Two Phones

With direction Android is heading, I see more and more software developers considering buying two phones. They’re going to keep one in Faraday’s cage and use it infrequently for banking or age verification, (sidenote: In European Union) while the other one will be the actual personal computing device — a “Linux phone”. This is cool idea and I hate it, because it throws away needs of everyone else. “I’ll get my privacy no matter what and fuck everyone else, especially the poor, kids, elders and non tech-savvy, so circa 95% of smartphone users”. It also doubles the environmental cost of producing 2 phones instead of one.

We mustn’t agree to limit rights of people to develop and install software on the phones which they rightfully own. We mustn’t agree to lock down apps only because we installed OS not affiliated with Google and its partners. It’s developers’ duty to protect the rights of users, as they are inherently less privileged ones, even without taking their social standing into account. Strength before weakness.

It’s a shame that during technical interviews we spend exactly no time discussing ethics of software development.