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> Vote with your wallet, they say, but when hostile technology is far cheaper than friendly technology, and the vast majority of the population couldn’t care less, how could we possibly make a dent?

I don't see the goal as making a dent. That's too large.

I have two goals:

* Ensure I have access to free platforms. I use a Librem laptop and a Pinephone. I also use closed platforms as part of living in society.

* Ensure the free flame is kept alight. I do that by using the free platforms, buying the products, and improving them with bug reports and patches.

The vast majority, for better or worse, do not share those goals.

As an advantage to free platforms, those that do care have the capability to improve it. We don't need many.

Free platforms/tooling won't be as shiny. So be it.

But that’s my point, sure it works now, but in 10-20 years what’s keeping free, floss, friendly technologies from being bullied out of availability? Google delisting floss alternatives, because they’re from unverified developers and could contain malware; governments mandating ISPs ban “untrusted” protocols like FTP because paedophiles use them to share CSAM; etc.

Fdroid and Linux mobile are both free platforms.

Mandatory trusted computing for access to the internet would screw free platforms.

…yes, that’s what I’m saying.

> sure it works now, but in 10-20 years what’s keeping free, floss, friendly technologies from being bullied out of availability?

People who use, support them and promote among friends.

> Vote with your wallet, they say, but when hostile technology is far cheaper than friendly technology, and the vast majority of the population couldn’t care less, how could we possibly make a dent? And this is before even considering that governments around the world are on the side of hostile technology.

If you need a phone that has all the modern features and app support (so you can work with your banking app, local parking app, etc.), you're basically limited to android and iphone. Apple just did "this"... google is probably next... what do I buy after?

I mean.. i can maybe modify android enough to remove the offedning features, but what will average joe do?

> If you need a phone that has all the modern features and app support ... you're basically limited to android and iphone

No, you aren't. You can use Librem 5 with Anbox.

Yes.. and no...

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/#availability

Lead time is 6 months. You cannot buy it in telco stores, to get monthly payments with your phone bills, and you cannot buy it cheaper on a contract.

Basically, if you're a "normal person" (non-geek), you're limited to iphones and a selection of samsungs, huaweis, xiaomis, and some cheap plasticky telco-branded chinese phones.

> Basically, if you're a "normal person" (non-geek), you're limited

Every technological breakthrough starts with geeks. HN audience can support and promote the user-respecting technologies, even if they are half a year away.

Maybe we need to poison the well.

Create a botnet that downloads CSAM to millions of devices so that millions of reports are generated for innocent people so that it’s clear that all of this doesn’t work as intended.

That would be good (as long as people can't actually see the CSAM, perhaps find a hash collision), but I wouldn't want to be the one who ends up in solitary for life for taking one for the team.

Don't download actual CSAM, that's too questionable of a proposition. Just figure out how to manipulate innocuous images such that they trigger Apple's perceptual hashing algorithm. Then flood the web with those. If the false positives massively outweigh the true positives then eventually people will stop paying attention.

> our “democratic” representatives couldn’t care less about the needs of their constituents

I'm not sure this is actually the reason in this case. If you go outside of the tech bubble, a lot of people don't understand what the fuss about CSAM is all about, and "if you're not doing anything wrong, why are you opposed to saving children?" is an oft-expressed sentiment. So, politicians support it because 1) the majority of their voters approve, and 2) not supporting it makes them vulnerable to highly effective attacks on their public image from their opponents, again, because the general public buys into those arguments.

> I have yet to see any convincing argument for how we get “back” (if we were ever there) to a time when technology was on our sides.

Did you actually see who had written this article? This is CSO of Purism, company developing user-respecting devices.

I don’t see how that refutes anything I said. The way I see it, they’ll either fail, or stop respecting their users, like every other successful tech company thus far.

They are not a for-profit comany but a Social Purpose Corporation, which values user freedom more than profits. They provide auditable devices running free software. It does not even matter if they fail in the future. If you have their device, you can trust and verify it forever.