6 ms·

Some companies are better than others but there's absolutely no reason to believe any one of them would ever be on "your side" for any reason. You can vote for

Some companies are better than others but there's absolutely no reason to believe any one of them would ever be on "your side" for any reason. You can vote for who makes decisions in government, but you can't vote for who makes decisions in companies.

panarky 7y ago
You vote every time you decide to buy or not to buy.
- minikites 7y ago
  Tell me how I can choose to avoid buying fungible commodities from a particular source: suppose I want to avoid oil from BP because I disapprove of their handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Avoiding BP-branded filling stations doesn't actually mean I'm not buying oil that came from BP. Or suppose I want to avoid wheat from Archer Daniels Midland, or crops sprayed with Monsanto products. The idea that capitalism provides meaningful choice is a joke.
  - parasubvert 7y ago
    The whole point of commodification (which arguably has little to do with capitalism - this process occurs in communism too) is to eliminate differentiation. Pecunia non olet ("money doesn't smell") is the motto of any commodity market for thousands of years. You might not like who you're buying from, but the POINT is fungibility: to completely remove all distinguishing characteristics, allow interchangeability, separate the value of the good from the value of the producer or seller. Early stage markets (usually aided by capitalism) on the other hand allows for disequilibrium, competition, and differentiation. At worst is how you get commodities repackaged as "artisanal bottled water" and "bone broth", and the like. But it would be the way to differentiate ethical oil (is there any?) from unethical. Also has been pretty successful at labelling GMO / non-GMO food. So, yeah, there are many cases where you do have meaningful choice.
- inetknght 7y ago
  That's not how that works at all. You can buy something you need because you need it and that's not at all a vote saying you like the management of how it was produced.
  - celeritascelery 7y ago
    It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. And if you can’t find a company that you want to support, then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package. Well, that's the problem with politics as well, and the reason that modern democracy is a sham (compared to ancient Athenian direct democracy [1]). [1] obviously for those it included at the time. After all, modern democracy didn't include slaves, women, and even poor white folks (the extension of voting rights to non-property-owning white men happened in 1828, and it was hampered in the South until the early 20th century) until well into the 20th century.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      > It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. Again, that's not how that works at all. I can name hundreds of items that I've purchased in the past year where there aren't meaningful competitors. I can name dozens of contracts I've entered into where management changed after the contract was signed (sometimes years afterward). Of course then I'm screwed because I'm still stuck in that contract.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      > If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. Someone else does not exist. That is like saying you voted for Comcast.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  That's not always a democratic vote when there is a market monopoly, lockins and external pressure to use products from certain companies.
- coldtea 7y ago
  You vote wholesale (on all aspects of a product) and not just on those you like or don't like, so the point is moot. Plus, to vote "away" from a company/product, other products should exist that are better, and not just in this single aspect (encryption of backups), but in other aspects that count for your usage.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  And just like an election between 3 smarmy, corporate-backed cantidates, sometimes the illusion of choice is just that.
- chme 7y ago
  Voting is a very bad way to send a message, especially if it is 'voting with your wallet'. Its at most 1 bit information, often even less, since it could be a huge number of reasons for each person to vote one way or another, or maybe not vote at all or just random. You can boycott a company your whole life, and nobody not even the company will care.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  You vote if you actually have a choice. What choice is there beyond Apple or Google in terms of smartphones? And I mean actual, ergonomic, everyday convenient choice -- my mother will firmly refuse me if I said "I'll buy you a phone but will have to tinker a full weekend to make it half-privacy-aware". And even if she was on board, she'll just yell at me if she can't do a basic task (this is a controversial topic around here but heavily modded and supposedly Google-less Android is absolutely not as useful as a Pixel or vendor-modded Android). So... Google is an ad company. There's nothing they won't do to get to your data. And of course, being a huge company, they will lie about it at Congress hearings, lobby against punishments, make PR campaigns to mislead the general public, cover up their work with China until they are caught, etc. They already did all of these, many times. Apple is seemingly a good citizen but do we really know what they do behind closed doors? As an Apple user I am still a realist and I know the answer to this question is a firm "No". We seriously have no adequate choice. I like my iPhone; I don't play games on it (well, a few brain-teasers and a bunch more serious like chess but you get the idea), and I read a lot of stuff on it: work- and hobby-related. Social media gets almost zero attention from me. So smartphones can be very useful if you don't get hooked on BS. And so I ask you again -- what actual choice do we have? How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference?
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    > How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference? We (that is, tech users) have a choice, if we choose it. The ones who don't are the people who can't take that option (ie, your mother). You've stated as much. What is your choice today, as someone technically inclined? Well - you mentioned modded Android; but there are several other options, if you don't mind fiddling with things. More than a few phone operating systems are out there, many open source. For hardware, probably among the best right now is the Pine64 phone (it's currently in a strange "high-beta" state - you can order one, and it will supposedly be close to what will eventually be sold, but it isn't completely considered a "commercial product"). Alternatively, you could build a phone using a Raspberry Pi (or a similar board, like a Beaglebone or something), or an Arduino (you'll be very limited in what you can do using a standard Arduino - basically make/take calls, store some contacts, maybe SMS). Note that most phone modules out there are 2/3G - but you can find 4G/LTE modules, fairly cheap if you know what you're looking for. Your "phone" won't look pretty, but you probably know that. It will likely be fragile at times, and the software quality will depend on what you can find and what you can code yourself. Cloud storage, games, etc - will all be mostly up to you to implement in some manner. A lot of work, certainly - but that's the only real option, as you can never be absolutely certain, if you're not in control of at least the OS and software. But for everyone else? Yeah - they don't have any choice, unless they are willing to step up their knowledge (and most aren't, nor should they have to).
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Except that you only reasonably have two choices in smartphones: Android or iOS. So you can vote between plague and cholera. And, no, you would have to be in a very privileged position already to have any other choice. The "free market" can't fix things if there are no choices to choose from. Sometimes politics has to fix this instead.
shadowgovt 7y ago
And at the end of the day, these tools are powerful and it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access. Apple (and their peers in the big-cloud-data-storage world) may not even be in the wrong for not willing to hand the same tool to the just and the unjust for cheaper than those individuals rolling their own.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  > it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access Unclear on what exactly? How much damage is done through encryption alone?
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Arguably making it harder for enforcement agency to do their jobs. I believe this is their burden to bear and work with, since privacy for every citizens is also important.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      I agree that the resopnsibility is on the FBI to do investigation, but transitioning from a world where private documents are irretrievable without a warrant to one where they're structurally irretrievable because of mathematics and computational limitation would fundamentally alter the balance of power between society and individuals within that society in ways that society hasn't had to explore. It's something that's worth thinking deeply about before leaping upon it. Part of the FBI's responsibility of investigation is to surface this concern to companies that have the power to make that world a reality, and it appears Apple has agreed with them on the risks.
      - nx20593 7y ago
        Consider this then. What happens if freedom of speech is taken away (something that is already being talked about in some radical circles). If some group of people don't think you have the right to free speech comes into power and now have access to your private communications you could be "ghosted" away to the gulag for "hate speech" for something a benign as telling as an offensive joke if you upset the powers that be. To quote George Carlin. "F$ck the Children"

panarky 7y ago

You vote every time you decide to buy or not to buy.

minikites 7y ago
Tell me how I can choose to avoid buying fungible commodities from a particular source: suppose I want to avoid oil from BP because I disapprove of their handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Avoiding BP-branded filling stations doesn't actually mean I'm not buying oil that came from BP. Or suppose I want to avoid wheat from Archer Daniels Midland, or crops sprayed with Monsanto products. The idea that capitalism provides meaningful choice is a joke.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  The whole point of commodification (which arguably has little to do with capitalism - this process occurs in communism too) is to eliminate differentiation. Pecunia non olet ("money doesn't smell") is the motto of any commodity market for thousands of years. You might not like who you're buying from, but the POINT is fungibility: to completely remove all distinguishing characteristics, allow interchangeability, separate the value of the good from the value of the producer or seller. Early stage markets (usually aided by capitalism) on the other hand allows for disequilibrium, competition, and differentiation. At worst is how you get commodities repackaged as "artisanal bottled water" and "bone broth", and the like. But it would be the way to differentiate ethical oil (is there any?) from unethical. Also has been pretty successful at labelling GMO / non-GMO food. So, yeah, there are many cases where you do have meaningful choice.
inetknght 7y ago
That's not how that works at all. You can buy something you need because you need it and that's not at all a vote saying you like the management of how it was produced.
- celeritascelery 7y ago
  It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. And if you can’t find a company that you want to support, then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package. Well, that's the problem with politics as well, and the reason that modern democracy is a sham (compared to ancient Athenian direct democracy [1]). [1] obviously for those it included at the time. After all, modern democracy didn't include slaves, women, and even poor white folks (the extension of voting rights to non-property-owning white men happened in 1828, and it was hampered in the South until the early 20th century) until well into the 20th century.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    > It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. Again, that's not how that works at all. I can name hundreds of items that I've purchased in the past year where there aren't meaningful competitors. I can name dozens of contracts I've entered into where management changed after the contract was signed (sometimes years afterward). Of course then I'm screwed because I'm still stuck in that contract.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    > If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. Someone else does not exist. That is like saying you voted for Comcast.
thrwaway69 7y ago
That's not always a democratic vote when there is a market monopoly, lockins and external pressure to use products from certain companies.
coldtea 7y ago
You vote wholesale (on all aspects of a product) and not just on those you like or don't like, so the point is moot. Plus, to vote "away" from a company/product, other products should exist that are better, and not just in this single aspect (encryption of backups), but in other aspects that count for your usage.
Jamwinner 7y ago
And just like an election between 3 smarmy, corporate-backed cantidates, sometimes the illusion of choice is just that.
chme 7y ago
Voting is a very bad way to send a message, especially if it is 'voting with your wallet'. Its at most 1 bit information, often even less, since it could be a huge number of reasons for each person to vote one way or another, or maybe not vote at all or just random. You can boycott a company your whole life, and nobody not even the company will care.
pdimitar 7y ago
You vote if you actually have a choice. What choice is there beyond Apple or Google in terms of smartphones? And I mean actual, ergonomic, everyday convenient choice -- my mother will firmly refuse me if I said "I'll buy you a phone but will have to tinker a full weekend to make it half-privacy-aware". And even if she was on board, she'll just yell at me if she can't do a basic task (this is a controversial topic around here but heavily modded and supposedly Google-less Android is absolutely not as useful as a Pixel or vendor-modded Android). So... Google is an ad company. There's nothing they won't do to get to your data. And of course, being a huge company, they will lie about it at Congress hearings, lobby against punishments, make PR campaigns to mislead the general public, cover up their work with China until they are caught, etc. They already did all of these, many times. Apple is seemingly a good citizen but do we really know what they do behind closed doors? As an Apple user I am still a realist and I know the answer to this question is a firm "No". We seriously have no adequate choice. I like my iPhone; I don't play games on it (well, a few brain-teasers and a bunch more serious like chess but you get the idea), and I read a lot of stuff on it: work- and hobby-related. Social media gets almost zero attention from me. So smartphones can be very useful if you don't get hooked on BS. And so I ask you again -- what actual choice do we have? How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference?
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference? We (that is, tech users) have a choice, if we choose it. The ones who don't are the people who can't take that option (ie, your mother). You've stated as much. What is your choice today, as someone technically inclined? Well - you mentioned modded Android; but there are several other options, if you don't mind fiddling with things. More than a few phone operating systems are out there, many open source. For hardware, probably among the best right now is the Pine64 phone (it's currently in a strange "high-beta" state - you can order one, and it will supposedly be close to what will eventually be sold, but it isn't completely considered a "commercial product"). Alternatively, you could build a phone using a Raspberry Pi (or a similar board, like a Beaglebone or something), or an Arduino (you'll be very limited in what you can do using a standard Arduino - basically make/take calls, store some contacts, maybe SMS). Note that most phone modules out there are 2/3G - but you can find 4G/LTE modules, fairly cheap if you know what you're looking for. Your "phone" won't look pretty, but you probably know that. It will likely be fragile at times, and the software quality will depend on what you can find and what you can code yourself. Cloud storage, games, etc - will all be mostly up to you to implement in some manner. A lot of work, certainly - but that's the only real option, as you can never be absolutely certain, if you're not in control of at least the OS and software. But for everyone else? Yeah - they don't have any choice, unless they are willing to step up their knowledge (and most aren't, nor should they have to).
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Except that you only reasonably have two choices in smartphones: Android or iOS. So you can vote between plague and cholera. And, no, you would have to be in a very privileged position already to have any other choice. The "free market" can't fix things if there are no choices to choose from. Sometimes politics has to fix this instead.

shadowgovt 7y ago

And at the end of the day, these tools are powerful and it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access. Apple (and their peers in the big-cloud-data-storage world) may not even be in the wrong for not willing to hand the same tool to the just and the unjust for cheaper than those individuals rolling their own.

thrwaway69 7y ago
> it's unclear that it's in the best interests of humanity at large to make it easy for every individual to cipher their data in a way that no other human can ever access Unclear on what exactly? How much damage is done through encryption alone?
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Arguably making it harder for enforcement agency to do their jobs. I believe this is their burden to bear and work with, since privacy for every citizens is also important.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    I agree that the resopnsibility is on the FBI to do investigation, but transitioning from a world where private documents are irretrievable without a warrant to one where they're structurally irretrievable because of mathematics and computational limitation would fundamentally alter the balance of power between society and individuals within that society in ways that society hasn't had to explore. It's something that's worth thinking deeply about before leaping upon it. Part of the FBI's responsibility of investigation is to surface this concern to companies that have the power to make that world a reality, and it appears Apple has agreed with them on the risks.
    - nx20593 7y ago
      Consider this then. What happens if freedom of speech is taken away (something that is already being talked about in some radical circles). If some group of people don't think you have the right to free speech comes into power and now have access to your private communications you could be "ghosted" away to the gulag for "hate speech" for something a benign as telling as an offensive joke if you upset the powers that be. To quote George Carlin. "F$ck the Children"