[Zak]

People keep framing these sorts of debates in terms of tinkering.

It's about ownership, not tinkering. It's about preventing megacorporations from having the last word about how government services can function and how people can interact with them.

[71bw]

But it's how the people outside of our circles see it. We tinker with our devices, which is not understandable to them - their phone just works, why would they change anything about it?

[Zak]

People keep talking about it that way inside our circles, and if we do that here, we will surely fail to do better with a broader audience.

Last year's example of ICEBlock makes the freedom/tinkering distinction clear to most people. ICEBlock was an iOS-only app for tracking immigration raids in the USA and alerting users when they're nearby. Apple caved to government pressure and banned it. Because iOS users don't have the freedom to install apps from other sources, that's the last word; the app is effectively dead.

I've found most people understand pretty well why that sort of thing is a problem even if it did not affect them.