>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.
when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
The Onion is actually making great money on its print edition. Having a real newspaper is a novelty these days, almost like it's part of the joke, and you should subscribe.
A number showing up in someone's SMS inbox and a government form explicitly pairing your name to your number with no retention policy are different data collection events.
Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM.
While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.
These posts get upvoted because the content itself is big news (government apps having insane amounts of spyware is, imo, something worth discussing.) I think if the frontend was just plain HTML/CSS, it would still get a comparable number of upvotes.
Brave has a feature (free) that lets you hit a button and literally remove every animation if you want.
The White House app tracker list comes directly from Exodus Privacy's independent audit, verifiable by anyone.
What the cards look like on mobile has nothing to do with it.
You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig.
I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs
the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
I've been thinking about this for a bit and there are a variety of reasons why it can be appealing for PMs to push for apps over webpages:
- No search competition, when you search on duckduckgo or google for the page a competitor can bid to show up, won't happen with an app.
- Notifications, this is a big one. We live in the attention economy and apps are more likely to slide into push notifications - with ads - than webpages.
- Some users have a mental model that more easily maps to "this app is my go to for this task" and struggle with webpages. That's a psychological and incentive issue. Apple support PWAs but just barely and don't like them because they don't partake in the 100 billion dollar revenue 30% payment processing extortion.
- More intrusive access and "better" targeted advertisement.
- Once an icon is on the home screen somewhere, chances are some users are going to use it because they notice the icon and would not have done so if it were just a tab inside the browser. The attention economy strikes again.
- Companies _love_ to build a relationship with customers. It's usually a very one sided and jealous relationship where getting the user to install an app is perceived as a step in that direction.
- Users are more willing to create accounts for apps than webpages (citation needed, this is just a gut feeling)
- On mainstream iOS and Android it's much harder to block ads in apps than it is in the browser.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those alone explain why we see them so often.
Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
It requires SSN or EIN -- almost all situations where you pay the government or they pay you require that as part of a law about enforcing federal debt collection.
There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also:
Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.
I put most of my apps into freezer (Realme phone) so they run only in foreground. Apparently my mobile operator uses their app to prevent sharing my mobile into a Wifi hotspot, my food delivery app pretended to be Amazon having an issue with a package etc.
Ahhhh the USA, we can do anything, but others cannot!
The duality of the Statunitians politician.
Folks kept saying Apple protect your data and what not, now folks have their entire phone scanned by Apple unless they prove they are adults by sending personal documents which are being breached left and right.
Sheesh... I should not have downloaded the White House app yesterday just to see how ludicrous it was. I just deleted it, though I'm sure a lot of my data has already been exfiltrated. Doesn't excessive tracking like this violate the App Store + Google Play's ToS?
[The White House app] ships with 3 embedded trackers including Huawei Mobile Services Core (yes, the Chinese company the US government sanctioned, shipping tracking infrastructure inside the sitting president's official app)
The executive branch has decided this company is so dangerous I can’t buy a monitor made by them - but it’s embedding its SDK in its official app?!
I realize the decision makers probably don’t even know it’s there - it was just added by whatever contractor built the app, but that’s arguably even worse.
And I have absolutely no doubt that if it was discovered in a political opponent’s app, and the administration wanted to harm them, there would be no compunction about using that fact against them.
42 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 55.9 ms ] threadwhen is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
It boggles. It truly does.
While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.
The White House app tracker list comes directly from Exodus Privacy's independent audit, verifiable by anyone. What the cards look like on mobile has nothing to do with it.
I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
[0] https://realfood.gov/
- No search competition, when you search on duckduckgo or google for the page a competitor can bid to show up, won't happen with an app.
- Notifications, this is a big one. We live in the attention economy and apps are more likely to slide into push notifications - with ads - than webpages.
- Some users have a mental model that more easily maps to "this app is my go to for this task" and struggle with webpages. That's a psychological and incentive issue. Apple support PWAs but just barely and don't like them because they don't partake in the 100 billion dollar revenue 30% payment processing extortion.
- More intrusive access and "better" targeted advertisement.
- Once an icon is on the home screen somewhere, chances are some users are going to use it because they notice the icon and would not have done so if it were just a tab inside the browser. The attention economy strikes again.
- Companies _love_ to build a relationship with customers. It's usually a very one sided and jealous relationship where getting the user to install an app is perceived as a step in that direction.
- Users are more willing to create accounts for apps than webpages (citation needed, this is just a gut feeling)
- On mainstream iOS and Android it's much harder to block ads in apps than it is in the browser.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those alone explain why we see them so often.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
Democracy needs to be adjusted - right now private interests can too easily sabotage and undermine it.
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...
Fear-mongering. Not even dangerous permissions. Granted on install
The duality of the Statunitians politician.
Folks kept saying Apple protect your data and what not, now folks have their entire phone scanned by Apple unless they prove they are adults by sending personal documents which are being breached left and right.
Deserved!!!!
[The White House app] ships with 3 embedded trackers including Huawei Mobile Services Core (yes, the Chinese company the US government sanctioned, shipping tracking infrastructure inside the sitting president's official app)
The executive branch has decided this company is so dangerous I can’t buy a monitor made by them - but it’s embedding its SDK in its official app?!
I realize the decision makers probably don’t even know it’s there - it was just added by whatever contractor built the app, but that’s arguably even worse.
And I have absolutely no doubt that if it was discovered in a political opponent’s app, and the administration wanted to harm them, there would be no compunction about using that fact against them.
What is the ios equivalent?
Whoever fulfilled this contract gets a stop work order for gross incompetence and the CORs/COs should be terminated immediately