Ok, but forgiving student loans doesn't do that. It signals to borrowers that they don't have to repay high loans if their career can't support it. It tells borrowers that they can make risky loans without a chance of default. It tells universities that they can keep charging exorbitant tuitions because kids can still get loans to pay them.
The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy after X number of years after graduation. Lenders need to accept the risk. With no risk, they can loan as much as they want and have guaranteed repayment. This drives tuition higher and higher.
I’m always surprised that student loan forgiveness appeals to anyone who should otherwise be able to think about all of the bad second order effects.
The more we inject money into the education system, the higher prices go. Setting a precedent that the government will just pay off your loans if you don’t pay them off only encourages more people to take out loans without thinking about paying them back.
There are so many things wrong with this idea that I can’t believe it continues to be popular. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a litmus test for who can and cannot consider second order effects of economic decisions, or who believes money can spent en masse without altering the system.
If this were done in a less ridiculous manner, it might actually have the desired effect. Make student loans dischargable in bankruptcy (just like any other loan) and don’t give them government backing. Then private lenders could decide how much money to lend out, and the answer might well be “not very much.”
What are the second-order effects of a subclass of citizens permanently encumbered by debt that (with rare exceptions) cannot be discharged through bankruptcy?
Perhaps your analysis of second-order effects is not thorough and complete? Have you really considered all of them?
I don't really think we need to forgive student loans - I think they should absolutely be dischargeable through bankruptcy, though.
Bankruptcy isn't a "get out of jail free" card - it puts a huge burden on a student relatively soon after graduating that makes it harder to start a family or buy a home. So it incentives are still aligned for the students taking the loans.
But the option that a student defaults brings some real light and transparency into a loan system that just feels wildly disconnected from reality right now. If a student can't pay the loan back with the job options in the field and is like to default... don't issue the loan.
I think it's absolutely abusive that student debt can't be discharged, and is pretty heinous as policy.
Yeah it's pretty amazing that we have loans which you can never escape and yet have high interest rates in spite of that. If I cannot declare bankruptcy, then at the least the interest rate should be 0%, appropriately reflecting the risk.
> I don't really think we need to forgive student loans.
Neither do I. I was happy with the status quo ante Trump where many classes of public servant could get their student debts forgiven after on the order of ten years of service. (An imperfect program with too many disqualifying loopholes, but it was better than nothing. Now, almost no one qualifies.) The Overton window has foreclosed on that kind of solution to the problem, however. Even military personnel have been disqualified from attending certain schools as part of their meager education benefit.
> Bankruptcy isn't a "get out of jail free" card
Indeed. One’s mid-twenties are arguably the worst period of one’s life to live with damaged credit.
> I think it's absolutely abusive that student debt can't be discharged, and is pretty heinous as policy.
The reason that you can't (default) discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy is that your degree can't be seized and sold off, so there's a pretty weak incentive to not declare bankruptcy as soon as you're handed your degree.
What if a degree could be seized? For example, what if bankruptcy courts could require a debtor to stop "representing themselves" as having a degree as a condition for discharging debt. If a court revoked a degree, it would effectively reset the graduate to the status of a dropout removing a significant amount of the degree's value (I know knowledge has its own value, but credentialism is a big part of a degree's value too).Universities already have the infrastructure to flag students. For example, many institutions withhold official transcripts or diplomas for academic fraud, moral infringements etc. Could this create enough of an incentive to pay back loans and not declare bankruptcy?
I don't think that would fly, since it would provide no benefit to the owner of the debt and would just be enormously punitive and feel pointlessly cruel.
It would be like if instead of a foreclosure they just took a bulldozer to the house, then salted the earth with asbestos and lead so nobody could ever build a house there again. What's the (acute) benefit in just destroying the value? Plus, it turns the four years into a complete waste of time, no matter how hard you worked to get the degree, just because you couldn't find employment after.
I know we're talking about tweaking incentives to make it not worth it to game the system, but this would also screw over people that found themselves in that position through no fault of their own, plus it would waste all the time and work of everyone that taught that person and contributed to their education (even though they got paid, people largely aren't in education for the cash).
I don't know, I think it would be too much of a bummer to work.
When student debt becomes dischargeable, market forces will finally price degrees according to their actual economic value relative to the risk of poor returns. Currently, that price discovery is broken; the cost of a degree bears almost no relationship to its real-world payoff. No need for degree seizure to correct it. Lenders can decide for themselves which degrees lead to returns, which in turn provides degree seekers with actual financial signals instead of vibes-based "go into programming" propaganda from FAANG.
> What are the second-order effects of a subclass of citizens permanently encumbered by debt that (with rare exceptions) cannot be discharged through bankruptcy?
A harsh lesson in personal responsibility. If you went to an out-of-state school to major in criminology hoping to be the next CSI, and you borrowed 180k to do it, you've learned a valuable lesson.
Don't give me "they're only kids, they aren't able to make these decisions!"
Maybe, but that precedent has been set before for other types of loans, and in a limited way for student loans, and the sky didn’t fall. The upward price pressure on university prices is far more influenced by other factors (which should be fixed!). Loan forgiveness probably is a drop in the bucket, I suspect.
Allowing student debt to be canceled during bankruptcy would be a good first step (possibly even better than canceling student debt across the board).
To your point, making it easy to cancel debt teaches borrowers that debt isn’t a serious thing.
Requiring someone go through bankruptcy (and all of the associated negatives on your credit score, etc) seems like a good tradeoff. Allows you to get out from under the debt (the entire purpose of bankruptcy in the first place..) while not letting everyone pretend the debt never existed (need to live with the impact of bankruptcy on your ability to borrow in the future)
I don’t know why we don’t hear more people lobbying for this. I guess it’s because the sound bite isn’t as sexy.
Bankruptcy affects your credit score for 7-10 years. Someone who graduates from college in their early 20s with six figures in debt could file for bankruptcy immediately and have it be off their credit history by the time they've saved up a down payment and want to get a mortgage.
There is also the obvious drawback that if more people can discharge the debt, the interest rate goes up, and then everyone else has to pay for the people who took out loans they didn't pay back.
> Someone who graduates from college in their early 20s with six figures in debt could file for bankruptcy immediately and have it be off their credit history by the time they've saved up a down payment and want to get a mortgage.
So change the bankruptcy law? It’s a pretty easy fix. Create a whole new chapter if that’s what it takes. Make it dischargeable only after 7 years of nonpayment, do means testing… bankruptcy law already has these kinds of nuances built in.
> Make it dischargeable only after 7 years of nonpayment
You don't really want to give people an incentive for nonpayment.
> do means testing
Bankruptcy already does that. But what are your "means" the day you graduate from college and haven't yet found a job, or temporarily take a low-paying one on purpose to meet the eligibility requirements?
You would need something like, deferred payments while you're unemployed but if you subsequently find a job then you have to pay, instead of one-time permanently discharging the loans. Except that's how it already works.
> The law is not meant to cover every possible permutation of circumstances and motivations.
This isn't a permutations issue. We know the specific shape of the problem: 18 year olds from poor and lower middle class families don't typically have existing assets with which to secure a loan, so if they can't secure it with their future earnings, they can't get one, and then they can't afford to go to college.
> If student loans are dischargeable in bankruptcy, lenders will price it in or refuse to lend without a gurantor.
That's the problem. The inability to discharge them allows the borrower to get a much lower interest rate than they otherwise could for unsecured debt issued to someone with minimal credit history, or find someone willing to loan them the money to begin with.
It was set up this way so that people could go to college.
Imagine a world where lenders charged different interest rates depending on the risk profile of each school.
Lower interest rates for schools where graduates repay their debt, higher interest for schools where many people default.
Assuming it wouldn’t disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, that could be an interesting way to incentivize schools to get their shit together and prepare students for starting their career
Don't have a dollar amount that you repay. Rather, your student loan payment is x% of (your income minus the average rate for those with a high school diploma) for y years. Forgiveness programs for certain fields go away--instead, the tab gets picked up perhaps with a multiplier. Disability, death? Irrelevant--a dead person generally makes nothing, the amount owed is $0. (Generally makes nothing because there can be ongoing income from something they produced. That would be subject to the loan repayment.)
Devils advocate: I don’t think this would work due to the cash flow uncertainty the models causes.
If universities don’t know how much they’re going to bring in over the next few years, they won’t be able to budget effectively.
And then there’s the question of whether it’s acceptable for the lender to collect more than what was borrowed. E.g. if I graduate college, start a company, and sell it for $100 million.. am I then paying my alma mater (or lender) millions? If so, would universities make more money from the commons or are they banking on a very small percent landing extremely lucrative gigs post-graduation? I don’t think we want the model to resemble startup financing, where nearly all fail and a small handful pay for the rest (that works for startups, doesn’t work for people’s careers)
I like the concept though. In 2010’s when I was entering college, I actually made a website trying to solicit someone to pay for my education in exchange for a percentage of my future earnings. I found no takers at the time.
That effect would be drowned out by all the people defaulting en masse because getting out of a six figure unsecured debt is worth more than a temporary hit to your credit score.
If that’s true, why isn’t everyone already doing it? Especially if 87% of student loans are forgiven during bankruptcy - maybe people just aren’t aware it’s possible.
"Possible" and "easy" are two different things. 87% is of the people who applied for it, but they would be the ones most likely to have it granted because there is little reason to pay lawyers to file a form which is likely to be rejected. But the more you relax the requirements, the more people do it, which is of course the problem.
People who start lobbying for it quickly discover that 87% of people who petition for their student debt to be cancelled in bankruptcy get it (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/29/bankruptcy-student-loan-borr...). I support removing the special treatment entirely, but ultimately most student debt holders don’t go bankrupt.
> Still, few people pursue the option because of a “pervasive” myth that the loans can’t be included in the proceeding
It also says nothing about whether the person actually goes bankrupt, just which debts are discharged, which is one of the key parts of the bankruptcy process. Certain debts are discharged because the person can’t pay them back, which is the point of going into bankruptcy court.
That's why it should be a one time event in conjunction with reworking the whole system.
Why can I, as an 18 year old, sign for a loan that _cannot_ be forgiven, graduate into a crashed economy, and still be held accountable for choices that impact me when I only had a small part in them? The system needs reformed, and we need to do something for the people still on the hook of the old system (and I say this as someone who has paid off all my student loans).
Same reason you can sign up for war, or ride a bike without a helmet (in some places). The world is a dangerous place and the less legislation we have blocking people from making decisions, the more likely they are to be capable of making their own. In 2009 when I graduated, it was common knowledge that any private colleges or abnormal degrees were an oddity only for rich people to buy a piece of paper for their more disappointing kids. I don't know what changed (or if it was just localized), but whoever convinced you to go for the scam is at fault here in your circumstance- not the "system" for allowing other people to benefit.
It's a bunch of able-bodied people who took the elevator instead of stairs thinking it was a shortcut, but the effort put in was the whole point. Anyone who told you otherwise is to blame. Punishing people who took the stairs sends a clear message to everyone else deciding which way to go.
> Why can I, as an 18 year old, sign for a loan that _cannot_ be forgiven, graduate into a crashed economy, and still be held accountable for choices that impact me when I only had a small part in them?
Because you took the money promising to pay it back, spent it on something you wanted, and now it's gone and someone has to pay the money you spent.
It's like saying why can I, as an 18 year old, purposely drive a car into someone else's house, cause six figures in costs, and then be expected to be on the hook for that because auto liability insurance doesn't cover intentional acts? You're the one who chose to do that.
The price of tuition and the expectation that you pay back the money are not secrets kept from you until after you've already signed, or if they somehow are then maybe fix that.
The money can't be spent on a house or any useful asset that could be resold. They wouldn't give you a loan for that at 18 because it'd be irresponsible since they know you don't know anything about finance or economics as you likely don't have an education yet. They'll give you a high interest credit card with a 500 dollar limit to buy what you want though.
They give you the loan because the asset is you. In general if you get a degree, your future earnings increase by more than the cost of the degree.
The "problem" is that if you don't pay a mortgage the bank takes the house, but the only thing for them to take if you don't pay your student loans is your future earnings, which is just the thing where you have to pay back the loan.
A educational program using "your future earnings" as collateral only really has a claim to some percentage of the delta between what you earn and what you would earn without the degree (after 4 years experience), which would incentivize them to not to structure programs in a wasteful manner or misrepresent the future economic value of a given program.
In many cases, that delta is negative. The school and lender should at least be forced to disclose that reality when you're filing FAFSA and taking secured loans.
Second, that doesn't hold true for other assets like mortgages so why would it apply here?
Third, the lender reaaaally should not be telling anyone what career they should do.
Fourth, If the lender and school made no claims that any degree would guarantee extra earnings, why on earth would they need to disclose the opposite? If you saw any marketing copy that claimed you'd be guaranteed more money you can definitely sue for false advertising.
At the end of the day, neither of those industries are guilty of more than helping rumors spread. There may be a specific person who felt ok to lie to you, but it wouldn't make it past their legal department.
> Because you took the money promising to pay it back, spent it on something you wanted, and now it's gone and someone has to pay the money you spent.
How are they supposed to pay it back with a crashed economy? Look, I get it with personal responsibility and all that but these people were following the rules, did their part and now are burdened to their death while Big Co gets bailed out over and over and never learns responsibility. Why the double standard?
Bailing out corporations went very poorly. They reinflated the housing bubble like they wanted to see how big they could make the balloon this time. I mean look at this:
Except that no one has been preaching at you for your entire academic life that you MUST drive a car into someone's house at 18 in order to be able to get more than a minimum wage hard labor job.
But now we've arrived at the source of the trouble. Why are people being preached at to get a degree in subterranean cat washing instead of engineering or nursing, or for that matter forego a degree and pursue a trade?
As a parent of a 16 and almost 14 year old i'm effectively home schooling personal finance with them. My wife and I got none from our parents and were preyed upon constantly. I think I was 45 when i finally got my student loans paid off. My wife did many years in a dangerous, low-performing, HS as a teacher to get hers forgiven. Sending an 18 year old off to college without a solid understanding of finance is like throwing an 18 year old in the ocean while bleeding profusely and tasking them with swimming to shore, maybe a couple make it but the sharks will get the rest.
Thanks to the crashed economy I was on the hook for hundreds of other people’s bad decisions and the degree I went for did not result in a job despite prospects being more than good when I began the program.
People who want loan forgiveness anbd to rework the financial aid system aren’t looking for a get out of jail free card, they’re looking yo even the playing field a bit.
Student loans currently carry no risk. They can't be discharged. Interest is the payment to the lender to accept risk. There is no risk in the current state of student loans. Therefore they should never-ever charge interest.
Also schools need to be reigned in, if GA et al can pay each student athlete $40,000 a month, they MUST be held accountable for burdening the students and the state with unscrupulous debt.
> Student loans currently carry no risk. They can't be discharged. Interest is the payment to the lender to accept risk.
you make a good point, if there's no risk there should be no interest. Or at worst, the interest rate should track COLA adjustments to social security. Some basic adjustment relative to inflation so the lender gets back what they lent out.
Now that schools can pay their athletes I hope the rest of the student body take notice and start asking questions about school funds allocation. It should make it plain as day to the average student that their school has plenty of cash and choses to force them into debt.
>you make a good point, if there's no risk there should be no interest.
Even loans to the US government pays interest. If you meant "no premium beyond the risk-free rate", why would anyone want to lend to students, when they have to deal with the hassle of dealing with lenders and the political risk of it getting discharged, when they can just led to the federal government instead?
College grads also pay on average 10x the taxes above a HS grad, so there is a huge disconnect on the repayment the lenders get. Once you pay the SL amount in taxes, you should be done.
They should charge rate. But rate should be similar to say interbank rate. Maybe plus something like 0.5%. This is how standard loaning often operates. You have risk free lending so you get loan from somewhere else and then take some margin.
One downside is that money lent for a student loan cannot otherwise be invested. If paid back later with no interest, the money will likely have lost value to inflation in the meantime.
I think I agree with your broader point - just quibbling, here.
Interest also compensates for the other things that money could be doing. If I didn't loan it to you (or a student), then I would be doing something else with the money, even if just buying a government bond.
College grads also pay on average 10x the taxes above a HS grad, so there is a huge disconnect on the repayment the lenders get. Once you pay the SL amount in taxes, you should be done.
I'm not sure that is accurate. You need a borrower to do that. If there were other low risk borrowers they would also lend them money, it's not a zero sum game. I'm no banker, but pretty sure the bank doesn't lend itself fractionally reserved loans and buy t-bonds.
Surely the first step is to stop issuing loans in such a way that will cause the next generation of students to suffer the same problems, freeing us up to sort out the problems of previous generations without moral hazard.
The UK had what I think was a really nice set up, although it's now not nearly as palatable. My student loan had an interest rate tied to inflation, and repayment was a fixed amount of my income above a limit, collected via the same mechanisms used for income tax. Any unpaid loan would be written off when I turn 60.
The modern system is similar, but the interest rate has been decoupled from inflation which means that instead of paying back essentially the same value, no matter how slowly you pay it off, it's now definitely better to pay more earlier. Which makes it much more like a regressive "graduate tax" that you only have to pay if you don't earn enough.
> The UK had what I think was a really nice set up, although it's now not nearly as palatable. My student loan had an interest rate tied to inflation, and repayment was a fixed amount of my income above a limit, collected via the same mechanisms used for income tax.
My problem is that it's presented as a loan but is in effect a tax. I would rather have a graduate tax which was honest on the face of it rather than wilfully misleading students that it's an ordinary loan. The 'loan' framing is harmful in my opinion, because if student loans were regulated like actual loans the government would have much less room to effectively change the deal after the fact.
I also feel a lot of the current social and political toxicity around the student loan system comes from it being effectively a tax which you can get out of by lucking into having rich parents who pay your student fees upfront, it rubs people up the wrong way on class grounds. A graduate tax would avoid this problem as well.
With the system as it existed in 2000, it was very much "free money". That was before the introduction of fees, which are still not applicable for Scottish students studying in Scotland, and in combination with the interest rate increase would very definitely tip the balance for me.
I have a decent career that means I've paid off my loan. I can easily imagine that many folk with fees and modern loans won't ever even cover the interest payments.
> The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy after X number of years after graduation. Lenders need to accept the risk. With no risk, they can loan as much as they want and have guaranteed repayment. This drives tuition higher and higher.
This. The whole student loan mess is a direct result of their special treatment during bankruptcy.
> It tells universities that they can keep charging exorbitant tuitions because kids can still get loans to pay them.
I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of tuition claw-back from schools, when a student loan goes into default (but only by the government, not private lenders). The universities need more skin in the game to keep tuition under control.
That's not a solution at all, because it will price out way too many students.
The solution is to do what Germany and most of the EU does - pay universities with tax money and do not charge students anything at all (or maybe a few hundred to thousand euros).
> The solution is to do what Germany and most of the EU does - pay universities with tax money and do not charge students anything at all (or maybe a few hundred to thousand euros).
This is a totally fine system, but would change US tertiary education massively. Much of the state university increases in tuition since the GFC have been driven by exactly the opposite behaviour (cut state funding, make it up in tuition).
Germany and other EU countries that offer free tuition begin segregating students into vocational and university tracks starting around age 10. Only about 30% of students qualify for university. The rest stop school around 15-16 and go into vocational training. These aren't student choices, their dictated by the school system.
The US would never approve of a school system that told parents that their children weren't allowed to go to university and had to go into vocational training.
Most states already have affordable tuition for in-state residents. California is middle of the pack, and CSU tuition is less than $10k/year. (Nationwide, public in-state 4-year tuition ranges from ~$5k/yr to ~$15k/yr.)
For most students at public 4-year universities in the US, room & board costs significantly more than tuition. Even in those EU countries where tuition is free, average student loan debt is often >$20k USD because of this. By way of comparison, average student loan debt in the US is ~$40k USD, and that includes private school and out-of-state student tuition as well as room & board. Note that at least for the US, $40k is the mean; the median debt is <$30k. And these numbers are totals, not per year.
Perhaps one of the best ways to address the college affordability "crisis" would be to build more dormitories. The capital expenses could be publicly funded, and then charge students maintenance costs. But for various reasons, including NIMBY development barriers as well as modern expectations (see, e.g., the vitriol spewed about the windowless UCSB Munger Hall bedrooms), schools have long ago neglected this aspect.
That is what we did in the past, and why my undergrad degree didn't cost me nearly as much as someone would pay to get the same degree today from the same university. We've decimated state funding for public universities.
> When students have "skin in the game", i.e. they are paying for it, they will work to get their money's worth out of it.
For one, Europe's academic system works well enough to disprove this zero-sum ideology.
Making everything financialized has two serious downsides: first, it excludes a bunch of people - those who financially cannot afford to take the risk of failure (because you can't discharge student loans in a bankruptcy) even if they get a stipend, and then it leads to humanities and "niche" subjects being either killed off entirely as the chance of ever earning back the student loan is very slim, or the only students for these subjects are those who "come from money", both of which has negative impact for society at large.
I went through free K-12 public school. The caring about getting educated was performative, not reality. Neither the teachers nor the students particularly tried.
> How many German universities are ranked top 40 globally? How many American?
University rankings are mostly nonsense. They generally over-weight English speaking universities because most of the "high impact" journals are in English. The UK also does well by these metrics, but fundamentally academic research and teaching are very different things, and incentivising high output research institutions to focus on the research breaks the social purpose of universities which is to turn out educated undergraduates.
The German model is to focus more on teaching, which is a more sustainable approach than chasing the finite research dollars.
so take the money back from the universities in all cases where they negligently misrepresented the future job market of the field of study to the borrowers or what?
There will always be value in doing work that other people don't want to do themselves or that requires expertise and skill that isn't conveyed all that well through books or pictures. The economy used to be full of stable masters for horses and carriages, and manual typists, and street lamp lighters, and television repairmen, and any number of jobs that don't exist anymore.
I think it's a stretch to call having to make a living in a career other than your preferred job "suffering". Even before AI, there were surely millions of people who grew up wanting to be an artist, or an astronaut, or an architect, or any number of things that they never had the skills or the work ethic or the resources to achieve. I'm sure before cars there were people who loved maintaining stables of horses and carriages, and lamented the decline of the stable master profession. It's no different now.
At one point, there was a case for preventing scammy and fraudulent apps. For a long time, the ios App store had a much higher quality than android.
But now? There are tons of scammy and fraudulent apps on the app store. If you try to search for any popular app, you'll be presented with a dozen apps that look similar with similar names and logos.
And there are literally app farms pushing hundreds consealed illegal gambling / casino / betting apps to app store daily. Apple approves every single one.
They are then getting removed in days / weeks, but it just proves their review process is a joke.
Look at any hobby and there are lots of beginners and casuals and far fewer people who are very skilled at it. The Maker hobby is no different. It's certainly not a problem of the microcontrollers available. Arduino is the simplest, but there are plenty of others.
The "blinky LED" roadblock is really just a result of the fact that more complex "maker" projects require some amount of electrical or engineering or fabrication knowledge and skill, which takes some trial and error and practice -- the same thing that limits progress in lots of other hobbies.
The real "Maker" movement is the demand that drives so many consumer level fabrication tools and components that were only available as expensive industrial and commercial orders in the past -- 3d printers, laser cutters, microcontrollers, IC sensors, brushless motors -- there are so many options now that just weren't available at all 20 years ago.
I agree with the outcome of increased fabrication tools availability.
Yet, when the intent is that the population is to be empowered democratically to wield these tools, there needs to be a better pedagogical culture in the communities.
I cannot believe the amount of people replying who seem to think that having a path to improvement is gatekeeping. How are people supposed to actually use these tools to make greater than novelty-level changes in their lives and communities?
The price of Arduino has not only been going up and up, but there have been IP disputes over the years. At the same time, you can get chips for pennies on the dollar. People in this thread are lamenting the possible demise of Arduino, when like Cloudflare, like Github, and like so many other things, they should have never been so invested into a single player.
The result of Arduino going away should be "Ah, it is a sad day that one of our many choices of accessible boards is going away. let's make sure the other ones are robust against that same fate and keep creating with our remaining tools."
Instead, the conversation is "How dare that big corp change the terms and conditions on our only hobby option!"
I certainly see a structural and cultural problem here.
It's more likely to be a problem with Apple (and Google) because they have put themselves in a position where they are a gateway to everybody. There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction but 0% of iPhone users back up to them because of technical limitations that inhibit iCloud competitors or any compatible storage solution.
Allegedly it's deliberate, according to a pair of legal actions they face in the UK (hearing in 9 days) and US (hearing in August 2026).
> 13.1 a set of technical restrictions and practices that prevent users of iOS from storing certain key file types (known as “Restricted Files”) on any cloud storage service other than its own iCloud and thus ensuring that users have no choice but to use iCloud (a complete monopolist in respect of these Restricted Files) if they wish to meet all their cloud storage and/or back up needs, in particular in order to conduct a complete back-up of the device (“the Restricted File Conduct”); and/or
> 13.2 an unfair choice architecture, which individually and cumulatively steer iOS Users towards using and purchasing iCloud rather than other cloud storage services, and/or limit their effective choice, and/or exclude or disadvantage rivals or would- be rivals ( “the Choice Architecture Conduct ”). See further paragraphs 6 to 9 and 97 to 132 of the CPCF.
> 30. By sequestering Restricted Files, and denying all other cloud providers access to them, Apple prevents rival cloud platforms from offering a full-service cloud solution that can compete effectively against iCloud. The cloud products that rivals can offer are, by virtue of Apple’s restraints, fundamentally diminished because they can only host Accessible Files. Users who want to back up all of their files—including the basic Restricted Files needed to restore their device at replacement—have but one option in the marketplace: iCloud.
> 31. There is no technological or security justification for Apple mandating the use of iCloud
for Restricted Files. Apple draws this distinction only to curtail competition and advantage its iCloud
product over rival cloud platforms.
> There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction
Not according to the UK, lately. The problem is still domestic. UK wants to exert this control over any service a UK citizens happens to use, whether they have a UK presence or not. Same with the ID/Age verification stuff.
Moving away from Apple and Google probably is something they should do, but it's not going to be a solution to the problem of the UK government's overreach.
UK citizens need to turn their attention inward against their government.
Readers may be interested to know what my MP had to say when I got in touch about this:
Thank you for your email.
The UK has a strong tradition of safeguarding privacy while ensuring that appropriate action can be taken against criminals, such as child sexual abusers and terrorists. I firmly believe that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive—we can and must have both.
The Investigatory Powers Act governs how and when data can be requested by law enforcement and other relevant agencies. It includes robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy, ensuring that data is accessed only in exceptional cases and only when necessary and proportionate.
The suggestion that cybersecurity and access to data by law enforcement are at odds is false. It is possible for online platforms to have strong cybersecurity measures whilst also ensuring that criminal activities can be detected.
It should be noted that the Home Office cannot comment on operational security matters, including confirming or denying the existence of any notices it has issued. This has been the longstanding position of successive UK Governments for reasons of national security.
I support the responsible use of data and technology to drive economic growth, create new jobs, and empower individuals. It is essential that data is used safely and wisely, and that individuals remain in control of how their data is used.
Additionally, I welcome the Government’s transparency regarding how data is used, including on the algorithms that process this information. Several algorithms have already been published for public scrutiny, with more to follow—as resources allow—across multiple departments.
Thank you once again for contacting me about this important issue.
To be clear, Apple and Google both have huge UK presence. I don't know the extent of Google, but Apple has offices with thousands of people working in them. Compliance with what the UK wants in this regard is not optional.
What the original poster does is completely misplace blame under the guise of "clever" writing - blame should be assigned squarely on the idiotic policies of the UK government.
I'd say more likely, their UK presence. There's an increasing gap between UK and the rest of Europe, wider than other non-EU members such as Switzerland.
I see Switzerland as a country that wants complete independence, but sees value in cooperating with other countries, and does so. UK seems like on the path to becoming an authoritarian hellscape and won't allow any other country to stop its degradation.
I did mean EU presence. From what I’ve heard, the plan of the construction project seems to have been to relocate people from Munich, Warsaw, etc. to London. Not only is there isn’t much of an equivalence post Brexit, as you note, but it’s also not less expensive in any obvious way. So yes, it’s weird.
They are, and most time this allows them to abuse you. But what do you think happens once you that gateway is blown open, isn't your front door next?
> There are multitudes of online storage providers outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction
What I said above means that once you normalize the situation that providers have to open the gate to your yard whenever the state comes knocking, the state will just come knocking directly at your door. In other words I'm not sure the state will stop in its pursuit of access to your data when it can just incriminate trying to evade the law by storing it out of reach.
> But what do you think happens once you that gateway is blown open, isn't your front door next?
Yes this is the way policing should work, if they think you have done something they knock on your door rather than go to Apple and Google and compromise the entire population all at once through the convenience of their monopolies. Bonus points if a judge needs to grant them the privilege of knocking on your door too.
> Yes this is the way policing should work, if they think you have done something they knock on your door [...] Bonus points if a judge needs to grant them the privilege
How exactly would they come after you if your data is "outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction"? They went after the gatekeepers because they wanted a one stop shop for accessing people's data. They will look to take the same easy road in the future and there's nothing easier then framing any attempts to keep data out of UK's reach as a crime. They get your data or get you for not providing the data.
The law will be "stupid", tech savvy people will find ways around it. But it's enough to throw a or a noose around as many people as possible and tighten as time goes by. Authoritarianism 101.
> How exactly would they come after you if your data is "outside of the UK's reach and jurisdiction"?
By suspecting you of a crime first, then they can establish access to your device through legal due process and access the data on your device or imprison you for not facilitating it. Same thing they do with computer passwords and whatnot.
My friend, suspecting you of a crime is the easiest thing to do. Just putting your data outside of UK jurisdiction makes you suspicious. Ever tried going into the US and refusing to unlock your phone if asked at the border because "you have rights"?
> through legal due process
"Legal due process" is literally just what the law says. In this case a backdoor is the legal due process. The UK government took aim at Apple and Google because they wanted a one stop shop for their data access needs, and didn't want to bother going after you "the criminal" individually. If Apple and Google didn't exist and everyone starting backing up their data in some far away, untouchable jurisdiction (should you trust one) you think the UK government wouldn't tighten the noose around individuals the same way? Most governments are going in this direction anyway.
The government showed its intentions with this move: have easy access to your data. They'll keep pursuing that goal no matter what, gatekeepers or not. They define the due process. In this particular case the problem isn't that Apple is a gatekeeper but that the government wants things they shouldn't (by my definition) have.
Although effective, this particular technique does not scale very well. Even if the UK had 100,000 kidnapping wrench torturers, it would take ~2 years for them to get through to pulling everyone in the UK’s teeth.
Fortunately for those who like laws having an effect, that's not factoring in the deterrence aspect of the first (few) toothpull event(s)
It's the law that's the issue. Avoiding enforcement only works until people actually care to start enforcing. There's also enough examples in history of people taking matters into their own hands if they disagree with something, doubly so if there's a law against it or something else makes them feel righteous. If you do bad in the eyes of the public (or its prosecutor), good luck swimming against the tide
My (grand)parents like their FOSS launcher, gallery, and chat client just fine. I've had zero questions about how Signal works, but a bunch about how to deal with the OS' pre-installed garbage spawning notifications about this or that update. They can't tell the difference between an advertisement pushed by some commercial app they want and a smartwatch firmware update notification
From my POV, it's the commercial software that has fundamental usability issues due to misaligned incentives (not completely different either, but not as aligned as FOSS). They just have a better lobby and marketing budget. Chrome didn't become this ubiquitous on mobile by having to be downloaded from f-droid, but by making a deal that device manufacturers cannot refuse
The person above said "run", not "install". I don't build my own car either. But in this case it's more of a marketing/discoverability problem than a knowledge gap on setting it up because it's nearly as simple as using them
Idk if it's just me but I do hate these suggestive questions. If you've got something to state, spit it out
People need to hold the UK government responsible for its crimes against humanity. Until the AUMF and similiar policies across the Wetsern hemisphere which resulted in the utterly reprehensible "War on Terror", are rescinded and the crimes committed under their enactment fully prosecuted, the authoritarianism will continue.
Remember, people, these are WAR CRIMINALS driving these policies forward. To expect this class of individuals to adhere to democratic, western values, is naive in the extreme.
The same people who have no problem with genociding a million people in the middle east enemy-state-de-jour are not going to give one fig of care to the local human rights violations that they are also getting away with.
The West has a war criminal problem. Until we solve that we cannot do a damn thing about our human rights problem.
The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.
* They offered local councils the chance to request it if they were going through a reorganisation or devolution process.
* 18 councils requested and 9 were accepted as justified.
* And even those are only delayed until May next year (one year after the rest of the UK).
So to be clear the UK government not only didn't postpone the general elections but half the councils who requested the local elections were postponed were denied, with the other half having reasons and still doing it a year later anyway.
And all that is actually covered in the page you link to.
Fact check - the UK hasn't postponed the general election.
Your link points to _some_ local council elections (the people responsible for bin collections, parks and care homes) and the extension has been requested by the local councils themselves.
I wish they would help get as many reform councils as possible. Given how incompetent they have been in the ones they did get elected, I think it would put a damper on the enthusiasm of their supporters.
yes, and they're totally not fighting on multiple fronts against central govt, those in the areas they're trying to run deciding that the civil service can now be a political arm of the left or from having to boot the actual racists in sheep's clothing from the party.
I'm not defending any party here, I'm even highlighting some of reforms worse issues. But you have to admit it's not apples and oranges when comparing their performance so far with a cushy little on-the-Thames millionaires cul-de-sac.
The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy after X number of years after graduation. Lenders need to accept the risk. With no risk, they can loan as much as they want and have guaranteed repayment. This drives tuition higher and higher.
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