[hephaes7us]

In other areas of life, people self-select at their own risk. You can diagnose medical issues yourself, buy power tools you don't know how to use safely, and invest in assets that you don't understand.

All other things being equal, we should try to protect people. But we shouldn't force everyone to make the choices that are best for the people with the least comprehension of what they're doing.

[GabrielHawk]

Have you ever seen government officials talk about tech? I think you'd have to be naive to buy the narrative that they're making such a large policy decision for our security.

Of the few people using rooted phones to begin with, there's even fewer that don't know what they're doing.

Much more likely is this is a decision to get in line with the well documented and rapidly spreading surveillance laws of the past few years.

> But we shouldn't force everyone to make the choices that are best for the people with the least comprehension of what they're doing.

You are acting like it's easy to accidentally root your phone

[hephaes7us]

It's not that I believe it, it's that that would be the only legitimate justification, and I'm don't suggesting even _that_ doesn't hold water.

[sneak]

You can’t freely sell devices to let others self-diagnose medical issues, so this part of your analogy doesn’t hold up in the case of phone sales.

We also limit investing in certain types of investments to so-called “accredited investors” which is just legal jargon for “millionaires”.

I don’t think the point you are trying to make about letting people own-goal is as strong as you think it is. (I would have gone with “roulette is legal”, which is a better one that the investment one, as the accredited investor rule is in all 50 states.)

[hephaes7us]

I'm not certain what you're advocating for here?

If you are interested in the public good, I think it is pretty clear that we should ban roulette overnight since it has a negative expected value for everyone but the casino. On the other hand (still presuming you're interested in the public good), I think you have to consider very carefully whether it's good or bad to lock people out of investments or to restrict people's access to health care.