Comment by CharlesW
5 hours ago
> …perhaps you and Google have different notions of who the consumers are.
A relatively small percentage of HN users have empathy for people who haven't the faintest idea how their gadgets work and no curiosity about learning that. It can seem inconceivable.
I agree with you that normal people deserve safety when using their most intimate device, and that backdoors that can give technical people unfettered access will ultimately be abused by bad actors. I wish the world didn't work this way, but it's the one we live in.
> have empathy for people who haven't the faintest idea how their gadgets work and no curiosity about learning that.
I sincerely hope that a lot of people are actually better than how the stereotypes may make one think. Empathy (or lack of it) doesn't change the issue: users are deprived of choice and forced to go along a corporate decision, whenever it benefits them or not.
Ultimately, it all boils down to lack of informed consent and power/voice disparity between casual users and large corporations, especially when the choice is limited (and we have a de-facto duopoly). What you're seeing here is users expressing their dissatisfaction with a major decision that goes against their interests and that they had no say in. Have some empathy for those folks too.
I'm pretty sure most people who are unhappy about the news don't want to harm anyone and find no enjoyment if someone is harmed by lacking informedness. I'm very confident there are ways to present the issue and give a choice in a manner that is comprehensible to anyone, without requiring any technical knowledge. Every competent adult should be able to decide if they want to risk a thief gaining access to all their accounts at the benefit of ability to have extended control over their phone. Or be unable to install applications not blessed by the vendor, at the benefit of vendor promising to keep them safe from malware. I might not do the best job here, but I strongly believe that such things can be explained to anyone regardless of their life choices.
That's not what Google is doing, and their disrespect for user autonomy should not be confused for a lack of empathy towards those who don't understand computers.
Consider this framing: there's a controversy whenever it's acceptable that one could be punished for their choices on how their devices behave. I.e. whenever users willing to have better control over their devices should be punished by a refusal to access a lot of popular apps, sometimes even resulting in social awkwardness. I'm sure that empathetic people can see how this can feel unfair.
I have empathy for them, that's precisely why I made them much more secure by recommending mobile Firefox with uBlock :)
Yes, these big corporations are truly benevolent entities who are only looking out for the common man, and us software engineers are out of touch and "lack empathy".
It couldn't possibly be a frustration and concern that this is blatantly anti-competitive and serves to make Google considerably more money and leaves us with little/no options for people who actually know how to use a computer.
Frankly I think the security argument is largely a smokescreen to avoid discussions of anti-trust.