There are two big problems with this (not that Apple’s caprice is the only alternative):

1. The vast majority of people are Grandma, and they do not have a Johnny available to administer their tech. Most people are not technical.

2. The vast majority of Grandmas will follow instructions on a “how do I share cute photo” website even when that website directs them to dig deep into configuration settings and ignore six “are you sure you want to allow this app to fully remotely control your device?” warnings. Even if Grandma has a healthy suspicion of scams, when she is instead trying to accomplish a goal she will suddenly prove quite adept at giving software with questionable provenance root access to her life.

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CamperBob2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

And what if my grandma is Admiral Hopper. I wonder if there's a way to argue for or against paternalistic corporate gatekeepers without invoking sexism, ageism, or both?

	▲	zbentley a day ago \| parent [-]
		I used the terms from the grandparent post with tongue firmly in cheek. I didn’t intend to be sexist or ageist and agree with your criticism.

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preg_match 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the bigger question is whether this is even worth solving. If people really want to give someone root access and do it willingly, maybe we just say this is out of our purview and allow it. And then, slowly, people will learn. They will be hard lessons but evidently baby proofing the entire world is not really working, so we might just abandon ship on that idea.

	▲	zbentley 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> And then, slowly, people will learn I hope you're right, but I'm not sure they will. The less locked-down WinXP and early Android era was ... really really bad in terms of nontechnical people getting hacked/scammed. And bad actors are also innovating, so the target of what people have to learn is moving: now we have synthetic AI voice scams, easy-to-create full clones of popular websites that harvest credentials, an explosion of 0days that let people run RATs that hassle elders for their MFA codes, and so on. Like, I'm 100% with you that baby-proofing the world is an unattainable, patronizing, and negative-externality-laden goal. We shouldn't do that. But we shouldn't go full libertarian "you're on your own; toughen up" either; I think we have a lot of data that indicates that the harms of that approach are both high-magnitude and high-volume.
	▲	NetMageSCW 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Tell me that when it’s your relative that is out thousands of dollars because they were scammed.