The UK government is giving Apple and Google three months to build on-device scanning infrastructure. This isn’t about child safety; it’s about the end of private devices and the death of the “nothing to hide” fallacy.
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It’s never been about protecting children, that’s how it’s been sold to the people who aren’t paying attention. That always works, that or “terrorism”.
Prompt people to fear for their kids, or fear other people, and they can be manipulated. Fear and anger are much stronger than love and compassion, unfortunately.
That always works, that or “terrorism”.
Seems like a good place to leave this link. For those who haven’t seen it,
Timothy May, 1988, the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.
Fun fact. Timothy May was also the guy who discovered in 1979 that low level radiation was causing memory errors in computers.
We’re moving towards a world where everyone has an approved device for official purposes and anyone who wants privacy has a second Linux/alternate android OS device for everything else 😬
Nah they can get fucked altogether. I dont need their one.
There was never a better moment for linux to shine than now. C’mon smart people, do something for the dumb stupid generic user. An actual good usable linux distro for phones, bring back firefox os.
There was never a better moment for linux to shine than now.
Maybe so. Maybe so.
But I’m not so sure there is a long term tech solution. It’s a political problem. Ultimately, if the gov requires let’s say a trust attestation for the use of web sites, they will have to comply, or leave the market. Sure, you can run Linux. But now you can’t use it to bank, to shop, to access gov services, to pay your bills… If they push hard enough, even mundane shit like get a weather forecast or w/e. Google would already love this. It locks everybody in.
A gov can make life VERY difficult for noncompliance, by leaning on the things you want to do. Sometimes, a site that isn’t local like a bank can say, fine, we’ll leave that market. But the bigger the market, the less they wanna do that. What happens if the US follows the UK into this? And then Australia or Japan piles on? Plus, some things are local by definition. Like your bank. If it’s required to block non-trusted (I threw up in my mouth a little bit…) devices, it will have to do that.
I’m not sure Linux can save us. Maybe it can buy us a little time. But in the end, this needs a political solution. Not a tech one.
There will be two forms of the internet. One will be the clearnet, where everything is monitored and controlled, and the other will be Tor and I2P, where you still have freedom to be an actual person. Also, mesh networks like MeshCore and Reticulum.
The internet can be gated because it requires you connecting to central infrastructure and a central operator has to assign you an address where something like reticulum requires no central authority because it’s based on public-private keys and so anybody can connect to the network permissionlessly
problem is most smart people are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to work for big tech. If open source can start paying developers the same then we’ll start to see competition
Story about that. A while ago I sent a $$ contribution to an OSS author who’d built an app I liked for Linux.
He wrote me back. He said mine was the only donation he’d got in the past 2 years.
That’s the life of many OSS authors. And yah like you say, the top programmers can go get 1-300K’s of dollars or euros or w/e working for big tech.
Many core linux contributions in the kernel or w/e do come from highly paid programmers at big tech co’s. So there is that. But run of the mill programs and apps that are still useful day to day, many of those are done for no money.
The number of apps people created to make something more convenient for themselves and then decided to share with the community is very high.
I’d argue that everything big tech produced in this last decade with all that expensive workforce is somewhat unnecessary. If I have a 2026 Linux computer with the capabilities of a 2016s win/mac, I am totally fine and I can do everything I want to do with it.
What the hell is this take. Firstly your cooling the average user dumb which is just kinda rude and untrue, Also developers are working really hard to build the best possible Linux experience for everyone. how about you actually chip in before shaming them for not working hard enough. And Linux is already user friendly enough for most people, arguably more user friendly than windows. People just want to stick to what they know, also vendor lock in, and most people don’t know how to install Linux and will just use the default operating system. I don’t think Linux devs can do anything to fix any of those problems.
Chill out, dude. Drink some water. I don’t know how the hell you got offended by my comment. I pointed out this is a perfect opportunity for another phone os to popup (hopefully linux based) in a jokey way, even calling us users stupid (look up “c’mon, do your thing/do something”. I can’t believe you’ve never came across this meme before). I never said devs aren’t doing enough, you assumed that. Linux user friendly enough for most people? The most trivial thing for you can be really complex for others without experience. First time you can’t fix something exclusively using the UI, people will bail. Users need to be able to solve things intuitively. “touch button, thing happen”. There isn’t anything intuitive about opening terminal to install an app from the repository because the default app store version is broken. This is where you’re right: people will stick to what’s familiar. Someone bought a pc that came with Linux and gave it a try. Installed google chrome and it wasn’t loading videos, looked up quickly how to fix it and the first link, or even a chatbot, told them to open the terminal and type a bunch of nonsense. User will close the browser and ask a cousin or whatever to install Windows for them because they just wanted to watch youtube while studying (even though the steps for the fix were just copy/paste). And you missed the point confusing enthusiasts with regular users. Nobody will need to learn how to install an os that comes by default on the phone, but no company will want to ship a phone with an os that doesn’t have potential or a big userbase of enthusiasts (those are the ones that will learn how to install Linux). Android started as a startup that showed something with potential before eventually being bought. Graphene os, despite being based on Android, is growing well, so much so that they partnered with Motorola to ship enterprise phones with it installed. It’s just silly to think there is nothing the community can do. People created amazing stuff before, and will do it again when some feel like it.
Sorry, I didn’t catch on to the embedded sarcasm part. Anyhow back to arguing.
Linux user friendly enough for most people? The most trivial thing for you can be really complex for others without experience.
I have seen windows users use macOS for the first time and vise versa. Neither windows or macOS are intuitive. What do you mean you have to open a browser and download an exe file and then open it (said some macOS user)? Why does your window snapping barely work? (said some windows user) I’d say a first time user would consider linux more intuitive than either macos or windows.
There isn’t anything intuitive about opening terminal to install an app from the repository because the default app store version is broken.
Yeah this is true, kinda funny when people use chatgpt for help and the first thing it always says is open terminal.
And to be fare just last night I installed fedora on some laptop with an old fedora 42 iso and I tried to update it to fedora 44 using the gui software manager and it just didn’t work. I ended up updating in the terminal.
At what point do we stop carrying around a phone? Or should I call it the snitch in my pocket.
Nah, just remove Google from your phone.
Or buy one that already has done that. Costs a few hundred
Good thing Android doesn’t include Google by default
I dont think that will last much longer. We have to work harder on linux phones
How? Android is open source. You can just fork it
Ok you fork it and create a FOSS mobile OS. If it was that easy we would already have alternatives. The core is open source but google has been and is trying it’s best to slowly take over the OS. I’m honestly not very knowledgeable about android so I don’t remember the exact details.
We don’t need to, because AOSP works great.
graphene is the way
Absolutely not, it is currently but they are built on googles platform and devices.
Linux phone is what we want
linux is not secure enough to be a phone lol
if cops arrest you and its not fully turned off and encrypted with luks youre boned, and look at all the current devices supported for linux, its basically just the very expensive pine or fair phone. older pixels are fairly easy to buy in poorer countries.
then theres postmarketos which has the far larger selection of devices but most of these are quite old at this point. not to mention it uses far more resources and will drain your battery 10-20% faster
I think the goal being to get linux to where it needs to be is better than it being a variation of a google product.
It is not out of the realm of possibility if gOS got a decent market share that google could get some bullshit corrupt court to block or take it over.
They have said AOSP wont bave the third party blocking but it very much could be forced through. What then gOS stays on an old AOSP?
idk why you think its somehow a much more monumental task to support something that already works (re:gos and aosp) vs building something entirely from scratch
linux needs to focus on becoming as secure as aosp/gos first before even considering being on a phone
I didnt say it was a more difficult task, I think it has more risk and involves aggressive third parties.
Well marceline by the time a new generation of GOS security update guarantees elapses (7-8 years) maybe you can all have Chinese phones in Mexico
The UK government is giving Apple and Google three months to build on-device scanning infrastructure.
Nothing has gone through parliament yet. That’s not to say that a majority of twats couldn’t be found there. But crucially I think this is not something a floundering PM can decree on his own authority. So far this threat is about as believable as any statement by the incumbent American president on Iran.
ultimatum: build device-level scanning to detect “illegal images” or we’ll pass laws to force your hand.
As if Google and Apple wouldn’t be more than happy to do this, if they aren’t already.
The amount of stuff their LLMs must’ve seen by now.
This post is acrid; I’m venting. You’ll probably feel attacked.
I’d like a serious answer, but I’ll probably will only get replies from petulant adult-children though. That’s not a provocative jab; it’s a statement of disgust. The whole consumer side of tech is largely adult-children who fail to take any responsibility. This isn’t even new. From day dot commercial software vendors have been exploiting you.
the market only has two offerings: Google’s Android and Apple’s <whatever their mobile-computer O.S. is called>
Does no one see an issue with this? A duopoly? It’s not even one market in one country, it’s nearly a duopoly on a global scale.
get mad at increasing surveillance by surveillance companies (Google, Apple, et al.)
scream at internet, for the Nth time
Just don’t use them.
but my Discord my Bank apppppp~
You’re all willingly giving up your autonomy whilst crying about it. Why? Just why? The alternatives aren’t good enough for your pampered ass? Stick an external battery to the pinephone and suddenly it lasts for two days.
That’s too goofy; what would my friends think of me?
Install GrapheneOS on models that support it.
Too many buttons to click; it should all be done for me. Waaaaaa~
Too hard to escape the Google/Apple ecosystem
Are you all for real? Pressing buttons on your computer is too hard? Holy shit.
Apple and some (most? All?) androids already do this…
May I see some evidence for that?
https://www.deseret.com/business/2026/06/10/apple-releases-new-parental-controls/
In addition to existing software that blurs nudity in messages and FaceTime calls, which is turned on by default for users younger than 18
Thanks for taking the time to respond. It helped me understand because the ops linked article is an incomprehensible rambling blog post by someone who should be prescribed ai writing tools to improve their output.
As far as I can tell there is no automated reporting in either sensitive content warning or safety core (the android version, which sounds like a music genre) by design and scw is off by default unless you’re a child account and sc is on by default(? Not actually sure about this one, all the Android kid parents I know use third party systems instead of the built in stuff so I’ve literally never seen it in a default state). Which is what I assumed you meant when you said they both already do that.
It’s crazy that they’re trying to shift the enforcement of their age verification law to the device os. Hard to think of a precedent for that!
Oh yeah, the article is written by someone short on facts and large on mouth-foam
The biggest thing for me with this story (in general, not the article linked above) is that it shows how woefully out of touch the UK government is -issuing an ultimatum to phone manufacturers to implement measures which were implemented years ago
No wonder they’re gearing up to give s defence contract to Musk and our health data to Thiel
The UK PM has just announced an under-16 social media ban.
This is the ‘Trojan Horse’ in action. You cannot enforce a ban without an Age Verification layer, and you can’t have Age Verification without a National Digital ID or biometric database. They are using the ‘child safety’ card to build a mandatory surveillance gate for the entire internet.
Between the new taxes and the constant bans, it’s clear this government has zero respect for personal agency or digital sovereignty. If you aren’t already moving your data off the cloud and into your own home lab, start now. The gap between our current society and a total surveillance state just got a whole lot smaller.
