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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

This is silly argument to make here. The vast majority of users aren't using their phones to whistleblow on some government scheme or a plot by the new world order. They are running their businesses and lives on these things. And for those people the ability to run some .apk from a sketchy website is worth less than nothing to them, but the safety of being protected from attack is. Realise that you are not the kind of user these phones are designed for. You are a power user who wants power user features. That is fine, but don't condemn people who are just using their phones as tools.

Unless an app essential to their business gets taken down from an app store, with no way around that.

> The vast majority of users aren't using their phones to whistleblow on some government scheme

But some of them are, and it is essential for a healthy society that this is always possible for them and for anybody who needs to.

It is possible: Buy an Android if that's what you need from your phone.

Not being able to install 0.1% of the apps I like is not giving up essential liberty. Getting a completely controlled sandboxed environment with vetted applications is not little temporary safety.

Not being able to sell your application, because another company doesn't like it, is giving up an essential liberty.

> Not being able to install 0.1% of the apps I like is not giving up essential liberty.

Apple literally dictates acceptable expressions of sexuality to people.

How the hell is that not giving up an essential liberty?

Controversial opinion: I like Apple's security lockdown- and the whole Internet is still available, so I'm not quite that worried about not being able to install [app] because there's likely to be a web version, too. Keep in mind that using an Apple phone means that you are using a tool / machine / device that's much less likely to reveal its secrets. Isn't that worth something, too?

What Ben Franklin Really Said: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said#.U...

FWIW, the original quote in context means something different than most people realize:

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Yes, but it is an apt quote which has been re-appropriated long before the 21st century to mean what it does today. Just because Ben Frank didn't mean it in that context doesn't mean it loses its power.

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