I've known for a long time that T-Mobile shipped junk apps upon initial setup, but seeing them loaded OTA after a single click on an ad (even a few pixels off of the "x" button) is very concerning. Even putting aside the moral issues with practices like this, that's a huge security hole in a very large percentage of Android phones.
> AppLovin’s X’s are unusually tiny, so mis-taps are especially likely
This is why I use Intent Intercept - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.k3b.android.intentinterce...
It tells me exactly what's about to happen from my tap(accidental or intentional), and gives me the option to undo my tap.
Every privacy/security conscious Android user should have Intent Intercept installed on their devices already.
Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity.
You click on a banner ad inside an app, and if you have Intent Intercept installed, it won't immediately register as an "impression" and take you to wherever the banner has been programmed to take you to by default. Since Intent Intercept also affects the ad industry(of which Google is a big part), I don't expect Google to build a similar less-nerdy tool into Android by default.
> Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity.
Intent Intercept is open source(Apache License 2.0 https://github.com/k3b/intent-intercept) and its release binaries are hosted on F-Droid, arguably the most trusted Android "store" for Free and Open Source apps. So I'm not too worried.
However, in this case, this tool will hopefully mitigate that risk and, as you said, the creator of the OS is actually a threat too (by leaving their OS vulnerable in order to facilitate their ad business).
Ideally, I can just nag my non-tech savvy relatives to let me install such a security app for them and then enjoy having peace of mind for their behalf.
There are antivirus apps on Android that will warn you for this crap, but an antivirus cannot work on an operating system designed to install malware.
It's a fundamental tradeoff between allowing multiple ways for apps to be installed or forcing everything through a single installation workflow (a la iOS and its App Store).
Before the iPhone you couldn't even get the "cool" phones in America, Japan had so much better things available and everybody envied what wasn't available here.
The reason we have any control from the carriers was the power Apple had and the stubbornness of Jobs.
A lot of the battles being lost by Apple are being won by groups who will make the ecosystem worse.
At least this used to be true in the halcyon days when iOS was simple.
Stopping carriers from ruining phones is quite popular on HN from what I've seen.
Geeks don’t like it.
But Apple is a three-trillion-dollar corporation, because most folks aren’t geeks.
TinyMDM at $23/year seems to fit the ticket [1]. (I've never used it and just heard about it today.)
Edit: Discussed somewhat here https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-permissions/. Seems like it's abetted by garbage from the carrier.
Something for iOS to look forward to?
There are settings carriers can push to iOS (access to features like tethering, some network configuration stuff) but this type of malware cannot be pushed onto iOS. At worst, carriers push shitty Java applets to the (e)SIM, but that's all sandboxed off from any user interaction.
One is not obviously better than the other, though I'll grant that Apple has managed to get their users to a place where being subjected to them has become a point of pride, which is impressive.
do you have an example of "overcharging them at every turn"? looking at the Google One [1] vs Apple iCloud [2] pricing it seems pretty similar.
------ Google Apple
5 GB: free free
50 GB: N/A $0.99
100 GB:$1.99 N/A
2 TB: $9.99 $9.99
6 TB: N/A $29.99
[1] https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0
Having all of the sections of the article on the same page would have helped surface and resolve a lot of these potential editorial issues.
Thanks also for reading so carefully. My web stats say many people stopped at the summary!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/applovin-...
The root problem is that Google Play is poorly curated. One problem it has is that it ranks apps that have many downloads higher than those with fewer downloads. AppLovin is used to boost downloads for the purposes of the Google Play algorithm.
Of course, this is known to Google.
You think deeply about that question.
Even so, I avoid stocks that don't have a sustainable, value-based business model.
65% (68^%) net (gross) income margin for Q2 '25 [1]. 44% (54%) net (gross) for Q2 '24.
(Nitpick: I don't love financial dashboards that don't define and date their metrics. For example, what does leverage on that page mean?)
[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1751008/0001...
Exotica like Fairphone and PinePhone are starting to look pretty good...
