People are concerned because they know that Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator. He doesn't want to install this app because he thinks it will serve some useful purpose, he wants to install it because he thinks the country and everyone in it is his property.

If he's allowed to get away with this, at some point before he's overthrown, he's going to force you, personally, to install this app. When you object that this is crazy, his remaining true believers will make up some nonsense reason why we shouldn't be worried.

It’s a purely political app, not an official US government.

So yes, it’s weird and illegal for the republicans to force all government employees to have a propaganda app on their work phones.

Reminds me of the story of a parliament full of apparatchiks clapping their dictator, with no one daring to stop, because it would mean a lack of loyalty, for which they'd be dragged out and shot...

> This just feels like the weirdest part to me:

>> A button within the app allows users to “text President Trump,” which autofills a text bubble reading “Greatest President Ever.”

Have you ever watched any part of any of his cabinet meetings? They are just 3 hours of people telling him how great he is in the most cringiest ways possible, each person trying to one-up the last with the ass kissing. So this autofill doesn't seem weird at all to me.

(I'm not saying its normal, I'm saying its expected).

> It feels like something you might see from the government in a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship.

Well.. I mean, yeah. That's about where we are.

That's because the Trump administration IS a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship, at least in spirit.

Like, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, puts people in prison for a 100 years for going to a protest like a duck, it might be a duck!

Long-time de-Googled Pixel user here: while it's not for most of the people I know, for whom the barrier to install LineageOS / GrapheneOS / etc on their Android pocket computer is as yet too high, advertisement-company Google's nonsense can be uninstalled. It helps that I use my less-smart phone much less than back when these things were a novelty. Nice to be able to call and text, snap photos, take notes, visit some websites with JavaScript turned off, set alarms, and learn stuff with Anki, all with one high-tech slab that fits in my pocket. I also appreciate F-Droid and the contributions of so many people making useful software. Still, I'd trade computers and all the pollution from the underlying infrastructure for lower population density and the ability to regularly eat fish from local waterways without getting poisoned.

4th amendment probably