Comment by echelon

A smartphone is essential to operate in the modern world. Facebook is not necessary at all.

Google and Apple are holding the entire world hostage.

I can't even order food at half the restaurants I visit any more without a Google or Apple device. They're all using smart phone QR code menus. It's absurd.

Imagine what happens when they're the only way to pay. When they're the only form of government ID.

Do we really want these devices to be locked down and not owned by us? This much responsibility should be a business liability imposed by the governments of the world, not unlimited permission to tax and coerce without impunity.

Imagine if your government was as free as your smartphone. We wouldn't have elections. We'd have no freedom, no peace of mind, forever renters. Bad choices would be imposed upon us as defaults. The government would make us more dependent upon them. If we had a business, we'd be taxed 30%, told we couldn't have a relationship with the customer, made to jump through frequent hoops, deal with constant friction, have to pay protection racket money to avoid ads, have everything we do monitored and controlled, be subject to takedown whenever and for whatever reason, not be allowed to issue updates or use our own technology, have the government themselves compete with us and look at our data...

The governments of the world need to end this.