Literal Hostage Situation

https://feddit.org/post/15784373

Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can’t share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can’t video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.

I have WhatsApp on Android and have restricted its access to my photos. Every time I want to share an image I need to first select which new photos I want to give Whatsapp access to, then select the photos again to send them. Next time I tap to share an image I won’t see any new photos in the options no matter how many new photos are in my gallery.

I can also share to Whatsapp from my gallery, which will prompt again the permission for this individual photo thing. Same.

maybe they’re serving different versions of the app to different regions or something. I am 100% sure this doesn’t work for me.
Preload vs play store version?
play store. what’s preload?
So a mini oems load on versions of apps from and other developers as preloads on the phone so they are there day one when you first launch the OS. These versions of the apps are not subject to Play store policy restrictions around permissions and other data privacy things, and are generally far more privacy invasive than their Play store equivalents. I usually advise people to disable or uninstall preloaded versions as much as possible and try to get the Play store versions instead.