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Comment by jimmy1 | Hacker News Reader

Seems like we need to relearn the concept of liberty, but again in the digital world.

Yes, liberty is sometimes difficult, and it allows people to make bad choices. Liberty is hard.

We've seen this story play out enough times to know that it isn't a slippery slope. It starts of as a play to "protect the users" or "avoid the bad guys", or as we have seen in the security theater of other domains, namely the aviation industry, "for your safety and security"

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We have liberty. You have the liberty to use a platform that tries to protect your security at the cost of adding some restrictions. You have the liberty of choosing a different platform (using the same hardware even!) that has no restrictions and is fully open to be modified, at the cost of requiring a lot of technical expertise and putting yourself at risk of malware. You have the liberty of choosing yet another platform (still on the same hardware!) that's not open to modification but less restricted, at the cost of serving you ads on the lock screen and having a history of the worst malware infestation of any computing platform in history. And you have the freedom to write your own platform from scratch if you don't like any of these.

> but again in the digital world.

You can always buy a different platform. Seems like that's plenty of liberty.

It seems like a false choice. Can I go start my own oil refinery because I don't like Exxon, Chevron, BP, or Shell?

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