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Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is, no one seems to be talking about how they backup

by toolz 5y ago

Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is, no one seems to be talking about how they backup your messaging data in a possibly insecure way and exposing peoples email address if you have an associated phone number. Surely I can't be the only one who finds it incredibly frustrating to see how many people think being republican associated is noteworthy when in the context of scary privacy violations. It would seem to me you're just encouraging republicans to buy this phone. Surely, the privacy conscious people in this community want privacy for everyone regardless of political affiliations, right?

ceejayoz 5y ago
> It would seem to me you're just encouraging republicans to buy this phone. I don't see anyone in this thread doing this.
loeg 5y ago
> Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is As of this writing, no comments exist that match that description. One comment mentions that it's a phone marketed at conservatives, but does not describe that association as embarassing.
- testbjjl 5y ago
  Front running victimization.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
I haven’t seen any comments encouraging anyone to buy this phone. If you take making fun of the phone and the people dumb/gullible enough to buy the phone, “encouraging republicans to buy this phone,” well, I don’t know what to tell you. If someone is so full of spite for the evil leftists that they’ll run to anything some of those users make fun of, that’s on them. But no one thus far has encouraged anyone to buy this piece of shit product.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Here? I don't think you're going to see any. And I think there's a legitimate use-case for people who feel that their favorite social networks are censored. Doesn't matter if the apps are full of garbage, that is what they want.
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    I don't think this phone can unban abusive former Twitter users for the user, so it still won't support that use case (in addition to being not great at privacy)
freedomben 5y ago
Indeed. When I clicked on the thread I expected more serious technical analysis of the bad security. I could get "lol stupid suckers with victim mentality" pretty much everywhere else on the internet. Fortunately at least some of the more egregious comments have since been edited. When a bunch of the comments are about how stupid the target demographic is, when there's tons of interesting technical meat to talk about, it's kind of embarrassing.
- blitzar 5y ago
  > when there's tons of interesting technical meat to talk about There is nothing technically interesting to talk about - its litterally big tech tech with an eagle, fighter jet and amaerican flag skinned on it.
ElemenoPicuares 5y ago
> * Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is, no one seems to be talking about how they backup your messaging data in a possibly insecure way and exposing peoples email address if you have an associated phone number.* > Surely I can't be the only one who finds it incredibly frustrating to see how many people think being republican associated is noteworthy when in the context of scary privacy violations. It would seem to me you're just encouraging republicans to buy this phone. Surely, the privacy conscious people in this community want privacy for everyone regardless of political affiliations, right? It's frustrating when people unnecessarily politicize things— like when they express righteous indignation over their inaccurate accusation of political discrimination in a thread that's literally just pointing out its association with divisive partisan political groups.
duxup 5y ago
> think being republican associated is noteworthy I think a phone associated with a specific political party is noteworthy.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
>Surely I can't be the only one who finds it incredibly frustrating to see how many people think being republican associated is noteworthy when in the context of scary privacy violations. I think the point of the conversation is that this is a bad privacy product that is being heavily marketed towards (technically) unsophisticated people who subscribe to a specific brand of politics. Those two facts aren't unrelated. In other words: conservatives are the intended victim here, not the butt of anyone's joke.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  > marketed towards (technically) unsophisticated people it's being marketed towards gullible people, period. as a conservative programmer, I saw the ad and laughed. it was called out by people in conservative online communities as well.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - seanw444 5y ago
    Yeah there are lots of bitter people in these comments making sweeping generalizations.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
The problem here is that "Freedom" in "FreedomPhone" does not seem to be "freedom" the way free software advocates define it, or privacy advocates define it; it seems to be "freedom" the way far-right activists use it as a dogwhistle. If people are a bit focused on the company's politics, it's because they put those politics front and center. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if there was some company doing the inverse of this -- marketing to the segment of the far left that believes tech companies are, if not explicitly conservative, explicitly uber-capitalist and willing to pander to conservatives at every turn to prove how "centrist" they are[1] -- and was doing the same thing that the FreedomPhone is, then the discussion on HN would be pretty similar: we'd be going, "Hey, this looks like it's basically a rebranded phone with dubious software that's being marketed to people with a political chip on their shoulder." The flavor of the chip isn't irrelevant, but it's not what's specifically curious and scammy about it.[2] [1]: I am sure there are conservatives who are reading this and scoffing at the idea that leftists think social media companies are biased against them. All I can say is that I probably follow more leftists than you do, then, and you're gonna have to trust me on this one. [2]: There is an interesting and weird history of marketing scams that specifically target conservatives, and evidence that there's more of that on the right than the left (although by no means is it exclusively right-leaning).
- andai 5y ago
  Re: [1] I was wondering what a phone targeting left-leaning people would look like, but I think that's pretty much just Twitter, Tumblr etc? You seem to disagree on this point, so I'd be curious to hear more.
  - fabianhjr 5y ago
    Probably a Fairphone since it values sustainability and worker rights in their supply chain even if the value for buck of their devices is lower than the main corporate brands like Apple/Alphabet/Samsung. (Plus support for unlocking the bootloader, flashing a custom ROM and relocking the bootloader which means it recently got CalyxOS support) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fairphone_4 https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fairphone_4
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reilly3000 5y ago
Look, I’m resigned to the fact that most of the leadership and investors in most of the companies I support are voting red. It’s in their self-interest, and the majority of them are highly ranking members of the church of self-interest; acolytes of the reverend Milton Friedman. Many of the open source projects I love most for their utility and verve are built by libertarians who aren’t very amenable to paying for social safeguards. Needless to say, my political and economic views skew elsewhere. Regardless of that, I’m going to support their services and projects on their own merits, and according to my needs and those that I perceive in others. This is different. The Freedom Phone is another cash grab against some of the most vulnerable people in my country. Their susceptibility to manipulation has been laid bare and the wolves of the world have picked them over again and again. This is targeting marketing it is most cynical conclusions. The formula is well known: Push a high margin product and service to an addressable group. Speak to their fears and with their in-group language. Tell them exactly what they want to hear and make them scared to death to do anything but buy it. It matters not what substance is behind the product. In fact, in schemes like these, actually delivering real value is antithetical to the point: to become rich, by way of filth. I’m not politically aligned with the group that is being targeted for The Freedom Phone. In fact, they as a group have repeatedly gone out of their way to hurt people that I care about. That said, they are people just like me and don’t deserve to be defrauded. This post did an excellent job of demonstrating how they are being lied to and that makes me mad as hell. Based on the way they treat security and compliance from what we can see on the front end, I shudder to think what it is like on the backend. Unencrypted PII+payment methods, sloppy secrets, resale and abuse of customer data are all on the table, possibly more. The thing about these kinds of schemes is that they are almost never sustainable. Technical, social, legal, and/or financial debt will eventually cause their implosion. It’s just a matter of how many people they screw over in the process. I’m going to spend part of my Easter Sunday sending this blog post and my thoughts to the FTC and some attorneys general. I would encourage you to do the same if you’re able and so inclined. Getting this in front of media is also valuable. Exploitation of this variety is cancerous and fully deserves to called out early and often.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Well said. I don't really have much to add other than saying thanks for being a good person.

by toolz 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago

> It would seem to me you're just encouraging republicans to buy this phone. I don't see anyone in this thread doing this.

loeg 5y ago

> Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is As of this writing, no comments exist that match that description. One comment mentions that it's a phone marketed at conservatives, but does not describe that association as embarassing.

testbjjl 5y ago
Front running victimization.

filmgirlcw 5y ago

I haven’t seen any comments encouraging anyone to buy this phone. If you take making fun of the phone and the people dumb/gullible enough to buy the phone, “encouraging republicans to buy this phone,” well, I don’t know what to tell you. If someone is so full of spite for the evil leftists that they’ll run to anything some of those users make fun of, that’s on them. But no one thus far has encouraged anyone to buy this piece of shit product.

tomc1985 5y ago
Here? I don't think you're going to see any. And I think there's a legitimate use-case for people who feel that their favorite social networks are censored. Doesn't matter if the apps are full of garbage, that is what they want.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  I don't think this phone can unban abusive former Twitter users for the user, so it still won't support that use case (in addition to being not great at privacy)

freedomben 5y ago

Indeed. When I clicked on the thread I expected more serious technical analysis of the bad security. I could get "lol stupid suckers with victim mentality" pretty much everywhere else on the internet. Fortunately at least some of the more egregious comments have since been edited. When a bunch of the comments are about how stupid the target demographic is, when there's tons of interesting technical meat to talk about, it's kind of embarrassing.

blitzar 5y ago
> when there's tons of interesting technical meat to talk about There is nothing technically interesting to talk about - its litterally big tech tech with an eagle, fighter jet and amaerican flag skinned on it.

ElemenoPicuares 5y ago

> * Somehow with multiple comments about how embarrassing the phones association with republican organizations is, no one seems to be talking about how they backup your messaging data in a possibly insecure way and exposing peoples email address if you have an associated phone number.* > Surely I can't be the only one who finds it incredibly frustrating to see how many people think being republican associated is noteworthy when in the context of scary privacy violations. It would seem to me you're just encouraging republicans to buy this phone. Surely, the privacy conscious people in this community want privacy for everyone regardless of political affiliations, right? It's frustrating when people unnecessarily politicize things— like when they express righteous indignation over their inaccurate accusation of political discrimination in a thread that's literally just pointing out its association with divisive partisan political groups.

duxup 5y ago

> think being republican associated is noteworthy I think a phone associated with a specific political party is noteworthy.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

>Surely I can't be the only one who finds it incredibly frustrating to see how many people think being republican associated is noteworthy when in the context of scary privacy violations. I think the point of the conversation is that this is a bad privacy product that is being heavily marketed towards (technically) unsophisticated people who subscribe to a specific brand of politics. Those two facts aren't unrelated. In other words: conservatives are the intended victim here, not the butt of anyone's joke.

hunterb123 5y ago
> marketed towards (technically) unsophisticated people it's being marketed towards gullible people, period. as a conservative programmer, I saw the ad and laughed. it was called out by people in conservative online communities as well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- seanw444 5y ago
  Yeah there are lots of bitter people in these comments making sweeping generalizations.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

The problem here is that "Freedom" in "FreedomPhone" does not seem to be "freedom" the way free software advocates define it, or privacy advocates define it; it seems to be "freedom" the way far-right activists use it as a dogwhistle. If people are a bit focused on the company's politics, it's because they put those politics front and center. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if there was some company doing the inverse of this -- marketing to the segment of the far left that believes tech companies are, if not explicitly conservative, explicitly uber-capitalist and willing to pander to conservatives at every turn to prove how "centrist" they are[1] -- and was doing the same thing that the FreedomPhone is, then the discussion on HN would be pretty similar: we'd be going, "Hey, this looks like it's basically a rebranded phone with dubious software that's being marketed to people with a political chip on their shoulder." The flavor of the chip isn't irrelevant, but it's not what's specifically curious and scammy about it.[2] [1]: I am sure there are conservatives who are reading this and scoffing at the idea that leftists think social media companies are biased against them. All I can say is that I probably follow more leftists than you do, then, and you're gonna have to trust me on this one. [2]: There is an interesting and weird history of marketing scams that specifically target conservatives, and evidence that there's more of that on the right than the left (although by no means is it exclusively right-leaning).

andai 5y ago
Re: [1] I was wondering what a phone targeting left-leaning people would look like, but I think that's pretty much just Twitter, Tumblr etc? You seem to disagree on this point, so I'd be curious to hear more.
- fabianhjr 5y ago
  Probably a Fairphone since it values sustainability and worker rights in their supply chain even if the value for buck of their devices is lower than the main corporate brands like Apple/Alphabet/Samsung. (Plus support for unlocking the bootloader, flashing a custom ROM and relocking the bootloader which means it recently got CalyxOS support) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fairphone_4 https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fairphone_4
- 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

reilly3000 5y ago

Look, I’m resigned to the fact that most of the leadership and investors in most of the companies I support are voting red. It’s in their self-interest, and the majority of them are highly ranking members of the church of self-interest; acolytes of the reverend Milton Friedman. Many of the open source projects I love most for their utility and verve are built by libertarians who aren’t very amenable to paying for social safeguards. Needless to say, my political and economic views skew elsewhere. Regardless of that, I’m going to support their services and projects on their own merits, and according to my needs and those that I perceive in others. This is different. The Freedom Phone is another cash grab against some of the most vulnerable people in my country. Their susceptibility to manipulation has been laid bare and the wolves of the world have picked them over again and again. This is targeting marketing it is most cynical conclusions. The formula is well known: Push a high margin product and service to an addressable group. Speak to their fears and with their in-group language. Tell them exactly what they want to hear and make them scared to death to do anything but buy it. It matters not what substance is behind the product. In fact, in schemes like these, actually delivering real value is antithetical to the point: to become rich, by way of filth. I’m not politically aligned with the group that is being targeted for The Freedom Phone. In fact, they as a group have repeatedly gone out of their way to hurt people that I care about. That said, they are people just like me and don’t deserve to be defrauded. This post did an excellent job of demonstrating how they are being lied to and that makes me mad as hell. Based on the way they treat security and compliance from what we can see on the front end, I shudder to think what it is like on the backend. Unencrypted PII+payment methods, sloppy secrets, resale and abuse of customer data are all on the table, possibly more. The thing about these kinds of schemes is that they are almost never sustainable. Technical, social, legal, and/or financial debt will eventually cause their implosion. It’s just a matter of how many people they screw over in the process. I’m going to spend part of my Easter Sunday sending this blog post and my thoughts to the FTC and some attorneys general. I would encourage you to do the same if you’re able and so inclined. Getting this in front of media is also valuable. Exploitation of this variety is cancerous and fully deserves to called out early and often.

Shared404 5y ago
Well said. I don't really have much to add other than saying thanks for being a good person.