[dredmorbius]

Phones costing $1,000 is a feature.

Not a feature I like or endorse, but one that's clearly in the interest of both device vendors and much of the online advertising and commercial sector.

In a world in which credible attestations of interest and potential commercial value are difficult to assess without the manifest signals of a high street address and the visual assessments made possible by physical presence, owning a < 2 y.o. piece of $1,000 kit is a highly reliable market segmentation signal.

This is a key reason why websites (especially commercial ones, but also anything advertising-related) are on such a relentless treadmill of ever-escallating resource demand. Got to keep those undesireable old-cheap-Android and 15-year-old desktop plebes out somehow.

Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410503> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29612296> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959819> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530274>