Mediaboss Marketing

What a great formula for a grift: Find some gullible idiots who wish to free themselves of the tyranny of Big Tech, and get them to use your platform or buy your equipment. For the last year, various MAGA types have tried to set up alternatives to Twittermost notably the clown shows of Parler last year and Gettr this year. And now we have the advent of the Freedom Phone, which promises to be Completely. Uncensored. and comes pre-loaded with apps that freedom-lovers love to love, such as Parler and Rumble.

The device has been criticized for failing to deliver on the promise of breaking its users free of Big Tech. In fact, the phone offers very little by way of freedom except freeing you of an excess $500 thats been weighing down your pockets. The Freedom Phone itself is a clunky product designed to fleece nave consumers who dont understand how they are being exploited and productized by the tech industry (for a primer on this subject be sure to watch Netflixs The Social Dilemma).

One of the criticisms of the device is that contrary to its makers assertions, its actually just running Android. But this criticism is either misguided or offered in bad faith. Its true that this device is running a flavor of the Android operating system called LineageOS. Yet that in and of itself doesnt say anything about whether the device frees you from your Googlian overlords. Yes, Android is owned by Google, but once you grab an open source versionas LineageOS isand start tinkering, you can build pretty much anything you want and Google doesnt get to monitor you or collect your data just because your phone is running Android.

To put it another way: Android is a big toolbox that allows developers to build all sorts of software; it doesnt say anything, either good or bad, about the Freedom Phone that its running Android. Indeedif you plan on making a smartphone, thats almost your only option.

So no, the problem with the Freedom Phone isnt its OS. Rather, the problem is that it exists in an ecosystem where the users options for having a useful device without connecting it to services that deprive it of its freedom are exceedingly small.

Still, say you decide to buy one. Congratulations, youre the proud owner of a new Freedom Phone, free from Googles intrusive monitoring and censorship. But its also free of most of the reasons youd bother to own a phone and keep it charged and connected to the internet in the first place. You want email? You want to have your phone guide you to your next insurrection-planning meeting? You want a calendar to put that meeting on? You want a contact list that is shared with your computer? You want to make a handy shopping list (of groceries or, say, materials for protest signs and Molotov cocktails)? You want to do some research on just how bad critical race theory is? The minute you try, youll notice that your phone simply isnt as useful as it would be if it were connected to some of the services Big Tech provides. If you want to do those things, youve got to start installing Gmail and Facebook and the other apps that, well, defeat the purpose of having such a device.

You seethe phone isnt the problem. In fact, you can turn any Android phone into a freedom phone by signing out of your Gmail account, turning off your location sharing, and then only using the apps that swear on their mothers graves never to track you (and they might be lying).

All snickering aside, if the Freedom Phone were better executed, and perhaps marketed less to the right wing than to those with a general, both-sides-of-the-aisle concern about the growing social and political dominance of the tech giants, it might conceivably be a pretty resounding shot across the bow of smartphone retailers. After all, this is a device thats as disengaged from the primary culprits of digital dictatorship as it can be while still being minimally useful.

If the makers of the Freedom Phonegenuinely cared about freedom, they would not be focusing just on the right, but trying to tap into the widespread desire to use technology that doesnt exploit us or take advantage of our proclivity to become addicted to outrage. This is an admirable sentiment. If there really is a market for such a thing, perhaps someone of better faith and more competence can come and service this market. For now, though, the Freedom Phone is a gimmick being sold to people who dont know any better, and its purpose is not to reduce political anger but to put it front and center.

All that said, if youre going to buy a Freedom Phone, please tell them I sent you so that I can get a commission!

Go here to see the original:
The Freedom Phone Is a Cynical Gimmick - The Bulwark