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Tin foil hat time: this is why Google is pushing to kill app sideloading.

Mobile phones are the only platform at the moment that can reasonably be used to enforce mandatory software installs and remote attestation. Removing sideloading can down the road leading to Google (or Apple for IOS) forcing all app store provided apps/browsers to support government authentication APIs like this.



Google is gung-ho on embracing every kind of identification law because it aligns with their business model. They sell ads therefore it is important that humans are authenticated. Other social media companies like X have similar incentives.


It's general hard to have discourse online without some good authentication as bots dominate everything. That's why normal people use mostly facebook groups. This needs some solution but gov ID isn't it, unless it's some cryptographic thing that is passed to other services that link data with their own salt or something like that.

Having said that I like how in PL we have very nice auth to all government services that finally works well (it's like 5th implementation of this system). It makes it very easy to use gov services and before had to login with bank accounts or create some crappy accounts. Now it just works with faceID and done.

You can also login to 3rd parties as well. For example I was able to get my medical health results info from commercial provider by sharing basic info from this auth app without creating account or anything (they get access to Gov ID).


If there was something like that guarantees pseudonymous ID that can't be reversed via rainbow tables like stuff that could be useful as general login ID.

I would like to have ability to choose if I use new one for this provider or one that can be linked with other services. Kinda like with apple anonymising emails. Are there any efforts in this directions?




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