Spotted this discussing how for many people the best security is from big tech such as Google, compared to sometimes poor security from decentralised or more ‘indie’ tools. It’s a different aspect of Schneier’s ‘feudal security’ - the powerlessness of the serfs who are forced to use large corporate services to get a secure online experience. Thoughts?
Nicely articulated post. In short, it’s saying:
I often try out beautiful indie web projects, but abandon them because they value freedom and decentralisation over security engineering.
For me this boils down to two things:
- There remains competitive advantage in for-profit tech firms keeping a good part of their software engineering for themselves. Classic market differentiation. And open source software doesn’t always find equivalent resources to pursue equivalent excellence. In short, the FLOSS business model remains frustrating.
- It’s easier to pursue security over freedom and decentralisation than pursue security and freedom and decentralisation.
I guess the question then is, will either of these change?