this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026

251 points (98.5% liked)

Enshittification

5110 readers

5 users here now

What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

hydra@lemmy.world

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world

251

f-droid has my condolences (europe.pub)

submitted 1 week ago by godsammitdam@lemmy.zip to c/enshittification@lemmy.world

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/linuxphones@piefed.ca/p/832312/f-droid-has-my-condolences

Pay the $25 ransom little devs or else!

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, it's going to be interesting, because I don't install any software from the paid Google repo.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Even if you don't sideload from the Google store, this is bound to affect anybody with an Android-branded device because Google covertly controls who gets to wield that brand.

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I refuse to call it a store. I can't walk into it and pick up a box from the shelf with physical install media. It's a software repository with paywalls.

[–] PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

I like you

[–] gankouskhan@piefed.zip 3 points 1 week ago

The year of graphene os!

[+] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com -28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

True “Leopards Ate My Face” moment. “I paid iPhone money for a phone 3-5 years behind made by an ad company, I didn’t think they’d come for my privacy!”

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

What? Most android devices are cheaper than paying the Apple premium.

[–] SillyDude@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have him tagged as "corporate shill", so I guess he just does this type of shit.

[–] JigglySackles@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I love finding out other people's tags. I need to change clients so I can do that.

[+] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com -7 points 1 week ago

This is true, but it just makes the point all the more relevant.

The Google Pixel 10 (latest/best; the 11 is coming soon) benchmarks similarly to an iPhone 11 from 2019. Sure, there are other factors, but the Pixel 10 costs the same as the iPhone, and the Pixel 10 Pro is priced competitively (if not the same) as the iPhone Pro.

Samsung Galaxy phones are more powerful than Pixels, and in some benchmarks, match or exceed the iPhone of the same year/generation. However, when they both throttle (due to heat), the Snapdragon chip loses more power. Granted, this only happens in top-end games, so for most uses, the Galaxy might be slightly more powerful.

If you're going for a cheap Android phone, you're getting a lot less performance. Or it's only available in China or some other weird restriction.

Either way, they all run Google's spyware. Google was recently forced to disclose how much money they make per year on the average Android user. It's something like $1700. According to George Carlin, half the people are below it, but conversely, half the people are above it. Google gave one example of a corporate suit making them tens of thousands of dollars each year. And yet, they're charging modern iPhone prices for 2019 iPhone performance, and they're double dipping by selling your personal information wholesale.

You can speculate that Apple does the same, or may in the future, but we know what Google makes per Android user, we know what power Google puts in their phone, and we know what Google charges per phone. So again, that makes me ask why you would use an OS from an advertising company when a computer company is making phones as well. Again, "Leopards Ate My Face" moment.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think this counts as a leopard-face moment. That would imply that Android users (or app developers) were somehow hoping that Google would only screw over non-Android users. No one was thinking that; everyone knew that Google was screwing you the hardest if you were using an Android phone. They were just hoping that Google wouldn't go this far and completely lock down the platform.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 1 week ago

I've been an Android user since 2010 (and an iPhone user since 2016). There's always been an anti-Apple sentiment in the Android community. To be fair, this is almost entirely the fault of Steve Jobs, who swore he would wage "thermonuclear war" on Android, that he would bankrupt Apple to "right this wrong" and called Android "a stolen product". Steve Jobs was also an arsehole and possibly a pederast who made sexually suggestive remarks to his daughter (according to her, he asked her if she'd learned to masturbate yet, daily, and when she finally said yes, he told her she'd be real popular with men). There was a lot wrong with the guy. He then released his phone on only a couple carriers, so Android was kind of a necessity if you lived in an area where one of those chosen carriers didn't cover (like I did — the iPhone wasn't even an option for me until the 5s) and then attacked the competition for doing what he didn't or couldn't.

Still, there has always been this animosity towards iPhone users. To me, they served two different markets. Android was kind of the wild west back then. I never had an Android phone I didn't run custom firmware on until I got my Galaxy S10 (which cannot be unlocked). It was all about new experiences and "what can we do with the platform?". It was awesome. Meanwhile, iPhone was always just this handheld Mac you could put in your pocket, and it could also make phone calls. For people who just want their phone to be like their computer, boring but with whatever wallpaper, it's fine. iPhone is predictable. It does innovate and it has and Android has copied plenty from it, but of course the inverse is also true.

But no, the Android users I talked to didn't think Google was screwing them at all. They thought they were rebels for not using the iPhone. Like the iPhone was a "Fisher-Price" or "baby's first" phone for people not smart enough to use Android. They always acted like Google had their back. Even the "privacy focused" custom firmware GrapheneOS requires you buy a Pixel. So you have to pay Google to get into their ecosystem, though they're now expanding to Motorola (which has never been great with smartphones, and no, not including the one you think, though IIRC the Atrix was the first smartphone with a fingerprint reader?). So yeah, all these guys who said having Android made them better than the iPhone users who are now saying Google is trying to make Android into iOS — yeah, I think leopards ate their face.

load more comments