The Fairphone (Gen. 6)

Is it just me or does the discourse about a product like the Fairphone often feel kind of "culture war"-y? So many times I read comments where people are very upset and offended how a Fairphone costs way too much compared to other smartphones or how it supposedly is completely unusable because one feature does not work the way they expect. It's just strange. If you don't like it, don't buy it, no need to engage. But so many people seem to feel obliged to present their strong dislike for the Fairphone as if it's sole existence attacks them personally.

I noticed the same general reactions for Framework laptops. Some folks are acting like these smaller companies are trying to force their products on the consumers, but their advertising is completely fine.

However I also find some of the supporters of consumer friendliness unbearable (e.g. Framework or Thinkpad fans).

I get that tribalism is present in many layers of our society and culture (politics, sports, music), but I always found it weirder when people do it for products. The only goal of a company is to maximize their profits, why someone becomes a die hard supporter of them is beyond me.

To summarize, I just wish people would put less emphasis on consumer practices. Buy a product you like and is beneficial for you, but don’t judge others for their choices.

I see it as a larger problem in many "ideologically inclined" projects, like Open Source software, fairtrade products, etc.

A large amount of energy is wasted on "infighting" where people spend significant effort on attacking projects that, seen from a distance, are actually allies¹.

Or where people dismiss the entire project because it's not 100 aligned with their view of perfection².

Or, indeed, where people who don't even use or want to use a project, spend significant effort to discredit this project.

¹ an example is the enormous amount of effort and campaigning within the "mastodon" community against projects like bluesky or nostr. But also gnome vs kde, Ubuntu vs Redhat, Etc

² an example is Opensource software being discredited because they use GitHub, or host on AWS. It's Patagonia being discredited because they use plastic. Or Fairtrade coffee being dismissed because it transports coffee with trucks and ships burning oil.

I experience this a lot. I have a Fairphone 5 and helping provide answers to questions in threads online is a minefield. You answer questions of someone, and somebody else comes along and starts shouting they want feature x.

People seem to flock to smaller phone companies and demand they fill in their one feature. Whether it's USB-OTG display functionality, headphone jack, slider to kill all connections, etc, everybody is convinced their one feature is holding this phone company back, just because they want this one feature.

It's just disappointing. I'm just happy with my long-lasting repairable phone.

> The only goal of a company is to maximize their profits

Overall this is effectively true, but it is not a law of the universe or anything.

Why can't a collection of people have ideals, want to support and realize those ideals through action, and also find a way to financially support themselves and even profit by pursuing those ideals?

The hypothesis you've put forth is that the group that founded Framework were sitting around thinking about the best way they could invest money to make money, and the best option they could come up with was to make modular laptops. What has their return on investment been thus far, and does it clearly and readily beat all other options they had for investing?

This is super common with most slightly niche devices I feel.

Framework/Oura/Whoop/Garmin/Fairphone etc etc it's all the same.

Plenty of companies choose different balances between profits and social impact. Compare Unilever and Nestle and tell me all companies are equally profit-focused. Look at Patagonia.

I agree with a live and let live view of purchasing decisions, and I agree that tribalism about companies is weird, but at the end of the day it’s far too reductive to say all companies prioritize profits equally.