from hackitfast@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 23 Jan 01:05
https://lemmy.world/post/24607994
Currently, you are unable to view the APKMirror web page. Instead, you get the following message shown in the screenshot below.
Tiktok downloads are currently blocked in the United States due to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
The link in this statement leads to the following page, containing the bill that was passed:
www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/…/7521
This sets a dangerous precedent going forward for the Android community which sideloads applications onto their phones, being that APKMirror is the largest mirror of APKs for Android phones. It’s also possible for them to add more apps to be included under this bill, and possible for another bill to be passed which may act as an even more broad blanket to target specific groups of people (e.g. LGBTQ+, people of color), messaging applications that are truly secure (e.g. Signal), and so on.
Then of course there a very real possibility of our president forcing the integration of software updates into both Android (and possibly even iOS smartphones) that can forcibly remove applications for the “sake of national security”.
Blocked APKMirror links:
www.apkmirror.com/apk/tiktok-pte-ltd/tik-tok/
www.apkmirror.com/apk/tiktok-pte-ltd/lemon8/
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Yes, this is just another policy that hinders the working class, the duopoly does like their police state.
Anyone have any thoughts on APKPure as an alternative?
It looks a little sketchy to me, I’m seeing mixed things on reddit about it.
An alternative application you can use to download Google Play apps is the Aurora Store (gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore), but I think it still obtains the files from Google Play.
Damn, Aurora is linked to google and you need to login to get apks, unlike F-Droid.
F-Droid is cool, but limited with apks.
f-droid.org
F-Droid is great, but it’s only for FOSS. So it won’t host content like TikTok on it.
True, thanks for clarifying!
You can just login anonymously like the description you posted says. It works pretty well. It’s how I download apps that aren’t available on my local play store.
And how I get ones that it says are incompatible with my device for no apparent reason.
What does this mean?
Is it similar to Chrome’s “Incognito” mode?
I’m not 100% sure but it doesn’t require a login when you pick that option. Iirc it uses an account from a set of shared accounts so that it doesn’t have any personally identifiable information.
Sounds like people need to start divesting from America and hosting their content in the free world not Trumps snowflake censorship kingdom.
That’s a CloudFlare page. CloudFlare is responsible for something like 25% of the entire world’s internet traffic. Even if they aren’t hosting it, they’re still dealing with routing. Self-hosting in another country won’t help if your traffic still bounces off of a CloudFlare server.
This is similar to the situation that started the Itch.io and FunkoPop feud. Itch.io was hosting a game that FunkoPop believed infringed on their trademark. Instead of just submitting a request to take the game down, Funko went above Itch’s head and got the entire site blocked. Itch.io didn’t even know anything was wrong until their site was suddenly inaccessible. And it was inaccessible even though their servers were perfectly fine, because the systems used to access their servers had been the ones to actually block the site.
As much as cloud flare is the evil overlord, they’re actually highly resistant to blocking sites. You really need to force their hand before they’ll block it they don’t just flip the switch on any request.
I think we need to take apart IPFS and put it back together in a more usable form.
Hell just torrenting the APKs wouldn’t be that hard. We’ve been hosting s*** that people don’t want hosted since the internet was a couple of daemons on big iron
I mean, it took a literal act of congress. But even CloudFlare needs to abide by the law.
Yup, they will comply with legal requirements, but it usually has to go to a lawyer before they’ll intervene.
The issue is that even if you choose a hosting service outside the US, they might choose to block your content anyway in order to comply with US regulations and avoid legal trouble.
Man… I miss the old internet where we just didn’t follow the rules.
Ad tech and surveillance capitalism keeps this spirt alive.
Wait, we were supposed to be following rules?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/41fea240-afbb-4478-b4e6-351aed5c30e6.webp">
At least “rules of the Internet” and “netiquette”.
That’s a cloudflare page. I don’t think apkmirror is doing it.
I thought it looked like CloudFlare. Does that mean the US government is leveraging Cloudflare in order to block whatever they choose, assuming it has that as its underlying architecture?
Or Cloudflare is on their knees drinking orange juice for a more favorable seat at the table. Iirc they’re responsible for ~20% of web traffic, so it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.
In that cloudflare is following the law, yes.
Could just be apkmirror setting up the block themselves in their Cloudflare dash. Might be the easiest way for them to do a geofence type thing.
Idiocracy. What will be not great is when Orange Fuck’s friends from Google block tiktok systemwide.
That’s nice, but can’t we block TikTok on all platforms, so we can get rid of it already?
While doing that, let’s block X and Meta as well.
Apkmirror is Android Police; they were never going to do anything to flout a law.
It’s also why setting up servers outside of 5/9/14 eye countries is imperative.
This is so confusing, first trump seeks to ban tiktok, then he allows it, and now its banned again?