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Comment by jsbisviewtiful | Hacker News Reader

> It's never popular when I post this

That's because you're coming off holier than thou and condescending. Anyone who understands gadgets will say phones are highly trackable and will have told anyone that well over 10+ years ago. It's a trade off of value. Corporations/gov can track me while I have my phone, but turn by turn directions, maps and a camera while wandering around are useful. We could legislate that traceability away in the US to an extent, but that would require our gov be working and right now it is not.

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I'm probably going to delete my HN account soon. I'm so disenfranchised with the direction technology is going that I'm finding it really heard to be civil and constructive here. I'm not trying to be sanctimonious, but I am quite angry and perplexed at why people have have backed themselves into this corner.

I hope you don't go! It's clearly a minority position you hold, but that doesn't mean it's a bad one. Or wrong. I've been perplexed by this and many other related issues. I wonder and hope every year, every step in the wrong direction that gets attention, we'll get to that magic 3% that stands up and corrects things for citizen good. No matter how your up or down votes end up in a few hours, know you aren't alone or wrong. At least from my point of view.

People could've done a lot of things to make their lives better. Unfortunately they prefer to get "managed" with all the consequences. No matter what you cancel and where you would go you will find all the same. The fact that one know how how to write b-tree from the scratch means zilch in this department

So print off map quest and carry a disposable like in the 90s. If you don't use social media, the value proposition of a smart phone is incredibly low. I feel we peaked at mobile phones which could call and text.

>If you don't use social media, the value proposition of a smart phone is incredibly low.

Sorry but what are you using your device for? There are many, many tools I use my smartphone for and I currently don't have Insta, reddit, Facebook, typical social media, etc on my device. Dismissing a pocket sized computer with far reaching access to the internet as a low value proposition is misguided. If all you use your device for is social media, call and text that's really too bad and a complete misunderstanding of what those devices are capable of.

Encrypted messaging like Signal and Briar is so much more accessible thanks to smartphones. People who would've never touched GPG can get a lot of its benefits thanks to smartphone apps.

(Which doesn't mean we have to give in to big corporations. Gotta love GrapheneOS!)

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