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Comment by Mr_Modulo | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can just do anything you want in the name of security and protecting users. This will make installing apps needlesly difficult. There is already a warning when enabling installation of apps from unknown sources. That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.

The real problem here is not that Google is doing this bad thing. The real problem is that they can do this bad thing. They shouldn't have this power. Something needs to be done to rain in Google and take back Android as an open platform.

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> If users don't read that's on them.

Nobody reads warnings or errors. StackOverflow is full of questions where someone pastes a clear error message and asks what they have to do when the very error message tells them the solution.

Also, scammers just tell people to ignore warnings and they do it. If someone is able to convince you that your child is in danger and that you have to bypass all warnings to help them, you _will_ do it.

Yeah, and Stack Overflow users are really angry that they don't do it, in other words, making their carelessness everyone else problem.

So we agree, their carelessness is everyone's problem. So Google's action is just a tradeoff you disagree with

Users don’t read warnings. Most scams capitalise on urgency. When given more time to stop and think something through, it often becomes obvious what’s happening.

> Users don’t read warnings

Why should that be a concern to a phone OS provider? A concern so important that they are willing to cripple couple billions of devices.

Courts make you liable for results, not intentions, like the way Quad9 is now an illegal piracy operation in France because it doesn't block pirate sites.

So why don't courts make knife manufacturers responsible for murders?

Only because they've chosen not to

If you had a big corpo being affected by every knife murder, you'd be sure that they would be liable. Since murders usually "only" affect an individual nothing is being done

First, courts do hold manufacturers responsible for manufacturing or design defects.

Then, generally, "software is just a tool like a knife" doesn't hold because software today is more a service than a tangible good. Companies continue to update the programs and things can happen in the cloud with limited user control.

Courts do take in consideration intention. The law however does not. And the law here doesn't exists

To be fair, this likely only affects millions (if that many) devices -- most people don't sideload apps, and of those that do, most of those users are more than capable of reenabling it through developer tools. The vast majority of Android users don't want to sideload (and shouldn't sideload since they don't know how to validate the safety of the app and they'll sideload anything a website tells them to)

There is a very real usability issue that has to analysed when developing high risk products, and that's popup fatigue.

A huge number of people just click accept to any popup they get because they're so fed up with seeing them. It's something that is often analysed in design of medical products

I experienced this problem in semiconductor manufacturing.

It was really difficult to explain to Korea that the additional warnings they wanted me to put in front of the tool operators were actually causing more harm than good. The cultural divide made this really difficult to approach.

"What do you mean the American mfg staff don't actually read everything?!"

"Yeah... Especially at the ATX line. We kind of go off vague shapes around here"

Having been through usability studies on the understanding of symbols and their placement on devices, I completely understand this issue.

You can put a very clear warning symbol front and centre, and people will just mentally gloss over it

> There is already a warning when enabling installation of apps from unknown sources. If users don't read that's on them.

Hard disagree. My grandma is just going to follow the scammers directions.

You understand then that there is absolutely no possible fix for that right?

If your grandma will follow current instructions, she will follow these new instructions including a 24 hour wait.

Your grandma will follow instructions to walk down to walgreens and buy a brand new device if they tell her. The solution has nothing to do with the device and everything to do with you needing to be an adult and figure out how to get your grandma to not follow directions of scammers.

This isn't a tech problem and you cannot solve it with tech.

This is not true. Scams rely on continuous urgency and want the entire process completed without you ever hanging up the phone, and cooling-off periods routinely break the illusion.

I can think of 2 examples, in my personal life, in the last few years where a simple passing comment in conversation perked the ears of a more experienced person and kept a couple of young people from being scammed. The addition of time was key in both.

> That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.

The phone scammers who are saying the FBI/NSA/IRS will arrest you unless you install sketchy remote access software or other malware are rather convincing to a certain demographic of people and no amount of text on the screen will stop that. It all comes down to whether or not you view the tradeoff being that vulnerable people are worth protecting with this measure worldwide or not.

>Something needs to be done to [reign] in

Should Google be less than an asshole in all things? Yes.

I think there’s this like “something must be done now!” attitude of self-important, busybodies I can’t get behind… even if they’re right.

Why have people convinced themselves into thinking now is the most important thing in the world? That if it doesn’t happen now so that it makes me happy instantly it isn’t an option?

Evolution; social, tech, biological, legal, just fucking takes time, and that’s a feature.

There will be a period in which there’s a ton of food over there but your little fishy fins can’t get to it, and that sucks, but deal with it yourself, or just chill and let things happen. I promise if it’s important someone will solve it eventually and the scales do not need to be tipped for every little thing like phone app permissiveness.

In the meantime, you are free to not buy an android phone if you don’t like the system that Google has produced. You seem to think that because you can see its insides that it is collectively owned. It isn’t. Google owns it. Talk of talking it from its owners, is theft. In this case, justified entirely because you don’t like a process they decided on.

Don’t make me defend Google, I fucking hate Google.

I have huge incentives to have a phone. It means Android or Apple. not exactly a flourishing free market of choices. Banks, the government, places I want to go to all either force me to use an app, or create costs in money and time if I want to avoid using one.

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