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Comment by samdoesnothing | Hacker News Reader

No, the problem is the extent to which private parties can use the power of law to legally restrict your usage of property you own. And that's the reason it's a right.

If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been infringed.

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> you can simply not purchase the product

You should explain how you'd see the majority of the population not buying a smartphone from a major brand.

...by not purchasing one?

Thirty years ago no one was buying smartphones from a major brand. No one was buying any smartphones at all.

But 30 years ago there were also no government services or major companies who require you to interact with them using an app on a major smartphone platform.

Nothing has changed, there are no government services or major companies who require you to interact with them using an app on a major smartphone platform.

I doubt that. The world is a vast place with many governments and there are lots of major companies.

There are many that do require SMS or a phone number of some sort at this point.

We are mostly saved by the part of the 70+ crowd who is completely computer illiterate and own significant investment resources. But that will only last 10-20 more years.

Require, maybe not?

But it's a comparatively huge pain in the ass to use a lot of government services where I live without a smartphone.

Our grandfathers fought in wars, but God forbid you have to go to city council to fill out a form every once in awhile

How does (great) past suffering justify (mild) modern suffering?

And my forefathers probably fought in wars against your forefathers. The world would have probably been better off, if they all had just stayed home. Nothing glorious about that.

The issue is societal lockin - aka network effects. People can't afford to "not buy one" because then they are "the one without".

Banking apps, delivery apps, public transport apps, utilities apps, insurance - so many services have been captured by the big two phone oligopoly that modern life revolves around your phone. The assumption is that you will have one.

Sure, you could decide not to, but you are instantly a societal pariah as every business finds it s so much harder to deal with you - and you don't have enough time in the day to deal with the secondary processes these businesses employ, for every aspect of your life.

Maybe it's country specific - here in Canada I don't feel like I need a smart phone for anything crucial. There is a trend where people including zoomers such as myself switch to dumb phones for a "digital detox". So it seems perfectly feasible to do so.

Some people can do it. I'd also ditch my smartphone if I was living in the woods, or had a personal assistant handling my daily needs, or lived in an Amish community etc.

But I don't see the vast majority of people to be able to ditch their smartphone, that's just not a reasonable proposition.

They don't need to ditch smartphones, there are more options than just an iPhone/Pixel or dumb phone.

But most people including myself just don't care about side loading. For those who do, there are options like a Fairphone, various Linux phones, etc.

A few people can live with just phone calls, but a sizeable majority use some additional apps for texting. Dumb phones won't work here.

1. Many people use a virtual text number, like google voice 2. Maybe even more folks use one or more app based texting services. I bet many users here have several on their phone:

Signal What's app telegram

There are probably 50 texting type apps in this category

These are dangerous attack vectors for people trying to remotely control your phone, but also important to talk to your friends.

I think we need a solution for these types of apps for a popular usable solution. I don't know how to solve the safety issue when running these apps, and I can't just "forward" text messages to my dumb phone.

I'm not sure how I'd manage tbh (in Finland).

I was called a luddite for not wanting to follow the "official" schoool Whatsapp group. Online banking is practicably unusable without the bank's own 2FA app.

Many things can still be done in a web browser, but the rest of society is going the smartphone route and it's increasingly difficult to avoid it.

Any non-digital options are aimed at elderly and handicapped individuals; not people who don't want smartphones.

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