[michaelt]

> They can be misused, like any technology can be, but that is not an inherent feature of the tech, but rather how it is implemented. And as the developers of such measures are not a monolith, it is unfair to paint them as merely trying to exert control.

You can argue that exerting control is a good thing - a clever scam artist convinces a vulnerable user to paste an attack at the command line, and the benevolent OS vendor uses their control makes the attack impossible, no matter what the scam artist tells the user to do. A greedy software maker produces a spyware-laden, cookie-stealing update and asks the user to enter the admin password to install the update. The benevolent OS vendor uses their control to make such malicious updates impossible, even with the administrator password entered.

But even if the control is being used exclusively for good, it is, ultimately, control.