This is exactly why Google is clamping down on running your own choice of apps on Android, as well as pushing things like remote attestation on both phones and browsers.

It's time to milk the entire userbase for every cent they can get out of them by any means necessary. The future is bleak.

▲

DaiPlusPlus 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> This is exactly why Google is clamping down on running your own choice of apps on Android, as well as pushing things like remote attestation on both phones and browsers.

Yes, Google is doing this; but I don't believe Google is doing it to squeeze an inconsequentially small boost in YT Premium subscriptions from former-account-sharers - I believe they're doing it because they want to demonstrate that YouTube is a "secure" platform for large, Hollywood-like, production studios to feel comfortable publishing first-runs of new TV content directly to YouTube - and those production companies are famously paranoid, luddite, and comically ignorant of cryptography fundamentals (i.e. they believe DRM can simultaneously allow legal subscriber Alice but deny evil pirate Bob from watching protected content when Alice and Bob are in-reality the same person (it's you, me, us!).

..and if not Hollywood studios, then certainly the major sports leagues. [The NFL's lawyers seem like real fun at parties](https://publicknowledge.org/the-nfl-wants-you-to-think-these...).

	▲	heavyset_go 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		All they have to do is uptick their DRM scheme a la Netflix and Amazon and YouTube would be indistinguishable from either platform from the eyes of rightsholders, and studios have no problem releasing to either platform.

▲

ivolimmen 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They will probably start requiring SecureBoot as well. So at some point running Linux will also pose a problem. It's not impossible but the extra steps are a pain in the butt.

▲

mindslight 2 days ago | parent [-]

"Secure" boot is mostly a red herring, as there are lots of hardware options these days. Remote attestation takes away your ability to run libre Linux on any device if you want to interact with Google (or other surveillance company) network services. It completely repudiates the idea of the mutual-consent-based protocol.

▲

heavyset_go 2 days ago | parent [-]

Secure Boot, or similar bootloader root of trust schemes, is the reason millions of phones and tablets will never run anything other than the manufacturer-provided OS and not what the user wants to run.

	▲	mindslight 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, of course. I agree 100% that the designed-to-be-ewaste market is terrible. If I had my way, any manufacturer-privileging signing scheme would be illegal. So would the anticompetitive bundling of software with hardware devices, for that matter. My point was that the threat of prohibiting libre Linux isn't from all manufacturers deciding to lock out installing Linux on their devices. But rather from remote attestation making it so that Google (et al) are able to force you to run a locked down operating system as a technically-enforced condition of interacting with their servers.