Manifest v3 & it's forbidding of dynamic code is another major treason, in my view, an uncompromising & cruel stance to force upon the web. I'm less knowledgable here, but I also feel like there's a bit of a hostile relationship with works like Magisk on Android, which have long had an uneasy relationship, albeit the recent v24 & it's new Zygisk zygote injection shows a lot of health & excitement right now. The ever encroaching desire to drive top-down control is highly visible in SafetyNet, which make it clear the device in your hand serves corporations, not you.
I agree with you on Manifest V3, the restrictions are somewhat understandable if Google didn't stand to gain so much from blocking the behaviour they now restrict.
The Magisk project is kind of a weird one, I 100% expected Google to neuter that when the dev behind it got hired but it's clear that that's not happening.
SafetyNet is a requirement for almost every media company out there. Android would die a quick death if Netflix, Disney+, and friends would suddenly stop working because Google turned good and disabled SafetyNet. There are some enterprise advantages to SafetyNet as well, sometimes you want to be sure that some internal applications work on phones with internal security intact only.
As always, if you don't like the product, vote with your wallet, or in this case your data. Don't use Chrome/ium, don't sign into your Google account, download from F-Droid and Aurora exclusively and root your device if you wish. Firefox is still a decent mobile browser, despite Mozilla's efforts to change that.
/e/ is an excellent replacement for almost the entire Android ecosystem and I think if that became popular among non-techies, Google might start to listen. It might also not and Android might be doomed, but it's worth a try.
It's not just disallowing imported code, it's disallowing all dynamic code. This prohibits, for example, Greasemonkey/VioletMonkey/Tampermonkey, or any kind of extension that has dynamic behaviors.
It's a prime example of draconian security absolutism, and it's vile & detestable & anti-human. Enforcing this not just on their store, but on the web & extensions in general, is an outrage.
That seems a liiittle hyperbolic. In any case, power user tools like Tampermonkey will seemingly be supported. Whether that be through special exceptions or new APIs remains unclear. Personally I'd like to see integration with Local Overrides.
Preventing any kind of dynamic agency from growing on the web is one of the most severe threats to user-agency I can imagine. It's a direct strike at one of the most core distinctions that makes the web different from everything else. I really believe strongly that the web will advance once we start making more adaptive scripts/extensions, scripts that can gain & accrue capabilities, and this directly prevents advance.
V2 extensions are no longer allowed but there's still no progress or path for Tampermonkey to even experiment with.
declarativeNetRequest still doesn't have capabilities sufficient to reimplement uBlock Origin functionality. Besides that, it puts the power to decide which blocking capabilities are even possible strictly in Google's hands.
Given that, it's quite clear it's a malicious move to take control away from the user.
Manifest v3 & it's forbidding of dynamic code is another major treason, in my view, an uncompromising & cruel stance to force upon the web. I'm less knowledgable here, but I also feel like there's a bit of a hostile relationship with works like Magisk on Android, which have long had an uneasy relationship, albeit the recent v24 & it's new Zygisk zygote injection shows a lot of health & excitement right now. The ever encroaching desire to drive top-down control is highly visible in SafetyNet, which make it clear the device in your hand serves corporations, not you.