You don't own your device.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
619 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
75756 readers
5801 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
With this and Google stopping side loading in Android, I’m going to be looking hard into Linux phones.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Was there any reason to make this an ios app as opposed to a website hosted outside the US? I'm really not surprised by the removal. What did they expect? All the Tech CEOs came to the inauguration with bags of cash.
Yeah good point. Plus if it's a website you can use it in private mode and not have evidence that you were helping people evade the gestapo all over your phone.
The only reason I can think of is the cost. Apple makes the map API free if you use Apple Maps on Apple devices. If you are building a website, you have to pay for Mapbox or Google Maps, etc., that can get pricey for indie developers.
Isn’t Open Street Map free?
But anyway, these apps are all about accessibility to regular folks. Believe it or not many people don’t know how to bookmark a website. Also this app gives you notifications, something a website could only do via email or something.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Barrier to entry.
Many (dare I say most) folks don’t know how to use a web browser, much less find a web app. Installing an App Store app is much easier.
It’s also much lower visibility for those who do know.
And that’s especially critical for this app, which relies on tons of people using it.
load more comments
(3 replies)
People are so stupid in this country. Do what the EU did and make it law that they have to offer sideloading and other app stores and payment methods.
It should be the law to begin with. This walled garden shit is really just another word for controlling what the user does with the device they purchased and not allowing them to do business with anybody else exclusively to add software without apple's approval and protection racket fee.
Everything is about control. The internet was left open by accident for a while and they are working hard to "fix" it. They are just trying to be slightly less obvious about it than China was. All of the forced AI tools, required apps and stuff like that are just ways to move users away from the open web.
Once most users restrict their Internet usage to ONLY content provided by the large companies (for example, once people no longer click on any Google result), then Internet providers will start granting access to the content from large companies for free and charge a lot more for access to anything else.
In 10, maybe 20 years, we will be needing to tell our internet providers when we change jobs so that they may change which "custom" internet services we get to have access to specifically for work.
It wouldn’t help.
In this case, even if the app was side-loadable and had a web app, that’s enough of a technical hurdle to kill its critical mass.
In other words, it doesn’t have to be banned; suppressing ICEBlock is basically enough to kill it.
Arguably, if it was normal to sideload apps it wouldn't be as much of a barrier to users, but they've been conditionned to think they need an app and the only place you can ever get them is the store.
It's a technical hurdle only because Apple decided they want to control everything, and same on Android because of Google's ever increasing war on sideloading. You used to download an APK from the browser and it would go like "This is an app! Install?", but now you have to go enable third party installation and all that, and now the whole Play Protect forcing developer validation coming up.
You are overestimating how technical most folks are. I know kids and older adults, on either side of my age, that have no concept of a filesystem, a URL, an APK to download, things like that, because they've never needed any of that.
Attention is finite.
Hence, web app's aren't really blocked by iOS/Android, but that's still a basically insurmountable hurdle simply because it's not the usual procedure for operating a phone. Defaults and accessibility are king (and Apple/Google know it).
EU didn't do anything except lower the tax on developers from 30% to 27%. And they still require Apple's rubber stamp to install.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Fuck the app just make it web based
And then Android could use it too, so many apps should just be websites.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is what sideloading is supposed to prevent
Brings new meaning to Google's decision to (effectively) block side loading on Android
It’s still on my phone! Sorry Tim Apple!
Still on mine as well. Why were folks slow to add this app?
I didn’t know it existed.
Some people are republicans? 🤷♂️
(I know, I can’t explain it either.)
Pretty sure Tim Apple couldn't care less, he just has to appease the Tangerine in Chief.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Rebrand it with the same tech as something like "Friend Sightings!" It's not a 1A violation because Apple banned it, it is a 1A violation because the government made them ban it.
Being constantly tracked is for the plebs, not the Elites or their enforcers.
Back in the aughts I was an apple fanboy. Later they no longer had the edge but I won't say it was completely not an option. Now it is completely not an option.
Just in case, if you're (still) a Nintendo, Sony, Tesla, Disney, Spotify, ... fan, it's not too late to change your mind about them too :)
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next ›