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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

> Just think, if you hadn't used a proprietary messaging solution as your default contact method, you'd be able to easily control how you receive the messages.

Apparently blaming the victim is totally okay as long as the victim was using a brand you don't like.

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You've failed to understand on two levels. One, this is not a question of competing brands. That's a question of technology and not liberty, which is the point of the comment you replied to; if OP choose free software, it doesn't matter which "brand" he chose, there are a number of free application that do the same job.

Two, calling this victim blaming is a bit of a stretch at best and ridiculous nonsense at worst. Yes, what happened to OP is unfortunate but it's just a moderate inconvenience. It's not like someone drove their car over him or smashed his face in with a bat (he'll get over this much easier). The person you replied to therefore is not wishing serious ill will on him. They are simply saying they hope this mild inconvenience is enough to wake him (and others) up to the necessity of free software.

> They are simply saying they hope this mild inconvenience If you read the post, you would know this is not a "mild inconvenience" for him. If you truly believe that, then I would contend you haven't experienced what it's like to lose a significant amount of personal data.

> is enough to wake him (and others) up to the necessity of free software. What free software was he and everyone he's communicated with in the past 5 years supposed to be aware of?

>One, this is not a question of competing brands. That's a question of technology and not liberty, which is the point of the comment you replied to; if OP choose free software, it doesn't matter which "brand" he chose, there are a number of free application that do the same job.

I call BS. If OP choose free software we could AS WELL have had the same exact problem.

It's a software bug -- the client caching the remote method to use (data or standard SMS). A free program could just as well have the same issue.

What "more control" you'd have? You could issue a bug fix request, which could just as well be ignored (I've several on FOSS projets). Or you could even have it fixed, but then you'd need to convince all the users you talk to to update to the latest version until you see any improvement.

If it was an open protocol, he would have access to apps that implement it on his phone. And even if that weren't the case, he would have the ability to write an implementation.

The difference here is that a sufficiently competent person cannot reliably replicate the experience.

The problem at this point is with the other friends and family who make use of this software. Great, he writes a new implementation of this protocol that prevents _his_ client from improperly caching routing information. This still doesn't fix the problem of the software on other peoples' phones.

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