3 ms·

It's not necessarily a good thing, but it is a lesson the software industry is going to have to learn. For example, take the story from a little while back abo

It's not necessarily a good thing, but it is a lesson the software industry is going to have to learn. For example, take the story from a little while back about how Gmail add-ons could access your messages. Any programmer looks at that situation, and they think, "Duh... OF COURSE an add-on could access your data, because how else on earth could it possibly work?" But a non-programmer doesn't think this way. They think, "Gmail is a platform and a service that I use, which is run by somebody that I'm supposed to be able to trust to handle all that stuff for me. They ought to reason through all these things before they offer it to me." They very well may not have a good enough understanding about how software works to reason through the implications like we can. It isn't self-evident to them where your data goes and what will happen to it if you do this or that. moreover, Gmail (and tech generally) isn't the center of their universe, and they may not realize these add-ons come from a third party or may assume a certain level of vetting would be done if they do. Whether this expectation is right is one question. In theory people ought to take responsibility for their own choices. But putting that question aside for the moment, when designing a product, we ought to never forget that many users lack either the knowledge or the inclination to think through all this. You're building a product that you're going to hand over to users, and a lot of users, maybe even the majority of them, are going to approach it this way. I don't have a great solution to offer, but blindly assuming that all users are knowledgeable certainly isn't the right path.

ascar 7y ago
I recently had a discussion with someone who complained about the Gmail permission dialogue when adding his Gmail account to the Windows 10 mail program. He was absolutely convinced that he will not agree to giving Windows permission to view and send emails for him and instead requested that Google and Windows enter a contract that only allows him to do that. It was completely impossible to explain to him the technical background (e.g. that him sending an email through the program and the program sending an email by itself is technically the same thing for Gmail) and he wouldn't accept that Google is quite rightly informing him about the implications (Google should change the text to say it only allows him to send emails). As you said he expected Google to give him technically impossible guarantees and handle that the third party software can't do anything without him confirming it.
fauigerzigerk 7y ago
It is indeed a difficult problem. It's not just that users cannot be expected to be knowledgable. They cannot know who to trust either. If you show them a warning that says "do not install this add-on unless you trust its publisher", what is a user supposed to do? There are thousands of add-on/app publishers with names that no one has ever heard of. So I do understand Apple's approach. Unfortunately, Apple muddies the waters by mixing up security protections with their own business interests and the interests of authoritarian regimes. To a degree I fear this is unavoidable. I think the best solution is to have that very restrictive app store that you can trust to vet things for you, but in addition to that they should permit side-loading for apps and content that you have to vet yourself or rely on a third party vetting system.

ascar 7y ago

I recently had a discussion with someone who complained about the Gmail permission dialogue when adding his Gmail account to the Windows 10 mail program. He was absolutely convinced that he will not agree to giving Windows permission to view and send emails for him and instead requested that Google and Windows enter a contract that only allows him to do that. It was completely impossible to explain to him the technical background (e.g. that him sending an email through the program and the program sending an email by itself is technically the same thing for Gmail) and he wouldn't accept that Google is quite rightly informing him about the implications (Google should change the text to say it only allows him to send emails). As you said he expected Google to give him technically impossible guarantees and handle that the third party software can't do anything without him confirming it.

fauigerzigerk 7y ago

It is indeed a difficult problem. It's not just that users cannot be expected to be knowledgable. They cannot know who to trust either. If you show them a warning that says "do not install this add-on unless you trust its publisher", what is a user supposed to do? There are thousands of add-on/app publishers with names that no one has ever heard of. So I do understand Apple's approach. Unfortunately, Apple muddies the waters by mixing up security protections with their own business interests and the interests of authoritarian regimes. To a degree I fear this is unavoidable. I think the best solution is to have that very restrictive app store that you can trust to vet things for you, but in addition to that they should permit side-loading for apps and content that you have to vet yourself or rely on a third party vetting system.