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From F-Droid to emulators, here's who's hit hardest by Android's new verification rules
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Bullshit.
It's hard enough to get people to step outside the Play Store ecosystem. Any additional friction will greatly reduce the number who do, and the combination of a reboot and a long waiting period is a lot of friction for the average person.
I specifically said publishing. Publishers/developers are not the average person. And the people installing third party apps on the user hostile platform of Android are also already dealing with friction. I'm more concerned with developers giving up because they need to do unacceptable ID verification, or are outright banned from development APKs entirely, than users giving up because "this takes too long..." Frankly, you ignoring the context of my post comes off as you just wanting to be angry.
I read the headline, I read the article, and I answered the rage bait presented in said headline. The impact of this change is "fuck all and nothing". I've got plenty of web sites that are inaccessible without getting around geoblocks with a VPN. Been in communities shut down by corporate media throwing money and legal teams at denying their right to exist. Feels like everyone wants a federal ID to use an online service these days, and Google wont be that far behind doing their own version of it. But this update changes literally nothing for power users right now. Sorry that I'm not as upset because the slippery slope isn't as steep as everyone else says it is.
If you really want something worth being mad at, get mad at the hardware manufactures who release hardware with proprietary firmware that only runs on Android. Wouldn't be having this discussion at all if users were allowed to run completely custom software from boot. If there was an open standard for a battery powered device that could run a modern compliant web browser, and take SMS/phone calls, we could tell Google to kick sand. Instead we have an ocean of built-to-expire mobile phones that end up being "obsolete" within 2 years. I'm pretty sure the mobile carriers/ISPs have more control over what hardware is allowed to exist though. I should probably do more research on that.