Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy

SpyApps everywhere.

Hopefully one day we not only have open software, open hardware but also reproducibly guaranteed secure systems. Now I don't have any idea how this could be verified (and no, Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" is not what I have in mind), but I hope we'll see to this eventually.

If you don’t trust a centralized authority you need decentralized governance…

we've alreaaaay seen that decentralization is an abstract, butnot a reality.

There will always be a move towards centralization when a project gains enough converts because the bulk of concerns are exactly the same but we don't have n+1 people willing to do the necessary legwork to secure.

As such, just like REST apis and their N+1 query problem, forcing everyone to have a security conscious posture is never going to happen.

You absolutely need centralized authorities; what the real argume is about is how that authority is selected, changed and intermediated. The same way we argue about how a stable RAFT algorithm operates.

Move on from this "decentralization is all we need" argument. It's failed and failing.

It will be excluded from any popular OS and will end up a niche thing that no one will use. The issue is the hegemony of big tech companies over the regulations to shape it however they like, and in return they provide the surveillance to legislators.

"Decentralized governance" is just feudalism. What you need is a re-envigoration of democracy. Democracy works, but we have to engage with it positively, both as citizens and as politicians.

Decentralized decision making is pure democracy. What you see to want is representative democracy or a constitutional republic with representative democracy in the form of elected officials.