Why the hell should we "mother may I" with Google for running apps on our own phones if it isn't sourced from the Play Store?
The "security" rationale is horseshit given just how much malware is readily download able on the Play Store. Google never cleans its own house before going after others.
The scams are likely to some from outside Play. In the US, these scams don't run because iPhone is the dominant platform and side loading in iOS is not possible. In the rest of world they are widespread.
"Likely"? Do you mean that based on actual data, or are you using it as a weasel word so you can present whatever convenient "facts" that benefit Google as truth?
I’m betting on the latter. No Kitboga video mentions custom Android apps. What actually appears on almost all videos are online ads/spam or fake celebrity accounts messaging random people on Facebook.
It's funny how you aggressively push solutions that ignore the most common scam vectors investigators encounter. Could it be a coincidence that your proposal conveniently places every aspect of people’s lives at the mercy of big businesses? Or that the scam vector you downplay, ads and social media, just happens to be cash cows for some of the richest companies in history?
We already have plenty of paid lobbyists cheering the transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest. There's no need to do that dirty work for free. Weaponizing the elderly being scammed of their life savings while protecting those that benefit from it is beyond messed up.
The scams that are happening in the rest of world are calls posing as bank support about urgent security issues and telling people to install apps to protect their accounts.
It might be pro consumer if the power were lying in some kind of democratically justified organization, which then decides which apps are allowed and which are not.
This way, consumers are helpless victims of the same megacorporation, which will use its near-absolute power over the mobile ecosystem (shared with one other megacorporation) to profit on the back of consumers.
We shouldn't let naive or mentally disabled people to dictate how computing should work. That's the same logic behind the age verification shit that's happening worldwide.
If you (not you specifically) are unsure of your abilities to use computers, let a friend or a family member buy a dumbed down device for you or install parental controls or something. Or maybe have clicking the build number 7 times reveal "toddler mode" where you can lock your device down irreversibly as much as you want.
And the only reason it is permissible to presumptively treat people as underage until proven otherwise in the physical world is that there isn't a constellation of intermediaries collecting all your habits and preferences when you buy porno magazines or alcohol in person.
Why is the answer people seem to arrive at being "mandatory collection of blackmail material that will ruin careers and relationships" when it comes to the Internet?
Because "somebody has to think of the children." At this point, I am convinced parental instincts are being abused to slowly but surely install more-or-less complete public surveilance. Its a rather obvious approach. You have to appeal to something emotional. And parents, and their apparent unwillingness to take up responsibility for their parenting, are the perfect target. Even child-less adults will chime in to toot the "Somebody has to think of the children" mantra.
Yeah, how dare someone do or say anything that some random crazy asshole could use to threaten that person's personal or professional life or even put them in danger of physical harm.
To hell with gay kids growing up in very traditional religious areas in much of the world.
That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!
Someone confiding to a friend over social media DMs that they're in an abusive relationship with someone violent? Well - she shouldn't be surprised when her partner beats her within an inch of her life when he finds out. If only she did what she was told, right?
And let's not forget the cringiest or most sexual thing you've ever said online - make sure that your every utterance in private would pass scrutiny by your employer's HR department!
Seriously...I don't understand people like you. What a small, listless, and unusually safe world you must live in.
You may as well have asked why can't everyone think and act like you as well as live in your particular region of the world with the same friends, family, romantic, and professional opportunities that you've been provided throughout your life.
It's almost like a well-monied or well-connected lobbyist is pushing this heavily. Multiple contenders out there as to who it could be. But regardless of who the originator is, the push can be kneecapped. Imagine jurisdictions that have an opposite push - one that criminalizes use of age verification software such as mandating providing government ID or facial scans. It can be done!
Especially the moment you move outside of America. Tech has always been comparatively more attuned to US mores and voter sentiment.
Everywhere else, I only see frustration and people trying to find someone who knows someone at a tech firm to get help.
The backlash against Tech firms is a force of nature at this point. Voters are currently unwilling to listen to appeals to reduce government overreach. Governments are trending towards authoritarianism globally, and are more than happy to give voters what they want, while also getting more leverage over tech.
But didnt Apple fire the first shot with ATT? Apple was never against ads (see ads.apple.com or numerous ads on App Store) they were against Facebook's ads.
So - given the law allows the NSA to do things given legal constructs, reality be damned, then what new legal construct do you think Wyden is sounding the alarm about?
When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.
Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches through our persinal data in bulk.
And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the practices?
Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to replace a large part of various agency's workforce - specifically those who care about the agency's culture!
It's fun to talk to an LLM yourself, but when I come upon someone else's output my eyes glaze over. I'm fine if an author uses AI to help them outline the book, brainstorm ideas, but I want the actual book to be written by a person.
Why read someone else's books? LLMs are the ultimate choose your own adventure story generators. Give it a scenario and some characters and some conflict and generate your own story. Sit down with ChatGPT and just have a good story time for yourself for a couple of hours going however you want to go. Want to focus on action and adventure? Or do you want interpersonal drama? Or both? You decide!
The LLM just reflects you back. I have a system like that and it can be very fun, but it's become clear that it will just lie to try to make me happy. One of the reasons people read books is to have access to another (probably unique) perspective.
It's an interesting moment we're at. Circles of trust are going to be really important. The internet is gonna be assumed-bot soon. TikTok is pretty much there already.
They welded shut the doors to Uyghur Muslims and had a bunch of donated food for them stacked outside their homes in one giant pile that they couldn't get to. It either rotted away or was eaten by animals.
Jack booted thugs shot a women in the face for the crime of sitting in her car and the administration called her a terrorist. Nothing happened to the thug.
Jack booted thugs shot a man in the back for the crime of defending a woman and the administration called him a terrorist. Nothing happened to that thug either.
Absolutely. But what people don't realize is this sort of thing happens in China too, it's just never reported or heard about, other than some whispers here and there, because of such tight control over the media, the internet, and public discourse. In the US, as much as the fascists are trying to take over, at least you can still protest and make your voice heard.
Me. I lived and worked there for a number of years. When you talk to the local people in confidence you find out about this stuff, and you sometimes catch glimpses of it before it's scrubbed from local social media. There's a very high level of control.
Most people don't understand this about China, and most reporters who go there are like "I spent 2 weeks in China and here's what it's like", or "I spent a semester studying at Beida (Peking U)".
10+ years ago there were places where social media posts were archived by some brave individuals before they were scrubbed so you could see what words were being targeted by censors. But that's long shut down to my knowledge.
Anything I can read? So far to believe it, I either have to move to and live in China for several years or "trust me bro". Neither of those are epistemically viable. It should be clear why.
Why can I say? Sometimes the only way to really learn about a country esp one with such tight control over information is to live there a decent amount of time. And since not many investigative journalists are doing that in China any more (China’s not likely to let them stay if they’re reporting the truth), it’s tough. If you really want to know, you may have to go find out for yourself.
Most people here have no cultural relationship to that era of 38 years back. You may as well talk about the bubonic plague that ravaged San Francisco in the early 1900's and how it changed the course of the city that eventually led to where it is today.
Values relating to mistrust of the military (as per the context of the post I responded to) as well as values relating to ownership of the tech you bought and of personal privacy.
Get off your high horse and stop talking down to a person you don't know. Take your anger out on someone else.
Yeah, it wasn’t some kind of ethical utopia, but it sure as hell has gotten a lot less ethical in real terms. When you start
Making things operate in ways that people dislike or are deceived by, it’s a very slippery slope, because everything from there all the way through eating babies is just a matter of degree.
Trite as it may seem, don’t be evil is actually a very, very strong statement, as is do no harm. 70 percent of tech market cap these days is a a million tiny harms, a warm pool of diluted evil.
Hard to say for sure. In that instance I can only reasonably speak for myself. So far at least, the evidence suggests the more I have, the more distracted I get by new projects.
The "security" rationale is horseshit given just how much malware is readily download able on the Play Store. Google never cleans its own house before going after others.
reply