Hacker News Reader

Comment by hopler | Hacker News Reader

> I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, “Could you please make a call for me?”

I don't understand how RMS can find this behavior of his non-noteworthy. He claims to boycott things but admits to having a critical reliance on other people not boycotting. For someone deeply committed to extend ideals, the moral flexibility here is huge.

It'd be one thing if he advocate a network of swapping burner phones or something, but he's acting like an antivaxxer relying on the herd to indulge and accommodate his desire to get the benefits without paying the costs.

View on HN

I recommend a recent set of episodes (0x60 - 0x63) of the Free As In Freedom podcast[0]. The show is hosted by Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sandler of Software Freedom Conservancy, both long-time free software advocates. It's a really frank and interesting discussion of their own struggles over this issue. The discussion surrounds their keynote of FOSDEM this year, the audio of which is included in the final installment.

[0]: http://faif.us/

EDIT: additional clarification

If everyone boycotted mobile phones, they’d probably pay for a landline or have pay phones available again.

It’s only been the last ten years or so where pay phones have disappeared from public spaces. And with the increased proliferation of WiFi, making a VoIP call from a laptop or whatever will likely become more and more practical in the future.

I refuse to eat meat, but if I'm hungry I will ask someone else to buy me a hamburger.

This bothered me as well. Not carrying a mobile phone works for him, but if everyone did the same then obviously that strategy collapses. Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone, which actually seems reasonable in some respects.

...or everyone would just use payphones/landlines like they did before cellphones became ubiquitous.

> Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone

I'm pretty sure he is advocating that, "unless things change".

If even a significant minority fraction of the population stopped carrying cellphones, society and industry would have to work around that problem. After all, we all seemed to get along mostly fine before they existed.

I honestly think there's a moral argument _against_ everyone not carrying a mobile phone. How many people worldwide do you figure use their mobile phone in emergencies? How many times do you figure having a mobile phone has made the difference between receiving help when needed and people dying?

It's not to say that mobile devices don't come without their own set of challenges (surveillance capitalism, social media, the influence on how we interact with others, etc). However, Pandora's box has been opened here. Even if we assume that mobile phones only make the difference in addressing emergencies, and only do so 0.1% for 0.1% of the population, that's 7M people that are saved.

It strikes me as suprisingly disingenuous that some people are so ready to eschew technology as inherently "evil" just because there are some challenges or problems associated with it. You have to weight both sides.

> if everyone did the same [..] that strategy collapses.

I think the idea is that if everyone did the same, operators and carriers would be scrambling to recapture the market with user-friendly privacy-respecting devices and services, so everyone could have a ethical phone, including rms.

> moral flexibility

It's not necessarily an issue of morals. Take cellular tracking [1], for example: avoiding carrying a phone around with you 24/7 is the only real way to address things like carriers from selling your realtime location data. Then, simply borrowing someone else's to make a convenient call doesn't open you up to anything. And then morals do come into it because you can say "well, at least I'm trying".

And convenience and other values such technology offers is non-arguable, it's just unfortunate it's so anti- freedom and privacy. In that regard you can't blame Stallman for participating when society as a whole is pushing such complete and utter reliance on mobile devices. That's like calling someone who advocates for privacy disingenuous for using a CC over cash 100% of the time; you can't even book most hotels without a CC, (and ID, and other identifiable information tying you to that exact location at that exact date). So what choice does even the privacy-advocate have, besides camping out on the road in a tent and boycotting anti-cash establishments? I've read of some Scandinavian countries already phasing out cash, which is once again a reliance society fosters. If Stallman walks into a store and asks someone to pay for his purchase with their CC because the store doesn't take cash, are you too going to make some contrived anti-vaccination comparison?

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/10/phone-c...

> It's not necessarily an issue of morals

I'm not sure if the original poster had this in mind, but Stallman's behavior in this regard would be hard to reconcile under a Kantian ethical framework [1].

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#CatHypImp

I don't think he would say it's ethically problematic for him to own a phone. He just prefers not to because he doesn't want to own a device that he cannot control. No Kantian issues, others need not share his preference.

right, if enough people share his preference they'll develop alternative tech to solve the communication problem.

things like the wiphone which is wifi only. surely stallman would be fine to use that, just as he is fine to use a laptop with wifi. it means he needs to get wifi access to make calls but it would still solve the tracking problem.

To expand, as I understand it, the Kantian ethical categorical imperative is something like, "behave as if what you do will be universal." Stallman's behavior requires enough people to not do what he does that he is not inconvenienced.

If he's advocating not carrying a phone under the current situation, he shouldn't be asking to use someone else's.

i keep thinking about this with regards to rechargeable public transit cards. they are anonymous, but each card still has an ID and allows to track movement patterns. so to mess things up i like to swap cards around...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com