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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

The society should change such that grandmas could decide for themselves whether they want tech or not, and still have a comfortable life if they choose to not use it. In our current society, smartphones and the internet are forced on everyone. It's not really a choice any more. Which is quite sad.

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My grandma does want tech because she loves sharing pictures with her grandchildren throughout the day. That doesn’t mean she wants to send money to Nigeria through a fake banking app?

You grandma can keep the „restricted“ flag on then. I will be happy to disable it on my device

My concern has been that companies with a huge install base (hi, Meta) would take advantage of this: "in order to provide you with the best experience, you have to turn off the restricted flag to install the next release of our app".

And then, billions of users cry out in pain as their private data is hoovered into the panopticon in the cloud.

Exactly, and it’s impossible to regulate those business practices! Don’t even try! Better to limit what people can do on their own computing devices, or better yet remove that ownership entirely.

> And then, billions of users cry out in pain as their private data is hoovered into the panopticon in the cloud.

That's not how data collection works? It's Apple's responsibility to prevent their application runtime from exposing private data or unnecessary entitlements. Enabling sideloading does not prevent Apple from protecting user data any more than the App Store does.

One thing we could do is abolish the "anti-circumvention" laws, where the government goes after you with criminal penalties for "contempt of business-model" for interfering with how a company wishes it's code would run on your computer.

Then it would be legal for someone to develop and give-away a patch for the Meta app...

Grandma will also be happy to disable it when the nice man from Microsoft phone support calls in to remotely fix the viruses she has.

Then maybe everyone needs to be educated to never ever trust incoming calls from unknown numbers? Or maybe these need to be blocked at the carriers? We have all this AI crap now but for some reason we can't deploy it to detect scam calls. We instead use it to automate the work that doesn't need automation, like software engineering or copywriting or art.

The average layperson doesn't even know caller ID can be trivially spoofed.

Or they accept the push notification dialog on some random site and start getting "COMPUTER HACKED, CALL MICROSOFT AT FAKE NUMBER" notifications that look like they come from the OS.

That's great until your device is weaponised against others (see: open HTTP proxies, open DNS resolvers, open SMTP servers, several billion IoT devices, and countless other examples)

Exactly, which is why we shouldn’t be allowing user “software installs” on any device, not just phones. The world would be a lot better if all tech were fully locked down, “freedom” be damned.

Ideally we should just let the government write the software, and they'd be able to verify that there's no dangers to grandma anywhere in the system.

It would be foolproof, maybe the most trustworthy system ever conceived.

While we're at it, let's also mandate the destruction of every general-purpose computing device incapable of secure boot or allowing it to be deactivated. And if someone dares to build a homebrew CPU out of relays, transistors, or logic ICs, they should expect the FBI to break down their door.

Those issues could be diminished if ISPs actually handled abuse requests and shut down people's connections until they removed their malware.

> shut down people's connections until they removed their malware.

Yes, in an ideal world, that might work but most people don't actually know they have malware. That's the point of the malware! And it's not like you can say "no internet for you until you replace your TV[0]" because that's an extremely quick way to the courts and a customer reputation below the toilet.

(Ignoring the "who pays for that?" question because that is a whole 'nother can of worms.)

[0] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fbi-google-disrupt-proxy-network-a...

Then how about her not having online banking?

You did the meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Last time I was in a bank branch they told me to go to the website for my issue.

> they told me to go to the website for my issue.

And this sort of attitude is exactly what needs to change.

I agree!

But what's Grandma supposed to do in the meantime?

Tell them she doesn't own any devices that could connect to the internet. I'm sure they'll figure something out. They have to have procedures for this sort of thing.

> They have to have procedures for this sort of thing.

"Sorry, try somewhere else" is the procedure.

Exactly. Rather than passing laws to require a non-digital option for these things, we should make sure that devices are locked down and controlled against users (aka hapless idiots).

> Rather than passing laws to require a non-digital option for these things...

Do you think I oppose this?

Seems like you’re pushing for control over user tech here over any sort of other regulation. Other regulation which would be much simpler to coordinate and which wouldn’t infringe on end user freedoms!

Removing end user control, repairability, and hackability/repurposing (all related) should be the very last resort, not the first!

> Seems like you’re pushing for control over user tech here over any sort of other regulation.

That fits your pattern elsewhere in this thread of not actually engaging with what others are saying to slay strawmen.

Over? No. Regulation and some controls work hand in hand as mitigations.

While we’re at it, let’s stop crime by adding more officers, reforming the bail system, oh and also installing cameras in everyone’s bedroom.

Last resorts are last resorts because they infringe on core freedoms. And your “controls” are equivalent to removing individual ownership of devices. This is a step too far towards a post-ownership society and joint corporate-state control of the individual’s means of communication and participation in society.

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