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do you have your approved device to make this transaction, sir?
2026-04-19
I had a thought experiment while on a walk today.
In the experiment, we supposed that everyone had to have a phone, which isn't much off from reality. Everyone had to have an 'approved' device, because none of the big apps, such as banking and restaurant delivery and social apps, wouldn't run on mobile devices running free operating systems.
However, sometimes people who still needed access to those services and applications, no matter how privacy-invading and data-collecting they are, they serve some necessary function in the person's life, so they need access to it. This is where they do the thing they've been thinking about and talking about with friends online for a long time - long encouraged by those friends who have already done the same. "Go out to the store", they'd say, "and get yourself a cheap SlopPhone."
"What's a SlopPhone?" The other person would ask.
"It's the phone where you put all the slop, and leave your open-source and good stuff on your main phone. Your social apps and government nonsense and bank stuff goes on the SlopPhone, while you keep your encrypted messengers, FOSS browsers, tailscale client, and all the fun stuff on your real phone."
So you buy a SlopPhone, and it's the device where all the slop you don't want to use goes. Sometimes you turn it on, a few times every other month or so to make a mobile deposit because the ATM is down, or because Aunt Linda won't shut up about those pictures of the kids she sent you on the SlopSocial app.
Then, when you're done with seeing those pictures you barely cared about and made your deposit on the bank app that can't run on your real phone for no reason other than it is running a 'Non-Sanctioned' version of android, you sigh, and turn the device off. Finally, you put your SlopPhone back in the drawer until the next time you need it for some mundane thing, and you pick up your real phone, which runs something like grapheneOS or lineageOS, and you open your favorite FOSS browser, and resume your day.