If govts actually start making stuff like grapheneos illegal, maybe I'll just stop using smartphones. If they're gonna be that blatant about wanting to be a surveillance state, then I see little reason to help them.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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I think it is quite hard to avoid smartphone nowadays because some necessities such as: ID, messaging, banking etc almost requires smartphones.
While it'd be difficult, you can usually make do with a browser or visiting in-person (e.g. with a bank, they need to know who you are anyway, so visiting in-person is mostly just an inconvenience). Physical ID is likely still going to be a thing for the forseeable future since at minimum there are bunch of old people who basically don't know how to use smartphones (or at least use them well).
Messaging is more problematic. You could probably use a combination of something that functions on your computer and a dumb phone for urgent things (although since texts/calls wouldn't be E2EE, you'd have to assume the govt knows the contents of the convo).
IMO it's entirely feasible just quite inconvenient.
It will be inconvenient, but I'm right there with you.
Digital ID or passport with smartphone is there and even many EU countries embraces and hell even ICAO endorse it. The future for world with smartphone only is closer.
I personally don't think that's really feasible unless they provide smartphones for every citizen themselves, and even then people like my grandparents would basically not be able to live given that they only barely know how to message me (and even that they do wrong sometimes, so...). They can certainly make it difficult without a smartphone, but they likely can't completely eliminate physical IDs until those issues are gone.
EDIT: also, if that does become an issue at some point, you can keep your smartphone off unless necessary and don't use a simcard. When on keep it in airplane mode. If you need a connection to use digital ID, do it briefly over wifi (since presumably most places you'd need digital ID would have wifi) and then turn it back off. While not perfect, this would probably be good enough for most people.
These are all no necessities whete I sit. I use TAN generators for banking. I use Signal and Matrix for messaging.
Signal requires a smartphone bro and for matrix (outside of discord). it just normal user does not know about it.
You can use Signal on a Linux system or a Google-free tablet. I use LineageOS and GrapheneOS on my smartphones and WiFi tablets. Obviously, I'm not a normal user.
No maybe about that. A MiFi router and a tablet would be a workaround. If they outlaw general computers that would be it, no more computers for me.
has anyone questioned who is behind all this age verification all over the place, including forcing the credit card bans of the games, on one reddit post, someone said russel vought is behind all of this, but i cant find anymore info other than the post.
The American led world is clearly losing its position as the global leader. These supposedly free societies are clamping down, because their economic situation is getting more dire, and because discontent will be arising naturally out of that and they know.
This is the natural conclusions of a ruling class at odds with humanity and at odds with our class, the working class.
The credit card game bans are all coming from one Australian Religious group.
Similar Astroturf groups are being used to create fake grassroots community groups to PrOtEcT tHe ChIlDrEn.
I think it's not so true. MasterCard wanted an excuse to do this anyways. You can tell because the bigger backlash does not sway them at all.
I think there is an ounce of truth in that, but Corporations don’t “want” things. Investors want dividends and ROI. Executives want golden handshakes. Employees want a pay cheque.
Someone is financing the Astroturf campaigns. Someone is directing who they lobby.
It's a cooperation between:
- religious fundamentalist christian groups, many of which done some rebranding to appeal at least somewhat secular (Collective Shout, NCOSE - formerly Morality In Media, or even the European CitizenGo), while others are still primarily religious fundamentalists (Exodus Cry, Seven Mountain Dominion),
- big tech companies like Google, who want to tie their users' data to real identities, want to lock down their ecosystems even more, and don't really care about potential bans under a far-right christian theocracy as long as they benefit from it economically and finacially.
It’s literally neither of those lol.
Governments are doing this because they want control and they want to know all the stuff that Google and Apple etc know. It’s got nothing to do with religion or big tech lol.
It just happens that those people pushing for it happen to be extremely religious. Nothing to see here, if we ever got our rights back and not everything will go to crap, we don't have to set up provisions so that a small religious extremist minority cannot get hold on our governments. In fact, those christian extremists weren't "real christians", they just pretended to be one, because my interpretation of the bible only include the good parts and I ignore the bad parts.
In sue what world you’re living in, but in the one where these digital id laws are being pushed in all the big western countries, the anti-Christian governments are all in power.
The USA are the only one where the extremely religious Christian’s have any real power and they’re the only country pushing back.
What exactly are you basing your argument on?
I've been saying for YEARS that the EU has been overstepping their bounds by forcing companies to do things that they should have no right to force them to do, and that the EU is becoming a threat. I was downvoted every time and called a "bootlicker" because people loved the EU dictating terms to the "big bad american corporations".
Well now the EU have gone full nanny surveilance state, and people like those who argued against me have no one to blame but themselves. Congratulations.
Yeah, I totally agree. Lots of people don't seem to understand centralized authoritarian control is the big evil, even if it reinforces your personal politics (for now).
The EU is good when they're doing good things, and bad when they're doing bad things. Someone has to reign in international corporations and their anti-consumer anti-planet bullshit.
people .. who argued against me have no one to blame but themselves. You really think people agreeing or disagreeing with you on the internet have/had anything to do with it?
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The EU must be less of a state and more like EFTA
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So far as I can see, this is just speculation (and propaganda!). Regarding European Digital Identity Wallet which the article says is under development, this would be an app you don't neccessarily have to install on your phone (and it might not be possible to install if it requires some google-pay api).
European Digital Identity Wallet is the reference implementation under which each member state can model their own to access all governmental services. It will effectively be mandatory for citizens to do anything. It's also planned to be part of the EU age verification implementation.
If they depend exclusively on the Google safety net attestation service this is true. GrapheneOS supports even stronger attestation though, they just have to choose to implement it properly: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide
I wonder how home-grown European companies like Fairphone will be affected by this.
Mixed. They sell phones with "standard" Android and /e/OS. "standard" Android could potencially have strong Google Play Integrity API support, while /e/OS which uses open source MicroG can only get basic Google Play Integrity API support.
But since API check can be required by app developer for any reason, it can easily be abused or mandated by law like age verification or chat control.
I wonder what future there is for non google phones like fairphone, or even apple. Do apple phones use google things?
Yes. I'm unsure of where I heard it so take with a grain of salt but I've heard they make about the same number of calls to Google servers as a stock android phone.
As far as I know it's only the case with Safari using Google Safe Browsing service and Google being the default search.
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Third party app stores would also break this
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