- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone
consumerrights.wiki/w/Common_Questions,Arguments,&_Responses_when_discussing_Flock_Surveillance
theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone
consumerrights.wiki/w/Common_Questions,Arguments,&_Responses_when_discussing_Flock_Surveillance
Once again, I agree. Perhaps my previous phrasing was a bit harsh, I’m not taking offense. In my judo practice, there’s this idea of “stupid uke”, an opponent who intentionally acts like dead weight. Living training dummy for learning new moves or perfecting your form.
I am, to some extent, playing stupid uke right now.
Accessibility to normies is a common problem I see in smaller projects, even minor stuff like videogames. I’m thinking of a specific example right now, where the (small) dev team is clearly very talented…and very much falling into the expertise trap. Basically need to learn an entire programming language to play the game, which is not marketed as that kind of game.
I recognize that I’m ahead of the curve in this sense, and I will figure it out one day, probably very soon. I just want to point out that accessibility will be a major factor, and that this is something that privacy-focused software will have to reckon with sooner rather than later.
here’s a good real world scenario you might already know:
phones with the oem operating system spy on you, and the ultimate way to get rid of it is changing the os. how do we make it accessible if the manufacturers are making the process intentionally obtuse and difficult, and more than that, different for every device out there? how do we make sure every model (and counting) is supported when they make every phone a little different requiring many specialized volunteer work hours on each?
you just hit my main point here. if people in general understood why this is a problem as much as you do, they would care enough to look for the stuff we already managed to put out there and act on it, just like you are.
it’s not that simple though is it? people seem to think there are more pros than cons for buying into their shtick and that privacy is meaningless. they are the ones to ultimately hand over their data to apps they know are spying on them because they do so openly at this point.
this can be changed, because it was changed into this in the first place by the powers that be, question is how.