just downloaded fdroid for the first time in a while. it seems incredibly developer hostile. this "anti-feature" thing has its heart in the right place but it seems like software purity culture cranked to 11.
- communicating with a non-open source endpoint (a podcast app got dinged for this because it uses the iTunes index)
- auto check for updates
- links to closed-source apps
there are valid reasons for all these things. an app should not be dinged for it. if it's truly bad, take it down.
all of those anti features are nerd things that don't matter. i did this in my freshman year of college, it's sort of a play on apple's “privacy nutrition label" thing but for dark patterns.
this would be wayyyy more valuable than what they currently do, which is slap a label on a listing with “the upstream source code includes proprietary software”
@samhenrigold TBH, I wish something like this was mandatory per #ConsumerProtection laws in my juristiction.
Maybe @Bundesregierung 's @bmuv & @Bundesverband can consider working towards criminalizing and outlawing #DarkPatterns!
@kkarhan I don’t think legislating the issue away is the right move. This is a VERY fluid thing — either a law is written to ban a certain type of pattern and companies work around it, or the law is overly blunt and vague that companies become too sensitive and end up pulling their apps from the EU to avoid dealing with it.
The way forward is almost certainly education. That’s the only surefire way to address it at the root.
@[email protected] In spite of these valid criticisms of @[email protected] , you can at least add your own repos (like @[email protected] for #Orbot, a #Torification-proxy so you can toot over @[email protected] / #Tor ... And I'd take #FDroid over #GooglePlay or god forbid #Huawei #AppGallery any day!
@samhenrigold I think both are key:
Just like a lot of #US Services have already been unavailable for refusing to comply with laws (i.e. #CashApp & #Venmo don't comply with #KYC & #AML) and a lot of things are banned in the #USA under the veil of "#ConsumerProtection (i.e. #KinderSurprise, unwashed eggs & non-chlorinated chicken despite being scientifically better) ...
sam henri gold
Kevin Karhan 
Eva Chanda