Yes, absolutely. Advertising is unethical. It is psychological coercion designed to make people buy stuff they normally wouldn't think they need.

The only ethical ads are PSAs that impart helpful and useful information, but they're not really advertising in the commercial sense.

Huh, I haven't experienced any problems. I also set it up for my sister and she has whitelisted 8 domains (unnecessarily, IMO, since I doubt they were blocked, but she might have misinterpreted things.)

I run Pi-Hole. When I'm not on my home network, I connect my device to it over OpenVPN and force the device to use my Pi-Hole as the DNS server---it's an OpenVPN option. So I have Pi-Hole protection wherever I am.

And this, kids, is why everyone should be running multiple layers of ad-blocking. Get your Pi-Hole set up. And stick to a browser that lets you have multiple ad-blocking extensions. And for the love of $DEITY, don't use Facebook, Instagram, etc. on your phone.

So Google put some spin on it, AKA lied...

Shocked, I am.

On an open-source OS such as Linux or {Free,Open,Net}BSD, you can, if you want, write code that runs in kernel context. So you really can do anything you want with the hardware.

But I think most people understand that the OP meant more along the lines of running one's own apps that don't have anti-features like telemetry or ads or whatever.

My first computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer. It had no real OS as such; just a BASIC ROM. And if you were willing to write 6809 assembly language, as I was, you had absolute control over the hardware. There was no "OS" to mediate.

This is exactly right. And what's even sadder is that the USA is hurtling towards financial doom ($40T debt and going up by $2T/year; spending more to service the debt than on the military) so that we'll all get to "enjoy" living under the last remaining superpower of China. Really tough times ahead.

Additionally, Article 31 merely requires online platforms to provide a way for traders to communicate their contact info, and requires random checks to make sure they're doing it. It does not require any sort of vetting ore registration by the platform beyond making sure the online traders have put something up.

No, you are misinterpreting the DSA. It refers to "Providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders"

The "online platform" is the app store, not Android itself. This is explicitly defined in Article 3 of the DSA: "online platform’ means a hosting service that, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates information to the public."

So if that's the reasoning Google's using, it's mistaken and/or a deliberate lie.

A study commissioned by an organization whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta could not possibly be even the teeny-tiniest bit self-serving.

Yes, let’s trust a critically important part of our national infrastructure to “open source” software.

Spoiler alert: You already do. Linux and other open-source infrastructure is ubiquitous in embedded products everywhere. If open-source software disappeared today, most countries' infrastructure would be crippled.

When you go open-source, who’s responsible if something wipes an entire country’s data?

The people you employ to manage the infrastructure. Duh.

Google is required (as a "platform" under EU DSA ) to ensure that this information is publicly available to all EU users of apps on Android

Only apps that Google distributes. But Google is requiring registration even for developers who use alternate stores like F-Droid. It should be F-Droid's responsibility to comply with the regulations for apps it distributes... Google should not be involved because it's not the platform in this case; F-Droid is.

So that explains why my Internet-connected color-changing light bulb needs a 20A circuit...

That totally validates Google's locking down of the Android ecosystem and its requirement that all developers register with Google. Why, could you imagine the security implications otherwise????

/s