Google is no better, just easier to get around their cuckery for now. Supporting them is not the answer, we need better solutions.
Bowing to Apple's tyranny is not a solution either. Nor is censoring a Nostr economy because someone with money said so.
I think thatโs a point worth developing though. There is no โbetter option.โ Google is not our friend, and buying an Android phone contributes directly to Googles bottom line, whether you put Graphene on it or not. It still signals to the market that Android sells phones and makes Google money.
There have been several attempts to make a compelling alternative and *every single one has failed*. The last example I even considered having a shot at success was Ubuntu Phone, and itโs dead.
PinePhone was never more than a tinkererโs device.
There has to be a *compelling alternative* before it matters. Android is open source the same way Darwin is open source. Nobody actually uses it in an open fashion except some freaks like us. 99% of them are just using Google Play.
The open ecosystem will never have a chance until they produce something more compelling than the closed ones do. Openness is not enough for most people, and all we have to do is look at the current state of politics in most of the world for proof of that.
Do what do we do about it?
Yes. Thatโs the thing isnโt it? What do we do about it. The issue as far as I see it, is social, not technological.
Nostr has the same problem that everywhere has. 99% of people are bad at planning. They want to have shiny right now for the money. They donโt want to pay for something they may or may not get in the future.
It took both Apple and Google years of time and billions of dollars to get where they are today. Thatโs why the 1% are rich. Risk tolerance and delayed gratification.
Relays and clients here are not financially feasible. People want it for free. So weโre already humoring the idea of ads.
The most popular Linux distributions are corporately supported.
So are all the biggest open source libraries and packages.
See the pattern here?
Society has to be willing to invest in itself before a societally free product will exist. Iโve been saying it for ages, including in my recent article. People really have no right to complain unless they are in the small minority of folks who actually fund these things with more than a pittance. Plenty of them are here, but there just isnโt a critical mass to support the work sustainably. We have 18,000 active weekly users (Nostr.band stat). Apple has 1.2 Billion people funding them. Itโs a systemic problem.
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The reason these big corporations pull this shit is because we let them. And everyone wants to beat the war drums when something fucked up happens, but forget about supporting the little guy when the shiny toy is easy. This is echoed through history.
Degoogled Android is more censorship resistant than iOS. This is because users can download and install apks directly or use alternative app stores like Fdroid. In the specific case of defending ones right to send zaps, android as lf today is better than iOS. It's not perfect. But this specific of censorship in the Apple store, highlights that at the very least Android is a more robust option for censorship resistance.
Just use desktop clients?
Desktop is definitely more free, but my criticism also applies to Linux vs. everything else.
Itโs not a criticism of the project or the people either. Itโs a criticism of society that produces these corporate behemoths.
The world is just people. Peopleโs behavior created these things.
