Comment by EvanAnderson
9 months ago
> The masses will always stay in the walled garden. It's where they want to be and they don't even realize there are walls. It is just what is for them.
The walls should have open doors, though, versus prison bars. Physical switches on devices (much like older Chromebook devices had) used to opt out of the walled garden should be mandated by consumer protection regulations.
It's not entirely unlike the qualified/accredited investor rules which won't let you invest in unregulated securities without income/net worth/certification requirements. No form exists which would allow someone to say "hey, I get why these wall are here, but I understand and am opting out of your protection".
I personally think there should be (I value individual rights/freedom over preventing someone from harming themselves), but I also see why we ended up here. When bad things happen, people demand action and government wants to be seen as doing something.
Really, we're talking Singapore, which is one of the most restrictive places in the world.
Have the EU counterbalance this closing with extra fines for anticompetitive behavior.
> Physical switches on devices (much like older Chromebook devices had) used to opt out of the walled garden should be mandated by consumer protection regulations.
I don’t want to live in the same society as the person that wrote this asinine comment with this much confidence. We are just ideologically incompatible
How so? I understand the tension between freedom to tinker and consumer protection. It's OK to assign different values to either of them. And there are definitely ways to reconcile the two positions. Some of that will have to come through nuanced regulations.
For example, it could be regulated that if the flip is switched (or a fuse is blown irreversibly) on a device, responsibility for the device and its software fall entirely onto the owner. So if they get phished on an unprotected device and lose their life savings, it's entirely on them. Manufacturers and service providers have no obligation to support them.
Once you have enough power to legislate and enforce this, what's to stop a future administration from tightening the ratchet just a little bit further and forcing users to purchase TPM computers with unbreakable DRM and encrypted blobs running who knows what, and no ability for users to modify their system, change hardware or operating systems without either running afoul of the law or losing access to banking and insurance?
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