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QubesOS enables some of this today, at high setup cost.While I think that it can't really work as I envision without hardware integration, in addition user friendliness is in fact a key part because this is another case where widespread adoption would have a kind of emergent "herd immunity" effect. The effect of introducing kill switches ("Activation Lock" in Apple terms) for phones is a good example. From an NYT article from that era [0] following Apple's general push of the feature:
>"Comparing data in the six months before and after Apple released its anti-theft feature, police said iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped 38 percent. In London, they fell 24 percent."
>"In New York City, robberies (which typically involve a threat of violence) of Apple products dropped 19 percent and grand larcenies of Apple products dropped 29 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same time period from 2013, according to a report from the New York attorney general’s office, which included data from the New York City Police Department. By comparison, thefts of Samsung products increased 51 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same period a year ago, the report said."
Now, with jailbreaking before that it was already possible to have a relatively effective remote kill switch type of feature, and there were even commercial jailbreak products to that effect (or to try to track it down and find it). But when only one in thousands or tens to hundreds of thousands of phones might have something like that, it wouldn't have any larger effect beyond the specific feature working as intended and rendering the phone unusable (or letting it be recovered maybe). For criminals playing the odds it made no material difference overall, if they occasionally got a phone that "broke" after stealing it they'd just toss it. But once it was universal it changed the math on even trying in the first place and became not just a response but a deterrent.
By the same token if everyone had an easy level of adaptive viewing, it'd change the math for everyone else as well. And as a very compelling response to an entirely separate popular demand, if it was everywhere and normal it'd be a lot harder for even governments to single anyone out over it. Even government resources are not in fact infinite, and it's an important check on power as to whether they can engage in mass sweeps or must devote significant individualized attention to each case.
>iOS12 Shortcuts may enable this in the future, if apps can be tagged by users with custom metadata, which then drives a OS-wide policy engine.
I don't think Shortcuts can really handle this, at least not on a stock device.
>iOS "Screen Time" has arbitrary categories of apps, some of which incorrectly classify social apps (like Flipboard) as "Reading". This need to be customizable based on user priorities.
Screen Time on the other hand might represent a small step in this direction. I'd be excited if it was!
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0: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technolo...