Comment by zbentley
3 days ago
There are two big problems with this (not that Apple’s caprice is the only alternative):
1. The vast majority of people are Grandma, and they do not have a Johnny available to administer their tech. Most people are not technical.
2. The vast majority of Grandmas will follow instructions on a “how do I share cute photo” website even when that website directs them to dig deep into configuration settings and ignore six “are you sure you want to allow this app to fully remotely control your device?” warnings. Even if Grandma has a healthy suspicion of scams, when she is instead trying to accomplish a goal she will suddenly prove quite adept at giving software with questionable provenance root access to her life.
And what if my grandma is Admiral Hopper. I wonder if there's a way to argue for or against paternalistic corporate gatekeepers without invoking sexism, ageism, or both?
I used the terms from the grandparent post with tongue firmly in cheek. I didn’t intend to be sexist or ageist and agree with your criticism.
I think the bigger question is whether this is even worth solving. If people really want to give someone root access and do it willingly, maybe we just say this is out of our purview and allow it. And then, slowly, people will learn. They will be hard lessons but evidently baby proofing the entire world is not really working, so we might just abandon ship on that idea.
> And then, slowly, people will learn
I hope you're right, but I'm not sure they will. The less locked-down WinXP and early Android era was ... really really bad in terms of nontechnical people getting hacked/scammed. And bad actors are also innovating, so the target of what people have to learn is moving: now we have synthetic AI voice scams, easy-to-create full clones of popular websites that harvest credentials, an explosion of 0days that let people run RATs that hassle elders for their MFA codes, and so on.
Like, I'm 100% with you that baby-proofing the world is an unattainable, patronizing, and negative-externality-laden goal. We shouldn't do that. But we shouldn't go full libertarian "you're on your own; toughen up" either; I think we have a lot of data that indicates that the harms of that approach are both high-magnitude and high-volume.
On the sliding scale here where the left is "full anarchy" and the right is "goo goo ga ga baby proof the world", Apple is about 95% to the left. Here's how that looks:
Anarchy |--------O-| Goo Goo Ga Ga
And people are arguing we should be moving further right. It's ridiculous, we all need to be candid and recognize this will not work
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Tell me that when it’s your relative that is out thousands of dollars because they were scammed.
I'm not going to argue we should close all banks or whatever ridiculous argument people come up with just because someone lost money.
The only way to 100% prevent scams is to remove the potential entirely. There are scams, infinite actually, right now, on iPhones. Do you support that? Surely not, so we should lock iPhones down more no? Ideally, we ban smartphones altogether, to prevent scams. Oh you don't support that? Well come back when one of your relatives loses 1 million dollars.
Look, we can take steps to prevent scams, and we do. What we should NOT do is go so extreme that people cannot even use their devices the way they want that they paid for. This is anti-consumer. If I want to install some software, I should be able to. It is not Apple's responsibility to baby me, baby you, and baby the entire world and say "no no you can only use our approved software!"
Especially when some of that approved software is... wait for it... malware! Yes, there is quite a lot of malware on the Apple App Store and the Play Store. But I can't install open-source software I've audited myself on my iPhone? How strange.
It appears to me this has nothing to do with scams, and everything to do with control, censorship, and profiteering.
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