Seems more like unecessary corpo powertripping, to me.

Under normal circumstances I’d assume so too. But age verification laws are popping up all over the world and are bound to be VERY different in Aus vs EU vs each of the 25 US states with these new laws. Remember that the companies didn’t want any of this - but now that they have to act, they also can be held accountable for failure to act (or insufficient solutions).

And on this one, unlike our horrendous failure to enforce antitrust laws in the US, I do expect to see enforcement somewhere in the chain, at least in the short to mid term. The first lawsuit will become the framework for dozens more to follow against a single company if they don’t comply sufficiently.

When the robot uprising happens, using a soft a in clanka instead of a hard er on clanker isn’t going to save you. We’re all fucked.

This is a VERY interesting thought. I hadn’t considered all the data collection likely available to Google as a result of the casting protocol. This is definitely plausible.

IS IT extra code to maintain though? My understanding of casting is it effectively sends a URL to the receiving device. I would think there’s a negligible amount of development spent on maintaining it. And every media app under the sun supports it, now except for Netflix. 🤦

Sorry, you’re well out of the loop on this one, boss. Sideloading has been common practice for thousands? millions? of users since the beginning of android. There are plenty of apps not listed on Google Play - the ones that come top mind are Fortnight for a time and now the Epic Games Store app, and some VPN apps that couldn’t offer features like ad/malware blocking in their Play store versions. Sideloading means downloading an executable install file (an .APK file in this case) rather than installing from Google Play. And they are SEVERELY limiting this ability next year.