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For stock releases, yes, a rigorously vetted walled garden with no sideloading is going to provide greater default protection than an open platform, but consume

For stock releases, yes, a rigorously vetted walled garden with no sideloading is going to provide greater default protection than an open platform, but consumers also lose the ability to shape the extent to which they manage their own devices. As far back as 2012 I used an Android CFW that sandboxed apps and returned empty values for whichever permissions were specified. And prior to that, it used 7.x at-will permissions. Since it was rooted, I could set the hosts file to block known malware domains and social media tracking anf load modules or patch issues instead of hoping it would be in a future update, if ever. Until buying a Pixel (on Android 7.1.2-8.1), I'd never bothered with an OEM spin or stock builds, but it's been... okay. It's a shame it took half a decade for privacy options to catch up to the level of custom projects, and it's still primarily for device protection, but the situation isn't the sieve it once was with locked bootloaders and the over-broad support emphasis of earlier days.

sjwright 9y ago
> but consumers also lose the ability to shape the extent to which they manage their own devices. Which is only useful for the consumers who have the skill, the depth of knowledge and who maintain that knowledge to keep it up-to-date. Maybe one percent of users. Probably fewer. This is why most people outsource this stuff to third parties, just like we outsource the pasteurisation of milk and the maintenance of sewerage systems. The typical analogy is the age-old argument about whether consumers should be expected to know how their car works. Maybe they should but that's beside the point—they don't. Insisting that they should is irrelevant. Most people don't know what brake fluid does and they won't care if you explain it to them.
- washadjeffmad 9y ago
  Not to sound too Monty Python, but shouldn't they have at least the right to know these things? And your example proves the point; because others cared to become the third-party, we have projects like LineageOS for smartphones and tablets. However, they could not have if Google had locked its OS down or restricted it to certain hardware. Just because most people only want to know the time doesn't mean no one but clock makers should have the right to understand how clocks work.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    I just don’t agree with your premise (because you don’t need to know how a Seiko watch works to learn how watches work) or your conclusion (because in the absence of AOSP, projects like Firefox OS might well have been successful).

sjwright 9y ago

> but consumers also lose the ability to shape the extent to which they manage their own devices. Which is only useful for the consumers who have the skill, the depth of knowledge and who maintain that knowledge to keep it up-to-date. Maybe one percent of users. Probably fewer. This is why most people outsource this stuff to third parties, just like we outsource the pasteurisation of milk and the maintenance of sewerage systems. The typical analogy is the age-old argument about whether consumers should be expected to know how their car works. Maybe they should but that's beside the point—they don't. Insisting that they should is irrelevant. Most people don't know what brake fluid does and they won't care if you explain it to them.

washadjeffmad 9y ago
Not to sound too Monty Python, but shouldn't they have at least the right to know these things? And your example proves the point; because others cared to become the third-party, we have projects like LineageOS for smartphones and tablets. However, they could not have if Google had locked its OS down or restricted it to certain hardware. Just because most people only want to know the time doesn't mean no one but clock makers should have the right to understand how clocks work.
- sjwright 9y ago
  I just don’t agree with your premise (because you don’t need to know how a Seiko watch works to learn how watches work) or your conclusion (because in the absence of AOSP, projects like Firefox OS might well have been successful).