Recently, my phone updated without my consent (even though I turned auto updates off) and added Gemini
Like WTF Samsung
Because it’s profitable.
This is most prevalent on androids, even stock pixel. As much as I like to shit on apple, they have less bloat on your phone. Of course whatever native app you have on there, you wouldn’t able to delete, whereas on android you could delete it if you really wanted to.
Few people want to pay full price for their phone.
I mean, yeah, but there’s also manufacturer bloatware. This model year, Samsung in particular has outdone themselves with the implementation of their AI chatbot nearly zero percent of their customer base wanted.
Because money.
and the most delicious kind of money of all: dark money! ooooh it’s so good because the sources of the dark money offer you a lot of it, and they specifically ask you not to ask questions, which is so good for you because these bloatware programs make your device sell worse and provides no value as a sales platform because it turns out that billboards and radio spots are, surprisingly, the most effective form of advertising.
but! you have a sense of solidarity. you have faith that by never offering a phone without bloatware, your entire industry will ensure that all phones won’t have bloatware. you rest easy at night knowing your phone won’t sell poorly, at the end of the day, because every phone is like this. your contributions to a surveillance and propaganda machine that should punish you in the market because won’t because all your peers are your allies in this.
and it gets better! every time someone else’s phone gets more bloatware and more dark money attached, then everyone else appears comparatively better, allowing them to get worse. ooooh you love it so much when you get to take more dark money. and all it costs you are several thousand lives far away from your big mansion. you don’t even have to see the suffering
adb device
adb shell
pm list packages | grep 'packagename'you have to be careful what packages you remove, some can softlock your device.
The big one that matters is Verizon Software Manager. Used to be DT Ignite or something. They try to disguise that garbage forced installer as something genuine. I forget what it is on AT&T but I think it still has DT in the package name. The Verizon one is like some crazy package name thats not the name of the software at all. Must be the name of the company that makes it.
everytime i factory reset my device so much bloat/spy/malware gets installed automagically
Keep that thang (abd) on you
naw, it gets tiring. Either A) im going back to the flip phone i have or B) once i save up enough money ill get a pixel and install graphene.
You get to feel like a super cool insider in a shadowy club secretly ruling over all the foolish little people who aren’t clever enough to be deemed worthy of receiving dark money!
It’s 2024 though?
Timezones bro
Yep, time zones. Some places are in 2025 already and the US is stuck in 1940.
i just want to be in the 80s/90s with a text terminal using lynx
you suggestij we win this fight within this month?
press X to doubt
If you’re still in 2024, you’re already behind. Get on with the times and start grinding. DM for a link to my weebinar and 5% discount on my eebook.
For the same reason we have every fucking other problem in the world right now.
Capitalism.
You cannot align incentives towards growing the wealth of a microscopic yet astronomically lecherous group of monsters and expect society to not just crumble under the weight.
Because it’s profitable to include.
Why would companies care as much about the minor brand value decrease in the eyes of more technical users when they can make more money right now by making things shittier?
Because people keep buying Xiaomi and Samsung shit that’s loaded with crap (at least over here, I understand this varies massively by region).
Base Android is also loaded with crap, directly from Google. Android is the worst mobile operating system, with the exception of all the others.
Base Android (AOSP) is not, what you probably mean is Google Android.
Look at GrapheneOS, that is a usable, privacy-focused Android without bloat.
It works on pixels only, I don’t trust Google hardware
There are many other custom ROMs that don’t need pixel. Try LineageOS.
I’ve used it for many years. Lineageos is a largest rom sure .
The issue is that google fucks with base android more and more. Now they made it that there is that yellow logo on boot - your android is insecure. Then banking apps are not working.Updating from android to android on lineage was a chore on oneplus 8t.
And I ended up not being able to rollback to stock because I wanted to trade in for A new model.It just makes it harder to use roms.
That’s fair
You ain’t wrong but it is currently the gold standard
You ain’t getting away from glowies, but at least corporate marketing trash can’t track you that easily
Almost none of the devices are shipped with anything but Google’s Android, and manufacturers don’t provide you alternative versions of Android
Yes, Google owns Android as a whole, but (almost?) every single OEM customizes Android for their purposes. That is not the same thing.
Moto doesn’t.
I guess we just have a simple task - to make sure that all android phones are running base android.
How do u propose that could be done?Legislation to allow installing arbitrary OS and firmware on all consumer devices.
At least Samsung phones are only bloated with Samsung apps, which in most part you can uninstall or disable. Although it’s still fucking stupid that when you buy a new phone you need to do a lot of maintenance just to make your phone work as it should, and not slow down because of shitty apps.
My Samsung tablet had a lot of non Samsung apps, some even duplicating Samsung ones.
I disabled no less than 10, there are other 10 I can’t
my samsung phone had tiktok on install
Many budget phones get paid money to install other apps by default, this can be useful for you so you get more hardware for the money
This is a S21 Ultra, bought for $1000+ at launch.
Nvm
I mind the Google crap more than I mind the Samsung stuff. At least Samsung’s browser supports ad blockers since ages. That Chrome POS is just useless.
i buy samsung cause parts aka easier to source parts.
fixing phones is the biggest scam ever. once you open the phone you are always going to have problems with the phone. they are not made to be opened and repaired.
As much as I hate this saying, it sounds like a skill issue
I’ve done repairs on all my phones. New buttons, screens, batteries, ports, etc. I’ve never caused an unforeseen new issue by doing so.
Its not so much a skill issue, more so phone repair stores are the scams. they break stuff that wasn’t broken in the first place and get you to come back with the that issue or say it was also broken. Source: used to work in the phone repair industry and knew people who did this on the regular and is a standard.
What you describe is literally a skill issue though, if they’re breaking unrelated components.
Depends on the model, and the manufacturers would certainly prefer you replaced it, but I’ve privately fixed a few phones for friends/family. Fucked up and broke the first one, but the ones after are pretty much all still running without issue.
you can argue that iphones and pixel phones etc… have bloatware/spyware/malware as well.
We’re not. It’s 2024.
You mean it’ll all magically go *POOF!* come the new year?!? I’ll wait until then to set up my new phone, then!
They are a prefect example of I’m a prviliged person who has not suffered so I refuse to believe that the current system causes suffering
Basically, because we don’t own our devices. We are allowed to use our devices by the good graces of the manufacturers that charge a premium for them.
This really needs to change. I remember the preinstalled app antitrust suit(s) in the early 00s. Those need to happen again, but likely the EU will have to as the US is entering a dark age, and the US will continue to have inferior everything to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future.
And laptops, desktops, televisions …
deleted by creator
- buy a laptop/desktop
- boot up windows and setup with fake shit
- download and flash your favourite linux distro
- disable secure boot
- boot from usb.
- ???
- profit!
Sadly, there are a few programs I can’t run on Linux but I use it daily, no windows
What programs?
I want to add here my deeply missed Playnite. There is nothing under Linux that comes close. I’ve settled for the combination of steam, heroic and lutris, but that is not even close for sure.
It doesn’t support steam but what about Heroic Launcher
i already use heroic, but my issue is that there is nothing where i can add ALL games regardless of source; in playnite i was able to add everything from amiga 500 games over ps2 games to current pc games, with great costumisation, integration of steamgriddb, addition of pcgameswiki links, the ability to start scripts and programs at the launch and the end of the game, is well controllable by gamepad (heroics gamepad support works, but where your selection jumps if you press up or down is a bit of a mystery; and pressing b to return to your library after looking at a game places you cursor somewhere not clearly defined, not to the last selection.) and offers a huge selection of plugins.
While I don’t know all the details, and as far as I know there has been no official statement that it will support Linux, the current rewrite of the codebase that is going on will at least allow much easier compatability with Linux. So there’s hope :)
- Internet Download Manager (IDM): Yee, I know it may not increase your download speed but was kinda good to have the main folder of downloads and every file by category downloaded in a subdirectories: Images, Documents, videos, etc. Using JDownloader 2 but it’s not the same
- Affinity Designer: I know there is “Inkscape” but I still prefer affinity for it’s UI and because I’m used to it
- AMD Adrenaline: Yeah, maybe was a bloatware and shit but kinda liked the built in record feature and tweaks you could do
fair enough, nobody is forcing you to switch, but Inkscape is there, and i am pretty sure there is a replacement program for on-the-fly recording (never looked into it, i don’t really play games like that)
I tried Xubuntu years ago because my PC was shit then kinda abandoned it, got tired of windows and installed Linux. After a big update, Linux broke and trying to reinstall it I… Picked the wrong partition and deleted windows lol
Inkscape is nice but in used to Affinity Designer and kinda love it. For Adrenaline I’m sure it exists but steam built-in feature is enough.
I love my Linux and fuck Micro$oft
Most mainline Linux distro work pretty seamlessly with secureboot these days.
ugh. wanted to get a oled tv but will not buy a smart tv.
Honestly … Just don’t connect the TV to the Internet.
ive been pretty anti consumerist lately so I don’t need much to get me to not buy things.
Just keep it offline and get yourself a Nvidia shield as a multimedia station. They are excellent.
yeah I really don’t want to have to but that is what I had to do with my fridge. keep it offline.
Same for my dishwasher. I don’t even understand why that thing asked for a wifi connection in the first place, it’s not like I can remotely unload it or anything. And a notification is perfectly useless when I can just check my watch…
heck I was mad years ago when my microwave wanted to know the year. this stuff is getting rediculous. I need to start a thing like the amish but no internet connections allowed except for computers and phones. well ok cameras and sensors.
Luckily most devices work perfectly fine without internet. And I get the convenience of being able to switch on the heating or lower the window blinds and stuff from the office before leaving so that it’s nice at home, but we did that back in the 90s with a simple timer.
most of the time a timer is more useful than remote access. I have been very tempted to pick up a clapper.
It’s called enshitification. Deshitification isn’t so much a thing.
Is it really enshitification if it was like this from essentially the start?
Outside of like literally the very first few android phones when there wasn’t even apps for the platform, they came bundled with all sorts of shit. I remember my HTC from 2010 drove me insane with the junkware bundled in, and that was about 2 years post Android’s first phone. We’re at like more or less steady state shitification. (varies by phone/brand)
I used to buy my phones with a specific eye towards avoiding bloat. It was still possible to avoid most of it 8-10 years ago, but not anymore.
This is a wild take for me. I had bloatware on my dumbphone. Hell, the old nokia phones had app/ringtone dlc bullshit in them too. My old palm pilot had bloatware. Where did you get a phone without it?
Not without it, just a lot less. 1plus used to be not too bad. Not like today where dozens of apps come with everything.
What’s sad is how true this is. Companies enshitify once they have a solid hold on the market. But if they start to slip in numbers, do they ever deshitify to regain trust and users? Fuck no, they triple down on the enshitification to make one last cash grab as they prepare to abandon ship with life preservers full of bonuses for themselves
'Cos capitalism.
Amazing how this one word is able to justify so much abuse of the pedon class.
