> If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.

Even more worrying is the inverse of this - if Google and/or Apple decide for whatever reason they don't want a relationship with you (aka they ban you for no reason) - you are completely screwed

I don't own a phone, but the most shocking revelation came when my child's school required us to use an app to specify how our children will be picked up or ride the bus.

So far I've been able to avoid using apps for pretty much anything, but when the school says "use an app or you won't get your kids" and then also say they will call CPS and have your kids seized if you don't get them in time, that puts you in a real fucked up situation.

The danger is when solutions that are convenient, but require giving up some sort of freedom, are made mandatory even for those who would like to stay free. I hope this is a lesson we avoid having to learn the hard way.

I have done some backpacking these past two years, and it is worrying how easy it is to get into big trouble if you lose your phone or payment cards.

As an example, my debit card got eaten by an ATM on my way to Argentina, and after my 6 month travel, the backup credit card I had brought was about to expire.

Despite my card working as a means of payment, I was starting to feel the effects of this corner case in every aspect of modern life. I could not use our equivalent of cashapp, I assume because my card was about to expire. I could not ride public transit, or trains, or do things like book a yoga class with my friends, all because all these institutions basically only let you interact with their service through their apps, where I had no way to pay.

I spent some time visiting friends in the capitol on my way home, and tried to sort the situation out with my bank. They thankfully were able to order some new cards to their office, rather than to my home address. But immediately after my talk with them I found that my one remaining card had been cancelled.

Then I tried bringing my passport to withdraw some cash, but the bank teller almost laughed at me, before explaining that you can't just do that anymore. The bank isn't even allowed to let you get your money in cash and leave. You can get bits of it in bills at the ATM for a fee the price of a coffee, but also that requires a card, of course.

Electronic payment solutions are so convenient, for the public and for institutions, for law enforcement and control, that we've forgotten how much we need to give up in order to use them, and now they're being made mandatory as we trudge along into a cashless society.

Now I couldn't even get food or shelter, if not for my friends. I remember half stumbling out of the bank with my passport in my hand, half dizzy with shock and anger. This, along with lots of other small mishaps like losing my phone and encountering trouble, kind of radicalized me on these topics.

Add "can't participate in society without agreeing to user-hostile Terms of Service clauses, such as indemnities, behavior profiling, and opted-in marketing subscriptions."

It's amazing where those dark patterns are cropping up (government services, SPCA, etc).

To me the point where the law needs to intervene is the bank or the school. You need a bank to function--that means the bank should be prohibited by law from tying you to an app from a particular company, whether it's Google or Apple or anyone else. You should be able to access their functions using any client that supports the appropriate open standards (such as web browsers).

Similarly, if the school is going to have control over your kids, the school should be prohibited by law from requiring you to use an app that's tied to a particular company. They should be required to provide you functional access using any client that supports the appropriate open standards.

> "can't participate in society without an apple or google account".

Wow. You nailed it. Thank you.

When desktop operating systems were dominant, the need for the freedom to control your own software installation was beyond obvious.

But now our phones are an even more dominant/necessary computing/communication tool.

Apple and Google's appeal to security is such a fig leaf. They can continue to lock down our phones, add even more security.

BUT, simply provide a way for users to mindfully bypass that. They could make the pass through screen as scary as they feel they need to. That's it.

(If they did that, customer pressure would naturally build over time, for less draconian warnings, as other verifiably/clearly responsible sources became popular.

Another benefit. Apple would soon put its considerable resources competing to delivering the most robust security of a more valuable kind. The kind that enforces the walls between unpermissioned/dark behavior without limiting desired behavior and innovation. That would create healthier quality-loyalty based "lock in" that their vertical integration and high focus DNA already gives them advantages to "win".)

I think it is kind of levels:

"can't participate in society without a mobile phone" "can't participate in society without internet" "can't participate in society without google"

not sure where is the logical correct threshold making it wrong. because we all accept maybe people not participating without internet.

This is one of the things I wish the EU would intervene. Requiring a smartphone and an app should be illegal for corps of a specific size and for public entities (see school example above/below).

You can use the majority of the banking apps without a Google Account on an Android through the Aurora Store:

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

I've tried it, it works.

With Apple, it's all far worse. On iOS, I've discovered that even some preinstalled premium apps, like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie, don't work unless you add an Apple Account to the system.

But with Android, it's relatively easy to set it up without any accounts, through Chrome, F-Droid, Aurora Store. (And I usually uninstall Chrome after installing F-Droid, too.)

Thanks. This matters a lot to me. I focus on it from the angle of not owning a smartphone, but it's even more urgent from your perspective. I want businesses to understand that some number of people, in order to avoid toxic behavior patterns involving social media or doom-scrolling, find a dumbphone to be the healthiest choice for themselves. And yet, the places you cannot park your car, the airlines you cannot fly on, the events you cannot attend... all because you don't have an app.

I do think the personal mental health angle matters a lot, but it adds urgency to consider school, banking, etc being dependent on private company memberships.

My local gym did something wonderful. They retained a keyfob-based access system instead of using an app, specifically because the owner knew "someone's going to have a dumbphone and complain they can't get in."

Having either Google or Apple should not be an obligation to any human being and governments should do whatever is in their power to allow us to continue operating basic services without them. It should be as simple as that. So all companies that choose the "app" way must also offer a possible equal or better webapp solution for their customers.

I also don't like the push towards accounts with google / apple etc or using apps to do everything, or the walled gardens that are the apple and google app stores.

To play the devil's advocate though, hasn't this always been the case when new technology gains widespread adoption? e.g. going backwards in time, at some point not having an email address wasn't a big hinderance, nor was not having a phone number etc. Telcos got regulated, maybe that's the next step for google, apple etc.

+1 on this. This is a privacy tie in sale. You buy product x, but after the buy it turns out it only works when you also accept the terms and conditions of product y.

Normally tie in sales are illigal, but because it happens in the digital world, we/they fail to notice...

Its banks, but also government and health (the dutch digi-d app), food markets, schools, more and more

If there is a EU DMA, where is an independent app store?

If you live outside the US, it's even worse with WhatsApp.

If for whatever reason you dislike WhatsApp, you just can't also be a society's functioning member.

Some companies have decided to deprecate email and phone support and only have a WhatsApp chat, potentially with AI slop. I've had to discontinue my services with some of these companies because of that.

Even some government services are going through WhatsApp; I've had to be there in person, among senior citizens just because of their tech choices.

I pretty much vouch for "vote with your wallet," but I am running out of alternatives.

This.

I really liked Huawei phones and I wanted to keep using them after the US forced them to part with Google, but after doing some research and finding out some of the everyday things I wouldn't be able to do due to not having the Google Play Services (I'm not even talking about not having a Google account!), I just gave up.

Being disadvantage and not able to own multiple phones for different purposes is a problem.

The main issue is we’re not there today and it’s not obvious what that world looks like.

We all had junk drawers of useless charging cables, everyone agreed it was stupid, hence a universal charging connector standard along with the promise that the charger junk drawers will be freed.

Even if we mandate the “POSIX of smart phones”, for lack of a better term, what problem today, for everyday users, does it solve? It might even make interactions with various government technology worse as that API will likely only be begrudgingly supported, which won’t win any hearts or minds.

Basically until you have a one line slogan that most people can relate to which, and is a problem they have today, movement will be very slow.

Also, in the short term, if these various site are AI coded, and thus follow existing software patterns, expect this to get worse.

Can you make an argument as to how this is different from having to have an account with, say, your ISP?

I've been phoneless for 5 years, and I've experienced this too. I do have a google account, but I get occasionally locked out of it because I don't participate in 2FA. I fought my bank for nearly 5 months before they provided a code generating dongle to 2fa into there web portal. I had to stop using Amazon and EvilBay for exactly the same reasons.

If you think it's bad now, just wait until passkeys are ubiquitous and best practice is to only trust a small list of providers. The only way to prove you're human will be to prove that you're Google's human.

The only thing protecting you from this is a strong government.

Bur if you look around theres a lot of money going into defacing democracy and electing morons, by the same business forces.

You aint getting a fundamental freedom by individual contributors, the same way bitcoin is turning into a centralized scam bank.

Remember those naive days when everyone was scared about Big Government running their lives? Remember how the Free Market™, unimpeded by government interference, was going to ensure our personal freedoms were never compromised?

Good times.

Frankly I think it's a lost cause and sadly doesn't make sense to waste energy on it anymore. I eventually abandoned my de-googled phone exactly because I couldn't use my bank with it.

[dead]

> I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account".

This won't work out for you. It just turns into technically being able to, but it being practically impossible. In Sweden (i.e. basically your future), we're already there.

> I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app.

What’s the alternative? The bank sending out a debit card to anyone who calls up and says “I’m @kristov, trust me…”

You were not able to served by the standard path, because you couldn’t authenticate yourself via the standard mechanism. You still got service by an alternate path. No different from opting out of the airport scanner; it takes longer and is a little less convenient, but you still get service.