Integrity company here. It’s been a year since we partnered with known mobster Two Face and we promised you that he would have no influence over our business other than as a financier and we’ve kept that promise! As you can see his racketeering has been kept completely independent of our day to day activities. You can trust us and Two Face that we will be allowed to be completely independent and there is no tom foolery going around behind the scenes.
Surely you mean Tegrity Farms?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=nQqBOz8bkBE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
There’s a news/politics website in my country that had radio ads, billboards and everything with a slogan “Nobody dictates us what we should write about.”
This tweet reminds me of that and doesn’t really fill me with trust either.
BTW, the mentioned website is described as a “disinformation medium” on Wikipedia.
I mean, their message is a little weird, but so is the scaremongering that’s been going on against them ever since they changed ownership. From comments on the Reddit post, Branch is actually integrated into Google apps, Samsung Launcher, and a ton of other stuff and nobody really blinks an eye at that.
There literally is no evidence they do anything unseemly with peoples’ data, yet the scaremongering persists, including a lot right here in this thread. What exactly are they supposed to say other than to emphasize this fact? Anyone who would distrust them based on this post was already definitely inclined to distrust them.
I see it more as a jab at the insane scaremongering when they sold.
Yeah sure, some concerns are justified in that situation, alright. But it’s not like you need to instantly drop something the moment this happens, more so because half the alternatives people recommend have trackers the very company that bought nova runs.
“Insane scaremongering?” What an incredibly ignorant and biased characterization
Is it? Don’t get me wrong, it’s completely understandable to be concerned, disappointed, annoyed or distrustful of such a buyout. Entirely understandable.
But at the same time, immediately coming to the conclusion that all data is now being hoovered up isn’t helping anybody. Because if nothing else, it destroys nuance. If you assume the moment an ad company is involved that all data is being gathered, then you lack the ability to make any further distinction. This would also mean that nobody could ever create a more ethical ad company, as users would still immediately assume they’re gathering all data, and hence be no better than any of the other companies. This in turn removes any motivation to ever even try this.
Likewise, and more relevant in this case, if users immediately assume the worst has already happened, then no company can ever try to sell to another company in a more responsible manner, as again the perceived result is the same, so there’s no incentive to do so.
What actually happened:
- Nova got sold.
- The new owners might start gathering more data.
- Or not.
- Just as well, Nova could have started gathering more data without selling.
- Or not.
From the perspective of the end user, other than the chances of more data being gathered in the future going up a little bit (and apparently not even all that much given that it’s been one year now), nothing has changed. 🤷
That’s what I mean: You cannot always immediately assume the worst will happen right now this very moment. Scaremongering precludes any sensible form of discussion or improvement to a situation, as one side has already decided that it’s all a lost cause anyways.
Now, should the new owners start gathering more data, then we can all toss Nova into the bin. And then say “Okay it took far longer than expected, but fuck ad-company buyouts!”. But so far that hasn’t happened, and hey, if anything it seems Nova found some buyers who don’t just trash the product they bought for some quick bucks.
Why do you need to trust a launcher with your data at all? Why does it ever leave your device? This made me very skeptical about them.
My AOSP launcher has zero permissions, except one that I optionally enabled to see notifications so it can do the little notification dots on my app icons.
Well sure, but that also means it’s rather limited in what it does. In theory if it had no permissions, it couldn’t even list the installed apps.
So I guess what you want to say is that it has some permissions, but none that leave the direct context of launching apps?
But even then… do you include a search box in that? Should that show recently opened files in apps, too? A rather common feature those contextual per-app run-actions, but they require some way of either the launcher getting this from the app, or in turn the app supplying this action to the launcher. Include a web search in that box? Sync settings? Show notifications? Gestures? All of these require a host of permissions.
Just install DuckDuckGo browser app and let it block any the trackers, job done. I’ve been using Nova on a new pixel 7a for a couple of months now and really happy with it (especially vs the incredibly stupid stock launcher, with its un-movable pointless widgets taking up half the home screen)
edit the DDG browser app runs a VPN which blocks trackers, I’m not making it up
Just so you’re aware why people are disagreeing with you - an installed browser does not change the behavior of HTTP calls made in other applications.
It’s not just a browser though, it also blocks trackers in other apps. Or is the DDG app lying when it shows all the trackers it’s blocking for each app?
Some few apps it literally breaks and need to have the tracker blocking disabled before they work again, so I’m pretty sure it’s doing something. It runs as a VPN afaict
I can understand the flak they’re having, but honestly Nova is the first thing I install on all my Android devices. Its so convenient and versatile
Didn’t believe them then, don’t believe them now.
RIP Nova.
Can’t blame the dev for selling out. I would for a windfall and retire.
But it’s time to move on. Wouldn’t touch Nova with a 1000 ft pole.
Been using lawnchair since forever, I try to avoid closed source apps as much as possible, so Nova was never an option for me.
Just wish it would get more development.
The last Alpha is from August 8 and even then the current iteration is a shell of what Lawnchair was during the V2 Alpha days
Consider using Neo Launcher. It’s open source and actively developed and is basically what lawnchair aimed to be.
is there any launcher out there which has got offline OCR support in recents like the Pixel Launcher? The custom rom I use(EvolutionX) does have launcher3 as its default(basically identical to Pixel launcher in every aspect, just without that Select/OCR in recents menu, and its got a bit more customisability since it’s open source), but being able to select images/text right from the recents menu without having to connect to the internet was something that I found to be a really powerful tool. miss having it handy whenever I needed it…
The play store says lawnchair isn’t available because it was made for an older version of Android… The versions on F-Droid are 2 years old too …
