BS. “Tech” as described here says no for one reason and one reason only. It will lose them money. Sometimes it will lose money over the short term. Other times over the long run.
That’s the only reason “tech” says no.
Individuals may say no for some of the reasons mentioned. But this article is basically describing companies and yes, they say yes if they think they will make money and no if they will lose money.
And this isn’t even a bad thing. Companies as a legal fiction exist for the purpose of making money.
What is a bad thing is people thinking that companies (especially public for profit ones) act on any basis other than whether they will make money or not.
Which is why this article is an f’ing disaster and naive beyond the extreme.
Back at university, one of my lecturers had a story about having to convince a company to cancel a contract they'd signed with a different lecturer, call them Bob, because the software Bob had agreed to write had provably impossible performance characteristics.
I forget the details, I think it was not quite as bad as "O(1) sorting for any length list" (not even 100% sure they actually told us the specifics) but it was something along those lines.
Are Apple, Meta, and Signal saying “no” to the UK’s demand for secure-to-GCHQ backdoors in E2E purely to defend their margins? Of course not; they’re saying “the laws of mathematics trump the laws of the United Kingdom”. Apple isn’t promising to pull iMessage (a huge part of their platform lock-in!) from the UK because they want to avoid the expense of complying with this law. Even a cynic would say that they’d love to comply, if only there was a way.
That’s the only reason “tech” says no.
Individuals may say no for some of the reasons mentioned. But this article is basically describing companies and yes, they say yes if they think they will make money and no if they will lose money.
And this isn’t even a bad thing. Companies as a legal fiction exist for the purpose of making money.
What is a bad thing is people thinking that companies (especially public for profit ones) act on any basis other than whether they will make money or not.
Which is why this article is an f’ing disaster and naive beyond the extreme.