> The fact that I can unlock and relock the bootloader is not a security issue or a risk. People who don't know what that means cannot possibly do it by mistake.

The second sentence is false. Lots of people blindly follow things and don't understand consequences until they brick their devices. Those who don’t break something won’t notice if they’ve silently backdoored themselves.

People asking for support after getting themselves into some weird hole they never should have been in because some friend or online article said so is super common.

When you reboot in fastboot mode and enter the commands that break your phone, I think you're responsible.

If you take a hammer and destroy your phone, I think you're responsible.

> The second sentence is false. Lots of people blindly follow things and don't understand consequences until they brick their devices. Those who don’t break something won’t notice if they’ve silently backdoored themselves.

"Lots of people", how many though? Can that number be reduced? What number would be acceptable?

I feel like it _has_ to be possible to devise an unlocking procedure that dissuades most people from self-harm.

The problem is often treated as intractable, but intuitively this seems really unlikely to me. I don't think more than a tiny percentage of Xiaomi owners, for example, would go through the bootloader unlock process which often has a mandatory wait period attached to it without a reason more compelling than an impulse to randomly and blindly follow instructions on the internet.

I would like to see user studies with good methodology before other people decide to barter long-term freedoms away for insufficient benefit.

Why do I so rarely see people who are concerned about the security issues of bootloader unlocking calling for designing hassle and warning into the process. Instead, it's more common to hear that in the name of the average user, all escape hatches must be removed.