this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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[–] nottheengineer@feddit.de 306 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Enshittification spares no one.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 71 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Happens when you don't have competition. (Except to steam seemingly)

[–] niels@lemmy.world 150 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The difference is that Valve is privately owned. They don't have to please a board of shareholders who want to see the platform milked for the slightest increase in profit margins.

[–] dismalnow@kbin.social 107 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Bingo. Enshittification is mostly confined to companies that have gone public or whose sole aspiration is to do so quickly.

It shifts responsibility from satisfying customers/users to satisfying shareholders (who are never satisfied).

You can build the perfect product and ride a gravy train as a private company in relative perpetuity. As a corporation, you're just going to strive for perpetually increasing profits on a quarterly basis with no real care or focus past that

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We need more companies like that, then.

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For that you need passionate people who are wealthy and not primarily driven to acquire more wealth. That seems to be very rare in large scale businesses.

[–] gjghkk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It isn't wealth that breaks or makes it. The system, and in this case the shareholding system makes it or breaks it. Valve owner Gabe is insanely rich (in the billions I assume) yet, because the system he put up, it is consumer friendly.

The system is the one, not the people.

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[–] ultrasquid@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago

Steam has some competition, its just that said competition never took off because Steam is so much better.

[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

(Except to steam seemingly)

For now. I'm curious what'll happen when Gabe eventually retires.

We also can't ignore the fact that the Steam Marketplace is a hellhole and the origin of a lot of today's microtransaction hell.

If you buy all your games on one platform then you're thoroughly fucked if it turns heel.

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[–] Alivrah@lemmy.world 132 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A single row of ads would be ok, but having this many plus an ad showing up first, where the search results should be... Oof

[–] Sheltac@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (8 children)

No it wouldn’t. Phones aren’t cheap.

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[–] shrugal@lemmy.world 71 points 1 year ago (10 children)
[–] XEAL@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Aside of the lack of ads, I now depend on Aurora Store for batch app updates because the cocksuckers at Google Play have allowed devs to force app version updates even when you have disabled automatic updates for that specific app.

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[–] sagrotan@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (17 children)

One word: F-Droid! I'm literally only searching there for Apps first, often I find it. Send them some love, if you can afford it! Wouldn't know how to watch YouTube anymore without New Pipe and stuff, listening to music via ViMusic, all ad-free. https://f-droid.org/en/

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[–] puddlexplorer@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks to Lemmy, my phone went full FOSS. Always go full FOSS.

[–] Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It's great that you can't unlock the bootloader to install graphene on carrier bought devices 👍

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

In Canada, carriers are required to only sell unlocked phones for the past several years.

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[–] illectrility@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago (11 children)
[–] albert@lemmy.sysctl.io 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am so glad F-Droid exists. For the apps I need that aren't there (Steam and Blizzard authenticator for 2FA) Aurora has been a godsend

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[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 52 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Luckily I only have F-Droid on mine.

[–] Alivrah@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

What, no love for the Ad Store?

[–] ratz@chatsubo.hiteklolife.net 24 points 1 year ago

This ad has features you may not like

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[–] Cyyy@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago (5 children)

it got worse and worse over the last 1-2 years. this days you can't even open an app description page on desktop anymore. you search for the name...and you can't click on the app listing. it just gives you the option to install on your phone but not to read the store page. you only get to it by searching on Google for it. and the mobile app is like you said shit too. often you can't even find an app and get random ads for other shitty apps.

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[–] kibiz0r@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I mean, it’s Google. What did you expect? Android is free because having it on a ton of cheap phones helps Google collect data and sell ads.

Side-rant:

Apple’s got plenty of problems and anti-consumer behavior, too, don’t get me wrong… but it’s incredible how far they’re able to enforce privacy, down to the hardware level, while still giving devs almost the same level of control over OS features as Android.

Like, look at how ARKit does point cloud sharing vs ARCore. iOS limits sharing scanned AR environments to peer-to-peer local connections, and it’s a totally opaque object. Android meanwhile uploads your scanned room to a Google server, and the privacy terms for that data are the same as the ones for Youtube, search, maps, etc.

It drives me crazy how many FOSS nerds will rail against Facebook’s data collection and chokepoint capitalism, but then go on to praise Android for standing up to that no-good Apple. They hear “I can sideload apps” and they drop all of their recent cynicism about why they’re getting nifty stuff at a hefty discount.

[–] snor10@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

I mean, FOSS nerds run android de-googled (or more specifically never install google services on a custom ROM).

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've lost all of my faith in mobile gaming ecosystem ever since I saw that talk of the two guys that created a bot for generating and uploading as many slot machine games to the playstore as possible, just generic pull a lever, see an ad and that's it, based on a random keyword like "owl slot machine" or "bathtub sloth machine" with pictures pulled from google images, that let the bot run for a few months and then found out that they made literally thousands of dollars of ad money.

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[–] rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

Wait, what? A shitty Google product? Plagued by ads and spyware? No way!

As others have pointed out here, use Aurora Store or F-Droid.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I like how like 10 years ago everyone went crazy about the apps. It seemed like you could have an app for everything, and everyone was enthusiastic about it. Nowadays I only open Play Store when I am in the need of specific utility, or to buy some classic RPG/other game ported to Android.

Most of the stuff in the store is just unusable shit.

And we need a store with actual quality apps (with no micro transactions, and being reviewed by people who care about usability), because certainly Google Play is not a good source for them.

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[–] Pietrasagh@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Try out Aurora Store. Just started testing it. Looks and works similar to play store but without adds. You ~~can login with~~ should not use your main google account.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/

/edit/

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[–] Vlhacs@reddthat.com 33 points 1 year ago

I'm not exactly sure when it started, but Play Store now has "Limited time events" that further block what I'm actually looking for. I don't give a damn about some gacha/loot box promotion some soulless pay2win app is advertising, I just want to browse for apps I might like.

[–] d3Xt3r@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The Play Store peaked back when it was still called Android Market (which I still reckon is a better name). DAE remember this?

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[–] Anders429@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Just be glad you're on Android and have alternatives to this. Poor Apple users are stuck with whatever Apple decided to do with the app store.

[–] fearout@kbin.social 72 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago

Can confirm on my own device. Only ad in sight is for two dots itself at the top ... I kept scrolling looking for one and didn't see any.

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[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ads Hey, I see tou took a screenshot, check out this screenshot tool you might like.

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Ads One last thing, since your battery is less that 50%, you might like this Ankor battery pack.

Anyway, what's the big deal?

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[–] emanresu@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Anyone got any of that Linux phone

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[–] Bishma@social.fossware.space 22 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I didn't appreciated the FDroid UX until Google app designers lost their damn minds. Now it makes me feel relief.

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[–] zozosticot@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] Rawsark@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 year ago

We've all seen how movies depicted the future. Full of advertisement, even in kids show like Walle

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