My view is that everyone can do what they want is a difficult approach. Sounds good in theory but does not really help anyone.
/e/ stands for data protection and privacy and I think so should the /e/ store. That means it is in my view ok if not every app ends up in the /e/ store because there are serious concerns about data protection and privacy and also alternatives exist.
Example: I don’t see any reason why the /e/ store should include Google Chrome. There are many good privacy focused alternatives available. If a user really needs Chrome for something he can at his own risk install an alternative app store like Aurora or Yalp (forked). /e/ documentation can explain how to go about this but also point out that by using one of those apps it is likely from expert experience (rather than proof everything) that the user is loosing some of the /e/ data protection and privacy features.
This leads for me to this approach, partly explained in other posts:
differentiate between recommended apps and apps where data protection and privacy aspects are unclear or questionable (green and amber from another post)
exclude apps that have serious privacy and data protection concerns (red). As mitigation have some documentation how a user can install them anyway if needed with an alternative app store. As mentioned, this has the challenge to select and deselect certain apps in an efficient way and by a what criterium?. This needs some thought.
Discoverability is important for me. If the /e/ app store contains 100 messenger of which experts would really recommend 3-4 apps over the others then it would be helpful if these recommended apps are presented more prominently in lists and searches. As long as that is not possible I would, for example turn lists off instead of showing just something. At the time of writing (22 Oct) the number one entry in the Top updated app list is WhatsApp. I struggle to see why the /e/ app store puts WhatsApp in such a prominent position to discover regardless of the question whether it should be in the app store or not.
Trust is also important, I think it is necessary to document how the /e/ app store works. What is selected for the store and why. How can a privacy conscious user find the apps she/he needs? How does search work, what’s presented first as a result and what second and why. Similar for lists, what makes top of the list (e.g. Home tab in the /e/ store: Discover) why?
So I think it is ok for a project like /e/ to have an opinionated approach on the app store, the prominent presentation of apps, search results and lists. User who are informed about possible consequences can be guided to alternative stores to install apps they need which do not meet the /e/ project objectives.
My vote is “yes” /e/ Apps store, mainly for these two reasons.
I use F-droid as my primary app source, Apps as my secondary, to (easily) check additional apps for trackers. There are decent apps out there without trackers that are not on F-droid because they are not FLOSS. For anything else, app repositories and Classy Shark. The key is that in all cases, I am making a (generally) informed decision, modulated by exigencies of the here and now. An imperfect system, admittedly, but the perfect system doesn’t exist. The antidote for an imperfect world is information, /e/ Apps offers information.
the problem is, that it’s the exodus proof. And as you can read here Don't trust exodus website result, you shouldn’t trust the result.
That’s the only way to check the trackers on your installed apps. I often install an app, check it with ClassyShark and remove the app after check, because it has trackers as hell but it has a good rate in apps store
There is something actually I’d like to use as soon as possible: It’s ok (and the right way imho) to have unsafe apps, but I’d prefer to also have a slider or something similar. Let’s say if I set the slider to green, I’d only get search results with apps having privacy ratings 10, 9 or 8. So if I search for e.g. “compass”, I do not even want to see apps with a worse rating than that. If there is anything else where I’d want to see all apps (including unsafe apps), I’d set the slider to red. Not sure how non-tech people would grasp this concept.
For me, people do what they want, and / e / is here to help them whatever their purpose by protecting them from trackers.
/e/ Apps must contain all the applications that are useful to these people while guaranteeing easy access to information about the applications contained in Apps.
Do you think /e/ Apps should contain ‘unsafe’ apps ?
For me, the first thing is that the system is safe
Then I want safe apps which mean no virus or no corruption file but I want to be able to use the main apps, safely (which mean be sure it is the official apps) like official newspaper app, train app or vod app I choose to pay for. For me it is very important to have them and to be sure I have the official app and I think a major task for e is to have official apps of big supplier (for exemple in france sncf and ratp for public transport, canal+ for video, all the official newpapers (les echos, le figaro, investir, liberation, le monde,…)). I don’t want to be track every second by google but if I use newspaper services I want to be able to have them
First I am interested in news and I want newspaper and journalist to live so I think it is good to look at them and pay for them.
Even with trackers, I’m pretty sure their apps collect less data than android by google itself (first you can limit the authorization of the apps and of /e/ setting so that localization for exemple is unknown. Even if they have a google tracker ,if /e/ follow its promise, if we don’tallow the system to collect some data it won’t and the app will not be able to do so (contrary to goole which has collected localization data with localization deactivated…)
Thirs point, I don’t know the possibility because I’m not a software guy but we might have a setting which forbid any collection or activity of apps when they are not opened. As a result yes the apps and all its tracker will only know you use their app the few time you sue it. Not a big deal for me that a newspaper I pay for know that I have read it…
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Absolute wrong. Apps are collecting data as hell. And e can’t do anything against. You, the user can do a lot against data collecting. Don’t use apps which collects data via trackers.
You want read newspaper , why don’t use the webpage of the newspaper ? Every good website is designed to work with a special ‘mobile layout’. That way is better than installing the tracking snd data mining app.
Absolute wrong. Apps are collecting data as hell. And e can’t do anything against
When you put some settings (for exemple some economy mode or data limitation), it’s written that your apps can’t send data in background mode (which can perturbate them). So if there is no data in background mode the app can do nothing when you are not using them I think (or I don’t understand anything about allowing or not background mode).
more specifically for my situation than newpaper webpage you have group offers (like netflix for video) with a subscription you have access (often through you mobile provider) to lots of newpaper; therefore you need to use the app (very often internet webpage are not so good on mobile…and you can also have tracker in the webpage…) so I need the app.
And last point, I’m sure you’re right and some of my data are collected (even by google via partnership) but much less than with classical android with google mobile service I’m sure because if every app give google the same information than GMS, google will have no reason to force their use
So yes ideally we should use no tracker at all but if we want some commercial services we will have to but we can work to limit it with /e/ for exemple. But /e/ will be very great with official bank app, train app, newspaper apps, video service app even if they are not open source because they are used and required by lots of people
You must know, that some apps not only collecting your data you use in the / with the app, there are apps which collecting the data from ALL apps you are using.
Thanks for this interesting and worrying information;
my point is if you don’t allow apps to work and process data in background mode how can they know what you do when the app is closed? (for exemple in data economy mode it is written in /e/ restricted access to data (except for apps we allow to have unlimited access to data, if no apps have access to localization, if we trust /e/ contrary to google how can app access to your localization data etc…) What is wrong in these assumption?
The apps will collect abd save your data ehen they are in foreground. when they are an backgroud nothing happens but the saved data is still available for other apps which can sebd them ‘home’
i’m a new user of /e/ and really admire what they are trying to do.
i think it’s necessary to offer mainstream apps via the store otherwise mainstream users will never adopt /e/ , but the main issue I see with this is that such users of a degoogled OS will immediately install many apps with many trackers and straight away negate the perceived privacy advantage of /e/.
the privacy rating is a great start, and certainly opened my eyes and pushed me to deinstall the worst apps and look for better alternatives but for less tech savvy users a more prominent warning about the trackers in each app might be a good idea , plus the ability to sort apps based on privacy rating would help when choosing alternative apps that respect privacy
What are they trying to do, actually? What’s the difference between (a) selling someone a standard Android phone with Google services, and letting people install whatever apps they want from Google’s play store, and (b) selling someone e’s Android phone with MicroG services, and letting people install whatever apps they want from (whatever we should call) a 3rd party store? Either way, they can use Google’s or e’s services, or both, and all the tracking apps they wish, and they end up in the same place - being tracked all the time.
IMO, e should show people what is bad about the apps, and not enable bad behavior by helping people install bad apps.
Before, in Android Lolipop and below, when you wanted to install an app you had to accept every access (Camera, account, cell phone, contact, etc) the app wanted. It was all or nothing.
Now, with Android Marshmallow and above, you can allow an app to access your camera but not your contacts for instance.
I guess you prefer as it is now. That’s the same for /e/ :
Before, if you wanted to use Android, you were forced to use it with all Google and the constructor trackers in it.
Now, with /e/ you have the choice. If you want 100% open source you can. But if you want a proprietary app, you can because liberty is about choice. You can of course use Blokada or Adaway to solve the issue of in app trackers.
According to you, if someone wants a proprietary app because he/she needs it, /e/ has to blocked her/him ? The result would be the replacement of /e/ by the stock ROM, which would be counter productive.
Let’s people follow the path of freedom at their rythm. Only a minority can go directly from a stock ROM with a lot of Google to a 100% open sourced ecosystem.
Word. I hate to possibly muddy the waters by adding another number to the evaluation, but I think the conflation of the kinds of access needed by the app and the trackers used/not used by the app is a mistake. They should be separate information in the rating. There are some apps that legitimately need lots of different kinds of access in order to run at all, but have no trackers, and they can end up with the same score as an app that needs very little access but has trackers. In my book, these are two very different things. So keep “unsafe” apps, but refine the rating system.
I don’t beleave in this. If it would be so easy to block trackers no one needs a OS like e. Everyone could install blokada and be happy or the custom rom developer integrade blokada in the rom and it’s a ‘privacy rom’.
If anyone trust this statemant that blokada is blocking trackers he will get in trouble ir better, he will loose his privacy
