Comment by safety1st
5 days ago
Their solution will be to push mandatory and nonconsensual updates to your devices which limit your device and your freedom in the name of security. Like Google is doing to Android in September. You will no longer be able to install "unverified" software on anything. To address prompt injection attacks they're probably working on an approach where your data all has to be in the cloud and subject to security scans. That's already basically the model for Google Workspace, Google Drive and Chromebooks.
The model will get full access to your data, but in the name of security, you will only be permitted to have data that is cloud-hosted; local storage will effectively just be cache.
The era of the general computer will end, and the products you purchased from these companies will be nonconsensually altered and limited.
I'm so glad I switched to Linux more than a decade ago. At least on the PC there will still be an open source ecosystem for a long time to come, it may have less features but I'm willing to accept that.
Knowing that they can change what you bought overnight with a single nonconsensual update, think very, very carefully about who you purchase all of your future technology from. Google's upcoming nonconsensual degradation of Android should be a lesson for everybody.
>Google's upcoming nonconsensual degradation of Android should be a lesson for everybody.
Google is almost certainly doing this because the iOS was not found to be a monopoly, while Andorid was. It came up in Google's appeal of the Epic case verdict, where they directly asked the judge about it. Turns out you can't be anti-competitive if you don't have [allow] any competitors.
Nope. I'm still going to blame Google for their own actions. Nice try, though. I'm old enough to remember when Google pretended to take responsibility for not being evil. Even had it as their motto.
> I'm so glad I switched to Linux more than a decade ago. At least on the PC there will still be an open source ecosystem for a long time to come, it may have less features but I'm willing to accept that.
Wait until age verification is mandatory everywhere. :)
I can already see that happening, e. g. to access financial transactions or government apps, one needs to verify the id, and that will not work without age verification that can not be tampered with. So Linux will either submit to the same or be excluded.
(That free developers will be able to run Linux fine for much longer will also be true, but I guess they only care about catching the 95%, not the 5% linux users ... and 5% is a high guesstimate).
Edit: To clarify the above, one already had to provide personal data for financial transactions, of course, so a bank knows who is who, but the recent age verification go hand in hand with the attempt to get rid of vpn, and applications now make it a new standard to query the age of users, with the claim to "help protect kids". And some people buy into that rationale too. I don't, but I have seen many non-tech savvy people submit to that justification.
There's always the zero knowledge proof tech alternative, but I don't have the feeling we are moving in that direction - it's not the most profitable business is it.
No, nor is it most amenable to mass surveillance.