This post is a story about CompanyA. It is a force of modern civilization. Its actual background story starts long before this paragraph. But it launched a top-notch modern phone operating system called OpsSys - it is meant for the smartphones of today. Cut to the modern day, it had recently announced changes in its flagship (opensource) operating system. For any developer who wants to develop apps meant for such phones, he/she must now centrally register at some place (online) that CompanyA provides. For simplicity, I will call this, CompanyA’s “developer enrollment programme”. There might be some fees and identity documents that need to be shared as part of the process. However that is hardly the real concern here.
It makes side-loading applications onto the phone impossible. More accurately, OpsSys phones won’t install app from developers who have not enrolled for that programme. Side-loading is a fancy term for installing software on the phone. Until now the app developers on the OpsSys platform could distribute their applications via the OpsSysStore or outside of it. The latter is a fancy name for an online application or software registry or library. OpsSysStore registry is different. It is managed by CompanyA. It is awesome. It is safe.
But OpsSysStore does glorified side-loading. CompanyA won’t admit it is side-loading. (It would be a marketing nightmare).
Disclaimer: The corporation/company mentioned in this post are inspired by real world stories. If they happen to represent something or somebody in the real world, it is not intentional, and it is co-incidental. The same thought must apply to real-world actions or events. The criticisms mentioned in this post are not meant to disparage anyone, anything, or any event, real or fictional. They are only meant as a vehicle to highlight a modern issue.
Side-loading saga - part 1
OpsSys operating system embodied a sense of opensource. That meant that its source code was openly available for people to see and run on their own devices. We can see that developers published applications on the OpsSysStore which mostly embodied the spirit of opensource.
Opensource was born out of the ideals of a very (real-world) popular movement called the “free software movement”. People often misunderstand what the movement actually means. But it embodies the spirit of “software freedom”. But like in the real-world, people in this fictional world also misunderstand “software freedom”. (Not everyone here is tech savvy or a nerd).
Do you recall that “developer enrollment programme”? Well, CompanyA had some crude version of it long before the public announcement of that programme; probably a decade ago. It was aimed at preventing a lot of malicious applications ending up on OpsSysStore. And it did succeed at it too. However, certain developers might have thought that the criteria which CompanyA had set forth to decide which apps were safe or not were quite draconian. Hence, I think this is the reason why alternate application registries were born. It is not the only reason, but one of the reasons.
One such registry became popular - AltOpsSysStore. However CompanyA hated this.
Side-loading saga - part 2
Why would CompanyA hate this? Can you see the drama?
Recall, I mentioned a “developer enrollment programme”. Then in the previous section, I said that there is a crude version of the enrollment programme. Lets focus on the latter and assume CompanyA’s story was paused here. It hasn’t died or anything; I am merely saying nothing eventful has happened yet.
CompanyA may have blurted out that “side-loading” is bad and evil for their consumers. They are not wrong. One shouldn’t download apps from untrusted sources. It could be malware. It could be ransomware. These are real-world digital maladies; they also exist in this fictional world. It is hard to emphasize how frequently unsuspecting people (in both worlds) fall into this trap. The unsuspecting people lose their money as a result.
By saying “to side-load is evil”, CompanyA is trying to protect its consumers. It seems like CompanyA genuinely cares about consumers. However, what is not said, is that the consumer is the money. So if consumers flock away from OpsSys phones - whether the fault is CompanyA’s or otherwise - CompanyA loses money. Ransomware, malware, viruses, are examples of digital maladies. It is not CompanyA’s fault they happen. The relative economics to understand why the consumers are the money is quite complicated. CompanyA will easily deny all of it.
But CompanyA is still noble in a sense. It is fighting a disease rampant in this fictional world. Although the details are intricately twisted by the veil of capitalism, CompanyA is somewhat heroic from this POV. If you, the reader, (fictional/real), paused for a minute to understand why digital maladies exist, I wouldn’t need to write such stories.
DigiCRT - CompanyA’s streaming platform
This is one of the success stories of CompanyA. (Apart from OpsSys operating systems). It is a novel state of the art video streaming service. It allowed creators to upload videos. The consumer of those videos could easily share videos, and comment on the videos on that platform. So it's not strange that CompanyA decided to publish an app for this on OpsSysStore and call it “DigiCRT”.
Initially DigiCRT, allowed for a kind of free-use. Consumers could enjoy content without breaks. The service grew so popular that CompanyA had to procure many datacenters spread over several locations. Consumers loved it; there were more people enjoying the streaming service. The irony is that the same people mostly never understood how computers work. It may seem disconnected, but the consumers in this fictional world did not evolve to understand that a datacenter houses thousands of computers. A datacenter drinks electricity to be operational. There were a few people who wondered how DigiCRT managed to keep the platform ad-free for many years. To them that curiosity alone was probably the 8th wonder (in that fictional universe).
And then, probably a decade later, DigiCRT, decided to monetize their platform. Therefore consumers were slightly miffed when the service decided to show ads. But, ads were actually a good thing!
There was another positive development which took place around the same time. We did see the birth of content creators. It wasn’t like they didn’t exist before. Their corpus on the DigiCRT platform, became more prominent.
DigiCRT/CompanyA would probably deny that the ads were meant to run their datacenters. In fact, their marketing team would probably dodge the issue altogether. They’d eulogize the creator corpus. It is something worth protecting. After all, “the creators” are good people, and they need to be supported in some way for them to manufacture more content on DigiCRT.
And then the monetization measures became worse.
Side-loading saga - part 3
I pity CompanyA. It launched OpsSys operating system that was opensource. Most of the developers, the companies they represented, etc published their apps with that same spirit. However, it didn’t mean that closed source application’s never made it on the platform. Unbeknownst to many, the DigiCRT app on OpsSysStore is “closed source”.
However, that didn’t stop alternative clients (or apps similar to DigiCRT) from being developed. CompanyA’s draconian policies would prevent developer’s publishing apps that competed with their services or pose a violation of that service’s contract called “Terms of Service”. These fictional world people never bothered to read them. (Statistically speaking of course). The language on those legal documents are incredibly dense and arcane. It is a 9th wonder why those DigiCRT content creators of this fictional world never made interesting videos on the legalese of internet services - even DigiCRT. Perhaps the lawyers of that world are asleep. Or is it because the platform’s engagement algorithms don’t incentivize those videos? Let the story not tread there though.
AltOpsSysStore and its cousins become even more popular as a result. And soon, there became apps that compete with DigiCRT's own mobile app. And all that is based on a technicality of anonymity. However, the main feature these rival apps provide is the ability to consume DigiCRT video content sans ads.
Now, CompanyA’s DigiCRT content creators are in despair. Many of them have made their livelihoods on the DigiCRT platform creating awesome video content. They made money through this ad revenue programme that DigiCRT designed. What now? Everyone at CompanyA is still denying the datacenter costs money. Most of the consumers still don’t understand computers, much less data centers. Even now, in this world, there is still not a chapter in its high school social science textbooks titled “datacenters”.
Ironically in this fast-paced fictional world CompanyA announces a “developer enrollment programme”, that prevents benevolent developers apps from being side-loaded. Is it intended to stop the rival DigiCRT apps? Will the veil of CompanyA’s capitalistic ambitions pitch the story of content creators in despair? Or is CompanyA going to pitch that they are really fighting digital scams and maladies. The people of that world may never know the truth.
Freedom
The AltOpsSysStore and cousin communities were quick to raise the alarm. But their efforts are really futile. It's not difficult to see why? There are several chapters not yet featured in their world’s high school social science textbooks. One of them relates to the veil of capitalism. However, that community has elegantly pointed out the violation in software freedoms by CompanyA.
That world is in this peculiar juncture partly because such freedoms exist. People of that world cannot consciously or unconsciously admit that OpsSys operating systems exist because such "software freedoms" exist. However, it has quite subtly pointed out that those freedoms alone don't guarantee a less malicious world - where things like digital scams or digital maladies cease to exist.
The people in this world share a lot of similarities with the people in the real world in regard to how they perceive freedom. And “freedom” is a strange word. It kind of taunts people into thinking about limitless possibilities. But it fundamentally doesn’t solve the “human”; instead it conveniently makes the human forget the fact for a while. The bodies of these people still feel hungry at times; they need food to cure it. They do feel horny, sad, depressed, or even lonely at times. Freedom of any kind isn’t going to solve this. A hungry predator is not going to leave you alone, because you attained freedom. You are not going to be shielded from the damaging effects of a natural calamity such as an earthquake or a large-scale forest fire if you happen to be in its epicenter because you understand or enjoy "freedom".
Oh evil…why?
However, certain people in that world look at the whole affair a little differently. For them, evil was always there. The relative civilization or modernity has only exacerbated the frequency of malicious incidents. Yet nobody can still explain the reason behind that. Perhaps it is a symptom of the digitalization movement or syndrome. Today in this world, even for a bank to facilitate its banking to its customers, there is an OpsSys app on the phone. There are matrimony apps, and, dating apps. There are a ton of pornography websites - some of them have apps that run on the OpsSys phones.
I may have committed a crime of showing the people of that world some doubtful solutions to the "human" issues. But why is it an "issue"? I hope they do understand that...
It is time to conclude this strange story. I don’t know if there is really something of note you would want to take away from this pathetic story. Much less relate it to the real-world. Do ponder about why evil exists in this civilization. Be critical to peer through the veil of capitalism. Do encourage your generations to do it too. I don’t know exactly when or at what appropriate age, one would need this, but, I guess you or others will peacefully figure that out.
I would really like to know how people plan to succeed in stopping digital evil in this world. Are their measures going to be draconian too? I am writing fully aware of this era - this time. It is a time which is many decades after world war 2. Though I have personally not lived during the time; I have come to believe one specific powerful individual hated a specific community of people; the same community of people were thought to be generally good at doing business (capitalists), and the world had to witness a gruesome ethnic cleansing ritual called the holocaust.
