So, it’s been a while since I was a part of this section of the community…but I signed up for an account just to weigh in on this matter.
Nothing, you can’t have it both ways. If you’re the ‘grassroots, community-driven company’, then understand that there is a symbiotic relationship between the community and the products/services provided. A dedicated community provides word-of-mouth and social media marketing, as well as QA and feedback, all of which costs millions of dollars to buy.
The tradeoff is that the dedicated community has expectations that need to be met. Sure, some are outlandish, but there are reasonable, baseline expectations that a dedicated community will have. Pretty high up on the list is “if a malware group would do it, don’t do it”…and “injecting a system app that installs apps that users didn’t ask for” is the sort of thing a malware group would do.
It is not unreasonable for the community - the loyal fanbase who continues to buy your products - to take exception with the installation of software that only reduces the quality of the experience of the user. Moreover, the generally-more-technical community here at Nothing is very unlikely to keep the apps installed on their phone or use them at all. This means that nobody wins - not the apps who paid to be installed on the phones (because so few people will keep them), not Nothing (who would get so little revenue from the installations due to the community removing them), and not the customers (who didn’t want this function added in the first place). This thread proves that the community is both aware and vocal, and we don’t forget things easily (still waiting on that Nothing Chat functionality that was lauded when the Phone 2 came out; no I didn’t forget about that).
Now personally, this doesn’t affect me. The single biggest reason I own Nothing phones is because their bootloaders can be unlocked and I can install /e/OS or iodeOS on them, which is what I’ve done very happily. However, it’s got me nervous, because there’s going to be pressure to remove the ability to easily unlock the bootloader, since phones with unlocked bootloaders can trivially - and permanently - remove adware entirely, even if it’s installed as a system app. If the Nothing Phone 4 lacks the ability to fastboot oem unlockmy way to installing community ROMs, I’m gone (and I say this as someone who has purchased three Nothing phones, two sets of earbuds, and wears his Nothing shirt regularly). The Phone 3 is already more expensive than the FairPhone 6, the push to add all the AI tweaking isn’t a draw for me, and on the topic of software, I’m still a bit salty that Nothing didn’t release some sort of install instructions for Mac owners to self-host their own Nothing Chat server if they so chose (or at the very least, officially state that Apple prohibited them from doing even that). Nothing can’t simultaneously put all their selling points in software-exclusive functionality, then end up with it being a mixed-bag where updates mean injected advertisements that weren’t REALLY disclosed at point-of-sale, or removing software capabilities retroactively.
So, for the moment, my NP2 and NP3(a) run /e/OS, so this doesn’t impact me…but the trajectory makes me extremely nervous that Nothing’s mindset involves chasing ad revenue…because ad companies have never, ever made anything better in the long-term.
