The key difference between “Android’s Play Integrity API” and this new thing which they are no longer proposing to put in Chrome but into Android WebView instead is the remote part of “remote attestation”.
The article does not make it entirely clear, but the new thing looks to be exactly the same as the old Web Environment Integrity we knew and hated, but with a new name and temporarily exclusive to Android.
As someone who uses root (not at the moment but plans to) as I believe in owning my devices, fully, this is horrible. We still need to oppose this.
The problem with root is that banking applications and many others straight up actively try to detect it and refuse to work if you are rooted. Android is in the process of being completely locked down.
Not just root. Some even detect if you have usb debugging enabled and warn or refuse to work unless you turn that off.
Big fucking sigh. I’ve been an Android user since the T-mobile G1, and I have ferociously defended the platform against iPhone for that entire time.
Is there a 3rd option? Or do I have to learn to love the enemy? I won’t be a part of the problem with privacy just because I’m too lazy to change.
Use custom ROMs
Honourable mention for Sailfish OS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS
The commercial version comes with an android emulator.
It’s not recommended for non-technical people, it sometimes crashes, it has random bugs that will drive you insane, and currently the weather app can’t connect to the service that provides the weather data.
But:
The people making it are not seeing you as the product and you will be free of all the bullshit.
… and i love it :)
It’s not there yet but… https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/
I love the idea, and would be willing to be an early adopter of a linux phone… but its tough to give up application support.
I have ferociously defended the platform against iPhone
Why tho
Because Apple are: closed system, unrepairable, proprietary, refuse to adopt standards, elitist and exclusionary, and generally less flexible and customizable. They are a baby toy, they are any recent BMW, and they are jerks about it.
And somehow, that’s becoming the better option over thieves and scammers with bad intentions. I may have to go with the assholes over the bastards. It doesn’t feel great.
I get you, but calling iOS a toy just makes you sound childish and ignorant. I don’t use apple for the same reasons, but iOS right now offers by far the most polish, mature and thought-through experience. In the meantime, Android continues to change everything on a whim every couple versions to nonsensical defaults. The UI keeps getting worse.
But I just can’t stand the inability of customizing iOS. Google is strangling the platform, replacing FOSS features with Google counterparts, and if it wasn’t for Samsung and maybe a few other big ones, they would probably have abandoned AOSP by now.
iOS right now offers by far the most polish, mature and thought-through experience
If you want to do it exactly as they allow you to. Everytime you try to deviate from Apples happy path there are suddenly thorns everywhere and you find yourself without any support, be it on iOS or MacOS
I should have said out of the box experience.
Google no longer even tries to pretend not being evil.
deleted by creator
A bit late… Something new might replace it but this experiment got killed a couple days ago already.
Google is killing off its proposal for “Web Environment Integrity API” as a new web standard, though Android phones may still have to deal with it.
That is literally the first sentence of the linked article. I think this is one of the things how it comes back.
Does Vanced really use WebView for playback (the link the article provides suggests it’s used for sign-in)?
Aside from forgetting to mention Revanced which is very much alive, I have doubts about the article. It feels like the author realized his headline doesn’t work anymore so came up with something plausible sounding…
