alt Hacker NewsI actually agree with you, but you have an optimism about the ability for open source maintainers to have achievable political aims, in a way that I haven't seen happen for decades.
What your happier future looks like requires both a technical solution, but more importantly political wins to sell that solution as the better one.
The current operating systems weighted by users, are entirely under the control of three major players, who are incentivised to further centralise things.
( I'm counting the three operating systems as Google Play Services, IOS and Windows. Yes, AOSP exists, but it's useless without Google Play Services. ).
I also don't think a device level switch would stop anything for a second, given the number of stories of parents who seem to hand their children their credit card, then complain about them racking up thousands of dollars on Roblox or whatever.
When the light-touch measures fail, the framework will be leveraged to start requiring more centralised and less private solutions.
> given the number of stories of parents who seem to hand their children their credit card, then complain about them racking up thousands of dollars on Roblox or whatever
Sure, but you hear about those because of how shocking they are to all sensible people. Actually I bet a lot more kids rack up those charges using cards they stole from mom's purse. Same kids will start trying to sneak mom's old iPhone out of the desk drawer to install "Adult TikTok" on. But again, this is not more concerning than the way my generation rooted around on the top shelf of Dad's closet to find the old Penthouse magazines.
I just don't accept the absolutist idea that if anything can be gotten around by any means, that means it can't still be sensible policy. Which seems to be the attitude taken by two separate groups -
1. Your and my common enemy -- the ones who are eager to enact "Show ID to access this site (trust us!)" verification schemes
2. And the freedom-loving hackers I've been arguing with today, who also detest those schemes but also don't want to see any scheme of any kind.