Posted by marbartolome 1 day ago
Linux.
Linux as an answer doesn't address the needs of 99% of people, so 98% will never adopt it. It's better to meet people where they're at and push for sideloading and alternative app stores.
Some folks don't like digital identity controlled by government, but it seems like the alternative is digital identity controlled by oligopoly.
A much bigger problem for running Linux on phones is that standard Linux runs like crap on phones. It doesn't have the mainline driver support amd64 computers have, and the battery life optimizations that make Android usable need to be reimplemented on top of Linux to get a day's worth of use out of your phone. Unfortunately, most Linux applications are written for desktops where they expect the CPU to be running all the time, the WiFi to be accessible whenever they want, and for sleep/suspend to be extremely incidental rather than every two minutes.
Banking on GrapheneOS
Probably won't help, but it is something.
There exists no path where a publicly traded company doesn't eventually view its customers as subjects. Every business school on the planet is teaching their students strategies and tactics that squeeze their customers in pursuit of maximizing revenue. And those strategies and tactics are often at the expense of creativity, ethics, and community. Just last week people's bed didn't work because the company that makes them architected things such that they have absolute control.
Only a reasonably altruistic private company might buck the trend. But the publicly traded companies are allowed, by the government(s), to use their largesse in a predatory fashion to prevent competition. They bundle and bleed and leverage every step of the way. They not only contribute to the politicians that do their bidding, they are frequently asked to write the laws and regulations they're expected to follow. Magically, it has the effect of increasing the costs of their competition to enter the markets they dominate. And so, the odds of an altruistic private company emerging from that muck is low.
Worse still, many of the elected officials (and bureaucrats) actively own stock in the very companies they are responsible for regulating. Widespread corruption and perversion of the market is the inevitable result.
I'm trying to do a better job and redirect my money to the places that better reflect my values. It's not even a drop in the bucket, but it's a lever where I feel like I have a measure of control.
The companies that make stuff could easily be beaten in the market by a non-profit competitor. With no worries about stock market prices and dividends, a non-profit could direct all it's money into making better products.
But the problems are that 1) nobody wants to work for a non-profit and 2) greed redirects the money away from better products into the founder's (or top management's) pockets. Firefox is an example.
Curious, but what bed/company do you speak of?
Protecting 1 million grannies is an entirely different risk class than the security implications of stopping everyone from using their devices as they see fit.
Protecting 1 million grannies means everyone loses ability to install apps that:
-allow encrypted chat
-allow use of privacy respecting software
-download art/games/entertainment that is deemed inappropriate to unelected parties
-use software to organize protests and track agents of hostile governments
-download software that opposes monopolistic holds of controlling parties
Thus the risk widens to the sovereign control a nation has over its own services. A US president could attempt to force Google and Apple to shutoff citizen access of banks and health services of an entire nation. Merely the threat could give them leverage in any sort of negotiations they might be in. For some nations in the future, the controlling nation may be China I imagine.
I think the real regulatory solution here is to break up monopoly practices. While the EU's DMA is all well and good in some ways, the EU is also pushing Chat Control... In a more fragmented market it becomes impossible for a bank or health service to mandate specific devices for access (they lose potential customers) so you could theoretically move to a device that doesn't do draconian style remote attestation that breaks if you go off the ranch. We need more surgically precise regulatory tools than sweeping legislation that would keep using alternatives like Linux or FreeBSD or whatever actually viable. It also makes it much harder for that same legislative body to enforce insane ideas like Chat Control.
The answer is not protect users from themselves. The answer is more freedom, with a legal framework that helps all users have more choices while helping victims acquire restitution.
This. We can’t anymore say to ourselves “but surely a US president would never do that”?
Reference: recent tirades at Canada, Spain, Colombia, Ukraine, ...
Without limitations on authority and control, I worry more that the world will devolve into a multilateral legal hellscape, even moreso than exists today. Given how much is dependent on software, you are going to have the governments of pretty much any country with multinational exposure trying this in the next 10 years if recent UK and EU developments are any indicator.
I knew of banks, but how is it that health services need remote attested mobile devices? Do clinics not support setting appointments through calls anymore, or what?
I believe if we look at the past compared to now, and then extrapolate towards the future, without proper action, we will keep slipping down the slope.
As someone in the USA, I could toss my phone in the dumpster forever and still live my life pretty much as I live it today. I might have to make a few minor sacrifices, but I'm grateful we still have that choice here.
Unfortunately, I think that depends on whether the portion of citizens without a phone is significant. People need to care for businesses/government to care.
See also countries where they struggle to use cash. What happens when a customer does not have a bank account?
For government services, both will work. But you must use some of them, otherwise no government for you. You can still do some things by paper, but those are getting rarer and rarer nowadays. The general assumption is that everything is done online. Some government services can't be done by paper or physical visit, not without involving this authentication at some point.
For most of everything else, only BankID (the oldest of the two and the most deployed by far). Especially for banking, only this works. Even if you call the bank and try to sort out via phone, they will refuse service until you can prove that you are you by authenticating via BankID.
But Sweden is mostly cashless nowadays (even some bank branches are refusing to deal with cash). For example, you can't take a bus or train and pay with cash. You have to use a vending machine that only exists on train stations, or depending on which kind of transport and the region you live you might be able to do a contactless payment, or you must use the app (the default choice that 99% use). If you use the app, to pay you need to use a "card not present" flow, or Swish (Sweden's mobile payment system), and to complete either you must use BankID. You can't use your card or do any payment without BankID (if the card is not present).
Even if you do use your card, if it gets denied for any reason, for you to sort out the issue you'll need the mobile phone and BankID.
If you go out with friends to a restaurant, most restaurants don't accept cash. If the restaurant doesn't accept charging each one individually then someone needs to pay for the group, and they will expect you to pay them via Swish which requires BankID. People won't take cash either.
As you can see, it's not actually trivial here to live as part of society without a working mobile phone. If you're outside, you better have 100% faith on your card, and/or be prepared that you might need to walk back home as you can't do much now, might not even be able to buy transportation.
Some smaller shops/kiosks only take Swish: no cash, no card. That requires a phone plus BankID.
If (or better said: when) BankID starts requiring the device to pass Play Integrity, then not only you must be carrying the device at all times, but it must be a blessed device from Google or Apple.
In Denmark the situation is very similar, and in their case their app (which is called MitID) already mandates that the device has to pass Play Integrity.
This in combination with using webapps where possible
Is that a problem these days? It was over a decade ago that I last needed to jailbreak a phone, nowadays it’s just "I’d like to unlock" "Ok".
Source: 7 years of running deGoogled Android phones and 11 years of running ROM’d Android phones before recently moving to iOS and giving up.
Pretty sure I read Google was no longer going to publish device tree sources for Pixel phones, which will make ROM development for them significantly harder, whether or not the bootloader is open.
95% of people don't know what "Run your own software" means, because to them, the app store lets them chose what apps to install. And they don't get viruses and malware like their 2008 laptop did.
That being said, there absolutely needs to be a mechanism for "lowering the gates" if the user wants full control of the device they own.
I should be able to run a crypto wallet I downloaded from a Kim Jong Un fan site while high and it shouldn’t be able to do anything I don’t give it permission to do.
It’s totally possible. Tabs in a web browser are basically this.
I can do it with VMs but that’s lots of extra steps.
The only place it seems to fall flat is network I/O - LAN access requires permission, but dialing out to the wider Internet does not.
Compare Windows, which has jack (except for bloated anti-malware hooks in NTFS.)
Linux is _trying_ to replicate macOS with Flatpak/XDG portals, but those still need more time in the oven.
Source: I use both a MacBook and a Linux desktop daily.
No it isn't, and no it doesn't.
I care about the free-ness and open-ness of my computer, because that's where I do all my work, my E-mail, my finances, and all my "serious computing." I feel that a different standard applies on a Real Computer because they are totally different devices, used for totally different purposes. So what I accept on phones, cars, and gaming consoles, I don't accept on my computer.
I believe the likelihood of a smartphone being the only form of computing (and access to the internet in particular) grows with diminishing income / cultural means.
This is based on anecdotal observation, does anybody here know of relevant survey data?
Based on a cursory look, keywords can include "smartphone-only internet users" and "large-screen computer ownership".
The American Community Survey asks questions related to that (income, computing devices). Comparing states, the poorer the residents of a state, the smaller the percent of households with regular computers ("large-screen computer ownership"), per "Computer Ownership and the Digital Divide" (Mihaylova and Whitacre, 2025) [0, 1, 2].
Also, Pew runs surveys on income and device usage ("smartphone-only"). Again, the lower the income, the higher the proportion that is smartphone-only [3, 4].
[0] Chart: https://files.catbox.moe/emdada.png
[1] Paper, "Census Data with Brian Whitacre.pdf": https://files.catbox.moe/1ttgee.pdf
[2] Web: https://www.benton.org/blog/computer-ownership-and-digital-d...
[3] Pew chart: https://files.catbox.moe/fs62tf.png
[4] Pew web: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
The idea that smartphones aren't computers and their users aren't deserving of software freedom is frustratingly entitled.
