced the most important permission control of all (network) and actively fights apps that fix that for their users. 😔 This way, Google will lose more of their customers to free alternatives. @publicvoit Why would Google let you control the Internet permission? That would cut their revenue. They live on ads and tracking, so what do you expect? I've cut my ties to their eco-system years ago… @IzzyOnDroid Because they aren't able to prevent that malware apps are published in Play Store which steal my data, harming my security and privacy and thus Google's ecosystem. @publicvoit I'm with you that's one of the reasons why they should – but to them that's rather a nasty side effect one has to live with so they get their data. There are enough people who don't care about privacy and such (unless they get to feel some of the effects themselves) so this can be ignored on their end. |
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@IzzyOnDroid I fully agree. But I should think that most users get it - #netguard - from F-Froid or Github directly, so I hope that Marcel will reconsider