If the Play Store becomes required like that then Android's already-shaky status as an open source base platform is going to go out the window. I'm glad there are non-Google distros of Android but there really needs to be more of a push to make a completely FOSS phone platform.
Screaming against the encroaching void that tails us, hell bent on turning every iota of live and culture into something that can be financialized and commoditized.
Fedi's daily active users actually went up for the last two months after hitting a low of just under 1,000,000. That's a lot of people, and on a platform that likely has the ability to carry on like a cockroach in a nuclear winter.
Anecdotally I'll say I feel like I used to be in the habit of typing out responses to posts daily when I first started using the internet. It feels like that was slowly trained out of me as the content and the responses got worse and worse (especially with the advent of LLMs). Trying to change that on Lemmy.
Do vinyl records count? I really like that they make beautiful noise from a simple electromechanical process.