Comment by echelon
1 month ago
Freedom > Privacy > Security
Never give up your freedom.
If you have to give up your privacy to ensure your freedom, so be it.
If you have to give up your security to ensure your privacy, so be it.
This goes for governments and phones.
Always fun to interact with some internet Thomas Jefferson giving freedom speeches from his mother's basement.
Reality is that people pay a lot of money because they 'trust' Apple (and to a lesser extent Google), but Meta is the sleaziest one of them all. (And I don't use their shit either.) But people want Whatapp and Instagram, and so you are telling them now they have sell-out and go to the "Meta App Store" to talk to their friends. That fucking sucks. And I think you agree with that.
Under such topics there are always comments about each vendor making their own store, yet it didn't happen on Android, where it's currently perfectly possible.
Sorry, I haven't had an Android phone since the original Nexus, so hopefully you can clarify. Could you install some hypothetical 'Meta Store' from the Google Store? Or do you mean more like Meta could just sell their own phone (eg Amazon)?
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And yet you're apparently not losing your mind over Mark Zuckerberg having his products on the web? He's doing everything you claim on the open web - third party trackers embedded on other websites, etc. Do you want to lock down the web?
I think you have a reason for defending Apple. Maybe you love the company, maybe you've got their stock, maybe you've worked for them.
Apple is a trillion dollar behemoth that has distorted the market and removed freedom and choice. They're a menace that needs to be regulated. Period.
I also think Zuckerberg's tracking needs to be regulated, but that's a battle for another day. It's one we haven't so egregiously lost yet.
People don't need Meta. People need smartphones. And smartphones are draconian dictatorships that the government has been too asleep and too lax to regulate.
> I think you have a reason for defending Apple.
Guilty as charged. My parents had a Windows laptop and all sorts of evil shit was "sideloaded", and when I started reformatting it, some indian 'microsoft tech support' guy was actually screaming at them through the speakers. This is what happens in your world.
I bought them an iPad (and another) and it's now been almost 15 years with zero tech support calls, zero problems, zero scammers. That is fucking great for me. Money well spent. So yeah, I wish you guys could just buy a free software phone with no ABI and go away to recompile your software. But it is fucking terrible idea on a societal level.
We keep mocking and laughing at the "internet Thomas Jefferson"s of the world but they seem to be getting increasingly prescient about the dystopian world where we are giving bad actors disproportionate control over our lives on the pretext of keeping us or children safer.
I will agree with your point, and will also say a lot of the "bad actors" are actually in the house here. So don't take anything on face value. Hacker news has some straight computer criminals, adware types, cryptobros, dubious startup types, whoever is vibe-coding these crawlers, and etc. So of course they all believe in "maximum freedom" (to scam people).
> This goes for governments and phones.
Apple does not have the ability to throw me in prison or take away my freedoms. Only to not grant me extra freedoms subsidized by their R&D budget.
Apple has removed your freedom from day one.
Their R&D budget is at the expense of a free market that would have delivered the same or better products.
Did you ever see how wild and innovative the Japanese mobile phones were before iPhone monoculture took over?
I want crazy stuff like a smartphone that has the form factor of a Raspberry Pi. Or a smartphone with e-Ink. Crazy new categories of devices.
Sadly, the Apple/Google monopoly has turned smartphones into one of the shittiest, most locked down device categories. It's a death place for innovation.
Nobody is forcing you to buy their products, so they haven’t taken away anything from you.
If you do decide to buy their products, nothing has changed since the day of your purchase, so they haven’t taken away anything from you.
Their “monoculture” didn’t “take hold” - it beat the Japanese offerings through innovation and a better product.
They operate in a free market, their R&D budget is made possible by their market success. If things change in the market (e.g. AI) the market will vote the way it always does.
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Technically for US residents Apple can throw you in prison for attempting to maintain and use your freedoms, thanks to the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA.