> Take a look at Amazon's DRM -- it doesn't matter if you as a consumer wake up one day and realize that there are negative consequences to being unable to port your library to any other devices. You still can't do it.
Because almost no one actually cares that you can't port your library to any other devices, Amazon's DRM is well known by now and they certainly don't mislead customers into thinking their books are DRM-free nor do they advertise library portability as a feature. The mechanism by which consumers "get that ability back" is by buying DRM free books if they're sick of DRM, but that hasn't and doesn't happen for most consumers even though they're completely free to do so.
Most people are content with Amazon DRM, and when they aren't, any company that sells DRM-free books will make a killing. But no one makes a lot of money from DRM-free books because there is no widespread demand for it. It's ridiculous to suggest that consumers have been robbed of their ability to influence the market, they have always held all the cards. Companies only make money if consumers want what they make, and boy do they want it.
If you have reason to believe Amazon is somehow preventing consumers from buying DRM-free books, I'd be happy to hear it. The kind of failures that markets can't solve themselves are typically ones of deception and coercion, show me that.
> None of that is stuff that consumers on their own would prioritize, but they're market conditions that benefit everyone tremendously.
Says you. I'll let consumers decide what's important and what market conditions are beneficial to them, thank you.
> either people don't understand security/access at all and we shouldn't treat any of their purchasing decisions on this with reverence, or people are making a security decision not to trust phone manufactures when they uncheck that box, and we shouldn't shame them for having a different risk model than us.
People don't need to understand security/access at all for their purchasing decisions to be legitimate. Do you need to be an expert in plumbing to know that you need a plumber? Do you need plumber skills to figure out that the wet & broken mess you've made by yourself suggests you need expert help? You can't conflate a consumer's knowledge of security risk with a consumer's knowledge of security itself. Security risks & benefits are really obvious: consumers notice when they or people they know get hacked & phished. They notice when their computer slows down to a crawl and starts injecting garbage into their screen. They especially notice when iPhones & Chromebooks have none of these problems.
Knowing if a non-vetted program is safe to bypass regular security checkpoints? Consumers consistently and repeatedly fail that test almost every time they're given the opportunity.
> How do you know that normal users don't just have a separate threat model than you and that they're willing to uncheck that box because they're consciously deciding to tolerate a greater rate of infection/malware than you find acceptable?
I know because they switch to a more secure & locked down platform wherever they can. I know because they loudly complain that Android is full of malware and unvetted trash and then proceed to buy an iPhone. I know because the anger& confusion they lash out with when they fuck up their own security clearly indicate that they'd rather never deal with that ever again. The idea that most consumers were happy with the previously awful state of security is totally absurd when they fled those platforms en masse the first chance they could get.