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Tell me you’re joking. * It’s not your device. * Ok, What does it mean to own something? To hold it? To be able to destroy it? To use the services it provides?

Tell me you’re joking. * It’s not your device. * Ok, What does it mean to own something? To hold it? To be able to destroy it? To use the services it provides? Maybe the receipt makes you the owner? If that’s your definition, in a very limited sense, you own it. But you don’t control it, because you can’t understand it fully, because you didn’t design it. In fact no one person designed it, it’s the product of the group, and advanced technological products like the iPhone serve the interests of the group, first. It just so happens in most cases the interests of the group align and benefit the user. After all we are very similar to one another and so this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. You want to buy, they want to sell. You need a service, they want to serve and so on. With a product like the iPhone you’re purchasing access to an iteration of a design. Delivering that to you in a white shrink wrapped box is a clever marketing illusion. You can’t see the many huge factories full of calibrated robotic pick and place machines or the lithography setup used to create the chips or the lines of workers that assembled the phone one tiny piece at a time. You don’t see the endless cell towers on the horizon and all the engineers that maintain them. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the human labor that forged the design. There’s easily 500 straight years of skilled engineering labor in the modern iPhone. Perhaps even double that. Here’s my point already. There’s some brain damaged, mentally ill, psychotic people who like to rape children, take photos of it and share it with their friends. Then what happens is those kids go kill themselves. This problem is happening at scale and it’s not in the interests of the group to let it continue. If the group believes it’s interests and your own diverge, you’ll quickly discover who really owns that device. They control the product they designed and manufactured and they can do whatever they want via signed software update, and you can do exactly nothing about it. That’s a fact. A $1200 iPhone might be the best deal ever offered to a human being in recorded history. But you’re buying a service, leasing a disposable product. You’re a guest. That’s the truth. It’s a really ugly image I have of the simple type of person who’s having a hard time choosing between email privacy and stopping a child predator.

yodsanklai 5y ago
I recommend this piece from Snowden for a different point of view https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/all-seeing-i https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/all-seeing-i
matheusmoreira 5y ago
God when did this world get so screwed up? I'm buying a phone. I'm not buying a service, an experience, a design or whatever. I'm buying a phone. How is it even possible to twist this? Buying a phone is really just a fancy way of saying I'm buying a computer. And if this world was just, this computer would not execute a single instruction without my consent. I don't really care what "the group" wants, they're not gonna use my computer for it. > It’s a really ugly image I have of the simple type of person who’s having a hard time choosing between email privacy and stopping a child predator. I don't have a hard time choosing between anything. I will choose privacy every single time. If authorities want to stop crime, they can go out there and do real police work. They don't get to surveil everyone on earth just because it would make things easier for them. If you have such an easy time giving up your privacy and freedoms, then you should be the first to be scanned. Who are you anyway? You're not even posting under your real name, threshold.
- threshold 5y ago
  You don’t want to be a part of the group and reap the benefits of collaboration and economies of scale? Well then your $1200 isn’t going very far. But you can have a lump of aluminum, a pile of sand and a sheet of glass. And there’s enough left over for a huge pile of books so you can learn how to fab chips, make circuit boards, write your own operating system and build your own phone network. Good luck This idea that you’re somehow special and exist in a vacuum is privileged and arrogant. You’re relying on other people to do everything for you. They feed you and look after you when you’re sick. And they build these fantastic technologies and work long hard hours and die early just to make it affordable. You got a great deal, the best any living human ever was offered. But the group asks you to run a program you can’t even see so their children don’t get raped and suddenly you’ve been cheated and violated and wronged.
  - commoner 5y ago
    That's a very unreasonable take. Privacy is not reserved for "special" people, it's for everyone. A $1,200 smartphone is generally not considered a "great deal" and definitely not "the best deal ever offered to a human being in recorded history". And users are absolutely justified to oppose on-device surveillance introduced on their smartphone, regardless of whether you consider it a "product" or a "service".

yodsanklai 5y ago

I recommend this piece from Snowden for a different point of view https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/all-seeing-i https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/all-seeing-i

matheusmoreira 5y ago

God when did this world get so screwed up? I'm buying a phone. I'm not buying a service, an experience, a design or whatever. I'm buying a phone. How is it even possible to twist this? Buying a phone is really just a fancy way of saying I'm buying a computer. And if this world was just, this computer would not execute a single instruction without my consent. I don't really care what "the group" wants, they're not gonna use my computer for it. > It’s a really ugly image I have of the simple type of person who’s having a hard time choosing between email privacy and stopping a child predator. I don't have a hard time choosing between anything. I will choose privacy every single time. If authorities want to stop crime, they can go out there and do real police work. They don't get to surveil everyone on earth just because it would make things easier for them. If you have such an easy time giving up your privacy and freedoms, then you should be the first to be scanned. Who are you anyway? You're not even posting under your real name, threshold.

threshold 5y ago
You don’t want to be a part of the group and reap the benefits of collaboration and economies of scale? Well then your $1200 isn’t going very far. But you can have a lump of aluminum, a pile of sand and a sheet of glass. And there’s enough left over for a huge pile of books so you can learn how to fab chips, make circuit boards, write your own operating system and build your own phone network. Good luck This idea that you’re somehow special and exist in a vacuum is privileged and arrogant. You’re relying on other people to do everything for you. They feed you and look after you when you’re sick. And they build these fantastic technologies and work long hard hours and die early just to make it affordable. You got a great deal, the best any living human ever was offered. But the group asks you to run a program you can’t even see so their children don’t get raped and suddenly you’ve been cheated and violated and wronged.
- commoner 5y ago
  That's a very unreasonable take. Privacy is not reserved for "special" people, it's for everyone. A $1,200 smartphone is generally not considered a "great deal" and definitely not "the best deal ever offered to a human being in recorded history". And users are absolutely justified to oppose on-device surveillance introduced on their smartphone, regardless of whether you consider it a "product" or a "service".