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by api 2247 days ago
> Look how interoperable email or phone networks are.

You are missing a major issue here: spam. E-mail and phone calls are riddled with spam precisely because these are at least somewhat open systems.

E-mail is unusable without running it through a ton of spam filters or (more commonly) letting someone else with a larger data set do that for you.

Phone calls are in some ways even worse. I no longer answer unidentified calls, period, and I keep my phone on vibrate at all times. Any important calls must be scheduled. I get 2-4 robocalls per day. I'm tempted to change my number but I've heard it doesn't matter.

Spam is a huge reason walled gardens win. Anything open gets abused to death.

Another example is closed OSes like iOS. Consumers love iOS because you almost never see malware. Open OSes easily acquire malware if the user is not tech-savvy (and even sometimes if they are), and finding software outside a walled garden is an exercise in picking your way through a minefield. Have you tried to search for a Windows app on the open web recently?

2 comments

> E-mail is unusable without running it through a ton of spam filters or (more commonly) letting someone else with a larger data set do that for you.

For someone who can't imagine that email may sometimes come from people who doesn't have their best interest at heart, sure.

Me, I receive 5-15 spam emails a day, which are filtered only by my local mail client, with some false negative, and extremely rare false positives (I spotted one in several years, and I always look through my spam folder).

Despite my lack of Google grade filters, I can use email just fine.

You must be rigorous about not posting your address anywhere. I get up to a 100-200 per day.
I still use hushmail for "throwaway" type emails where I have to sign up for something I'm pretty sure will be used as an email marketing platform. Then if one alias gets compromised I just delete it. hushmail has decent anti-spam measures also. I wouldn't trust it to send that really important email for Snowden only but it works great for basically unlimited email aliases. Then I can also see more easily who's probably selling off their address list and stop using their product.
> Another example is closed OSes like iOS. Consumers love iOS because you almost never see malware. Open OSes easily acquire malware if the user is not tech-savvy (and even sometimes if they are), and finding software outside a walled garden is an exercise in picking your way through a minefield. Have you tried to search for a Windows app on the open web recently?

Windows is a minefield to download for.

Linux is a yum or apt away.

And iOS is antiowner garbage.

Linux distributions are walled gardens. They're just community maintained instead of corporate. Linux of course lets you install anything but so do MacOS and Windows, and downloading random apps off the web for either of the latter can be dangerous. It would become dangerous for Linux if Linux acquired a large non-technical user base, but as it stands malware pushers don't target it much since there are not enough victims.

MacOS is targeted a bit less than Windows because its user base is smaller, tends to be a bit more technical, and running arbitrary apps while allowed requires magic incantations like right click open (twice) the first time or opening a terminal.

Every non technical person I know loves iOS because it just works and doesn't rot from malware or badly written apps that trash the system.

On Linux, the norm is that you rarely install a sketchy opaque binary. It either comes from the packages, or from a reputable vendor's official site (like NVidia drivers), or has source code trivially available. This lowers the chance malware could sneak in.
That's because there isn't a vast network of shitware sites geared toward Linux users. If it got popular among non-technical users there would be.

Never ever underestimate what people will do for even mediocre amounts of money. Look into the enormous ecosystem (bordering on a subculture) that exists around click fraud and other forms of ad network abuse, or try to search for some Windows software and look at how many fake sites you get. It's unreal. There's money to be grabbed, so it gets grabbed.

>Never ever underestimate what people will do for even mediocre amounts of money.

or even just for thrills or for nefarious purposes!

Reminds of me of that backdoor in Notepad++[1], an app many developers I've worked with used.

[1]https://www.hackread.com/wikileaks-vault7-cia-docs-notepad-p...