this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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"Ownership" totally does mean it's yours and you can do whatever you want with it.
That means you can do it, not that you should, nor that what you do won't have consequences.
It just means your phone won't stop you from downloading an unapproved app just like a gun won't stop you from loading an unapproved bullet.
It means your gun has a safety mechanism you can unlock to shoot, as does your phone to download "unverified" apps.
It means you can sell either freely to someone else without it becoming bricked or the new owner losing any rights (lookin' at you, Tesla cars).
It means defaulting on the loan will require the physical reposession of your phone or gun, and that neither will magically lock you out of using it using telemetry.
It means anyone with the right knowledge and tools can fix your phone and it'll work, just like your gun.
It means your phone works for you, and not for someone else - just like your gun.
Your phone is a tool. Just like your gun. It can be used for good - and for bad.
What you do with it is up to you, and not up to it or its manufacturer.
It means you can shoot people with your gun, just as you can extort and blackmail people with your phone. Nothing, other than your own morality, the morals of society and therule of law are preventing you from doing bad things. Certainly not the will of the manufacturer.
Any forensic inquiry into a phone on a crime scene would be like that of a gun.
Any taking of your phone from your home or person would require a warrant - like with a gun.
Any inquiry into your phone's contents and qualities should require outside tools - like a similar inquiry into your gun.
Your phone won't have a special police-only history of what you've used it for - like your gun.
Your phone won't report what you've been doing with it to 3rd parties without your consent - like won't your gun.
And so on.
As a non-american, using a gun as your comparison object is just so bizarre (and unrelatable).
Ownership of a phone doesn’t mean that the makers of said phone have to give you the source code and build in ways for you to be able to do things they don’t want.
Your own the device that does what it was advertised as. That’s it.
"A phone's schematics are publically available, like those of a gun"
I can assure you, I've written no such thing in my original reply.