The “any backdoors we leave open for it” bit kinda sounds like straight-up complaining that they can’t compromise users’ security without compromising their own control over users’ systems?
That’s a pretty standard position nowadays from a lot of different tech companies. They can’t possibly give the user any freedoms, because it might compromise something. It’s this broad assumption that all users that refuse to surrender control of their device should never be trusted and therefore not have their desires respected.
Like how Google continues to actively punish users that claw back control of their devices through custom roms or rooting, and of course Apple has been doing that forever. Microsoft is threatening more invasive restrictions in windows, too. It’s why shit like integrity checking is continuing to be pushed.
The pattern is very clear: you are required to let them stick their arm up your device’s ass to participate in our “modern” tech space.
It’s the equivalent of a store that forces all customers to strip naked before entering to prevent shoplifting. You of course don’t have to enter that store, but that store has also run virtually all the other stores out of business, and it’s the only one that carries the specific brand of chips you’re looking for.
In my country there was a story about a lady who got viral because it had been customary for shops to make people leave their backpacks and purses on a locker or with an employee. Then a security employee also had to check your receipt against the items in your bag before you left. It’s extremely annoying and cumbersome, it can add up to half an hour of extra time when the shops are full and there aren’t enough employees to do the checks.
So one day she went to buy groceries, before giving her purse to the employee she emptied it and itemized everything there was in there on a piece of paper. Then she bought her groceries and had the clerk double check the price and weight of every item she bought against the price tags and content labels of everything. Including the prepackaged meats. Then, when picking up her purse back, she had the list of items and emptied the bag again in front of the employee.
The manager noticed and went to her mad at what she was doing. She argued with him that they treated her as a thief so she would treat them as thieves themselves and pointed out how she had been charged for an extra plastic bag they didn’t gave her (we get charged the price of the bags) and demanded her plastic bag or money back.
Of course nothing came of it, but it riled social media discourse over here for a while. Some low end (local bodegas) and high end stores stopped the practice as the economic situation stabilized later, but it was still a quirky detail of that dark era. Some employees did steal stuff from customers bags sometimes. Same lady had a field day during the days of stores trying to return change on payments with lollipops and candy. So she tried to pay with a bag of candy and lollipops. That one was wild as well.
The “any backdoors we leave open for it” bit kinda sounds like straight-up complaining that they can’t compromise users’ security without compromising their own control over users’ systems?
Boo fucking hoo, I guess 🤷
That’s a pretty standard position nowadays from a lot of different tech companies. They can’t possibly give the user any freedoms, because it might compromise something. It’s this broad assumption that all users that refuse to surrender control of their device should never be trusted and therefore not have their desires respected.
Like how Google continues to actively punish users that claw back control of their devices through custom roms or rooting, and of course Apple has been doing that forever. Microsoft is threatening more invasive restrictions in windows, too. It’s why shit like integrity checking is continuing to be pushed.
The pattern is very clear: you are required to let them stick their arm up your device’s ass to participate in our “modern” tech space.
It’s the equivalent of a store that forces all customers to strip naked before entering to prevent shoplifting. You of course don’t have to enter that store, but that store has also run virtually all the other stores out of business, and it’s the only one that carries the specific brand of chips you’re looking for.
In my country there was a story about a lady who got viral because it had been customary for shops to make people leave their backpacks and purses on a locker or with an employee. Then a security employee also had to check your receipt against the items in your bag before you left. It’s extremely annoying and cumbersome, it can add up to half an hour of extra time when the shops are full and there aren’t enough employees to do the checks.
So one day she went to buy groceries, before giving her purse to the employee she emptied it and itemized everything there was in there on a piece of paper. Then she bought her groceries and had the clerk double check the price and weight of every item she bought against the price tags and content labels of everything. Including the prepackaged meats. Then, when picking up her purse back, she had the list of items and emptied the bag again in front of the employee.
The manager noticed and went to her mad at what she was doing. She argued with him that they treated her as a thief so she would treat them as thieves themselves and pointed out how she had been charged for an extra plastic bag they didn’t gave her (we get charged the price of the bags) and demanded her plastic bag or money back.
Of course nothing came of it, but it riled social media discourse over here for a while. Some low end (local bodegas) and high end stores stopped the practice as the economic situation stabilized later, but it was still a quirky detail of that dark era. Some employees did steal stuff from customers bags sometimes. Same lady had a field day during the days of stores trying to return change on payments with lollipops and candy. So she tried to pay with a bag of candy and lollipops. That one was wild as well.