I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract people to take the risk. Where I sympathize with your view is that sometimes an investment risk is taken, and the payout far exceeds the risk by any reasonable and sane margin. So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures, on the hope that the one successful one is so successful that it pays the losses of the failed ones. But yea, this system is not really working for the vast majority of people and that is a tragedy.
No you don't. That's exactly the point. Once you get fired, there are no longer any paychecks.
Meanwhile you have spent a limited resource you can't get back while investors have spent an unlimited resource they can always make more of.
And that even ignores the bottom line that people who get fired might lose their homes or not be able to feed their families. Tell me which investors risk so much that they become homeless if they lose the money.
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The bottom line if you need a certain amount of money (an absolute value) to survive.
1) Workers get 100% of that from the 1 company they work for. Maybe they can work for 2 companies part time if they are lucky. But losing even 50% of their income hits their bottom line severely. Meanwhile, investors can (as you say) optimize their risk so they are pretty safe.
2) And workers often spend a majority of their income on this bottom line, not being able to save much, let alone amass enough to invest to a meaningful degree. Investors (people who already have so much money they can risk a significant hunk of it) can lose a significant chunk of it and still be comfortable able to afford rent or pay the bills.
In fact, they often don't pay rent because they could just buy their home (something increasingly difficult for workers). Imagine if these rich assholes had to spend a third or half of their income, just to have a roof above their head.
They'd do everything to change the system, in fact, they do exactly that now by evading taxes.
> As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.
I would like people who cannot distinguish between an income stream and a capital value to learn what an "annuity" is.
Employees have very significant financial risk tied to the company because it's their main source of income. In America, there may even be significant health risks because health insurance is tied to the employer for baffling tax reasons.
Not to mention that in many startups, the employees are literally investors: they hold stock and options!
> So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures
The employee version of this is called "overemployment", but it's quite risky.
I have been an employee for 30 years across 10 jobs - one of which was Amazon from 2020-2023. I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. I always stayed ready to look for a job at a moments notice and it has never taken me more than a month to get a job when I was looking.
In fact, ten days after getting my “take severance package and leave immediately or try to work through a PIP (and fail)” meeting, I had three full time offers. I’m no special snowflake. I keep my resume updated, my network strong, skills in sync with the market, 9-12 months in savings in the bank.
Whether you are an enterprise developer or BigTech in the US you are on average making twice the median income in your area. There is usually no reason for you not to be stacking cash.
And equity in startups are statistically worthless and illiquid - unlike the RSUs you get in public companies that you can sell as soon as they vest.
As far as an “annuity”, you should be taking advantage that excess cash you get and saving it. But why would you want an “annuity” based on the performance of a specific company? I set my preference to “sell immediately” when my RSUs in AMZN vested and diversified.
Fortunately after the ACA, you can get insurance on the private market regardless of preexisting condition (I lost my job once before the ACA. It was a nightmare) or pay for COBRA. Remember that savings I said everyone should have?
> I’m no special snowflake. I keep my resume updated, my network strong, skills in sync with the market, 9-12 months in savings in the bank.
This is extremely unusual in general, not at all typical.
Here, on Hacker News, we have an unusually high proportion of high earners, and I'd guess a lot of FIRE people like me (and I infer, you), but the median US person has $8k, about 3 months, of savings: https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-savings-account-...
I could not guess either the income nor the savings distribution of those 14k Amazon departures. Also, reports suggest most of these people will have a chance to find a different role within Amazon.
As a former Amazon employee who lurked in the “anonymous” internal #pay-equity and the #pay-equity-discussion Slack channels, I can tell you that the typical return offer for an L4 who was a former intern was around $150K - $165K cash and stock and the average L5 was around $230K - $260K+ cash and stock per year (check my numbers on levels.fyi I might be off that was a couple of years ago).
But I have that amount in liquid cash because I’m an empty nest boomer with my wife who had a house built in 2016 in the burbs of Atlanta that I sold for twice the amount I paid for it in 2024 and downsized to a condo in Florida.
Before 2020, my only security was my ability to get a job fast.
But honestly anyone who expected loyalty from Amazon was like the old woman who took care of the snake. They should have been saving.
And I’m not at all FIRE, I’ll be realistically working until 65. Don’t cry for me. I work remotely and my wife and I travel all of the time including doing the digital nomad thing off an on where we are gone for months at a time.
Yes and when my employers - including Amazon - decided they wanted to stop putting money into my account, I didn’t stress.
I told my wife as soon as I had the meeting with my manager at Amazon back in 2023 about my “take $40K severance and leave immediately or try (and fail) to work through the PIP”. She asked me what were going to do? I said I’m going to take the $40K and we are going to the US Tennis Open as planned in three weeks. I called an old manager who didn’t have a job for me. But he threw a contract my way for a quick AWS implementation while I was still interviewing.
I doubt very seriously if my job fell out from under me tomorrow, someone wouldn’t at least offer me a short term contract quickly.
> Whether you are an enterprise developer or BigTech in the US you are on average making twice the median income in your area. There is usually no reason for you not to be stacking cash.
For now, expect that to be clawed back severely over the next few years.
It’s already happening. The pay I am seeing offered now in second tier tech cities like Atlanta where I use to live are the same as they were in 2016 and haven’t kept up with inflation.
I’m having to continuously move up and closer to the “stakeholders”.
> I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.
I would challenge you to change your perspective on this. The average employee is likely to be worse in the case of a failed company than an investor. The investor may lose funds sure but the employee:
- loss of income which they live off of while the investor likely has other money remaining as they are rich.
- loss of access to good health coverage in the USA
- potential opportunity costs in the form of learning the wrong things to support the now defunct company ie learned rust but now we all code in AI tools
- potential opportunity costs implied in aging. Few want a 60 y/o engineer but a 60 y/o investor is great.
In short while the investor can lose objectively more money the worker loses more relatively.
I suppose. But in a world where upset people then act irrationally up to and including doing some murder I wonder if we start mapping burnt out individuals to a higher "cost" than their lost spending. What for example is the objective cost of Samuel Cassidy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_San_Jose_shooting#Perpetr...
Oh I agree with you. I don't live in the US, but in a country that has a very high progressive tax rate. I am taxed about 50% of my income currently. But I gladly pay it because I like to live in a safe country with strong government programs and a great healthcare system. It is also very difficult to fire an employee here. Companies generally have to pay people to leave, and this can be a year salary upwards. But I do sympathize with people in the US, even if the "average" lifestyle experience is higher, because a lot of people seem to be struggling there.
Spare us your sympathy. When it's harder to terminate employees then employers are more reluctant to hire in the first place, leading to higher unemployment rates and overall slower economic growth. As a US based employee who has been laid off before (multiple times) I prefer our approach.
If the choice is between propping up the economy which is built atop a delicate house of cards and is about to implode on us anyways thanks to the AI bros, or knowing that the psychotic C-suite can't fire me because he needs an extra 0.2% of profit margin to look good to investors, I'll take the latter.
Having experienced both worlds here, it's about roughly the same difficulty getting hired, except over here in NL at the end of my 1 month in which they can fire me for any reason, I get a nice little ironclad contract that provides me rights as a worker. Anyone claiming getting laid off unceremoniously is better is just coping
Also doesn’t Amazon and many other tech companies give out RSUs as part of compensation for corporate employees? Obviously not all, but the OP’s complaint is, in my view, not entirely fair to levy at Amazon specifically.
This is not the same. It is similar, it gives the veneer of meritocracy and ownership but it's not the same.
Compare how much ownership per unit of work each person has. In fact, only one side knows the company's financial status so it cannot even be a fair negotiation, let alone fair outcome.
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In a society which claims that everyone is equal and in which everyone lives roughly the same amount of time, the fair distribution of ownership is according to how much of their limited time they spent building the thing.
You can admit people are not equal and then take both time and skill into account.
Restricted, but your point isn’t a good one. You don’t hire someone then hand them, idk $50,000 in stock or options so they can leave the next day. CEOs even get paid in stock grants based on performance or other such restrictions options, etc., (obviously there’s a lot of variation here) with lots of strings attached (maybe not enough but that’s beside the point).
> In a society which claims that everyone is equal
No, you are making this up. Society doesn’t claim that everyone is equal. We claim you should be treated equally under the eyes of the law, which by the way our poor performance here is a criticism that I think is very valid.
Many countries have similar clauses in their rulesets. And they don't only apply to the state, in many countries it would be illegal to pay a person less based on gender, race and similar characteristics (though of course difficult to prove).
Now, I am not saying everyone is equal[0], just that it's a very popular meme in society.
Finally, even if you get compensated by some share in the company, how large is it relative to the amount rich people own? They will still keep getting rich faster than you can, even if you work 80 hours a week and they 0.
[0]: E.g. intelligence is the only thing which separates us from other animals, and given the relative value of life ascribed to a human vs any other animal, it's laughable that the value of human lives is not dependent on intelligence to some level. Similarly, many people are so anti-social, they are actively harmful to almost everyone around them - morality should absolutely play a role in this value.
Yes, Martin. All men (and women) are created equal. The purpose of that document and in that phrase is that all are created equal under the purview of the law or God, not that "society should be equal". Those are completely different things and as you mentioned, it's a very popular (and stupid) meme which is why I responded specifically to what you wrote there.
> Exactly, that's why I say ownership should be proportional to the amount of work done (and perhaps skill involved).
This sounds reasonable, as all bad ideas usually do (and good ones sometimes) but the complexity is in the implementation. If I start a business and hire someone who is going to do 50% of the work, I give them 50% of the company (generally speaking not even talking about $ investments here).
Well, what do you do when your company hires over a million people? And, what do you actually distribute to the employees? Is it the market value of the company divided amongst employees? If they work for 6 months how much value do they get? How exactly are you assessing the value that someone is delivering or the amount of work that was done?
There aren't easy answers to these questions. We are in fact not great as a society (and I'm not sure we should even strive to be) at assessing who did what work. And, how do you handle people who are less skilled because they were born that way? Some people just aren't capable or competent and that's a genetic fact of life. Oh, by the way, what if you leave the company for more pay? How does that work?
Your simple idea opens up a pretty nasty can of worms here without clear answers. But there is one solution - if you (or others) think that giving ownership proportional to the amount of work done is the best way to run a company, the free market is right there waiting for you to give it a go.
> under the purview of the law or God, not that "society should be equal".
Well, gods don't exist but many people substitute them with some kind of moral system so it's not only under the eyes of the law. The second part touches upon the core of the issue IMO - whether we want equal opportunities or equal outcomes.
Equal outcomes are obviously unjust because some people put in more work, have more skill or are better in some way at some things (whether that's work or morality) and equal outcomes can only be achieved by taking from them.
Equal opportunities are much more reasonable but they too have issues - specifically what counts as an opportunity and when does it start?
- If at birth, then the society must forbid any kind of inheritance, otherwise some people are obviously massively advantaged by being born to rich parents. Even that is not enough because rich parents can afford the child a much better education and contacts. You'd literally have to take children away from parents and assign them to random families, which would probably be somewhat unpopular.
- At the beginning of a particular school enrollment or job sounds more reasonable but then people who were advantaged or disadvantaged earlier have a much better change of getting into the school or getting the job so it just adds up.
- Not to mention people who are sufficiently rich through inheritance fundamentally don't have to work, they just invest. Assuming all people need roughly the same amount of money to survive and the rest can be invested, the rich will get richer faster than the poor.
These are hard problems with no easy solutions. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to solve them, even if that means trying out ideas that can turn out bad. The alternative is increasing inequality until a collapse, a revolution or until we're back to slavery.
> the complexity is in the implementation
No shit. I didn't say it was easy. But we can start by talking about an idealized world with perfect information and what justice/fairness would look like and then make changes according to real-world constraints such as imperfect information. This has already happened to criminal law - in an ideal world, you know ow much suffering an offender has caused, how severy punishment he deserves for it, how severe punishment prevents how much crime, whether somebody is actually rehabilitated or if they'll re-offend, etc. But in the real world, there are rules about what level of proof is necessary, about what evidence is admissible, whether you can assign punishments based on risk of re-offending, etc.
With compensation, the first step would be to negotiate based on equal information (not withholding information about compensation of other employees - in the name of privacy, it could be median and variance for each position). The second step is negotiating not money-per-unit-of-work but skill level relative to other employees.
> If I start a business and hire someone who is going to do 50% of the work, I give them 50% of the company (generally speaking not even talking about $ investments here).
Not necessarily. If you started it alone and worked on it for some time, that time should count towards your share. Similarly, if you invested money into it, that should also count.
> How exactly are you assessing the value that someone is delivering or the amount of work that was done?
The exact details can be negotiated and various schemes should probably be experimented with at both the company and societal levels.
The point is that there should be no class divide between workers who get paid per uni of work and owners who take a cut from the income and/or can sell the company.
> Oh, by the way, what if you leave the company for more pay?
The company is still built on top of your work, your share just keeps decreasing relative to others as other people put in more and more work. This is actually something that protects founders - if you start as 1 man in a garage, then leave the company but it turns into something hugely profitable, you still keep getting a cut, just a small one.
A lot of people criticize my opinions based on risk (but incorrectly, given employees risk much more than owners - see other comments) but this actually spreads the risk around a lot. If you work for multiple companies in your life, you still have some income, unless all of them go bankrupt.
Oh and this solves the issue with privilege from inheritance to some degree - the children of workers didn't build the company, so they have no claim to a share in it.
>As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company
Is your livelihood, housing, ability to put food on the table for your family etc. not a risk by your understanding? Or are you only willing to accept certain types of financial risk as "risk"?
Here's an illustrative question: John Q. Billionaire owns shares in a passive index fund such that he practically has the same exposure to Amazon's stock price as if he owned $10 million in stock. I will potentially be homeless if I lose my 45k per year job at Amazon. Who has more risk?
This drives me nuts. You move to another city, risk your livelihood on a new job that you don’t know if is gonna work out for you. Your kids go to a new school, your partner has to either move to find a new job, or make it work long distance for a while… Your whole life changes on what is essentially a bet, you have no security whatsoever. And people say the risk is not yours.
Also - and I think this is the main thing - you have NO SAY in any of it after you sign that contract. An owner DECIDES to close shop. To fire people. You risk being fired for whatever reason comes to the mind of your boss, manager, director, owner.
Then don’t do that? In 2020, when I had the “opportunity” to work at Amazon in a role that would eventually require relocating after COVID, there was no way in hell I was going to uproot my life to work for Amazon and that was after my youngest had graduated. I instead interviewed for a “permanently remote role” [sic]. If that hadn’t been available, I would have kept working local jobs for less money.
Anyone with any familiarity about tech knew or should have known what kind of shitty company Amazon was. At 46, I went in with my eyes wide open. I made my money in stock and cash and severance and kept it moving when Amazon Amazoned me. It was just my 8th job out of now 10 in 30 years.
If your a billionaire and you invest in index funds, the risk of becoming homeless is really low, sure. The system works in such a way that the more money you have the easier it is to make more money. So if your stuck at the bottom, your really stuck.
And I believe there is a huge shift of wealth going on, to a very small number of insanely rich people. And that is a very big problem.
If being a founder/VC was truly more risky than being an employee - you'd see more homeless VC's and founders than employees, not just more millionaires - ie a spread either side.
Sure sometimes founders and angel investors take big risks - however often the money invested is other people's money!
So if you have a VC funded start up - the VC has persuaded other people to give them money they will invest on their behalf, and while there is a strong alignment with upside and VC renumeration - they still charge management fees come win or lose - and risk is spread across the fund.
Founders stock options are often aligned with VC's such that often they win with certain exit scenarios when the rank and file with ordinary options do not.
Under those scenarios I'm not sure either the VC's or the founders are really taking much more risk than the employees - as I'm not sure you see that many homeless VC's.
The real point here is that people who take the initiative ( to set up a company for example ) set the rules, and also often configure the rules to favour themselves - it's as simple as that. Isn't pretending otherwise window dressing/self-justification from people taking advantage of other people's passiveness?
Isn't it the same as the house in roulette - sure each spin the house is taking risk - but if the game is structured so the odds are in your favour - you are taking less risk than the customer.
It comes down to who is setting the rules of the game.
This is unfortunately true.
Accusing a company for maximizing profit is naive. There is a structural problem on taxation Vs how much the company contributes back to society.
Morally speaking, your sentiment is right with most of us I think but asking for a company is asking for a thing, like asking for a building or a chair.
Earning more while exploring more than contributing back is unhealthy in any measurement of time.
Back then, companies would have schools, universities and whatever to sustain the community they want to build. They would build roads, renovate public spaces and contribute to private transport and all of that apart from taxes.
Now they invest on their own charities, which sometimes is quite hard to validate how much money goes in to where due to the conflict of interest and the possibility of fraud.
>Earning more while exploring more than contributing back is unhealthy in any measurement of time. Back then, companies would have schools, universities and whatever to sustain the community they want to build. They would build roads, renovate public spaces and contribute to private transport and all of that apart from taxes.
Sounds like company towns, which were derided for other reasons.
If there is water ice there, as suspected, it is the most realistic path to a self sustaining space economy. If you can earn money in space, there is a reason for people to work in space, and you can extend the economy into space.
I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account". I have been living with a de-googled android phone for a number of years, and it is getting harder and harder, while at the same time operating without certain "apps" is becoming more difficult.
For example, by bank (abn amro) still allows online banking on desktop via a physical auth device, but they are actively pushing for login only via their app. I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app. If they get their way, eventually an apple or google account will be mandatory to have a bank account with them.
My kid goes to a school that outsourced all communication via an app. They have a web version, but it's barely usable. The app doesn't run without certain google libs installed. Again, to participate in school communication about my kid effectively requires an apple or google account.
I feel like the conversation we should be having is that we are sleepwalking into a world where to participate in society you must have an account with either apple or google. If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.
> If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.
Even more worrying is the inverse of this - if Google and/or Apple decide for whatever reason they don't want a relationship with you (aka they ban you for no reason) - you are completely screwed
Even if they ban you for a reason, you're screwed. Granted, the ban may have been warranted, but you're essentially put into a societal prison with no due process or recourse.
That is a great analogy. There are countries where a police can throw you into a lifetime jail with zero option for justice unless you are a famous person from a well known western country.
Those countries are North Korea, Iran, Russia, Google and Apple.
Well the US can do it with CBP/ICE, but not for life. I was placed in a jail without being arrested or being accused of a crime and they were very clear at all times I was not even arrested, nor did a federal criminal history search show any record of arrest. No access to lawyer either.
US Citizen. Contacted lawyers, all informed me they'd given up trying to sue for these things because it's hopeless.
Looks like the statute of limitations has ran out.
I typed up a ~100 page document with very thorough records of the retroactive warrant, what happened, and medical records to try and hold at least the "medical care providers" accountable but the board determined that the medical care providers were performing a (warrantless) law enforcement search and not medical care so their license wasn't in jeapordy. Not sure how they determined this since they were in no way deputized nor were they employed by the government, and in fact I was personally being billed for it.
The CBP argued the opposite, that medical care was rendered and not a search so CBP was not liable for extending the ~12 hours during which they "detained" me with no evidence. CBP argued they held me for my own safety because I could die of non-existent drugs.
The challenges to this have all failed (see Ashley Cervantes, basically identical legal facts) so it seems the courts are pretty satisfied with the catch-22 of any challenges of the criminal aspect to be ruled as medical care (thus unchallengables) and then any challenge of the medical care to be ruled as a detainment for a criminal search (thus unchallengable).
Assuming what you're saying is true, this is the kind of thing 2A was written for. I don't mean for you personally, but for society it's really the last line of defense against a rogue government. But, even if your story is totally made up it's completely believable. Scary times.
2A might have been written hundreds of years ago but it is now an instrument to sell guns. no amount of guns you buy will help you against rogue government
Hard disagree. Guerilla resistance has proven itself surprisingly effective against modern militaries. Multiply that by a military which would be going to war against its own citizens and you have a very uncertain situation.
Yes, if the military was targeting you individually you'd almost certainly be fucked. But a guerilla resistance spread out over a continent would be very difficult to eradicate. Just look at Afghanistan.
Apples and elephants. I'm talking about a double digit percentage of the population fighting a guerilla resistance against a rogue state and you link me to like 50 guys in a house that's surrounded.
~12 hours in jail, a few hours shackled in prisoner transport vans, and then ~12 hours in cuffs at a couple different hospitals hospital (where I was touched by health care professionals without my consent and without a warrant) while they waited for signs of non-existent "drugs." Shortly before I was released they served me retroactive search warrant, signed by a judge after it happened, using made-up PC that did not even state the name of the person or animal they claim prompted it.
I was released after an HSI guy showed up, took a quick look at me, decided I wasn't a terrorist or whatever, served me the retroactive warrant, and then I was sent on a prisoner transport van to be dumped at the border with my all my shit (including my shoelaces) in a plastic bag.
For the hospital part I was sent a ~$1k bill, which is still in collections.
The 100 miles "border zone" is where all this can occur. It's a very contentious issue (considering 2/3rds of the pouplation and cities are within the zone).
The ACLU is very interested in this issue on 4th Amendment grounds but they have not had much luck with it in the last decade. Lots of cases but it's still not a settled issue.
does this mean you were originally on your way into the US and that's where they nabbed you, and then when they finished with you they took you back to where they picked you up?
i'm not here to debate or defend in either direction, i don't know enough about any of it, but i believe that i have heard from a lawyer podcast that whether you are a US citizen who is entitled to enter or not, the rules (including your bill of rights status) are different "at the border" because you are not in the US yet
if you're telling a real story and not just AI generating bullshit for karma you should go to the PRESS. this story, if it's real, should be something the press would eat up.
The press did an almost identical story for Ashley Cervantes, who had almost the same thing happen, except she was digitally (finger) raped by doctors as part of the process and was a young barely adult ~poor woman vulnerable minority so way way more public sympathy for her vs me (I'm a middle class white native English speaking boring white boy with a hick accent so basically at the bottom of the interest at ACLU, they do occasionally feature some people that have had it happen if they have sympathetic backgrounds).
Nothing changed. Same port of entry, same hospital network, same everything (I don't think she was jailed like me though). Lawsuit failed and public press did nothing. Later the ACLU won some kind of suit that forced all involved parties to be warned, which they promptly ignored, and that was the end of it.
I looked at the final motion to dismiss document and boy did she get bad legal advice. The lawyer tried a Bivens case against the hospital... which any lawyer will tell you is an impossibility. Bivens cases are just about impossible to win under any circumstances, but trying to do a Bivens against a non-federal officer is a guaranteed loss.
To have won this case against the agents would have required piercing qualified immunity which is very tough (you have to prove intentional misconduct... just being incompetent isn't enough in most cases).
She would have been better off pursuing a medical malpractice case against the hospital and/or doctor to be able to get any kind of relief.
> I'm a middle class white native English speaking boring white boy with a hick accent so basically at the bottom of the interest at ACLU
I would assume they would be jumping at a few of these cases too, as a) it may be easier to bypass any ingrained bias in the system if you aren't necessarily matching people there may be bias against, and b) establishing case law is important for changing ambiguous legal situations.
Are you assuming they wouldn't be interested or did they communicate that they weren't interested?
Very similar stuff has been in the press often this year. Everyone mostly forgets each case after a couple of weeks (did that end up being a real gang tattoo or not?, etc.).
I think my case might have gotten picked up by someone if it happened under Trump or close enough it would have still been under the statute of limitations. There wasn't much interest in immigration law under Biden, lately IJ and others have become interested in defending CBP/ICE overreach.
First of all - add Israel. If you're a Gazan than this goes without saying, but even if you're a citizen, then - the General Security Service can and does people into custody without a warrant; often does not publicly disclose or admit said custody; and has "secret" detention facilities to hold such people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_1391)
I also wonder about the US: What about the secret imprisonment mechanisms it set up after the 2001 attacks on the twin towers (9/11)? Were those ever dis-established?
The US has done just that to Abrego Garcia, and is now giving him the choice between confessing to a crime that he hasn't been convicted of (and likely didn't commit) and deportation to a country he has never been in.
He has already been illegally disappeared to El Salvador, despite theoretically having access to a lawyer. It took a national story for him to be brought back, only to get threatened by the exact same thing.
Lawyers only matter if the people with the guns think they should be bound by the law.
Very true. They are effectively a new type of non-territorial state with absolutely no separation of powers or rule of law or principle of proportionality.
What makes this difficult though is that they are under constant attack from highly organised and automated criminal operations that create and exploit accounts en masse.
Any solution to the tyrannical state of affairs we are subjected to (even more so as developers) needs to balance better protections for real people (including as you say for people who have committed some transgressions) with fighting organised crime.
It's also used by the actual territorial state to project power through corporations, by influencing them to project their policies. I'm reminded of the story of the guy that had his google account shut down for "CSAM" because they took explicit medical pictures of their child at the directions of physicians, that were only privately shared solely for the purpose of aiding diagnosis. Apparently google works with the government to create these systems to scan your cloud images in the background.
Yes, I think governments love centralisation of control in very few hands. It gives them far greater powers than they would otherwise have, both technically and legally.
"Harmful" content has significant overlap with freedom of speech, so governments find it hard to ban directly. But when there's a big corporation facilitating access to that content, then it becomes a clear case of "evil capitalist profiting from harmful content - corporations need to take responsibility!".
When a government doesn't like end-to-end encrypted photos and cloud drives, all they have to do is issue a secret order telling Apple to disable it.
And when people find workarounds for intrusive and insecure age verification methods, what's better than a total sideloading ban to regain control?
> governments love centralisation of control in very few hands
Honestly, that was one of the things that shocked me about the Digital Markets Act in the EU. It gives them less power over their citizens, not more. (Of course, they also passed the Digital Services Act around the same time, and now they're looking at age verification and breaking E2EE, so I guess they figured they had to balance things out...)
I think these are separate initiatives by different parts of EU agencies and national governments. The markets and competition crowd does not coordinate at all with the law enforcement and security people.
I don't mind this being a bit chaotic. At least it shows that there are trade-offs.
IBM in Nazi Germany was no different from other German owned companies in being conscripted to do what the Third Reich ordered them to; the headquarters in the US obviously had no control over them during WW2.
Plus it's ridiculous to apply collective guilt in any form by blaming later IBM management, given that anyone involved with 1940s German IBM is long dead by now.
The original post is about technology being used for authoritarian purposes. I used Dehomag (IBMs German subsidiary) as an example of how technology has been used to support that supposition as a historical example (I could have picked many).
Your post does not repudiate the parent post, nor my post.
He was a high profile case of social media coordinated banning. Not just one platform but many and it wasn't about court orders at the time but simply the vague "policy" which we know gets applied selectively.
The particularly interesting thing was that the sentiment of unpersoning someone online and "one service banning you" being a good reason for others to do so, was used by politicians later on to suggest more proactive unpersoning of different government critics which, they obviously called conspiracy theorists. Obviously different politicians call for the ban of people from opposing political parties, so it's not something about a specific party or political compass quadrant, as much as people want it to be.
This was sometime after Trump's election, when the "all out war" on the US political landscape was happening.
You could probably find numerous less extreme and easier to defend cases, where people get banned from one or many linked services, with no recourse but the Jones one was one of or maybe the first high profile one across several sites.
It's very easy to think that these powers will only be used at someone we dislike or find politically abhorrent but it will always point back to us, the moment we are the nuisance, no matter if it's because we are against the new freedom (TM) war or "save the children" civil encroachment.
I would argue that social media banning is much different than Google/Apple banning. If I got banned from Facebook or reddit or even HN then I'm not really missing out on much. Of course, for people who actually do business on these platforms, like Jones, then it sucks to lose a platform, but I don't think anyone has a fundamental right to post whatever they want on these platforms.
If I got banned from Google, then almost 20 years of emails, 1TB of files on Google Drive, are gone. Many of the services I use that use email as a second factor, I'd be locked out of. (And before you ask, yes, I use an authenticator whenever I can, but for some reason some services decide to still only let me use email as a second factor). If I forgot my password at any site, can't reset it. Not to mention that I can't use my Android phone out of the box without installing custom de-Googled firmware.
I suppose the same argument could be made that I don't have a fundamental right to use Gmails mail servers, but as I pointed out above, it is more than just an inconvenience, it could actively be harmful to my digital life, because Google has its hands on almost all things digital.
I don't understand : in my experience it's still much easier to set up another email account than to deal with authenticator requirements, where you might be forced to use Google's Authenticator ?
If Gmail blocks me from making an account, I could use Yahoo mail or whatever, for email. But Gmail is more than just email. It's an entire identity. I can't use an android phone out of the box without a Google account. I ~bought~ licensed some movies from YouTube and those would just go poof. All the sites I used Sign in With Google would essentially be lost to me since I can't use that Google account.
The logical answer might be to just not use Sign in with Google but some services don't even let you use username/PW, it's sign in with Google/apple/Github etc.
Well yes, but that's partially on you − I might understand your average person not being wary about these issues, but we're on Hacker News here, these issues have been discussed for decades.
The sites also shouldn't be 'lost', don't they have a way to register another kind of login from the same one ? And you can always make a new, platform-free account − better do that sooner than later !
Please name and shame the websites (like Advent of Code and Rebble) that only allow a login through platforms. And services that only allow Google Authenticator.
You're missing the point. You get banned in coordination.
> I don't think anyone has a fundamental right to post whatever they want on these platforms.
You don't have a right to anything if you fall for the bullshit of "they are private companies".
These private companies exert tremendous power and are also an arm of the government when the government wants it. The government uses them to censor things and hides the hand. It was very obvious before different US elections and during covid policies authoritianismathon.
> I suppose the same argument could be made that I don't have a fundamental right to use Gmails mail servers, but as I pointed out above, it is more than just an inconvenience, it could actively be harmful to my digital life, because Google has its hands on almost all things digital.
So you get my point but want to hiper focus on your exact circumstances. There's no need. Think of the worst case scenario and fight to protect yourself and others from that. Don't support it when it's "the bad guy getting the stick".
Date didn't go as well as the other person was hoping? They can report you to the app, some tired and overworked support person in an emerging market bans you, they keep whatever cash you already spent on bonus likes and your multi-month subscription, no refunds.
And you can never sign up from the same Google/Apple account, the same phone, and with the same face, because of course now you have to verify your biometric information with some of these apps (Bumble is introducing submitting your id or taking verification photos).
Or their AI misfires and deems you as having said something inappropriate, again, off you go. You have no recourse, hope you know someone who works at that company who can flip the bit in their database.
Want to know the reason why they banned you? Sorry, that's sensitive information, you will never know, only that you "violated the terms of service". Which one? Sorry, we can't tell you, goodbye.
Oh, now 60% of society meets through datings apps? Too bad, you don't get to anymore, shouldn't have violated our terms of service. Oh, and most of these apps are run by the same company, so you get banned on one, you likely get banned from all on them at once. Have fun.
I think this is the thing we need to change most. These big companies effectively have as much power as courts to break your life, but no transparency, oversight, appeals process or even a clear process in some cases. They can destroy a person or a small business without even noticing.
And just think, how people could stop using so many of their services. Say, not use GMail mailboxes and go for other providers. It's like most of us are actively putting ourselves in their prisons every day.
The most common antidote to anti-consumer behavior like this, is for the established parties to pull a dumb stunt and for competitor to eat their lunch.
If you can't bank without Google or Apple, all competition is dead on arrival.
If we have to politik the deplatforming rules of companies because they've taken complete control of the gates, we're doing the wrong politiking at the wrong place.
The only solution I see is some decentralized way of governing. And even if this gains mass support, I still forsee some centralized way of how rules are enforced that can also cut off your relationship as well. Efficiency v.s privacy tradeoff I guess.
from an incredibly trivial perspective I was thinking about this recently when I discovered all games operate as saas products now, if for whatever reason you're banned then you can no longer play the product you purchased, what happened to third party mplayer servers?
I don't own a phone, but the most shocking revelation came when my child's school required us to use an app to specify how our children will be picked up or ride the bus.
So far I've been able to avoid using apps for pretty much anything, but when the school says "use an app or you won't get your kids" and then also say they will call CPS and have your kids seized if you don't get them in time, that puts you in a real fucked up situation.
We've reached the point where people without devices or common online services are so rare that society no longer accommodates them. It's similar to how we need legislation to ensure that disabled people have accessible infrastructure, except I doubt there will ever be legislation mandating offline/off-app accessibility.
File it under faulty assumptions organizations make about their clients or customers. If you live in a rural area in the United States it is still quite possible to have:
* No cellular service
* No landline service
* No postal delivery to your property, and a physical address that isn't in any database
* No public utilities
It can be very frustrating to deal with services that assume you have the ability to receive SMS messages, and almost anything requiring identity these days demands a phone number.
I don't think its unreasonable for private companies not to bother to offer their services to these people. Why should they have to? Many services require nearby physical infrastructure. Electing to live in the woods is not really a disability. Plus you can just get internet out there if you want and thereby receive SMS.
You're right, it's not a disability. However, it's also not always elective. Sure, a private business has no requirement to serve people outside of the market they want to serve, but what if that business is providing a service that is de-facto required in order to access government services?
It's the government's role to serve everyone generally, so they should provide reasonable accommodations for people. I suspect there are such accommodations, but it's hard to say without looking at a specific, real scenario.
Also, not always elective? I'm not so sure about that. You decide where you live. If you're a minor, your parents decide where you live. That's elective in a meaningful sense. You might have reasons you are personally weighing that make sense for you to live in a certain place, but accessibility of services should be part of that calculation, and ultimately it is still up to you.
The government isn't obligated to pay for your gas or provide you a car to get to the nearest post office to pay your taxes, for example. If you choose to live in such a way where it is difficult or impossible for you to comply with the law, there is not much the government can or should do about it.
But further up this thread you're responding to it says:
> the school says "use an app or you won't get your kids" and then also say they will "call CPS and have your kids seized if you don't get them in time"
Is it reasonable for a school to "call CPS and have your kids seized" because the school couldn't "bother to offer their services to these people"?
I think this highlights the two extremes. The grey area requires human interaction, such as, talking to the school leadership and explaining your phone-less situation. I guarantee they will accommodate some other solution. Like, “pickup for you is 3:15 every day” and just get used to your face. It’s a rare situation they likely didn’t consider, but it by no means is insinuating that if you don’t own a phone then your kids will go to CPS. It’s saying if you fail to pick them up they will, but if you fail to show up just because you can’t check in via app, that’s absolutely your failure and you’ve been warned about the consequences.
Maybe. Is it a public or a private school? Is this something they could or should have reasonably known? What is their duty to accommodate you? Is OP accurately describing the situation?
Let's say they let you fill it out with pen and paper, but you have a moral objection to using pen and paper. Perhaps you don't like the environmental cost of paper or the policies of all the existing pen companies. Is this reasonable? Where is the line on what should be accommodated? The government really only has an obligation here under ADA. Private firms have no real obligation. Not wanting to use a certain technology is not a disability, it is a preference. If you want your preference to become the law, there is a mechanism to do it, but it involves convincing a large number of people that you are correct.
Yes, but to me there is a very big difference between being forced to adopt a class of technologies (online services in general) along with the rest of society and being forced to contract with a handful of specific companies that impose extremely one-sided contractual terms on everybody, touching almost every aspect of life.
This is how it happens that the appearance of a new option, which you are free to voluntarily choose or refuse (eg. buy a smartphone and an internet connection, maintain a Google account, accept everyone's ToS contract) gradually morphs into something mandatory if enough other people choose it.
I work for some local governments in Belgium and with every system they put in place I keep insisting on a analogous version. Online forms? Great but if anyone chooses the should be able to send in a paper form or get assisted by someone who fills in the online form for them.
As the spouse of someone blind it's becoming increasingly difficult to get accomodations from doctors and govt things. Surprisingly so much so that even making ada complaints goes nowhere. Very few offices are willing to sit and fill out paperwork nor willing to provide an accessible version.
The only saving grace has been be my eyes and other apps that allow for some level of access without needing another human available. It really sucks though as back in the early 2000s strides were being made for the blind community but now it feels like things have regressed because of technology and basic human dignity and kindness has lost out.
I think I might enjoy the CPS scenario... let them call CPS, and wait for CPS to arrive, and then discuss with CPS who is endangering the child, the parent or the school. I'm pretty sure a judge will quickly decide whether their rule makes sense or not, and I think judges in child protection cases are going to quickly side with what's important for the child.
I HATE this kind of nonsense, and threatening you as a parent is only making things worse. Why not offer a way to handle this on a simple website? It would have lower cost to the school and be more accessible to anyone with any device able to access websites. Nonsense.
Well the judge will likely rule the app is bullshit, but in the meantime CPS will argue they need to go into your house, look to see if you have a dirty dish, or the wrong proportion of snacks to vegetables, or maybe take notice your child is playing independently outside while they come around. Then they will portray that in the most insane way possible, and since it is a civil and not criminal process their is no requirement anything is shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's also the problem that once they have your kid, the tables are completely turned, rather than them showing why they should take them, now you have to show why you should get them back and that is a process that can be dragged out for over a year.
Unfortunately CPS has wide latitude, secret courts, and the ability to unendingly fuck with you, so it's better just to not "invite" them in your life if you can. And if they do manage to snatch your kid, note they give so little fucks for the kid that their contractors will leave a kid in a hot car to die because apparently that's safer than being with their parents.[]
Damn. When I had a child in Germany, our version of CPS came over and told me what fun things the city offers for children and asked me about my plans for day care and how I can get help to get a spot.
I once called them because the day care lady of a friend‘s kid is a bit of an idiot and kinda scared us about mass closure of day care centers and it was probably the nicest interaction I’ve ever had with a government agency.
But from what I’ve heard, America in general is a whole other beast both regarding expectations for parents, trust in the kids and the trouble you can get in for minor things.
I wouldn't be so quick to equate differences in personal anecdotes with stark country-level differences (though it's plausible that everything is worse in America as usual)
I grew up in a low income neighborhood in the Netherlands and many times saw people be utterly terrified of CPS. In many cases these were households where outside help could've been really useful, but even in the worst cases where heavy CPS involvement was the only option (real "take the child away" cases), the child's situation often unfortunately hardly got better, just different. In less intense cases CPS involvement often just seemed to thrust a compliance burden on households without offering much real support, mostly just leaving people feeling guilty and stigmatized. Overall still better for them to exist than not, and budget cuts and restructuring really hurt the situation later, but still an organization with very real odds of making the situation worse, sometimes catastrophically worse.
I'm so sorry that's the situation in your country. Another answer to your message from Germany is pretty close to my experience in France, child protection is way less combative and genuinely invested in what's good for children.
The danger is when solutions that are convenient, but require giving up some sort of freedom, are made mandatory even for those who would like to stay free. I hope this is a lesson we avoid having to learn the hard way.
I have done some backpacking these past two years, and it is worrying how easy it is to get into big trouble if you lose your phone or payment cards.
As an example, my debit card got eaten by an ATM on my way to Argentina, and after my 6 month travel, the backup credit card I had brought was about to expire.
Despite my card working as a means of payment, I was starting to feel the effects of this corner case in every aspect of modern life. I could not use our equivalent of cashapp, I assume because my card was about to expire. I could not ride public transit, or trains, or do things like book a yoga class with my friends, all because all these institutions basically only let you interact with their service through their apps, where I had no way to pay.
I spent some time visiting friends in the capitol on my way home, and tried to sort the situation out with my bank. They thankfully were able to order some new cards to their office, rather than to my home address. But immediately after my talk with them I found that my one remaining card had been cancelled.
Then I tried bringing my passport to withdraw some cash, but the bank teller almost laughed at me, before explaining that you can't just do that anymore. The bank isn't even allowed to let you get your money in cash and leave. You can get bits of it in bills at the ATM for a fee the price of a coffee, but also that requires a card, of course.
Electronic payment solutions are so convenient, for the public and for institutions, for law enforcement and control, that we've forgotten how much we need to give up in order to use them, and now they're being made mandatory as we trudge along into a cashless society.
Now I couldn't even get food or shelter, if not for my friends. I remember half stumbling out of the bank with my passport in my hand, half dizzy with shock and anger. This, along with lots of other small mishaps like losing my phone and encountering trouble, kind of radicalized me on these topics.
To me the point where the law needs to intervene is the bank or the school. You need a bank to function--that means the bank should be prohibited by law from tying you to an app from a particular company, whether it's Google or Apple or anyone else. You should be able to access their functions using any client that supports the appropriate open standards (such as web browsers).
Similarly, if the school is going to have control over your kids, the school should be prohibited by law from requiring you to use an app that's tied to a particular company. They should be required to provide you functional access using any client that supports the appropriate open standards.
If it is a public school, the state should “intervene,” but really it isn’t an intervention, it’s the state’s school they should fix their stupid policy.
For the bank, I don’t really see why it would be preferable to intervene with the bank vs the tech company. Either way the state will have to impose on a private company.
> You need a bank to function--that means the bank should be prohibited by law from tying you to an app from a particular company, whether it's Google or Apple or anyone else. You should be able to access their functions using any client that supports the appropriate open standards (such as web browsers).
Really this is an interoperability problem, so the government would have to impose on both sides. An OS should be mandated to come with a browser than supports some locked down functionality—a subset of HTML, nothing fancy, no scripting or anything like that. The bank should be required to provide a portal that speaks that language.
> For the bank, I don’t really see why it would be preferable to intervene with the bank vs the tech company.
Because the bank has a fiduciary responsibility to its customers. The tech company doesn't. The bank can't just deny you access to your money because you don't want to have a Google or Apple account. That should already be the legal framework, but apparently it needs to be clarified and enforced better.
> Either way the state will have to impose on a private company.
Banks are already not "private companies" the way tech companies are; banks are already agents of the state in a number of important ways (such as being required to report all kinds of transactions, follow know your customer rules, etc.).
>An OS should be mandated to come with a browser than supports some locked down functionality
What for? Online banking worked perfectly fine on standard web browsers over HTTPS for years before smartphones became popular, why should that change now?
The modern web is too complicated to make a fully featured actually secure browser; the least-common-denominator feature set that both ends have to comply with should be simpler.
You mean like if there were a standard (JSON, XML, whatever) format of document that you could cryptographically sign which would order a transaction to take place? Kind of like a digital teller's slip?
That would be nice, but how would the bank verify the signature? It's the same old key exchange problem all over again.
In any case, that's not what I was suggesting. I was simply suggesting that banks shouldn't be allowed to force you to depend on certain apps or app stores to get access to your money. Similarly, schools shouldn't be allowed to force you to depend on certain apps or app stores to take proper care of your kids.
> That would be nice, but how would the bank verify the signature? It's the same old key exchange problem all over again.
I suppose you could print your public key as a QR code on a piece of paper, or display it on a phone, or use a USB security key device, and physically give it to an authorized employee at a local bank branch. Or if there is a way to electronically open an account you submit it then, along with whatever other proof of identification is deemed acceptable. I think root of trust has been, and always will be, a hard problem. It's just about finding the acceptable level of risk. Security is weaponized inconvenience.
Edit: Just to think down that road a little further, I expect the issue exists because the solution chosen by the school/bank/gov't/business will not be the optimal one for users, but the most expedient for the org. They're going to do the lazy thing that works for 80-90%, because there currently is no better alternative that they can implement with minimal effort.
If we look at the past we see that postal mail and telephones became standard methods of communication, but you could always walk into an office somewhere and handle business in person. Now that last default is quickly being phased out. So what should be final fallback method of communication?
So I see two problems: there is no better way, and there is no required minimum. Both need to be solved.
Add "can't participate in society without agreeing to user-hostile Terms of Service clauses, such as indemnities, behavior profiling, and opted-in marketing subscriptions."
It's amazing where those dark patterns are cropping up (government services, SPCA, etc).
I sometimes contemplate that this sort of incidental ToS should be 100% unenforceable.
Here’s what I mean: suppose I want to order a cup of coffee at a cafe. I’ve made a choice to go to that cafe, and it’s at least generally reasonable that the cafe and I should agree to some terms under which they sell me coffee, and those terms should be enforceable.
But if the cafe requires me to use an app, and the app requires me to use a Google account, then using the app and the Google account is not actually a choice I made — it’s incidental to my patronage of the cafe. And I think it’s at least interesting to imagine a world in which this usage categorically cannot bind me to any contract with the app vendor or Google. Sure, I should have to obey the law, and Google should have to obey the law, but maybe that should be it. If Google cannot find a way to participate without a contract, then they shouldn't participate.
I might even go farther: Google and the app’s participation should be non discriminatory. If the cafe doesn’t want to sell me coffee, fine. But Google should have no right to tell the cafe not to serve me coffee.
(For any of this to work well, Google should not be able to incorporate its terms into the terms of the cafe. One way to address this might be to have a rule that third parties like Google cannot assert any sort of claim against an end user arising from that end user’s terms of service with the cafe. If Google thinks I did something wrong (civilly, not criminally) in my use of the app, they would possibly have a claim against the cafe, but neither Google nor the cafe would have a claim against me.)
>One way to address this might be to have a rule that third parties like Google cannot assert any sort of claim against an end user arising from that end user’s terms of service with the cafe.
Or just require retail businesses to accept cash. Which many jurisdictions have done.
I don't know about you, but I don't have my device super-glued to my hand. In fact, if I'm going out to run errands in my neighborhood, I often don't bring such a device at all.
If I walk into a cafe (which is what GP was talking about), I'm going to (horror of horrors!) speak to the nice person standing behind the counter to ask them to make me my coffee.
I'm certainly not going to go full on passive aggressive and stand in front of the person taking orders and place my order on an "app."
In fact, if a retail establishment attempted to require that, I'd just leave.
Which I've done several times at restaurants who, when I ask for a menu, am informed that I should "scan the QR code" on a label stuck to the table with my phone to get the menu.
This is one of the things I wish the EU would intervene. Requiring a smartphone and an app should be illegal for corps of a specific size and for public entities (see school example above/below).
Clearly the logical threshold is when a single private corporation becomes the gatekeeper to your life. The internet itself is decentralized so that's fine. Mobile phones as a concept is also fine.
Almost. Having access to the internet requires a device, or public computer if available. A just society would at least maintain ability to interact with all government services through in-person and through post office. Universal access.
At least in some countries you can use a public computer at a library or other government-provided institution. I agree that it ideally shouldn't be required though.
This seems to be percieved as an explicit intended loophole. I've seen contests where they say "for free entry, go to website..." followed with "internet access can be obtained at libraries".
Obviously, the idea of "you don't have to pay to participate" has a strong legal footing, but I have to wonder if they can find a way to pivot that to "I don't have to acquire an Android/iOS device". Maybe they would develop a kiosk-mode version of the OS that will run apps tethered to a placeholder library account.
I hope people can see what I am saying here, but this is just what the Affordable Health Care Act was in the United States. The government forced up to buy health insurance from private companies, and no one saw a problem with that.
So having health care was dependent on a private third party.
I don't think it's an issue to require Internet to participate in society, just like it wouldn't be an issue to require a mobile phone if you can use any phone (including a Linux phone or degoogled Android).
The problem is that now you need a phone with Apple or Google software running it.
I meant a bit like: Let's say you have 2 mobile phone operators in your country ( duopoly ) we are ok that for example using SMS for banking interaction ( second factor etc )
I think this is a process; and somehow slowly people accepting those levels, and in a society it becomes normal ( to have whatsapp for friend group, to have facebook for family photos etc etc ) and you are being left out eventually if you are outside of those norms.
So it is not so different for bank to require something like google provided software.
I think if we accept that market concentration for essential services cannot alawys be avoided, there must be an obligation for these companies to provide those services to everyone.
The difficult part is how to guarantee this right without opening the floodgates for all sorts of scammers and organised criminals.
We need some sort of due process proportional in cost to the effects of account terminations (or rejections) on people's lives.
In the UK some utilities do have a legal duty to supply.
I'm not familiar with the details though, so I have no idea what happens if someone is accused of having violated their terms of service. I think there are different rules for different utilities.
> "can't participate in society without an apple or google account".
Wow. You nailed it. Thank you.
When desktop operating systems were dominant, the need for the freedom to control your own software installation was beyond obvious.
But now our phones are an even more dominant/necessary computing/communication tool.
Apple and Google's appeal to security is such a fig leaf. They can continue to lock down our phones, add even more security.
BUT, simply provide a way for users to mindfully bypass that. They could make the pass through screen as scary as they feel they need to. That's it.
(If they did that, customer pressure would naturally build over time, for less draconian warnings, as other verifiably/clearly responsible sources became popular.
Another benefit. Apple would soon put its considerable resources competing to delivering the most robust security of a more valuable kind. The kind that enforces the walls between unpermissioned/dark behavior without limiting desired behavior and innovation. That would create healthier quality-loyalty based "lock in" that their vertical integration and high focus DNA already gives them advantages to "win".)
Have you tried buying a Windows computer recently? Add Microsoft to your list of companies where it's nearly impossible to go without having a registered account. At least in the western world.
It's a different story in other parts of the world. Chinese brands like Beelink and Minisforum still sell Windows 11 PCs that provide you with a local account. That's because their primary market is located in a jurisdiction that has historically allowed PC users to engage in mass piracy without legal consequences, for better or for worse. Old Windows 10 installs are also not going away any time soon.
While you can install whatever software you like on a standard Windows 11 PC, the lack of a software signing certificate from Microsoft require users to fight the built in browser, SmartScreen, and Windows Defender before they can run your software. The end result is closer to Apple and Google than people realize.
Thanks. This matters a lot to me. I focus on it from the angle of not owning a smartphone, but it's even more urgent from your perspective. I want businesses to understand that some number of people, in order to avoid toxic behavior patterns involving social media or doom-scrolling, find a dumbphone to be the healthiest choice for themselves. And yet, the places you cannot park your car, the airlines you cannot fly on, the events you cannot attend... all because you don't have an app.
I do think the personal mental health angle matters a lot, but it adds urgency to consider school, banking, etc being dependent on private company memberships.
My local gym did something wonderful. They retained a keyfob-based access system instead of using an app, specifically because the owner knew "someone's going to have a dumbphone and complain they can't get in."
I've been phoneless for 5 years, and I've experienced this too. I do have a google account, but I get occasionally locked out of it because I don't participate in 2FA. I fought my bank for nearly 5 months before they provided a code generating dongle to 2fa into there web portal. I had to stop using Amazon and EvilBay for exactly the same reasons.
Having either Google or Apple should not be an obligation to any human being and governments should do whatever is in their power to allow us to continue operating basic services without them. It should be as simple as that. So all companies that choose the "app" way must also offer a possible equal or better webapp solution for their customers.
Maybe the best solution is to get banned by these companies. At least then you have full rights to complain to government websites that require apple/google accounts.
If you live outside the US, it's even worse with WhatsApp.
If for whatever reason you dislike WhatsApp, you just can't also be a society's functioning member.
Some companies have decided to deprecate email and phone support and only have a WhatsApp chat, potentially with AI slop. I've had to discontinue my services with some of these companies because of that.
Even some government services are going through WhatsApp; I've had to be there in person, among senior citizens just because of their tech choices.
I pretty much vouch for "vote with your wallet," but I am running out of alternatives.
I never do business with those kind of companies, and it's not any problem in my life. If you can't reach them by email or phone, then they don't get any money.
+1 on this. This is a privacy tie in sale. You buy product x, but after the buy it turns out it only works when you also accept the terms and conditions of product y.
Normally tie in sales are illigal, but because it happens in the digital world, we/they fail to notice...
Its banks, but also government and health (the dutch digi-d app), food markets, schools, more and more
If there is a EU DMA, where is an independent app store?
I really liked Huawei phones and I wanted to keep using them after the US forced them to part with Google, but after doing some research and finding out some of the everyday things I wouldn't be able to do due to not having the Google Play Services (I'm not even talking about not having a Google account!), I just gave up.
At this point we programmers should make our voices heard and make it very clear that people still using platforms, or worse, forcing platforms on others, are collaborating with / are totalitarian extremists.
(Yes, this also means those of you still using GitHub, Discord, Reddit, YouTube...)
I think that may indeed be a less abstract, more understandable way to frame the problem for the public. But regardless of how you frame it the root cause is the same:
Why can't you participate in society without an Apple or Google account? Because you need an account with them to install apps on your phone. (Or soon will, with the direction Android is now going.) Why do you need an account with them to install apps on your phone? Because you don't control what code runs on your phone, Google/Apple does. Comprehensively solving the latter problem also solves the former, and I think it's best to tackle problems at their root, not just address symptoms.
With Apple, it's all far worse. On iOS, I've discovered that even some preinstalled premium apps, like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie, don't work unless you add an Apple Account to the system.
But with Android, it's relatively easy to set it up without any accounts, through Chrome, F-Droid, Aurora Store. (And I usually uninstall Chrome after installing F-Droid, too.)
Actually, no, they don't quite plan to take that away yet. In this sub-thread, we're talking about installing 3rd-party apps without having an Apple Account or a Google Account as an end-user of the device.
What Google has recently proposed to trial next year in just 4 countries, is blocking of unverified apps, but all apps you install from Aurora Store are verified and signed directly through Google, so, they will not be affected.
Basically, even if the 2026 trial succeeds, and becomes worldwide in 2027 or later — both huge ifs to start with — as an end user, you could still install F-Droid, Aurora Store, and then any Google Play Store app without providing an ID, as long as F-Droid and/or Aurora Store developers themselves would be willing to undergo the procedure.
Aurora Store and FDroid are not verified apps. In a world where Google is restricting your ability to sideload apps, how likely are they to get verified, or remain verified?
As an Android user, although I'm not too happy about the Sept 2026 upcoming changes, but also the impact is far overstated in these comments over here.
First of all, it's simply a trial, a whole year from now, in Sept 2026, and only in 4 mid-sized countries around the world.
Second, they'll only be verifying developers, not users. They won't be reviewing the apps any more than they already do today. They already do scan all third-party apps, which is partly why people are upset about the needless doxxing of the devs.
Also, as far as I understand it, an app store like F-Droid already does app signing on behalf of other developers, to ensure funny stuff couldn't simply slip through undetected, so, as such, F-Droid probably already "owns" the Aurora Store and all the other apps you can download through the F-Droid app store, so, it would be my expectation that even in those 4 countries in Sept 2026 during the trial, you could still sideload the same apps the same way I do today.
In turn, the apps installed by Aurora Store are signed by the Play Store; this ensures that the private data cannot be hijacked through modified updates of the app, since the developer profile won't match. So, there's no concern there, either, since everything is signed.
Basically, it's not a good precedent, but at the same time, nothing will really change at least for my own workflow (as a non-publisher), where I don't install anything outside of F-Droid or Aurora Store anyways.
Keep in mind, it's still just a trial. And even if it goes worldwide in 2 years in 2027 (which is still a big if), it's still FAR more consumer-friendly than anything Apple has ever allowed on iOS in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.
Just to point out, while everything you say is true, there are already similar life destroying mechanisms such as getting debanked.
A friend of mine owns a hotel in southern Italy, long story short during an investigation into mafia-related businesses his operation was also checked (and fully cleared as 100% unrelated to any wrong business whatsoever, it just ended in a cross examination).
Since those examinations involved quite a lot of checking/investigating money trails all banks refuse to service him again because he created a massive amount of work for their legal, compliance, etc offices, really massive.
As banks are privately owned entities they can refuse you services, or simply make your life that miserable that even if they comply with law (e.g. open you an account), they can still deny you any services that they aren't mandated by law of offering (payment processing is a simple one: no credit card processing, you can't work as an hotel) or just be as slow as possible when it comes to everything.
There are multiple things that are absolutely life-impacting as of 2025 that go beyond being tied to a handful of operating systems and their rules.
I also don't like the push towards accounts with google / apple etc or using apps to do everything, or the walled gardens that are the apple and google app stores.
To play the devil's advocate though, hasn't this always been the case when new technology gains widespread adoption? e.g. going backwards in time, at some point not having an email address wasn't a big hinderance, nor was not having a phone number etc. Telcos got regulated, maybe that's the next step for google, apple etc.
We definitely need laws stopping companies from this lock in, especially companies that have no relation with Google/Apple. Countries should demand companies to allow access to their services with a sufficiently modern browser (let's say less than one year old) with a minimum of 3 supported browsers by different providers (so no, not only chrome). Everyone has browsers on laptop, phone etc, so it's the best middle ground.
Society needs to kill apps (by refusal to install/use) before apps kill the open Web.
Another conversation to be had is the effect of messenger apps to exclude those that do not use them (socially, commercially, and soon politically if governments introduce "ID apps" and force their presence to vote). Each proprietary app creates its own communication silo, and people start not talking over email anymore, which is a fantastic open protocol that excludes no-one.
I have been refusing to use WhatsApp for years and out of all people I know, only one friend sends me "VIP vintage" email invitations when everyone else gets things via a Meta-controlled proprietary channel, everyone else ignores people not on these platforms. (Almost even more worrying is what people talk about on these platforms when you do get on there; when accidentally overlooking what a random person on a bus chats about, then I'm happy to have reduced usage of such proprietary platforms over the last couple of years.)
Parents should not permit their childrens' data to get onto these platforms under any circumstances (in Europe, GDPR helps).
Remember those naive days when everyone was scared about Big Government running their lives?
Remember how the Free Market™,
unimpeded by government interference,
was going to ensure our personal freedoms were never compromised?
The main issue is we’re not there today and it’s not obvious what that world looks like.
We all had junk drawers of useless charging cables, everyone agreed it was stupid, hence a universal charging connector standard along with the promise that the charger junk drawers will be freed.
Even if we mandate the “POSIX of smart phones”, for lack of a better term, what problem today, for everyday users, does it solve? It might even make interactions with various government technology worse as that API will likely only be begrudgingly supported, which won’t win any hearts or minds.
Basically until you have a one line slogan that most people can relate to which, and is a problem they have today, movement will be very slow.
Also, in the short term, if these various site are AI coded, and thus follow existing software patterns, expect this to get worse.
in taiwan you can't pay customs dues without a half broken government app
this is necessary for ANY shippment from abroad
no website, no phone number, no office you can drop into. You can technically file a paper form to some office in taipei, but it made clear its for large commercial import shippments and not "normal people"
1. It's not necessarily different. Your ISP has monopolistic power over you, and it should be regulated more aggressively.
2. A non-mobile ISP is currently much less important than an Apple/Google account for interacting with modern society, and less important than it was even a decade ago. If all 1.5 of my available home ISPs turned evil I could manage just fine without them.
3. Given the relative public perceptions this feels weird to say, but Comcast and their ilk are much less problematic than the Apple/Google monopolies. You can largely just pay for internet (plus an extra 10-40% from scammy business practices) and do whatever you want to do, with the analytics they're selling about you being less invasive than those which Apple/Google use.
Your ISP is an utility, it doesn't hold your de-facto identity.
Google and Apple increasingly become the entity required to identify yourself, either directly ("login with Google/Apple to participate") or indirectly ("use our App on iOS/Android to confirm your identity and participate")
My apartment, smack bang in the middle of Manhattan, has a single coax cable opened by Spectrum, and is the only option for me to get reliable internet connection. I have no choice but to (1) sign whatever their ToS are, (2) pay whatever they want to charge, and (3) have them do what they want with my metadata. I’ve decided it’s not the hill I want to die on, but no, I don’t have many ISPs to choose from.
You have at very least:
* Mobile connection, a few carriers
* Starlink/Eutelsat
It's not perfect, but nowhere near Google/Apple duopoly. Also this is very local US issue, solvable on city level regulation, while smartphones are everywhere.
You also have the option to move. I mean, that's not ideal, obviously you don't want to have people up and change addresses to deal with a problem with a single company, but if you end up on both Google and Apple's shitlists, there's nowhere you can go to where Schmapple is a third option.
>Might only be available in Europe & Africa though.
Yep. We just need to move Manhattan there. Problem solved.
It's crazy how some people think there's no solution when the solution is "clear as an unmuddied lake...As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer."[0]
Depending on where you live, a lot of times you don’t many to choose from. Maybe 2-3, but sometimes only one with fast enough speeds that it becomes the only option.
Even in places without those, there are a ton of little hamlets in BFE around me that have one guy that gets fiber from wherever is cheapest, then runs a point-to-point directional antenna relay system to a home-brew ISP.
No one is arguing for using ISP-hosted accounts as an alternative.
The core problem isn't even rooted in identity per se, it's about platform owners actively working to limit access to essential information from platforms they cannot profit from.
Even granting the most cherubic motives, this ongoing behavior is atrocious on it's face and should be prevented by any means, including competition, rule making and legislation.
> I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account".
This won't work out for you. It just turns into technically being able to, but it being practically impossible. In Sweden (i.e. basically your future), we're already there.
What's it like in Sweden? When I lived in Denmark the government had its own e-boks system for mail. I only ever accessed it via web, but I'm sure there's an app as well. Back then everything was authenticated via NemID which defaulted to the option of using codes printed on physical cards sent in the mail. I know they've moved to MitID now. Does anyone know if MitID can be installed on a de-googled device? Apparently there are a couple other options https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/get-started-with-mitid/how-to-use...
In Sweden, we have BankID for one thing. You can't do anything at all without it, including (in many cases) buying things online with your Visa or Mastercard. You can't even do stupid things like look up license plates or other simple tasks. You certainly can't deal very well with the medical system without it. In many cases even mail can be a pain in the ass without it.
Then we have another problem. Cashlessness. There are fewer and fewer places that accept cash for payment and even if they do some of them won't have change (since it's so rare that other people are paying in cash).
I have a friend now who was cut off from the BankID (and thus cashless) system and it's quite a struggle for him. He has to constantly have other people (i.e. us) do things for him, or drive 40km to one city or another during specific hours to do things (since all the local outlets for everything closed since 99% of people do 99% of everything online now).
He gave a copy of his bank card to his ex-wife who was living in Uganda and using it there. The card was under his name though, which is against their policy. He could have easily gotten a card in her name, but he's extremely irresponsible in general (and doesn't really care what the rules are). They banned him for six months. He hasn't even bothered to figure out if it's automatically re-instated or whether he has to appeal. I don't know how such people live to be 65 years old.
The government isn't requiring BankID except for on their own services (where sometimes other options are provided). It's kind of just the most convenient thing that all agencies and businesses end up using. There's no laws around it, I mean. They all opted into it. It's run by a private consortium of banks.
Does it? It doesn't seem reasonable to me to effectively ban a non-criminal citizen from the economy and from civic life, not even for "just" six months, no matter how "irresponsible" the citizen is.
BankID is owned by a cartel of our biggest banks but effectively, in real life, is basically mandatory. It's used with (mostly) everything here and it's hard to get a new one if you let some other things slip, like your passport or national ID card.
If you think it's bad now, just wait until passkeys are ubiquitous and best practice is to only trust a small list of providers. The only way to prove you're human will be to prove that you're Google's human.
To an extent, I already saw ads on various fora effectively asking for pretend humans ( you sign up to a list with your info and 'they' use it in your name ). It is going to be another cat and mouse game to track and I am getting tired.
Frankly I think it's a lost cause and sadly doesn't make sense to waste energy on it anymore. I eventually abandoned my de-googled phone exactly because I couldn't use my bank with it.
Some banks require an app for pretty much everything other than retrieving cash from an ATM, because they don't have a web app anymore:
1. Transfer money to another account. The alternative is to waste half a PTO to go to the actual bank (because they only open at working hours) to make that transfer.
2. Make an online payment. Most new cards no longer have a CVV (3 digit code) and instead require you to use the app to get a dynamic number. Many banks do not offer that option in their web app.
3. Forced 2fa for in-person payments with your card.
Today it's still possible to workaround many of these issues but they're closing these workarounds little by little.
Same. I have a very old iPhone stuck on an old version of iOS that's incompatible with most apps these days. In the rare case I need to deposit a check there are banks like Ally that don't have physical branch locations but still let you deposit checks via their website.
> I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app.
What’s the alternative? The bank sending out a debit card to anyone who calls up and says “I’m @kristov, trust me…”
You were not able to served by the standard path, because you couldn’t authenticate yourself via the standard mechanism. You still got service by an alternate path. No different from opting out of the airport scanner; it takes longer and is a little less convenient, but you still get service.
Not sure if you're genuinely asking because there are a dozen proven ways to verify identity or residency either digitally and physically without being locked down to 2 mobile OSes owned and controlled by 2 American companies.
Exactly, as was demonstrated by GGP's "had to go through to second level support". That seems perfectly reasonable to me, yet seems somehow objectionable to GGP.
"Can you believe that I had to prove my identity to the support group in charge of requesting replacement cards in order to get a replacement card?!"
"Uh, yeah, that makes total sense; what part of this tale of woe is surprising or interesting?"
What’s the alternative? The bank sending out a debit card to anyone who calls up and says “I’m @kristov, trust me…”
Are you under the impression that this wasn't a solved problem for the half-century before "apps?"
Yes, there was some tiny fraction of fraud, but it's not like adding all these layers upon layers of technology has fixed anything. The difference is that instead of getting ripped off by one of the people in your own town, anyone anywhere on the planet can rip you off now.
Off the top of my head: going in-person to the bank, email, phone call or sms to a number that you previously informed to the bank (say when opening the account), otp a la authy or aegis. None of these require you to be on google or apple's walled garden.
> Since 2020, the rate of bank branch closures in the U.S. has doubled. The majority of those closures come from large and very large banks, contributing to an overall 5.6% decline in total bank branches nationwide since the start of the pandemic.
Nor did GGP's approach require them to be in google or apple's walled garden.
That's exactly the point: there's an easy and common method that many people choose to use, but there is still a perfectly working method for people who choose to not use apple or google.
the part you are missing is that this is the situation for now. Emphasis on for now. Google are already moving to restrict what software your phone can run i.e. they control your device.
Please, don't be so obtuse just for the sake of argument. Any rational, well-informed person can wee where this is going.
I think the upthread argument is the weak one in that regard. "See how terrible it is that banks offer a new method to get more convenient service for people who have an Apple or Google device? Because I choose not to, I had to use a perfectly viable method that people relied upon for decades and that still worked just fine."
That's an example of how the banks are continuing to accommodate customer preference, not the other way around. As to "where this is going", ATMs and debit cards are nearly pervasive and, yet almost 60 years after their introduction, I can still choose to bank with a teller if I insist on not having a debit card.
slightly OT, but where can you opt out of the scanner?
Every time I've tried they told me I won't be allowed through security unless I subject myself to the scanner, despite me protesting that they can search me however else they please.
Anywhere that US TSA runs the AIT scanners, you can opt out of them*.
That is domestic US airports plus airports like Toronto and Dublin where you, for practical purposes, clear into the US on foreign soil and land in the US as a domestic flight.
* - I think this only doesn't apply if your boarding pass got tagged with the dreaded "SSSS" enhanced screening tag, but that's a fairly rare corner case for most passengers.
My understanding, which may be wrong. It's been a few years since I did this dance.
You can opt out of the millimeter wave radar.
Opting out means you go through a metal detector, a 20-second pat-down and perhaps a hand swab for explosives sniffer.
If you have SSSS on your boarding card, that means the pat-down, hand swab and digging through your carry-on luggage happen whether you opt out of the mmwave or not.
It's clear that you can opt out of AIT (mm wave) scanning if you don't have SSSS and uncertain otherwise.
From the TSA website, https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/factsheets/technology , "Most passengers have the opportunity to decline AIT screening in favor of physical screening. However, some passengers will not be able to opt out of AIT screening if their boarding pass indicates that they have been selected for enhanced screening."
The barrier to entry for running your own site (something dynamic, as opposed to static hosting) is essentially the same in 2024 as it was in 2004. Gotta get a domain (and keep it registered). Gotta have an SSL cert (letsencrypt makes it better). Raspberry pi can run a lot, but getting your consumer ISP to give you a static IP is still more money. Definitely more VPS options now though. But self hosting your still basically looking at the same experience as 20 years ago, with slightly better options. Ipv6 had this promise that everyone could have mutiple public ips just for themselves, but this hasn't really been realized to its potential for some reason. We never reached that point where average Joe can run their own web presence without relying on some provider or "walled garden" owning them. If your average Joe and you want to share your thoughts online, best option today is a walled garden. How could it be made better? Average Joe can't run mailman, and certainly can't run their own mailserver.
You only need a couple technically competent members to keep things going .. its not that hard .. and in any community there is always a certain percentage of folks who want to learn these things, anyway ..
The point is it can be done, easily enough. We don't need these walled gardens.
It absolutely is not. Google has been downranking 'outdated' formats for years, and there is a dearth of independent communities to draw members from. Discovery is harder now than it has been at any point in the past.
That's fair from the discovery side. I was referring to the "supply side": how do we get more people creating content for the web, where they fully own that content? I used the web a fair amount before Google, and I don't recall having a problem finding content. Maybe my expectations were lower. Maybe my attention span was longer. I remember spending a lot of time in "indexes", browsing by topic. Now I use DDG exclusively. When I accidentally use Google I am increasing shocked by the low quality. I am also asking chatgpt to discover what to search for, which I find really effective. I feel like rewilding the internet will require users to try harder. Which I guess means encouraging users to understand why they should try harder.
Brave move, but I wonder how he keeps or makes new friendships and deeper relationships. Maybe this is fine for a while, but people need people (not just text in a chatroom), and I hope he has an exit strategy from this lifestyle, for this reason.
It's not just about seeing people. It's about having deep connections and shared experiences. Eg: one of his friends has a life crisis and just needs to talk to someone. Are they going to hop on a train and track this guy down, or will they go see one of their other friends? So he will miss out being the person someone turns to, and these are the defining moments for long lasting friendships. Again, probably fine for a while, but if it goes on too long those existing friendships could fade away and he could miss out.
Is this train thing really different from the average "digital nomad"?
They too are away from their old standing friends, and since they are usually not intending to stay forever in the country they stay in, they're probably not investing in any deep connections there either.
In fact, given the huge loneliness/isolation trends, he is probably not that different to the average stationary person in this regard either.
DN here. It’s definitely different insofar that nomads frequently live in longer term shared spaces (ie weeks to months) and it’s pretty easy to meet people in these situations.
I don't live near anyone I could turn to like that, except my wife and mother. When I need to talk to someone, I do it on Slack, or I hop on a zoom call.
When I lived in New York, it wasn't that much different - my friends and I occasionally lived on opposite sides of Manhattan & Brooklyn; now I live in New Jersey, and if I want to see close friends, I have to dedicate at least half the day to it, and going somewhere on a whim is not always an option for me. Depending on where this kid is at any given moment, it might be faster for him to get to a friend than it would take me to get to mine.
Literally the other way around? Dude could hop on the train himself for free literally the same hour and see his friends no matter where they live in a couple hours?
Seriously, I have lived in remote regions and not everybody living there owns a car.
Many people need hours to get to their friends as well.
Travelling is an absolutely excellent way to meet people if you're at all open to it. "Deeper relationships" .. don't always last at that age. Often they get uprooted anyway at the transitions in and out of university. Which is probably the likely exit for this guy.
There's definitely a Fight Club single-serving friend reference to be had here.
Both in terms of cheap throwaway reference and maybe that's actually how he does it?
When I was commuting a lot I'd always see the same faces, eventually got to nattering with some of them. Nothing super deep or anything but that's probably more on my social ability than possibility :)
While this lifestyle is not for me, i tend to concur on the statement. I personally pick my houses as distant from people as possible. People don’t need people. Sure it gets lonely sometimes but let me ask you if you enjoying the company you have all the time.
People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related
YMMV, but all humans are social creatures, going back to our primate ancestors. Isolation harms health, mentally, emotionally, and physically; at its extreme, such as solitary confinement, it's considered torture. Note that almost all humans socialize and live among other humans (compared to animals like bears which live alone).
To be fair, this "social networking site" is specifically designed to be hostile towards most forms of social networking, and it's full of misanthropes who probably have the Unabomber manifesto right next to the Dragon Book on their bookshelf.
I'd be surprised if that was the way "most people living in city apartments" do it.
Why wouldn't city apartments have washing machines? (In Germany and most of the rest of Europe we also don't particular need, or care for, driers either, that's what clotheslines are for).
Laundromats I'd say are more for like, students, tourists, travellers, fresh immigrants, people with some temporary arrangements and no stable residence, etc.
Damn, what kind of apartment doesn't come with laundry? Only time I didn't have an in-unit washer was student accomodation. If I viewed a place without one now I'd laugh the estate agent out country.
Even in Germany, a software dev with a burn rate of 10k a year must be seriously in profit each month. Buy index funds on payday and he has a wide variety of exiting strategies available.
Been happily running lineageos for a couple of years now. No microg and no play store. F-droid for the apps. Interestingly, meta make WhatsApp available via a direct apk download, which helps a lot because before that I was using a play store downloader (the family is on WhatsApp). I use a per-app password to access gmail over IMAP in Kmail. Battery life is amazing, and I think I had one crash in 2 years. Thanks a lot to the lineageos team for all hard work!
That's a really great point. General Artificial Intelligence doesn't look like human intelligence. I guess that's the fear: we have never met another general intelligence before. We may as well be about to meet alien intelligence. One that is not constrained by a moral or social framework, and can copy itself at will.
> For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
They're certainly not general intelligences of an average adult human level (limited abstract reasoning ability, limited ability to transmit their reasoning), which is typically what is referred to as AGI.
A lot of animals do possess general intelligence in the sense that they can adapt to a wide range of different situations(within what they're physically capable of).
Involving "human level" in this definition just makes it much more poorly defined.
It has always been pretty vague, it's hard to define a proper bar for intelligence let alone the intelligence of any specific animal. We just don't understand intelligence well enough (which is why in my opinion Zucc saying they want to work on AGI is at the level of if Musk or Bezos came out saying they want to work on FTL travel).
Assuming old stuff is more durable than new stuff: I wonder why older stuff was made to a higher standard? If people had less disposable income back then, why wasnt there an incentive to make low quality cheaper things?
One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything.
>One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything.
That's mostly the right answer. Value engineering is a complex and constantly evolving discipline, with the most important advance being the proliferation of injection-molded plastics in the 1970s - a single injection-molded part can replace dozens of more expensive pressed, cast or machined parts, albeit often with a reduction in durability.
The other crucial factor is simply attrition bias - the past was full of terrible stuff, we just don't see most of it because it broke and went to landfill.
Older stuff that is still around was made to a higher standard. There has always been plenty of junk and low quality goods around, they just haven't lasted.
