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It should be forbidden for all device manufacturers to make apps, tracking, registering, etc. mandatory. Every TV, phone, camera, tablet, fridge, ... is becomi

It should be forbidden for all device manufacturers to make apps, tracking, registering, etc. mandatory. Every TV, phone, camera, tablet, fridge, ... is becoming a spying device like in the worst scifi dystopias. And as soon as the company stops supporting them they become trash to pollute the planet so they can sell you the next one. Regulations should have come a decade a go. We own nothing, we have no privacy, we are sold products 24/7. I will vote for a goverment that protects me of this total corporate surveillance. It is their duty towards citizens to do so. And it will happen, like feudalism died this techno-feudalism will die too.

dsign 2y ago
[flagged]
Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
When the governments all over the world are making their citizens download mobile apps I doubt whether there will be any regulation prohibiting hardware manufacturers forcing apps on consumers.
- jofla_net 2y ago
  dependence on such complex devices is disgusting
inopinatus 2y ago
My vote could be swayed by a policy platform making it not merely forbidden, but outright criminal, to market software and hardware that cannot function without assignment of a user id. Everything from drones to games. In many cases this would thoroughly annoy certain authoritarian regimes that are normalised as totalitarian surveillance states. Their exports would be disrupted. What a pity.
- jackvalentine 2y ago
  So, world of Warcraft is illegal now?
  - korse 2y ago
    You may be aware, but you can acquire and use the World of Warcraft client without signing up for anything with Blizzard. You register and pay to connect to their servers.
    - bslanej 2y ago
      First, to download the world of Warcraft client, you need to log into the battlenet client, which requires an account. Second, the world of Warcraft client is completely useless without a server to connect to. Alternative world of Warcraft servers are technically possible but illegal to run.
      - gkbrk 2y ago
        Implementing a network protocol is not illegal. Neither is writing a server.
        bslanej 2y ago
        You have to reverse engineer the protocol encryption, which is illegal in some places. Also, lots of copyrighted material such as NPC names and quest text must be stored in the server and transmitted from the server to the client, which is piracy in plain terms.
    - jackvalentine 2y ago
      This is a dumb take - WoW wouldn’t “function” to a reasonable person’s interpretation of that word without a login.
- beezlewax 2y ago
  I agree with this. I have an LG TV it basically forces you to agree to sharing data to function everytime it update. TVs are used by multiple people too so how does that even track legally. My partners will fly through menus agreeing to everything if I'm not there. I'm using a universal remote that doesn't have a microphone and it complains about that too.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    I find a drop of superglue in the remote microphone is very helpful for retaining a basic level of privacy.
  - technothrasher 2y ago
    My Pi-hole logs are filled mostly with my LG TV and my Roku box. I get literally thousands of hits a day with them trying to phone home.
    - n3storm 2y ago
      I have been using a linux minipc with debian+xfce for more than 15 years and no regrets. Yes having a keyboard with touchpad looked like a bit cumbersome at first, but then when al tvs went smart using an onscreen keyboard with a rf mouse is a nightmare.
      - FloatArtifact 2y ago
        What do you do about Netflix or other apps? They have reduced video quality without being on a certified device.
        phkahler 2y ago
        Get a firestick for those apps
        justinrubek 2y ago
        They've sealed their own fate with such a poor decision.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Wouldn’t a phone be illegal under that scheme? (Because of the phone number being required for function and being a user-id.)
  - tliltocatl 2y ago
    No, because that is service, not hardware.
    - sokoloff 2y ago
      I think we can agree that a modern phone is “hardware and software” for sure. If you want to modify GP’s proposal to exclude things that also have a service, how long until DJI adds a service to their drone? (It might even be a negative duration; I don’t own one, but it would shock me if there wasn’t some kind of service associated already, perhaps to prevent flying a drone in unauthorized areas [or justified as such] or allow access to some online component of camera service.)
      - justinrubek 2y ago
        They can add all the services they want to their drone. As long as I'm not required to use them.
      - Jensson 2y ago
        > I think we can agree that a modern phone is “hardware and software” for sure. You should be able to use your phone and install software on it without signing up for the sellers services, I think there is no reason to not allow that except evil lockin. See windows for what happens when you don't legally enforce that, its ridiculous windows forces you to sign up to their services.
      - inopinatus 2y ago
        Even then, almost all online services are susceptible to re-imagining such that user/session identifiers are self-declared and can be rotated/discarded at any time. To this, some folks would be yelling, "that's not how my/XYZ service works", which is a proxy statement for those unwilling to say, "my/XYZ business model is abusive". And that of course is also why this only happens via regulation.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> Everything from drones to games. And computers. Sure it's a good idea to have a password, but that's not the same as a user ID registered with a company.
exe34 2y ago
i paid an extra £50 for a washing machine without WiFi, but I'm not sure they'll be around in ten years. my microwave oven has two knobs: how hot and how long.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Part of the problem is you can't even count on appliances to last 10 years anymore. These industries can force people to accept new indignities by making sure their old device dies prematurely and the only new ones to buy are shit. Yeah yeah, survivor bias, rose tinted glasses, conspiracy theories, blah blah. I've heard all the canned refutations. It's true. Appliance manufacturers got better at making things worse. And even if the device doesn't die early, it will eventually have to be replaced for one reason or another. I got 20 years out of my Honda, which wasn't great but not terrible either, but trying to replace it with something new that had comparable reputation for reliability and also no touch screen computer spyware bullshit was a serious problem. My only choice was Mazda and the although my new car does have the physical buttons and knobs I want, they are easily the worst quality buttons and knobs. All mushy with no satisfying clicks. One company holding out and selling cars or appliances without the new horse shit isn't enough, because without comparable competition they are still free to cut corners and make something worse than could be purchased in the past.
- taneq 2y ago
  I’ve been preaching the Gospel of Knobs for decades. When I was a kid, a microwave had a power knob (already at 100) and a time knob (0-45min, with finer gradations for the first 10-20 minutes). To start heating, just twist the time knob to the time required. A few years later all microwaves had chiclet keypads with terrible user interfaces. They’ve improved from there over the years but never to the convenience of the original knob layout.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    A knob is way more annoying than the single button modes on my GE Profile. I put whatever leftovers in there. Pasta, chicken and rice, soups, BBQ, doesn't matter. I lightly cover it. Press Reheat. Perfect every time. I don't have to judge how much to turn two knobs. Same goes for potatoes. Stab it with a fork a few times, butter and salt the outside, toss them in and press "Potato". Perfect baked potato every time. Same goes for steaming veggies. Frozen or fresh, doesn't matter. Toss them in a bowl, put a bit of water/butter/seasonings in it, lightly cover, press Vegetable, and boom perfectly steamed veggies. The one-touch sensor modes on my microwave are fantastic. And this is a 20-year-old microwave, so it's not like adding this tech made it less reliable. I'll be sad if I ever need to have a different microwave.
moritonal 2y ago
Vote with your wallet.
- riedel 2y ago
  I always was told that, but I hardly believe that can work. You have to at least also do a viral YT video like the OP too or rather really have competent, independent media with a good reach doing product reviews.
- alpaca128 2y ago
  People voting with their wallets is exactly how we got where we are today.
- tobyhinloopen 2y ago
  Basically impossible, or at best very impractical. Companies change their product after you buy them. This is not a hypothetical - this happens all the time. It happened to you, and to me. My most recent example: I wanted to calibrate my display using a "calibrite display pro hl" and suddenly got prompted with a software update. After updating, an account is suddenly required. This device is way past its return date. I cannot return it. I'm now stuck with a device that cannot be used with their software without creating an account. Another example: Philips Hue devices were changed to require an account. These days I focus on getting commercial variants of devices, since they usually don't have cloud or smart crap in them. For example, there's commercial variants of many TVs. They don't have smart crap in them and are designed for 24/7 usage.
  - moritonal 2y ago
    Completely agree that this kind of behaviour should be illegal. My thoughts are products should work from purchase with their offered feature-set (or be forced to recall), have a factory reset mode, and an opt-out of updates.
- nyx 2y ago
  I wonder what the "free-market" types will say to minimize criticisms like those in this thread once everything that can possibly be purchased requires bending over for this sort of abuse. Is the fantasy that some entrepreneurial savior will come along and voluntarily forgo all the massive spying profits in order to cater to the minute proportion of consumers perceptive enough to realize they're getting molested on the daily? How about smartphones, for example? "Vote with your wallet," says the smirking corporatocrat, "and just buy a mobile operating system that respects your personal privacy." Alright professor, looks like my choices are iOS or Android, so I'm kind of hosed either way? Unless I want to return to a 2004 feature set, or perhaps a GNU/Linux paperweight with a 20-minute battery life that can't use banking apps or place phone calls? I exaggerate (but in my opinion only slightly), and sincere apologies for tone--but it's quite frustrating to be met again and again with such a smug dismissal of what to many of us feels like an inescapable horror. This depraved race to the bottom, with every MBA-steered ship vying to see who can violate us the hardest, seems to be standard practice these days, and "purchase different products" puts the onus on consumers to fix what isn't their fault in a way that leaves an awful taste in my mouth.
loki49152 2y ago
We don't need new regulations. This is probably covered by commercial fraud statutes, as they represented the sale of the device as a sale of tangible personal property. There is no condition required to complete that purchase - the offer is of the physical device and the implied ability to use that device for its obvious purpose.
- inopinatus 2y ago
  Omitting a regulator makes enforcement a civil matter and the entire burden is placed on the consumer, which is to say, the legal scales are tipped throughly in favour of rogue manufacturers. Good luck suing DJI; you’ll obtain neither satisfaction nor restitution, and it’ll take years of being strung along by lawyers to realise it. The even worse outcome of failing to protect the consumer at the point of sale is you’ve tacitly swallowed the tenets of an authoritarian surveillance state.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  we need new regulations - the solution currently would be following what you say and suing the company in I guess small claims court or a class action suit for lots of people mad about the same thing against a single company that they make drag out for years while making money doing the same scam and then the payout will just be the cost of doing business. The small claims courts solution of course not everybody has the time or resources to do that, so the company wins that way. We need new regulations that stops it before it gets to the point where you have to go to small claims court or class action to redress the wrong.
  - rendaw 2y ago
    New regulation i.e. more civil law. Which require you to sue in a small claims court to be enforced. How does this change anything, when as GP said there are already civil laws?
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      many regulations are enforced by government agencies that prevent the product from being sold if they do not match the regulations, the civil laws the GP pointed to are contract laws which means that the buyer if they feel ripped off has to sue.
rvba 2y ago
Also changing software and licences. I bought an android phone that worked and soon it will reset every 3 days, so Im unreachable unless I enter the PIN. What kills the idea of having a secondary phone just in case.
- alpaca128 2y ago
  As far as I know an Android phone isn’t unreachable after reboot, it simply has the same locked screen as always. The only difference is the difficulty to unlock it without the PIN. So in your case it would reboot once (not every 3 days) and then just continue doing nothing.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I own an iPhone (and iPad). It forces me to re-enter my device password, every couple of days. Has done that, for ages. I think that can be disabled, though. I know of a couple of folks that won’t even enable Face ID. I think that’s insane. The phone has our entire life on it. The thought of having that much information available to any pickpocket is sobering. I refuse to use custom apps for things like banking and store loyalty, etc. I keep a photo of my store loyalty card’s barcode in my Photos app, because it does get me significant discounts, occasionally, but I won’t install their app. Most of these custom apps seem to be pretty shoddy quality, in my opinion (I’m a snob, though. Many folks don’t seem to mind). They seem to be written with some kind of hybrid system, and some are little more than webviews.
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    Well after the reboot Android enters the Before First Unlock state which is significantly more secure. I don't know if that influences the ability to receive regular phone calls, but I'm pretty sure Whatsapp/signal calls won't work.
- stavros 2y ago
  Or you can just disable the feature. Let's not brand every security feature as evil, please, it's disingenuous.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
Most of the abuse is already forbidden under GDPR, it just doesn't get enforced.
- b112 2y ago
  There's a lot of this, and it's a real problem. We need to make small claims court far more accessible. But outside of the GDPR, there's also just weirdness in terms of what is covered where. I can appreciate that having laws at the county level, the municipal level can be onerous to comply with, so you want things at the national level -- if not international. But as soon as you do that, some asshat works to reduce regulation because "regulation bad" without any qualifiers. And then as you say, lack of enforcement, is that alternative to this. Give them their laws, make them feel as if things have been done, but then don't enforce. You're in the same boat, but people "feel" better. This is a bit of a tangent, but where I live you have to cook a hamburger to safe temperatures. It is illegal to do otherwise, unless it is freshly ground in house, and we have actual, real inspectors that will ensure safe handling practices. (This isn't me railing about eating raw meat, I eat my steak med-rare. But that's a steak, if you're going to cook a hamburger that way, you need to wash the outside, grind it up, and cook+eat it within hours. Many restaurants are buying mass produced burger paddies and not even cooking them, which is pure insane.) Yet when I was in California, it's OK to just present a charred outside, a raw inside, along with loads of parasites. The restaurant is covered if they put up a sign saying something about 'raw meat can make you sick' or whatever. So every restaurant puts up the sign, then just doesn't care about cooking it to safe temps. Yee-haw, FREEDOM! Point is, people themselves, everywhere ... whether it's a small business or just their customers, don't even know, understand, or really care. And this is the true problem. People can't even understand the risks of raw meat, something I was taught in public school when, oh I don't know, freakin' 10 years old! While it doesn't seem that difficult to people on this forum likely, it surely is for the average person. Clearly.
numpad0 2y ago
I first encountered this pattern in a rare wearable device, over a decade ago. I bought it from someone and had to contact them to deregister the device. The foot in the door was theft prevention. Crime rates in the targeted regions of those devices was the original motivation and the enabler. From Chesterton's Fence principle, that has to be solved before the zero consumer ownership problem can be solved.
captainmuon 2y ago
I would go further, it should not be (just) forbidden, but taboo. Just like it is taboo to install a camera in a bathroom or to listen in to private conversations. If I have a thing, that thing should obey me. Be it a crowbar, a PC, a smart lamp or whatever. It's a value in and of itself that I can trust in my things. What about criminals? Sure, it is convenient a car can spy on a criminal and tell the police where they are, but we shouldn't allow that. Just like it would be convenient to force priests and lawyers to tell there secrets, but we as a society decided that there is greater value in confidentiality. I mean especially for a society like the US which is traditionally individualistic and distrustful towards government etc., it should be a matter of principle that "my stuff" doesn't spy on my and serves me and no one else.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  > Just like it is taboo to install a camera in a bathroom or to listen in to private conversations. Give it 5 years. The xiaomi or LG above the bed is likely already watching and listening. Interesting how the taboo shifted from "no camera in the apartment" to "no camera in a bathroom". In many short term rentals you have outright always connected IP camera installed inside apartment because of "break ins", "squatters", etc. The owners don't see a problem, don't accept complains.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Oh, there are already cameras in bathrooms. Everywhere that has an infrared sensor near your buttcheeks that auto-flushes, or on a urinal staring into your crotch, or simply on a soap dispenser, blinking impassively until you lather up. Those IR sensors are basically cameras; they are wired up for power, they trigger with your image. So don’t act all surprised when they are hacked and subverted to the visible spectrum and recording capabilities.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    IR motion/proximity sensors are not basically cameras. You can't get an actual image from them. They are essentially a single, unfocused pixel tuned to a wide angle with a narrow filter tuned to specific wavelengths. Some of them will have a few extra pixels to try and reject background motion, but still we're talking like 3 or 4 pixels for a whole scene.
NoelJacob 2y ago
When Europe tries to do this, many cry as over regulation.
- AdrianB1 2y ago
  I live in Europe and I love this kind of regulation, but I hate other stupid over-regulations we have here. Yes, you can have good regulation and over regulation at the same time.
bilekas 2y ago
Regulations would absolutely be nice to have, I do like how the EU does actually try to get some good regulations down, my biggest problem with them is though that they don't have any teeth. A lot of the time the cost of the relatively small fines are baked into the cost of doing business if they get caught in breach. It's infuriating. Maybe a fixed percentage of revenue from the services or product that infringes would be more appropriate.
amelius 2y ago
> It should Yeah, everybody here agrees. The main problem is to get this implemented and this will not happen by just venting here. So I'm still waiting for someone with good ideas.
mopenstein 2y ago
Stop buying those products.
- neuralRiot 2y ago
  Right? People need to learn to read the small print. “Needs valid subscription for all features to work” no thanks. If something like this isn’t informed before the purchase you have a valid reason for a return/ refund.
afpx 2y ago
In this imagined techno-feudalism future, what will these "monarchs" do? Own and control their entire supply chain?
brandensilva 2y ago
It's been awhile since the populist has risen up and demanded the government actually do their jobs rather than get rich and catering to the rich coasting on the destruction of our privacies, rights, institutions, and freedoms. The fact nearly zero legislation has been introduced to punish companies for violating the protection of our data with the bazillions of data leaks is telling of which master they serve.
xnx 2y ago
> is becoming a spying device like in the worst scifi dystopias. Most companies care more about it being a rental device than a spying device
verisimi 2y ago
Absolutely. But the technocratic system we are moving into requires "smart" everything and being de-anonymised online, at least for governments and corporations.

dsign 2y ago

[flagged]

Abishek_Muthian 2y ago

When the governments all over the world are making their citizens download mobile apps I doubt whether there will be any regulation prohibiting hardware manufacturers forcing apps on consumers.

jofla_net 2y ago
dependence on such complex devices is disgusting

inopinatus 2y ago

My vote could be swayed by a policy platform making it not merely forbidden, but outright criminal, to market software and hardware that cannot function without assignment of a user id. Everything from drones to games. In many cases this would thoroughly annoy certain authoritarian regimes that are normalised as totalitarian surveillance states. Their exports would be disrupted. What a pity.

jackvalentine 2y ago
So, world of Warcraft is illegal now?
- korse 2y ago
  You may be aware, but you can acquire and use the World of Warcraft client without signing up for anything with Blizzard. You register and pay to connect to their servers.
  - bslanej 2y ago
    First, to download the world of Warcraft client, you need to log into the battlenet client, which requires an account. Second, the world of Warcraft client is completely useless without a server to connect to. Alternative world of Warcraft servers are technically possible but illegal to run.
    - gkbrk 2y ago
      Implementing a network protocol is not illegal. Neither is writing a server.
      - bslanej 2y ago
        You have to reverse engineer the protocol encryption, which is illegal in some places. Also, lots of copyrighted material such as NPC names and quest text must be stored in the server and transmitted from the server to the client, which is piracy in plain terms.
  - jackvalentine 2y ago
    This is a dumb take - WoW wouldn’t “function” to a reasonable person’s interpretation of that word without a login.
beezlewax 2y ago
I agree with this. I have an LG TV it basically forces you to agree to sharing data to function everytime it update. TVs are used by multiple people too so how does that even track legally. My partners will fly through menus agreeing to everything if I'm not there. I'm using a universal remote that doesn't have a microphone and it complains about that too.
- lazyeye 2y ago
  I find a drop of superglue in the remote microphone is very helpful for retaining a basic level of privacy.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  My Pi-hole logs are filled mostly with my LG TV and my Roku box. I get literally thousands of hits a day with them trying to phone home.
  - n3storm 2y ago
    I have been using a linux minipc with debian+xfce for more than 15 years and no regrets. Yes having a keyboard with touchpad looked like a bit cumbersome at first, but then when al tvs went smart using an onscreen keyboard with a rf mouse is a nightmare.
    - FloatArtifact 2y ago
      What do you do about Netflix or other apps? They have reduced video quality without being on a certified device.
      - phkahler 2y ago
        Get a firestick for those apps
      - justinrubek 2y ago
        They've sealed their own fate with such a poor decision.
sokoloff 2y ago
Wouldn’t a phone be illegal under that scheme? (Because of the phone number being required for function and being a user-id.)
- tliltocatl 2y ago
  No, because that is service, not hardware.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    I think we can agree that a modern phone is “hardware and software” for sure. If you want to modify GP’s proposal to exclude things that also have a service, how long until DJI adds a service to their drone? (It might even be a negative duration; I don’t own one, but it would shock me if there wasn’t some kind of service associated already, perhaps to prevent flying a drone in unauthorized areas [or justified as such] or allow access to some online component of camera service.)
    - justinrubek 2y ago
      They can add all the services they want to their drone. As long as I'm not required to use them.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > I think we can agree that a modern phone is “hardware and software” for sure. You should be able to use your phone and install software on it without signing up for the sellers services, I think there is no reason to not allow that except evil lockin. See windows for what happens when you don't legally enforce that, its ridiculous windows forces you to sign up to their services.
    - inopinatus 2y ago
      Even then, almost all online services are susceptible to re-imagining such that user/session identifiers are self-declared and can be rotated/discarded at any time. To this, some folks would be yelling, "that's not how my/XYZ service works", which is a proxy statement for those unwilling to say, "my/XYZ business model is abusive". And that of course is also why this only happens via regulation.
phkahler 2y ago
>> Everything from drones to games. And computers. Sure it's a good idea to have a password, but that's not the same as a user ID registered with a company.

exe34 2y ago

i paid an extra £50 for a washing machine without WiFi, but I'm not sure they'll be around in ten years. my microwave oven has two knobs: how hot and how long.

lupusreal 2y ago
Part of the problem is you can't even count on appliances to last 10 years anymore. These industries can force people to accept new indignities by making sure their old device dies prematurely and the only new ones to buy are shit. Yeah yeah, survivor bias, rose tinted glasses, conspiracy theories, blah blah. I've heard all the canned refutations. It's true. Appliance manufacturers got better at making things worse. And even if the device doesn't die early, it will eventually have to be replaced for one reason or another. I got 20 years out of my Honda, which wasn't great but not terrible either, but trying to replace it with something new that had comparable reputation for reliability and also no touch screen computer spyware bullshit was a serious problem. My only choice was Mazda and the although my new car does have the physical buttons and knobs I want, they are easily the worst quality buttons and knobs. All mushy with no satisfying clicks. One company holding out and selling cars or appliances without the new horse shit isn't enough, because without comparable competition they are still free to cut corners and make something worse than could be purchased in the past.
taneq 2y ago
I’ve been preaching the Gospel of Knobs for decades. When I was a kid, a microwave had a power knob (already at 100) and a time knob (0-45min, with finer gradations for the first 10-20 minutes). To start heating, just twist the time knob to the time required. A few years later all microwaves had chiclet keypads with terrible user interfaces. They’ve improved from there over the years but never to the convenience of the original knob layout.
- vel0city 2y ago
  A knob is way more annoying than the single button modes on my GE Profile. I put whatever leftovers in there. Pasta, chicken and rice, soups, BBQ, doesn't matter. I lightly cover it. Press Reheat. Perfect every time. I don't have to judge how much to turn two knobs. Same goes for potatoes. Stab it with a fork a few times, butter and salt the outside, toss them in and press "Potato". Perfect baked potato every time. Same goes for steaming veggies. Frozen or fresh, doesn't matter. Toss them in a bowl, put a bit of water/butter/seasonings in it, lightly cover, press Vegetable, and boom perfectly steamed veggies. The one-touch sensor modes on my microwave are fantastic. And this is a 20-year-old microwave, so it's not like adding this tech made it less reliable. I'll be sad if I ever need to have a different microwave.

moritonal 2y ago

Vote with your wallet.

riedel 2y ago
I always was told that, but I hardly believe that can work. You have to at least also do a viral YT video like the OP too or rather really have competent, independent media with a good reach doing product reviews.
alpaca128 2y ago
People voting with their wallets is exactly how we got where we are today.
tobyhinloopen 2y ago
Basically impossible, or at best very impractical. Companies change their product after you buy them. This is not a hypothetical - this happens all the time. It happened to you, and to me. My most recent example: I wanted to calibrate my display using a "calibrite display pro hl" and suddenly got prompted with a software update. After updating, an account is suddenly required. This device is way past its return date. I cannot return it. I'm now stuck with a device that cannot be used with their software without creating an account. Another example: Philips Hue devices were changed to require an account. These days I focus on getting commercial variants of devices, since they usually don't have cloud or smart crap in them. For example, there's commercial variants of many TVs. They don't have smart crap in them and are designed for 24/7 usage.
- moritonal 2y ago
  Completely agree that this kind of behaviour should be illegal. My thoughts are products should work from purchase with their offered feature-set (or be forced to recall), have a factory reset mode, and an opt-out of updates.
nyx 2y ago
I wonder what the "free-market" types will say to minimize criticisms like those in this thread once everything that can possibly be purchased requires bending over for this sort of abuse. Is the fantasy that some entrepreneurial savior will come along and voluntarily forgo all the massive spying profits in order to cater to the minute proportion of consumers perceptive enough to realize they're getting molested on the daily? How about smartphones, for example? "Vote with your wallet," says the smirking corporatocrat, "and just buy a mobile operating system that respects your personal privacy." Alright professor, looks like my choices are iOS or Android, so I'm kind of hosed either way? Unless I want to return to a 2004 feature set, or perhaps a GNU/Linux paperweight with a 20-minute battery life that can't use banking apps or place phone calls? I exaggerate (but in my opinion only slightly), and sincere apologies for tone--but it's quite frustrating to be met again and again with such a smug dismissal of what to many of us feels like an inescapable horror. This depraved race to the bottom, with every MBA-steered ship vying to see who can violate us the hardest, seems to be standard practice these days, and "purchase different products" puts the onus on consumers to fix what isn't their fault in a way that leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

loki49152 2y ago

We don't need new regulations. This is probably covered by commercial fraud statutes, as they represented the sale of the device as a sale of tangible personal property. There is no condition required to complete that purchase - the offer is of the physical device and the implied ability to use that device for its obvious purpose.

inopinatus 2y ago
Omitting a regulator makes enforcement a civil matter and the entire burden is placed on the consumer, which is to say, the legal scales are tipped throughly in favour of rogue manufacturers. Good luck suing DJI; you’ll obtain neither satisfaction nor restitution, and it’ll take years of being strung along by lawyers to realise it. The even worse outcome of failing to protect the consumer at the point of sale is you’ve tacitly swallowed the tenets of an authoritarian surveillance state.
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
we need new regulations - the solution currently would be following what you say and suing the company in I guess small claims court or a class action suit for lots of people mad about the same thing against a single company that they make drag out for years while making money doing the same scam and then the payout will just be the cost of doing business. The small claims courts solution of course not everybody has the time or resources to do that, so the company wins that way. We need new regulations that stops it before it gets to the point where you have to go to small claims court or class action to redress the wrong.
- rendaw 2y ago
  New regulation i.e. more civil law. Which require you to sue in a small claims court to be enforced. How does this change anything, when as GP said there are already civil laws?
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    many regulations are enforced by government agencies that prevent the product from being sold if they do not match the regulations, the civil laws the GP pointed to are contract laws which means that the buyer if they feel ripped off has to sue.

rvba 2y ago

Also changing software and licences. I bought an android phone that worked and soon it will reset every 3 days, so Im unreachable unless I enter the PIN. What kills the idea of having a secondary phone just in case.

alpaca128 2y ago
As far as I know an Android phone isn’t unreachable after reboot, it simply has the same locked screen as always. The only difference is the difficulty to unlock it without the PIN. So in your case it would reboot once (not every 3 days) and then just continue doing nothing.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I own an iPhone (and iPad). It forces me to re-enter my device password, every couple of days. Has done that, for ages. I think that can be disabled, though. I know of a couple of folks that won’t even enable Face ID. I think that’s insane. The phone has our entire life on it. The thought of having that much information available to any pickpocket is sobering. I refuse to use custom apps for things like banking and store loyalty, etc. I keep a photo of my store loyalty card’s barcode in my Photos app, because it does get me significant discounts, occasionally, but I won’t install their app. Most of these custom apps seem to be pretty shoddy quality, in my opinion (I’m a snob, though. Many folks don’t seem to mind). They seem to be written with some kind of hybrid system, and some are little more than webviews.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  Well after the reboot Android enters the Before First Unlock state which is significantly more secure. I don't know if that influences the ability to receive regular phone calls, but I'm pretty sure Whatsapp/signal calls won't work.
stavros 2y ago
Or you can just disable the feature. Let's not brand every security feature as evil, please, it's disingenuous.

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

Most of the abuse is already forbidden under GDPR, it just doesn't get enforced.

b112 2y ago
There's a lot of this, and it's a real problem. We need to make small claims court far more accessible. But outside of the GDPR, there's also just weirdness in terms of what is covered where. I can appreciate that having laws at the county level, the municipal level can be onerous to comply with, so you want things at the national level -- if not international. But as soon as you do that, some asshat works to reduce regulation because "regulation bad" without any qualifiers. And then as you say, lack of enforcement, is that alternative to this. Give them their laws, make them feel as if things have been done, but then don't enforce. You're in the same boat, but people "feel" better. This is a bit of a tangent, but where I live you have to cook a hamburger to safe temperatures. It is illegal to do otherwise, unless it is freshly ground in house, and we have actual, real inspectors that will ensure safe handling practices. (This isn't me railing about eating raw meat, I eat my steak med-rare. But that's a steak, if you're going to cook a hamburger that way, you need to wash the outside, grind it up, and cook+eat it within hours. Many restaurants are buying mass produced burger paddies and not even cooking them, which is pure insane.) Yet when I was in California, it's OK to just present a charred outside, a raw inside, along with loads of parasites. The restaurant is covered if they put up a sign saying something about 'raw meat can make you sick' or whatever. So every restaurant puts up the sign, then just doesn't care about cooking it to safe temps. Yee-haw, FREEDOM! Point is, people themselves, everywhere ... whether it's a small business or just their customers, don't even know, understand, or really care. And this is the true problem. People can't even understand the risks of raw meat, something I was taught in public school when, oh I don't know, freakin' 10 years old! While it doesn't seem that difficult to people on this forum likely, it surely is for the average person. Clearly.

numpad0 2y ago

I first encountered this pattern in a rare wearable device, over a decade ago. I bought it from someone and had to contact them to deregister the device. The foot in the door was theft prevention. Crime rates in the targeted regions of those devices was the original motivation and the enabler. From Chesterton's Fence principle, that has to be solved before the zero consumer ownership problem can be solved.

captainmuon 2y ago

I would go further, it should not be (just) forbidden, but taboo. Just like it is taboo to install a camera in a bathroom or to listen in to private conversations. If I have a thing, that thing should obey me. Be it a crowbar, a PC, a smart lamp or whatever. It's a value in and of itself that I can trust in my things. What about criminals? Sure, it is convenient a car can spy on a criminal and tell the police where they are, but we shouldn't allow that. Just like it would be convenient to force priests and lawyers to tell there secrets, but we as a society decided that there is greater value in confidentiality. I mean especially for a society like the US which is traditionally individualistic and distrustful towards government etc., it should be a matter of principle that "my stuff" doesn't spy on my and serves me and no one else.

lifestyleguru 2y ago
> Just like it is taboo to install a camera in a bathroom or to listen in to private conversations. Give it 5 years. The xiaomi or LG above the bed is likely already watching and listening. Interesting how the taboo shifted from "no camera in the apartment" to "no camera in a bathroom". In many short term rentals you have outright always connected IP camera installed inside apartment because of "break ins", "squatters", etc. The owners don't see a problem, don't accept complains.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
Oh, there are already cameras in bathrooms. Everywhere that has an infrared sensor near your buttcheeks that auto-flushes, or on a urinal staring into your crotch, or simply on a soap dispenser, blinking impassively until you lather up. Those IR sensors are basically cameras; they are wired up for power, they trigger with your image. So don’t act all surprised when they are hacked and subverted to the visible spectrum and recording capabilities.
- vel0city 2y ago
  IR motion/proximity sensors are not basically cameras. You can't get an actual image from them. They are essentially a single, unfocused pixel tuned to a wide angle with a narrow filter tuned to specific wavelengths. Some of them will have a few extra pixels to try and reject background motion, but still we're talking like 3 or 4 pixels for a whole scene.

NoelJacob 2y ago

When Europe tries to do this, many cry as over regulation.

AdrianB1 2y ago
I live in Europe and I love this kind of regulation, but I hate other stupid over-regulations we have here. Yes, you can have good regulation and over regulation at the same time.

bilekas 2y ago

Regulations would absolutely be nice to have, I do like how the EU does actually try to get some good regulations down, my biggest problem with them is though that they don't have any teeth. A lot of the time the cost of the relatively small fines are baked into the cost of doing business if they get caught in breach. It's infuriating. Maybe a fixed percentage of revenue from the services or product that infringes would be more appropriate.

amelius 2y ago

> It should Yeah, everybody here agrees. The main problem is to get this implemented and this will not happen by just venting here. So I'm still waiting for someone with good ideas.

mopenstein 2y ago

Stop buying those products.

neuralRiot 2y ago
Right? People need to learn to read the small print. “Needs valid subscription for all features to work” no thanks. If something like this isn’t informed before the purchase you have a valid reason for a return/ refund.

afpx 2y ago

In this imagined techno-feudalism future, what will these "monarchs" do? Own and control their entire supply chain?

brandensilva 2y ago

It's been awhile since the populist has risen up and demanded the government actually do their jobs rather than get rich and catering to the rich coasting on the destruction of our privacies, rights, institutions, and freedoms. The fact nearly zero legislation has been introduced to punish companies for violating the protection of our data with the bazillions of data leaks is telling of which master they serve.

xnx 2y ago

> is becoming a spying device like in the worst scifi dystopias. Most companies care more about it being a rental device than a spying device

verisimi 2y ago

Absolutely. But the technocratic system we are moving into requires "smart" everything and being de-anonymised online, at least for governments and corporations.