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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

> And the demonstration that Microsoft can easily do this

Pretty much every platform with hash-based antivirus can do this. It's bad, but so is the fact that Tor on iPhone can't use the same browser engine and privacy patches as Android/Desktop does. The average user is far-removed from caring about their OS vendor's power, apparently.

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Lack of caring… perhaps because of complexity of the situation. I would say that most users struggle to comprehend the situation and that anything done to protect them is easily marketed as a good thing. Calling it hash-based anti-virus plays well into this idea. Also, these mechanisms probably do more good than harm (at this point) but certainly have the potential for abuse by the platform owner or maligned actors that somehow seize control of it.

Oh please. No. Most users wouldn’t struggle to comprehend the situation if they actually cared to. Most people are reasonably intelligent in areas that they care about. Accept that most people just don’t care about your hobby horse, and that things you see as grossly unjust, or should I say, potentially grossly unjust, just aren’t cared about.

iOS offers this bargain: you don’t get to configure much, but as a result I’ll know where things are and when it “guesses” what it should do, it will usually be right.

Linux offers the opposite: I’ll just do what you want.

Windows has a fun alternative: you can customize things but I’ll also change things, we’ll handle conflicts by rolling the dice.

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