Touché.

The author responded to this response. You can see that here.

https://blog.cyrneko.eu/matrix-is-cooked

(This looks the same until you scroll down; you linked to a differen,t older version of the site that did not update the linked post)

I don’t like this article or this author’s conclusions. They answer the question “is internet content too engaging?” with “no, and besides, won’t you think of the free market?”

This article is unfortunate evidence that powerful groups who are critical of social media tend to be against the concept of free will itself (hello, Amy Coney Barrett), while powerful people who run social media are against the concept of reducing harm on their platforms at all.

A report by the American Psychological Association states that “using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.”

Uh huh.

Meta’s internal research that prompted concern about the effect of Instagram on teenage girls actually found that most users reported Instagram either had no impact or made things better.

ACCORDING TO FUCKING FACEBOOK.

…proponents of “addictive design” theories misunderstand the impact that regulation and liability will have on media competition. In a world where content is abundant and attention is scarce, platforms that manage to reach a critical mass of users compete not just on size but also on curation quality…

TikTok provides a good example. TikTok didn’t overtake established platforms like YouTube by having more users or more content; it succeeded by creating a better algorithm that more effectively curated content to individual preferences.

Again, doubt. Sure, the free market provided a more addictive alternative to an already addictive product. It resembles a slot machine more than the previous version.

I have no idea how the author thinks this is a slam dunk in their favor, when it’s clearly the opposite.

I presume that, up until this point, the UK wasn’t intentionally paying them for the privilege

Google Play is the part of Android that is most threatening. On many devices, you can’t disable it without ADB trickery. And it delegates permissions to apps in total subversion of the permission system we were allegedly being kept “safe” by.

If the best argument in favor of something is “you have the right to do it,” the thing usually isn’t very good

“Why we’re updating our pricing” mostly says more people are using it than ever, not that they’ve made enough changes to warrant getting extra money.

And I guess that’s technically true. If people are too locked into their platform, then that’s a great reason for them to update their pricing: to benefit themselves over creators.

Replace “VC funded companies” with “enshittifiers” for a better view at how many people may read your comment

This is informative and unfortunate

The alternative is to turn off the server, which we want to avoid doing.

The funnier and IMO better option

To use the word “Android” on their devices, they already have some kind of backroom deal with Google. Nobody really knows what that deal entails, though. It would take a(nother) lawsuit to find out.

Those companies have always developed some of their own, “hardware-specific” software and never released the results to the public either.

(Correct me if I’m wrong here, but that’s probably why pixels of the past have had really good ROMs, while phones from other companies are lucky to get LineageOS on them.)

…nah

Users can opt to make their searches private in their account settings.

The more time goes by, the worse the divergence will be. (I think this is basically the idea, but correct me if I’m wrong:) Right now, we might have GrapheneOS 15 vs Android 16. But eventually, there will be an Android 17 and an Android 18. GrapheneOS developers will either have to trudge along with an older OS, or hire more developers to recreate the missing pieces of the code - pieces Google has already created but will never release . The missing pieces will get bigger and more significant. Android 15 will age out of security updates.

This is pretty bad.

They give too much uncritical attention to Google’s PR statement, while barely affording a link to the venerable Graphene team at the very bottom of the page.

This isn’t a counterpoint to the exposed Google issues, it’s a shrug

Maybe Google is comfortable enough offering the Pixel as a typical consumer device now, instead of a developer one. They used to be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but there aren’t many competitors left.

AOSP can be fully abandoned and privately forked by Google without it technically being “dead,” but that abandonment would effectively kill the project.

From the article, Google can technically let AOSP still exist while destroying it in practice:

what could happen is that Google takes Android closed source from here on out, spinning off whatever remains of AOSP up until that point into a separate company or project… This technically means “AOSP is not going away”,

From the author, a sentiment I fully agree with:

If in 2025 you still take statements from big tech based on best intentions, you’re a fool.