They’re mods of the proprietary Discord client, so yeah they don’t meet the criteria. But the mods themselves are open source which is nice.

Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV’s, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon’s, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.

Pretty much unfortunately. The good thing is its trivially easy to change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield or Google TV devices, plus you can even go a step forward and debloat them entirely with ADB. Amazon’s really the only manufacturer I’d say that forces home screen ads with no choice around it, since they actively prevent changing launchers and such. But Apple is probably the only one out of the box with no advertising.

If you have the money, I’d go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.

Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.

You can easily change launchers on the Shield and remove all of Google’s nonsense through ADB as well though, unlike Amazon who locks down the OS very tight. Plus like another commenter said, you can just flat out install LineageOS and you’re good.

I prefer Calyx on my phone, for the sake of the extra privacy of Micro-G vs sandboxed Google Play Services.

You should give DivestOS a try tbh if you prefer microG to Sandboxed Play Services, since Divest’s implementation of microG is sandboxed/unprivileged unlike Calyx’s, which is a massive privacy and security benefit. Divest in general is a lot more private and secure then stock or Calyx, since it includes a lot of hardening and patches from Graphene, so I’d recommend it as the second best option to Graphene in general, and definitely by far the best option for using microG. Divest also covers most of the same phones Calyx and Graphene do, unfortunately no Pixel Tablet support though.

(I’m not trying to shill Divest or anything btw lol, I just think its a great underrated project that deserves a lot more recognition and support than it has, and seems to fit your use case)

For microG (what I would recommend, since its much more private than regular GAPPS/full Play Services), you can just flash a LineageOS for microG build for your device instead of the official LineageOS. You can get them here. It covers the same devices that Lineage itself does. Same installation process, just using their files instead of Lineage’s.

DivestOS added optional support for unprivileged microG fairly recently, so its definitely usable.

They both should work, you won’t get notifications for Teams though unless you flash microG or GAPPS.

Not all of it is carrier related. I had an S21 unlocked (from US) and it still included Facebook and their garbage services, Netflix, OneDrive, etc. Also all of Samsung’s first party bloatware and nonsense is prevalent regardless. Not to mention Samsung selling data and their tracking, crippling your phone if you root it or install a custom OS (and in the US outright preventing it entirely), etc. Can’t recommend them or their phones at all, but its unfortunate because they have great hardware, just terrible software.

Is the culprit “firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com”?

Sensors and Network access aren’t on Stock Android unfortunately (though they should be!), only on other OSes like GrapheneOS and DivestOS atm. Everything else besides those 2 however is present on Stock.

Yeah, that’s what bothers me. Feels like people romanticize pre-Musk Twitter, when in reality, its always just been complete garbage. Musk’s Twitter is certainly worse in some ways, though that isn’t saying a lot.

Overall, Twitter just sucks. Use other platforms where possible.

I agree with you. Stock Android OSes include so much proprietary bloatware, spyware, and other garbage from OEMs and Google themselves, that its a pretty horrible experience. They don’t take privacy and security seriously at all, not even good from a usability perspective either most of the time imo, as it also leads to worse performance and battery life, etc. I would much rather use iOS over like any Stock version of Android, even despite the many problems of iOS.

Only way to make Stock Android somewhat usable is through removing what you can through ADB, but even that is far from ideal and won’t solve all of the issues.

Overall though, by far best option is to just use an alternate Android OS like Graphene, beats iOS or Stock Android any day. Though between iOS and Stock Android, if I had to pick, I’d easily choose iOS.

What shell would you recommend? 🤔

Side tangent but god, just unbelievable how an app like YouTube would ever be a system app on Stock that you can’t just uninstall without needing to go through hoops like ADB. Samsung includes so much fuckery on their variants of Android, but to be fair, I believe even on stock Pixels, YouTube is a system app as well, so can’t even entirely blame them for this case. Still unacceptable and insane to me.

Stock Android just sucks, can’t see myself ever going back to it unless I absolutely had to. Props to you for making it work.

I think you missed my point, I’m not applauding Apple for doing the bare minimum, and to be clear, I think you absolutely raise fair points, I’m just pointing out that its ridiculous to claim that Apple intentionally allows Pegasus to happen, which is absurd based off the fact they make efforts to patch its vulnerabilities whenever they pop up, add features like Lockdown Mode, and even warn people who could be impacted. Could they do better to be proactive against exploits? Sure, definitely seems like they have room for improvement, but that’s not the same thing as what the person I replied to had implied by acting like Apple intentionally allowed Pegasus to work and was complicit with it.

I usually use Signal.

But, seriously… 3 (known) years later and Apple doesn’t have a fix for this?

Almost as if it’s intentionally unpatched

Pegasus constantly adapts, evolves, and changes overtime with how it works. Pegasus 3 years ago isn’t the same as Pegasus today. Once a vulnerability is discovered and fixed, they find a new one to exploit and take advantage of. Its a constant battle.

I’m not a big fan of Apple at all, but credit where its due, they have made a pretty good effort to patch Pegasus vulnerabilities whenever they come about, plus have added features like Lockdown Mode to help protect against it even further, etc. This article is literally about Apple even warning journalists to be cautious of it.

Saying Apple is intentionally allowing Pegasus to happen, like you’re claiming, is honestly laughable with all things considered.

There isn’t much worth responding to in your wall of label-dodging sophistry.

What are you still trying to insinuate by this? Why can’t you just accept the fact that we have different opinions and there’s nothing wrong with that, instead of accusing me of “label-dodging sophistry” or whatever else you can come up with. I never personally attacked you or your politics at all, so its just hard for me to understand why you’re being like this. It isn’t that deep. You’re just treating me like I went out of my way to shit on you or your politics, when I never did, my point was completely irrelevant of any political belief I or you may have, unlike what you keep trying to frame it as.

Politics exist, “bullshit” to you or not. Almost everything imaginable has political context and connections even if you plug your ears and make loud noises.

Wow, I didn’t realize I said politics didn’t exist, thanks for informing me of that. Is there anything else I never said that I should know about?

Like no shit, of course politics exist, and sure, a lot of things in life are political, but usually not to this extent that they are currently, and some people just want an escape from it through places like a general memes community that has nothing to do with politics in nature, that’s all I was trying to say. People have a right to criticize or be annoyed by that, that was my point, but you can’t seem to comprehend that.

You’re not sorry. Spare me the Reddit cliches.

FWIW I do genuinely feel bad for having to respond this way to you, I’m perfectly open to talking to people with different perspectives or opinions than I have, but instead you chose to make a bad faith comment attacking me and completely twisting what I said, it’s unfortunate.

I don’t think you’re willing to leave your bubble and see that the world is larger and more intersectionally connected than your selfish whining about how the world other people inhabit isn’t as comfortably easy for you to ignore anymore.

I think you base your entire life off of your political beliefs and can’t understand that others don’t feel the same way. It isn’t that hard to understand.