What choice is there beyond Apple or Google in terms of smartphones? And I mean actual, ergonomic, everyday convenient choice -- my mother will firmly refuse me if I said "I'll buy you a phone but will have to tinker a full weekend to make it half-privacy-aware". And even if she was on board, she'll just yell at me if she can't do a basic task (this is a controversial topic around here but heavily modded and supposedly Google-less Android is absolutely not as useful as a Pixel or vendor-modded Android).
So...
Google is an ad company. There's nothing they won't do to get to your data. And of course, being a huge company, they will lie about it at Congress hearings, lobby against punishments, make PR campaigns to mislead the general public, cover up their work with China until they are caught, etc. They already did all of these, many times.
Apple is seemingly a good citizen but do we really know what they do behind closed doors? As an Apple user I am still a realist and I know the answer to this question is a firm "No".
We seriously have no adequate choice. I like my iPhone; I don't play games on it (well, a few brain-teasers and a bunch more serious like chess but you get the idea), and I read a lot of stuff on it: work- and hobby-related. Social media gets almost zero attention from me. So smartphones can be very useful if you don't get hooked on BS.
And so I ask you again -- what actual choice do we have? How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference?
> How can we really vote in a way that will make a difference?
We (that is, tech users) have a choice, if we choose it. The ones who don't are the people who can't take that option (ie, your mother). You've stated as much.
What is your choice today, as someone technically inclined?
Well - you mentioned modded Android; but there are several other options, if you don't mind fiddling with things.
More than a few phone operating systems are out there, many open source.
For hardware, probably among the best right now is the Pine64 phone (it's currently in a strange "high-beta" state - you can order one, and it will supposedly be close to what will eventually be sold, but it isn't completely considered a "commercial product").
Alternatively, you could build a phone using a Raspberry Pi (or a similar board, like a Beaglebone or something), or an Arduino (you'll be very limited in what you can do using a standard Arduino - basically make/take calls, store some contacts, maybe SMS).
Note that most phone modules out there are 2/3G - but you can find 4G/LTE modules, fairly cheap if you know what you're looking for.
Your "phone" won't look pretty, but you probably know that. It will likely be fragile at times, and the software quality will depend on what you can find and what you can code yourself. Cloud storage, games, etc - will all be mostly up to you to implement in some manner.
A lot of work, certainly - but that's the only real option, as you can never be absolutely certain, if you're not in control of at least the OS and software.
But for everyone else? Yeah - they don't have any choice, unless they are willing to step up their knowledge (and most aren't, nor should they have to).
That's not how that works at all. You can buy something you need because you need it and that's not at all a vote saying you like the management of how it was produced.
It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else. And if you can’t find a company that you want to support, then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.
>then you’ll see it’s just like real politics. You don’t get to only vote for the parts of a candidate you like, you vote for the whole package.
Well, that's the problem with politics as well, and the reason that modern democracy is a sham (compared to ancient Athenian direct democracy [1]).
[1] obviously for those it included at the time. After all, modern democracy didn't include slaves, women, and even poor white folks (the extension of voting rights to non-property-owning white men happened in 1828, and it was hampered in the South until the early 20th century) until well into the 20th century.
> It’s a vote whether you claim it is or not. If you need something but don’t want to support the company, buy it from someone else.
Again, that's not how that works at all. I can name hundreds of items that I've purchased in the past year where there aren't meaningful competitors. I can name dozens of contracts I've entered into where management changed after the contract was signed (sometimes years afterward). Of course then I'm screwed because I'm still stuck in that contract.
If only there was a viable competitor phone. The choice is iPhone or some flavour of Android. Even if Android had E2E encrypted backups, it leaks is so many other unpleasant ways that it's not even a choice.
For me it's a vote for less tracking, or at least less invasion. It's not saying it's perfect or even close. There's a ton of things I'd change on iOS if I could.
So yeah, I 'vote' Apple because the alternative is a dumb feature phone.
They do. Including an independent third-party security audit.
> it leaks is so many other unpleasant ways
I recall Android security used to lag behind Apple at the device level, but I'm not sure that's still true with current hardware and OS. Could you educate us on the current state of Android data leaks?
For me, my device should have full-disk encryption, sandboxed apps and fine-grained control over app permissions. Both iPhone and Android have that.
Intentionally leaving iCloud insecure in the absence of legal compulsion is a sneaky evasion of all the much-ballyhooed device-level security.
Voting is a very bad way to send a message, especially if it is 'voting with your wallet'.
Its at most 1 bit information, often even less, since it could be a huge number of reasons for each person to vote one way or another, or maybe not vote at all or just random.
You can boycott a company your whole life, and nobody not even the company will care.
Tell me how I can choose to avoid buying fungible commodities from a particular source: suppose I want to avoid oil from BP because I disapprove of their handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Avoiding BP-branded filling stations doesn't actually mean I'm not buying oil that came from BP. Or suppose I want to avoid wheat from Archer Daniels Midland, or crops sprayed with Monsanto products. The idea that capitalism provides meaningful choice is a joke.
The whole point of commodification (which arguably has little to do with capitalism - this process occurs in communism too) is to eliminate differentiation.
Pecunia non olet ("money doesn't smell") is the motto of any commodity market for thousands of years. You might not like who you're buying from, but the POINT is fungibility: to completely remove all distinguishing characteristics, allow interchangeability, separate the value of the good from the value of the producer or seller.
Early stage markets (usually aided by capitalism) on the other hand allows for disequilibrium, competition, and differentiation. At worst is how you get commodities repackaged as "artisanal bottled water" and "bone broth", and the like. But it would be the way to differentiate ethical oil (is there any?) from unethical. Also has been pretty successful at labelling GMO / non-GMO food. So, yeah, there are many cases where you do have meaningful choice.
Except that you only reasonably have two choices in smartphones: Android or iOS. So you can vote between plague and cholera.
And, no, you would have to be in a very privileged
position already to have any other choice.
The "free market" can't fix things if there are no choices to choose from. Sometimes politics has to fix this instead.
You vote wholesale (on all aspects of a product) and not just on those you like or don't like, so the point is moot.
Plus, to vote "away" from a company/product, other products should exist that are better, and not just in this single aspect (encryption of backups), but in other aspects that count for your usage.
