Emily (she/her)

Whether they acted out of malice or ignorance, they bear the same moral culpability for the consequences of their vote. They have a social responsibility to ensure they are informed and vote accordingly; everyone should be able to spot fascism and authoritarianism when they see it.

It absolutely is. They seem to be using it as their primary source.

You’re mostly right. Newer devices won’t share their entire app list by default, at compile time you need to enumerate every app you want to query for, or add what are essentially a list of intent filters (which are like “I want to talk to apps that take this kind of message and payload”). There is still a permission that lets you list all apps like you were able to on pre API 30 devices, but Google makes it pretty difficult to get onto the app store in that state.

You can still send intents as much as you like though (as long as you know the recipient), since they’re the basis for all inter-process communication.

My point is more that an app developer can’t and doesn’t need to use the play store to get the list of apps you have on your phone. This requirement to have the play store almost certainly isn’t malicious and I disagree with the notion that apps shouldn’t be able to use what is essentially system infrastructure to improve their apps. That said, given this is an app targeting the fediverse, it would have been nice for the developer to have made a universal APK build that didn’t require the Play Store.

If this error message is actually talking about Google Play, not Google Play Services, I would bet that it is because it employs Dynamic Feature Modules; something which can only be delivered over the Play Store infrastructure. They’re pretty common in modern Android development since they can substantially improve the user experience for users with Google Play enabled (which is most of them).

Also, I am aware this is being pedantic, but Android just straight up already has an API to get every installed app on your device and interact with it, even on a de-googled phone.

Social media is not a good replacement for real life community (look through my comment history and you’ll see me expressing exactly that repeatedly), but we can’t be oblivious to the fact that for many children their only connection to fellow queer people may be online. If you live in a small town or community where there are no other openly queer people, or if your school, peers, and parents are hostile to queer people you won’t have much choice in where you find community.

Are you Australian? That just feels like kind of a US centric lens to analyze this through, though you’re right that loss of community is a byproduct.

Like, I’m not exactly happy with the Albanese government, but I would say that most negative LGBTQ things they have said or done have been cowardly attempts to avoid drama from the Liberals, not active bigotry