In May 2025, the Texas App Store Accountability Act made it mandatory for companies like Apple and Google to verify the ages of their Texas-based users. As the law is set to be enforced starting Thursday, Apple has outlined an update to its App Store rules.
On the Apple Developer website, the company explained that new Apple Accounts in Texas will be subject to “age assurance and parent or guardian consent on behalf of minors under the age of 18 for downloads, Apple In-App Purchases, and significant changes associated with an app.”
In practice, this means that anyone who wants to create an Apple Account in Texas must verify that they are 18 or older. Those under 18 will need to join a Family Sharing group, and parents will be able to revoke access to previously approved App Store apps.
We should all simultaneously delete their apps off of our phones and cut those data streams. Uninstall Day.
Every year I go through my apps on a big spreadsheet and look at licenses, perceived sketchiness, alternatives, breaches, etc. This has helped me move further and further from the worst offenders and this year I may actually have more FOSS than proprietary apps. I’m gonna share this year’s sheet somewhere on Lemmy when it’s done.
The only play store (google) apps i have on my phone are the play store itself, a banking app, an investment app, and FL Mobile. All nicely sandboxed in their own user profile on grapheneOS.
My main profile has 99 FOSS or not installed via play store apps.
Fuck google. Fuck the surveillance state. Fuck these politicians in glass houses.
May I ask what you use for a file browser? I really, REALLY,like X-plore and have communicated with the developer on a few occasions and bought and rebought whatever licenses or bonus features he offers. I haven’t found anything that works as well on either the FOSS or proprietary side. It does SMB, FTB, local files, Nextcloud and WebDav, etc. You can set up automated tasks to clone folders to a destination or move files (like photos) on a schedule. It does zip and archive files and has 2 panes making it easy to copy things around.
Librefind might help also! You can use it to compare the proprietary apps on your phone to feature complete FOSS solutions. ^. ^