alt Hacker NewsThis is if nothing else an interesting postulate. Default all devices to nerd mode and sheep mode is an opt-in at setup time.
In theory I have no problem with the idea of hanging the incompetents out to dry, when I imagine them as unsympathetic idiots, the same people who litter, and can’t drive correctly. But actually I think most of us would be horrified when it turns out that category of incompetents includes our parents and grandparents, or, increasingly, our children (Gen Z has been increasingly falling victim to scams, partly because they have no idea how computers work since modern ones present only highly abstract surfaces to them, and I suspect Alpha will be the same).
> Default all devices to nerd mode and sheep mode is an opt-in at setup time.
The entire point here is that sheep do not need an overly protective mode. It's a false premise.
I know plenty of them. I help them navigate modern tech. I install fdroid on their phones. They lie on a continuum and none of them are going to turn on developer mode (or whatever BigTech wants to call it) because a stranger on the phone told them to.
There is a small sliver on the far end of the continuum that will do things like that. But in general they are sufficiently gullible that no measure that can be bypassed will ever work for them. They require a Fisher-Price device.
BigTech wants to hold that small sliver up as justification for their anticompetitive practices.