Why are we still fighting smartphone bloatware in 2025? - eviltoast
    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      and the most delicious kind of money of all: dark money! ooooh it’s so good because the sources of the dark money offer you a lot of it, and they specifically ask you not to ask questions, which is so good for you because these bloatware programs make your device sell worse and provides no value as a sales platform because it turns out that billboards and radio spots are, surprisingly, the most effective form of advertising.

      but! you have a sense of solidarity. you have faith that by never offering a phone without bloatware, your entire industry will ensure that all phones won’t have bloatware. you rest easy at night knowing your phone won’t sell poorly, at the end of the day, because every phone is like this. your contributions to a surveillance and propaganda machine that should punish you in the market because won’t because all your peers are your allies in this.

      and it gets better! every time someone else’s phone gets more bloatware and more dark money attached, then everyone else appears comparatively better, allowing them to get worse. ooooh you love it so much when you get to take more dark money. and all it costs you are several thousand lives far away from your big mansion. you don’t even have to see the suffering

          • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            The big one that matters is Verizon Software Manager. Used to be DT Ignite or something. They try to disguise that garbage forced installer as something genuine. I forget what it is on AT&T but I think it still has DT in the package name. The Verizon one is like some crazy package name thats not the name of the software at all. Must be the name of the company that makes it.

            • Infomatics90@lemmy.ca
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              2 days ago

              everytime i factory reset my device so much bloat/spy/malware gets installed automagically

                • Infomatics90@lemmy.ca
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                  2 days ago

                  naw, it gets tiring. Either A) im going back to the flip phone i have or B) once i save up enough money ill get a pixel and install graphene.

      • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        You get to feel like a super cool insider in a shadowy club secretly ruling over all the foolish little people who aren’t clever enough to be deemed worthy of receiving dark money!