Ads upon ads upon ads
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Enshittification spares no one.
Happens when you don’t have competition. (Except to steam seemingly)
The difference is that Valve is privately owned. They don’t have to please a board of shareholders who want to see the platform milked for the slightest increase in profit margins.
We need more companies like that, then.
For that you need passionate people who are wealthy and not primarily driven to acquire more wealth. That seems to be very rare in large scale businesses.
It isn’t wealth that breaks or makes it. The system, and in this case the shareholding system makes it or breaks it. Valve owner Gabe is insanely rich (in the billions I assume) yet, because the system he put up, it is consumer friendly.
The system is the one, not the people.
Just leaving this here: Aurora Store
Aside of the lack of ads, I now depend on Aurora Store for batch app updates because the cocksuckers at Google Play have allowed devs to force app version updates even when you have disabled automatic updates for that specific app.
Since mobile gaming has died for me anyway, i have no reason to browse the store. For what I use it for, it’s fine. It has the apps i need and updates them.
Wait, what? A shitty Google product? Plagued by ads and spyware? No way!
As others have pointed out here, use Aurora Store or F-Droid.
A single row of ads would be ok, but having this many plus an ad showing up first, where the search results should be… Oof
No it wouldn’t. Phones aren’t cheap.
They can be. I bought a Galaxy s22 with a broken screen for $150, and my carrier just gave me an $1100 credit for it on a new iphone. I don’t need an iPhone, and I will be selling it to get yet another cheap phone and pocketing the money, but it goes to show just how much phones do not cost to the people producing them
Dam that’s a hilarious life hack lol.
I’m on a 12 Pro with no intentions of upgrading but when I go to I’m gonna try and find a new broken flagship to turn in too lmao.
Google is just a colorful façade. The insides of this bloated monstrosity is filled with ads and sellable user data. It needs to be put out of its misery.
It is an advertisement company after all :/
Yes, but the product they sell is You. They’re more like a pimp version of ad companies. But not the racist Hollywood type, you know: funny dressed black guy with a cylinder hat and a cane. No, this one wears wife beaters, takes showers once or twice a month and takes advantage of you every day, and still sells you to the lowest bidder…
Just be glad you’re on Android and have alternatives to this. Poor Apple users are stuck with whatever Apple decided to do with the app store.
Yes, Poor Apple Users are stuck with no ads at all! What a Shame
Yeah Apple doesn’t do this to the users whatsoever.
Poor Apple users kinda don’t have to deal with this shit
Can confirm on my own device. Only ad in sight is for two dots itself at the top … I kept scrolling looking for one and didn’t see any.
it got worse and worse over the last 1-2 years. this days you can’t even open an app description page on desktop anymore. you search for the name…and you can’t click on the app listing. it just gives you the option to install on your phone but not to read the store page. you only get to it by searching on Google for it. and the mobile app is like you said shit too. often you can’t even find an app and get random ads for other shitty apps.
It sounds like you’re browsing the web signed in to your Google account. Sign out and clear cookies, or go Incognito.
what has this to do with signed in our not? google does the same if you’re not logged in
Works well here. I just checked on desktop to be sure they have not broken it now - nope, I can browse apps normally.
maybe it depends on the region then. I’m in germany.
I like how like 10 years ago everyone went crazy about the apps. It seemed like you could have an app for everything, and everyone was enthusiastic about it. Nowadays I only open Play Store when I am in the need of specific utility, or to buy some classic RPG/other game ported to Android.
Most of the stuff in the store is just unusable shit.
And we need a store with actual quality apps (with no micro transactions, and being reviewed by people who care about usability), because certainly Google Play is not a good source for them.
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Linux is great! It’s such a zen environment.
Apple’s App Store has some ads. In my experience the first search result is always an ad, and every now and then the Today list features an ad. Not sure how much the normal data/results are skewed. It’s a store so you have to expect some kinda marketing tricks to sell you more. They tend to feature popular stuff.
It’s nowhere near as abhorrent as the post here.
I haven’t run into TikTok unless it has been featured or if it is the top result in the popular (free) apps chart. I wouldn’t dare searching for it 😆
I mean, it’s Google. What did you expect? Android is free because having it on a ton of cheap phones helps Google collect data and sell ads.
Side-rant:
Apple’s got plenty of problems and anti-consumer behavior, too, don’t get me wrong… but it’s incredible how far they’re able to enforce privacy, down to the hardware level, while still giving devs almost the same level of control over OS features as Android.
Like, look at how ARKit does point cloud sharing vs ARCore. iOS limits sharing scanned AR environments to peer-to-peer local connections, and it’s a totally opaque object. Android meanwhile uploads your scanned room to a Google server, and the privacy terms for that data are the same as the ones for Youtube, search, maps, etc.
It drives me crazy how many FOSS nerds will rail against Facebook’s data collection and chokepoint capitalism, but then go on to praise Android for standing up to that no-good Apple. They hear “I can sideload apps” and they drop all of their recent cynicism about why they’re getting nifty stuff at a hefty discount.
