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Comment by cucumb3rrelish | Hacker News Reader

Android user here: 90 % of Android devices have all the stuff you think you avoided by switching preinstalled and running in the background. Either because it's in the Google contract to use Play Services or because the manufacturer uses proprietary solutions they want to push. And they certainly aren't always removable

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These days things are much better thanks to Treble. Device-independent ROMs are a reality. You can easily flash pure AOSP on any modern phone.

While that's in theory, reality is much more harsh. Treble implementations vary greatly between OEMs. For example, Samsung phones don't have mobile data working because of proprietary RIL used by Samsung. Also, Treble compatibility often breaks on newer versions of Android, especially for Pixels (which is quite ironic). Treble is really meant to make the job easier for OEMs and ROM devs to continue supporting a device. The GSI is really meant as a way to certify Treble.

I understand that. I don't think I can cut it off entirely, but I'm going to segregate my usage of the platforms as much as I can. My personal cloud archive won't be on my phone, that's one thing I can do.

I may not be able to take down the beast, but I'll try not to feed it much more than crumbs.

I don't see why you switched to Android then in the first place, because only iCloud uploads will be scanned on iOS. Also I can't think of a single manufacturer with better privacy practices than Apple except for custom ROMs.

Isn't the obvious choice to use custom ROMs then?

For now… I think it’s easy to imagine what v5 of this tech can do, what additional databases come into scope over time. The potential of abuse by governments, and the principle of on device scanning. Cloud scanning doesn’t bother me as much… but this feels like a step too far. Some things are reasonable, this doesn’t seem so.

Installing a custom, privacy conscious rom on an Android phone is generally easier.

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