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Mandate that all boot loaders can be unlocked by consumers/device owners!
That single change alone would open the floodgates of development.
Manufacturer locked boot loaders was the single biggest mistake made in the phone world. Now just consider all the work it'll take to reverse that simple misstep made years ago that nobody gave a single thought to.
Only an Android alternative will fix this. No amount of proactive work from users will change Google's mind on this.
You aren’t going to keep Android open. Respond by shoring up Linux phones.
Most of the world can't afford to buy one specific android and hope not to brick it. Most people can't afford a google pixel and if they can, aren't going to risk it.
And what happens when google cuts off third party tools like MicroG. I need WhatsApp for almost everything from talking to family and friends to Work. Most of the world does, and the same is true for Facebook.
"I need WhatsApp for almost everything from talking to family and friends to Work. Most of the world does, and the same is true for Facebook."
Whatsapp and Facebook bring convienence for sure, but you can live without them. All those that know me, know i refuse to use Whatapp. Those that want to keep up with me have installed Signal. I admit that for business it can be tricky but we have to start somewhere?
Then you are fucked right? What's app and Facebook have you.
I too live somewhere this is expected. I said no. I won't do it. Facebook is easy, because whatever.
WhatsApp is harder even the doctors want to use it. But I won't. Someone has to start saying no.
Most people can’t afford a google pixel and if they can, aren’t going to risk it.
And they shouldn't. By buying Pixels you are supporting Google, the same company that is destroying Android freedom.
Today's best alternatives are phones that come preloaded with custom ROMs (Brax3, Fairphone, Murena, Iodé, and so on), or if you're feeling more adventurous, a Linux phone (I have heard good things about FuriLabs FLX1).
Which is why you stop using Android and use Linux phones instead.
Most Linux phones are android phones that have a Linux rom available to them, hence why they said most people wouldn't risk what they spent a lot of money on
I didn’t say put a Linux rom on an android phone. I said use a Linux phone.
Not only would that solve this little problem, it would reduce Google's power and remove one's data from the claws of US authorities (were the Patriot and Cloud acts let them mass track everybody using a Google product).
Just make sure you chose a non-US Linux phone.
I don't want to buy a new phone
Google doesn't give a shit about what you want. It only understands two things: credible legal threats and not giving them your money.
I don't want to, but I will if I have to
I genuinely appreciate the cause, but to sign this, I have to provide PII, agree to their terms of service and privacy policy, and get automatically opted-in to their mailing list that I'll have to unsubscribe from later.
So to petition against this shitty tech stuff, I have to go through this other shitty tech stuff. It sucks how normalized this all has become.
here it makes at least some sense to verify that each person voted once. the mail list stuff is of course to much and should be optional from the beginning.
Anyone know if this affects GrapheneOS users? I can install GrapheneOS like 50x faster than it would take to understand what I'm legally binding myself to by signing the petition.
custom OS shouldn't be effected by it. I'll probably change soon as well.
anyway, that is rather independent on the petition. a petition is usually not for your own short term benefit, rather for the common good, or outreach of the general problem. so doing either is for different reasons, both reasonable
Most online petitions are nothing more than a way to safely (for those targeted and for those amongst the authorities who support them even against the public interest) dissipate the common people's righteous indignation, by making them feel like they "did something" whilst said something is just about the least impactful thing imaginable.
(Some official ones, for example those mandating parliamentary sessions on the subject if they reach a certain threshold, might not be so, though its unclear as it really depends on the legislation around it allowing politicians to just ignore it at will)
This bullshit will require a lot more than adding your name into a list on some corner of the web in some legal jurisdiction where they're free to sell your private information.
A 24hr waiting period to use a competitor's product has to be one of the most blatant anti-competitive behaviour in history.
I‘m curious I read the petition and didn‘t see mention of „24h waiting“ anywhere could you tell me what you‘re referring to?
The 24h wait period is a part of the so-called "advanced flow" which will become the only way to install apps not verified by google once their new rules go into effect, as described here: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html
Welcome to McDonald's credit! You'll have to wait 24hrs if you want to eat that Whopper you want to buy!
The number of times that signing an online petition has prevented the plans of an evil corporation is exactly zero.
I agree. Doesn't do anything it would be better to get people to buy stock in the company and vote on what you want. Get enough people and you can make change.
But that process is also.... Gross. And expensive.
There are already some movements, like #Keep Android Open that ask to contact local regulators and law makers, this petition is useful to have a concrete number of people that agree and that can be used officially
please just make an android alternative
I want a phone that isn't a closed ecosystem race to the bottom shit phone
All of the alternatives eventually run into the same "Will my banking app work on it?" problem. The absence of a healthy app economy is the one thing that can't be fixed by throwing software engineers at it, and it is what caused the death of Windows Phone.
There are, but the market is rigged by monopolists. And things like banks increasingly require apps that won't even run on customer Android ROMs easily.
The regulators are needed here.
The problem with regulators is that they a) gladly suck corporate dicks, b) gladly opt-in for the same authoritarian methods of population control, and c) gladly ignore common sense altogether.