Comment by ben_w
4 years ago
(1) happened with the first multitasking OS, or possibly when CPUs got microcode; Android and iOS are big increases in freedom in comparison to the first phones.
(2) and (3) are bad, but a tangential bad to this: it’s no good having an untainted chat layer if it’s running on an imperfect — anywhere from hostile to merely lowest-bidder solution — OS. (And most of the problems we find in software have been closer to the later than the former).
(4) for all their problems, the American ones held off doing that until there was an attempted coup, having previously resisted blocking Trump despite him repeatedly and demonstrably violating their terms.
Re (1): That's technically true, but missing the point when viewed holistically. Those first feature phones were mostly just used to make quick calls to arrange an appointment or discuss one or two things. They were not a platform to mediate a majority chunk of our social lifes like today's phones are.
That also seems to miss the point, as for most of the stuff you’re describing the phone is a thin client and the computation is on a server, and that would still be true even if the phones themselves ran only GPL-licenced code and came with pre-installed compilers and IDEs.