I’m sure the obvious answer is tariffs, but the US phone market has been rough for anyone who isn’t Apple or Samsung due to the outsized role carriers play in phone selection in that market. Google has made some inroads by being Google, but HMD is not Google.

And that is what I would recommend against, even on a server that does not ban that age. If someone’s (young) age is relevant to a discussion they wish to participate in, I would suggest a throwaway account.

How were they revealed?

Why do you care?

If it’s just about following the rules as a matter of principle, I suggest not doing that. Nobody is checking, and saying your exact age on public social media is oversharing anyway.

If it’s about content moderation being strict enough to satisfy some comfort level, I wouldn’t rely on that, but I also think 13 is old enough to start learning there are shitty people online and how to deal with them, preferably with some adult support.

Google is concerned with its own interests and only behaves as if it’s concerned with anyone else’s when there’s a perceived benefit to Google.

There’s a chance the preferences of some app developers were a contributing factor for Google, but I’m convinced it was about reigning in OEMs more than anything else. Your comment cites fragmentation, and there were things like Fire Phone from Amazon that didn’t ship with Google services. Fire Phone failed because it wasn’t good, but if Amazon had iterated on it or someone else had done a better job, it might have taken a big chunk out of Google’s Android profits.

excluding legitimate users

I hate this framing.

I’m generally disappointed there wasn’t more outcry about Google creating a remote attestation scheme. Microsoft proposed one for PCs a decade earlier and the New York Times called it out as a corporate power grab. I’m not sure if there was a general shift in thinking, if people thought about phones differently from PCs, or if Google had enough of that “don’t be evil” glow people didn’t question it.

I don’t love the term “sideloading”. It sounds like something more nerdy and less normal that just installing software from a source of the user’s choice.

No, I don’t think it’s likely Google will try to prevent it. That would violate the DMA in the EU, and several other jurisdictions have moved toward forcing Apple to allow software installation outside its app store. Between that and antitrust lawsuits in the USA, I think it’s very unlikely Google wants to attract more scrutiny from regulators.

But for that you have to blame Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, a lot of banks, a lot of games for using what is basically DRM for apps.

I don’t think those entities had the leverage to force Google to add remote attestation to Android. Safetynet didn’t show up until 2014 when Android was already established enough that not being on Android wasn’t a realistic option for any of them.

Instead, I think it was mainly a move by Google to make it so any OEM shipping a fork of Android without Google’s blessing would have angry users because some of their apps wouldn’t run.

Thanks for the (partial) citation. That’s enough for me to believe someone important outside Google actually believes there’s a security concern rather than Google just using it as an excuse to be controlling.

That doesn’t mean I actually accept the concern as legitimate. I’d find a postmortem of a real data breach where that was a factor at least a bit persuasive, and there are enough countries with disclosure laws I’m inclined to think there would be some if it was a problem in reality.

It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.

Was this unexpected? It has been my experience online that people are more likely to tell you what they think you need to hear than what you asked for.

There’s a hardware device with a companion app that can do charge limiting for any Android or iOS device if you’re so inclined. I haven’t used it; I use ACCA.

They’re all essentially adults now, so we don’t enforce it anymore, but they sometimes still do it anyway.

I know adults old enough they didn’t grow up with smartphones who exclude devices from their bedrooms by choice to have a healthier relationship with technology.

I don’t know you, your daughters, or their friends so I can’t make specific recommendations. What I can say is that it’s really common for teenagers who are sheltered from the dangers of the world to make more and bigger mistakes once they’re unsupervised than those who get a gradual introduction.

The two main dangers of social media for most people are:

1. Encountering assholes. For girls and women, there’s a high probability assholes will try to sexually exploit them. Since there are minimal consequences most of the time for sending “show me your tits”, they’re going to encounter that behavior eventually, and it may be easier to deal with for the first time when they have parental support.
2. Algorithmic rabbit holes. These can create the perception that problematic attitudes and behaviors are common and widely accepted when they are not. Having an open dialog with parents about anything from eating laundry detergent to Jordan Peterson can be a strong stabilizing influence.

I don’t think a closed Fediverse server is likely to serve as a first step in a gentle introduction because it has neither danger and presumably no strangers to talk to. The full Fediverse might work better, as it does offer interaction with strangers. Encounters with assholes will be less frequent than on corporate social media, and any rabbit holes will be much more self-directed.

That said, when one of them is likely within a year or two of leaving home or at least having full control of her digital life, if she wants to use some corporate social media, she’s probably better off doing that with some parental supervision and support than jumping in completely unprepared when you’re no longer in a position to prevent it.

Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.

This seems like a good opportunity to learn how the notification settings on her phone work.

I know banks are pushing on Google to improve Android security, to avoid malicious apps with root access from messing with banking apps.

How do you know this? Do you have a link to a source that says it?

I’ve tried (not especially hard) to find sources in the past citing actual incidents where end-user devices running non-stock Android or with root access led to bank fraud or data breaches. I didn’t find anything to suggest that’s a problem in the real world.

The main malware problems I have seen reported for Android are:

1. Malware in the Play Store. This is the only way I’ve seen Android malware in the wild, on a family member’s device.
2. Zero-click exploits. The best prevention for these is an up-to-date OS. On an older device, that means a third-party build that won’t pass Google’s checks.

It’s unlikely they care much about a handful of people staying on old devices nor make all that much direct profit from phones sales. People who use old devices usually don’t spend huge amounts in the mobile ecosystem anyway.

What they really don’t want is OEMs selling non-Google-approved Android phones to the mass market. If important apps won’t run, those devices won’t sell.

Google’s primary aim with these changes is to improve app security for everyone

Bullshit. Google’s primary aim is to make sure that Android builds which aren’t Google-approved and may not integrate Google’s profitable services as deeply are not commercially viable.

Remember to leave one-star reviews for any apps that use this shit.

From what i understand, this works because there are multiple batteries charging at the same time?

That shouldn’t make a big difference in charge speed because it doesn’t change the ratio between capacity and input power. The difference is likely the silicon anode batteries Krudler mentioned; they’re not as easily damaged by fast charge rates as the graphite anodes used in most Li-ion batteries.

They probably will once it’s not in early alpha as the readme says it is.

If you’re hosting it yourself, ActivityPub is a separate component. If someone else is hosting it for you, they will have to add support.

There’s a significant distinction between servers that are actively malicious as you’re describing and servers that aren’t fully compatible with certain features, or that are simply buggy.

Lemmy, for example modifies posts federated from other platforms to fit its format constraints. One of them is that a post from Mastodon with multiple images attached will only show one image on Lemmy. Mastodon does it too: inline images from a Lemmy post don’t show on vanilla Mastodon.

I’ll note that Lemmy’s version numbers all start with 0. So do Piixelfed’s. That implies the software is unfinished and unstable.

Some people have privacy expectations that are not realistic in an unencrypted, federated, heterogeneous environment run by hobbyist volunteers in their spare time.

It you have something private and sensitive to share with a small audience, make a group chat on Signal. Don’t invite any reporters.