this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Not sure if this would work in China, but... I have a de-Googled bootloader-locked Huawei tablet (don't ask, it was cheap)... in the EU, but had to jump through some hoops to make it usable... and kind of did it, thanks to F-Droid, APKPure, and Gspace.
iPhones might be more tightly locked, but maybe people will find similar workarounds.
I think the issue is they’ll have to do much more work to get to those stores if they become remotely popular as a vector for bypassing censorship.
The minute people are using f-droid at scale to bypass controls and censorship, f-droid is going to get firewalled if it isn’t already.
China isn’t on the open internet. It’s a game of whack-a-mole for them, but they’re pretty good at it and throw a lot of bodies at this.
The average user won’t be jumping through the hoops required to make this work.
F-Droid has censorship resistance built in, it lets you share apps locally via bluetooth. It would be difficult, but I can imagine a bunch of protestors sharing apps, getting a mesh communication network going (like briar), all without clearnet access.
Not to mention lots of countries have "shut down internet access" in their protest playbook, so the freedom of speech, human rights, tech-bros are building the technology to work without internet.