> This isn’t a gdpr opt out where both alternatives need to be equally easy. We (as a society) absolutely need the devices to default to the current model when purchased.

I feel like this is completely the opposite. The case for closed devices is that if grandma is senile she can't be trusted to make sound choices and needs a piece of hardware to limit her options, whereas that isn't the case for random chemists and college students and farmers, i.e. the general population.

It's one of the cases where tech people can't see the forest for the trees. The vast majority of people can make reasonable decisions about their own lives, but then if a tiny percentage make mistakes, those are the ones who come to you with problems and then it seems like everyone who comes to you is having problems because only the people having problems come to you.

Then megacorps use that false perception that everyone is incompetent to try to weasel their way in as a middle man taking a thick margin while locking the doors so the average person can't go to the competition, which is the option that needs to be not just preserved but actually used by ordinary people.

And not just because of the margins. Centralizing everything is a skeleton key for authoritarians. If you want to ban a social media app because people are using it to find out about something you want to censor or organize opposition to your administration and having it banned from Google Play and Apple makes it so 99% of people can't use it, you'd win when we need you to lose.