Android is almost dead

The clock is ticking for Android as a (somewhat) open platform.

If you are running Android 8 or higher, a virus has been installed on your device and is silently awaiting remote activation. Over the past few months, devices around the world have been infected with this novel strain, with as many as 4 billion Android handsets and tablets estimated to have already been contaminated, meaning that around half of all humanity may be at risk from this threat.

Disguising itself as the innocuously-titled Android Developer Verifier" (ADV) process, this trojan horse runs surreptitiously in the background as a system service with full root privileges, quietly awaiting an activation signal. The service cannot be blocked, disabled, or removed. Unlike a commonplace bit of malware, this extraordinary strain won't be detected and neutralized by Play Protect (the malware scanning and remediation service that is installed on all Android Certified devices). In fact, Play Protect is itself the vector through which this virus is transmitted and installed.

That is because it is Google themselves who is propagating ADV. And once activated, this malevolent process has exactly one goal: to block you from running software by developers who haven't been approved centrally by Google.

The F-Droid news website

If nobody steps up, if no regulator takes on Google in this matter, we could very well be looking at the end of F-Droid and similar open source application repositories on Android. I use F-Droid, and in fact, one of the most important and most-used application on my Pixel 10 Pro comes from F-Droid: Fennec. This Firefox fork is not available through any Google-sanctioned means, and I could just wake up one day and have the browser on what is supposed to be my phone stop working.

Age verification, tying crucial services to iOS and Google Android, killing the ability to install your own software on your phone, purposefully making people hopelessly addicted to and dependent on AI", and so much more - we're facing a multi-pronged attack designed to beat us into submission and give up on the idea of Free computing. I have to admit I've lost all hope we'll be able to win this battle, as the combined interests of technology megacorporations and our own governments are just too powerful to fight.

I feel like we're living in the computing end times.