This year we made good progress. You know, Linux gaming becoming better, Reddit fucking up, Metaverse failing etc. But on the other hand Big Tech has or are planning to make some moves. Such as, Google’s Web Enviroment Integrity API (EDIT: they backed off), UK’s encryption bill, etc.
So what do you think of the future? I’m currently optimistic. I think the best recent event was Reddit fucking up. Obviously one of the biggest information sources going down that path isn’t something to celebrate. But it was bound to happen. I believe decentralized social networks becoming more popular is what Aaron Swartz would have wanted if he saw how Reddit was being managed.
Even custom ROMs depend heavily on googles services. If you disable all of it you’re loosing some basic features, some apps won’t work and you have problems installing new apps. There are solutions but in the end you’re relaying in googles closes source services.
I know that many people still rely on Google’s services, but speaking from my own experience, it’s not hard to ditch them entirely.
I installed LineageOS 2 months ago, and was only missing my banking app, which I installed using the Aurora store and it works without any issues. For everything else I found alternatives which are, admittedly not as good/users friendly as Google’s. But I wouldn’t say there’s no true FOSS phone OS.