You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play or App Store Account

Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by everdrive on Thursday February 26, 2026 @08:55AM (#47166131)

It's not difficult, however it does violate privacy. It is one more brick in the wall for requiring that all citizens own smartphones. And smartphones themselves are quite bad for privacy. When I frequent a business and they tell me use their smartphone app, my response varies from "no," to "I'm not downloading your fucking app." (depending on how polite the business has been)

100% of smart phone apps are bad. There are NO exceptions to this, by virtue of the fact that you must own and use the smartphone to access them. We stand to lose a lot when we finally lose this fight. (and I'm sure we will)

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by malfist on Thursday February 26, 2026 @08:58AM (#47166169)

100%?

I once published an app to help people track their budget. It didn't even request any permissions, not even internet. How is it bad?

I wrote an app for a university to let researchers track bat sightings in caves and upload it to a database for population tracking. How is it bad?

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by everdrive on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:02AM (#47166221)

Do I need a smartphone to use it? If so, then it's bad.

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by linhns on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:45AM (#47166811)

It's weird that many people don't rely not everything should be mobile-first.

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by malfist on Thursday February 26, 2026 @01:23PM (#47169928)

Let me know when researchers want to start lugging around laptops when they go splunking in caves to record bat populations and I'll tell them about the web portal.

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by everdrive on Friday February 27, 2026 @01:52PM (#47184089)

It's well known that bat research didn't even exist prior to 2007. Steve Jobs famously took the stage and declared, "I have finally achieved bat research!"

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by malfist on Thursday February 26, 2026 @01:22PM (#47169912)

I'm sorry, did you expect a smartphone app to not require a smartphone?

Should we get mad at books for requiring you to know how to read? Should we get mad at stores for requiring you to use currency to pay?

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Re:You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play o... by verzali on Friday February 27, 2026 @02:14AM (#47177526)

Citizens don't need an ETA. Only non-citizens are affected.

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