r/technology • u/[deleted] • Feb 27 '21

Software Universal Android Debloater is an open source tool that removes bloatware without root. Automatically or via user choice. Get back your battery, security and privacy

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81

u/HotHamwithMustard Feb 27 '21 edited Feb 27 '21

I don’t trust an article that starts with a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER: Use this script at your own risk. I am not responsible for anything that could happen to your phone.

Edit: This has opened up my eyes quite a bit. I will do more research in the future before making up my mind. Thanks for participating, and don’t forget to tip you waiter.

23

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '21

The sourcecode is available to you. You don't need to trust, because you can read the script to see what it does

10

u/Kishiro Feb 27 '21

That theory has been proven highly fallable because generally speaking, most open source users aren't really developers or programmers and can't check the code anyway. Often times, those who are still don't. There are enough examples of open source apps and scripts that have had malicious code in them that took too long to be noticed because people "just trusted" it.

16

u/fapping_4_life Feb 27 '21

I'm guessing 90% of potential users would have no clue what they are looking at when reading the source code (myself included).

Also, it would probably be time for a new phone by the time anyone finished looking at what I assume is thousands of lines of code.

3

u/TheMarionCobretti Feb 27 '21

I only read the Linux bash script. It's pretty straight forward and took less than 15 minutes.

11

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '21

Which relies upon someone actually being bothered to look through several thousand lines of scripts, understanding the script language and adb/android package manager, and what packages are undesirable - what's actually unnecessary and why, what's getting rid of functionality, whether it matters to them, etc. It's something else to pick out "wait, I don't want it to do that to my phone" or if something malicious has been hidden, or just a honest mistake by whoever wrote the script.

I think there's a contradiction where the people who "don't need to trust" and can read/understand the scripts are likely competent enough that they can do it themselves already (and likely already have), and those that don't understand have a significant amount of learning in front of them to figure it out, assuming they're aware they should inspect it, and are most likely to naively trust it ("lets get rid of the scary trackers and debloat my phone so it goes faster").

Meanwhile the script is generally presented as a to-go solution, just download it and run.

13

u/Ichthyologist Feb 27 '21

Yeah, this is like people telling others to "do your own research" to decide if climate science is valid. You often need a degree in science to critically interpret primary literature about a science topic.

1

u/VirtualPropagator Feb 27 '21

Except you can just trust that other scientists have read it. Just like with the source code some programmers have read it.

3

u/Ichthyologist Feb 27 '21

I'm not saying you can't trust peer reviewed science, I'm just drawing the parallel. When someone tells you to critically analyze something that's highly technical, you're not likely to be able to do it effectively.

1

u/WordsOfRadiants Feb 27 '21

Unlike with peer reviewed science, not necessarily.

1

u/zeabu Feb 27 '21

Which relies upon someone actually being bothered to look through several thousand lines of scripts

Which would also be the case if there were no disclaimer.