gress

Punishment and reward are very limited mechanisms for learning behavior. Mimicry is one of the others and is much more powerful.

The headline 'Obama administration quietly rejected ways to bypass smartphone encryption' would be more true and less sensational.

I said nothing about not reporting. It's the distorted headlines laced with innuendo that are damaging.

If Google thought there was a problem with intrusive ads, they would penalize them.

That was true when the incentive was for vulnerabilities to be disclosed and fixed for the good of all, but sadly today, vulnerabilities are extremely valuable and so the incentive is for them to be sold to the powerful.

The police use violence to protect the regular market. One could just as easily say that violence is market related.

Obscurity is not security. True.

Transparency is not security. Also true.

Personalization is not a problem. Systematic bias is a severe problem, even if it is not intentional.

The 'one true web' idea is a red herring. We absolutely need to know how google biases the results.

Clickbait and sensationalism is a thing in journalism. It is morally wrong because it spreads disinformation and is harmful to both individuals and democracy, but it is legal and profitable, and we haven't done enough to shun it, so it happens.

Yes it would. Cybercriminals are even more of a threat than spy agencies to most individuals.

[edit: in case it is unclear, I am saying that cybercrime is as strong reason for individuals to use ubiquitous encryption as government snooping not that it is a justification for government snooping]

Sure, but the stock market is not valuable as a prediction market.

The responses on this thread seem to prove that Apple knows what it is doing with its security strategy. The fact that people blindly disable protections and end up causing massive malware outbreaks is exactly the reason they are introducing things like Gatekeeper and Rootless. Arguably, this incident is evidence in favor of them locking down Gatekeeper further.

Why would you do that?

Why would you do that? It it exposes you to risk, and as has now been proven, if adopted as a general practice it exposes everyone else to risk too.

So Apple is putting user freedom ahead of advertiser freedom in this case, whereas Google is siding with the advertisers for obvious reasons.