If the state can’t protect its people from the damage that technology and capitalism can do, they have no right to prevent people from protecting themselves.

Fix climate change. Tax billionaires. Address the housing crisis. Then we can talk about taking away privacy in the name of upholding the law.

I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy theory any more than saying Facebook is free because you’re the product. To each their own though!

I guess what I’m getting at is if you buy a phone outright, you have no incentive to keep using it…other than of course wasting your money. But there’s no additional penalty keeping you from leaving the Pixel ecosystem, the financial damage is done.

On a contract, you have a financial penalty for the act of leaving early. So it disincentivizes leaving before 2 years or whatever the length of the contract.

So Google can say to carriers "Hey, we will subsidize our phones for you so you can give them away on contract. You get a captive customer, we get good odds of 2 years of valuable data.

I don’t know if I’m right about any of this, but it explains a lot of questions I have about why Pixels are far and away the best value you can get on contract with any provider, where I am anyway.

I don’t think so. Better to have captive customers on contracts if that is their goal, no?

Maybe if you’re buying them outright?

Where I am, you can get them (with a contract obviously) for 0 dollars up front and like 4 bucks a month for 2 years. And no other similar phone has the same deals. So it could be between Google and the cell provider.

Pixels are dirt cheap because Google is harvesting massive amounts of data from Pixel users, so they give them away.

GrapheneOS lets you have a cheap Pixel without Google knowing everything about you, and those near you.