Agreed, most people I have asked also think the switch is an additional safety feature. I can see that it is helpful to isolate a device and so can make using all manner of devices safer, but it requires that you know what the switch does and when and why you would switch it so this kind of excludes babies and toddlers.

My wife is from North America and common knowledge there is that wall sockets are just incredibly dangerous at all times. The UK style plug is quite different.

Have you tried to stick anything metal into one of these plugs? It is fairly todler proof. I think a 7 year old has the dexterity to defeat it but certainly not a baby.

Manufacturers sell the wall sockets in both switched and unswitched versions so I would say the switch is just there for convenience of the user.

It seems that maybe in the 60s having a switch on the wall was very useful because most electrical devices would have been designed to be switched on or off from its mains power connection (like lamps, hairdryers, vacuum cleaners, electric whisk, etc). I assume the standard was to have a switch as this gave a little extra functionality. Today however many electrical devices have digital electronics that don’t expect to be power cycled and so a switch is not really a feature but an inconvenience (think smart bulb, or Apple TV).

How does the switch protect children?

Thank you for the post, I do like reading what experts have to say about our digital privacy. I don’t like that many of these articles/discussions focus on specific choices that a user can make to gain more privacy. Please can we stop pretending that there is any alternative to WhatsApp. The network effect is why we use their platform not for any other reason. Its like advising someone to speak Fuzhou instead of Mandarin when in China, its not that its wrong to do so just that it is poor advice, or at the very least assumes that your priority is to speak Fuzhou over actually communicating with other people. The author says as much themselves: “Collective problems need collective solutions.” This is great! But shortly after we read: “Instead of using WhatsApp, use Signal.” groan + face-palm. I want to be positive and reiterate that I am happy that this is being debated at all.

I selfhost my own email and you are absolutely correct it is musch easier to receive than to send. I use a 3rd party to send all my outgoing mail on my behalf.

I guess this is the endgame for tracking every user in the world but they added “universal basic income” in the title so that its not so obvious what they are up to?

This sentiment would only apply to fictional people in fairytales. I.e. criminals break laws because they are themselves bad and good honest people would never require being imprisoned in the first place. In this hypothetical good/evil then maximum punishment for the evil makes sense. The problem is that real people are more complex than that and so the punishment you are proposing is not proportional to the crimes committed. I know its easier to not have to consider all the variables in every case and just proclaim “to hell with them all!” and call it a day but I hope that we are all not so desperate that we can’t take the time to think about the issues and make a balanced (but more complex) opinion.

Why is it expected that social media companies will find a solution for this? Political discussions are part of the democratic process so why would any of the big social networks (who are effectively advertising companies) have an incentive to foster the fair and open exchange of ideas and information?