The MAGA-targeted “Freedom Phone” has a breathtaking amount of red flags Nobody elected Mark [Zuckerberg] or Jack [Dorsey] to be the arbiters of truth in America," declares a man over a chorus of triumphant horns. "Yet they still thought it was OK to ban a sitting president from their platforms. If they censor the president, they'll censor anyone. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg censored MLK or Abraham Lincoln. The course of history would have been altered forever!" That's the sales pitch for the "Freedom Phone," a $500 smartphone aimed at the MAGA crowd. Just as we saw with Gab, Parler, and Voat, the Freedom Phone is the latest attempt to build an alternate tech platform for right-wingers, but this time with a smartphone instead of social media. When the phone was announced back in March, its tagline was "a phone made for conservatives, by conservatives." The device is being hawked by Erik Finman, the self-described "world's youngest bitcoin millionaire." The phone is supposed to ship in August. The Freedom Phone's feature set is about what you would expect. The company (which seems to also be called "Freedom Phone") claims to have made an "uncensorable app store" that won't ban Gab and Parler the way Google and Apple did. "FreedomOS" is a "free-speech first" operating system that the company claims to have developed, and it says the hardware is "comparable to the best smartphones on the market." Based on the information that Freedom Phone has released so far, almost none of that seems to be true. The phone has so many red flags that it's difficult to know where to start. The website lists almost no information about the device itself. There's the name, a picture, and a price, but there's no spec sheet of any kind. This is a $500 phone, and its website gives you no indication of what you're actually buying. The front page of the website looks normal, but every button that should say something like "learn more" and link to more information instead says, "Buy it now." There are 10 "buy it now" links placed all over the front of the website—and almost no important information about the phone. Plenty of manufacturers publish incomplete teaser pages for upcoming phones, but they don't collect the full retail price from customers without providing detailed spec information first. Finman talked to The Daily Beast about the phone and admitted that his supposedly patriotic device was manufactured by Umidigi, a Chinese tech company. Our best guess is that the phone is a rebranded Umidigi A9 Pro, which you can buy for about $120. Without a spec list, which just about every other smartphone manufacturer on Earth provides, we're left with the impression that the hardware doesn't match the price tag. Anyone buying a Freedom Phone is basically doing it sight unseen. You'd better really trust this upstart phone manufacturer because if you don't like what you receive, you're out of luck. The FAQ states, "If the device is already opened, we do not offer returns at this time." Other manufacturers stand behind their products. More at the link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...phone-has-a-breathtaking-amount-of-red-flags/
App ideas for Freedom Phone. You "adopt" a ghetto child, but instead of sending him/her money, your money goes to the NRA and the legal defense fund for January 6th insurgents. Then you send the child selfies of yourself engaging in acts of gluttony and excess, and the child sends you e-mails describing how you've destroyed their hopes and dreams. A calculator that tallies up the gas you burn going to Wal-Mart, Cracker Barrel, and Chik Fil A, and what you spend there, and figures out how many school lunches/childhood vaccinations/textbooks that could buy. Similar to the ghetto kid one, but you adopt a bald eagle, and watch it die of pollution. Links to a gas burning calculator like the Wal-Mart one so you know how much you contributed to the death of your eagle. No limit, kill as many eagles as you want. An augmented reality game like Pokemon Go that lets you re-kill the victims of spree killings at the real locations. Encourages travel, and improves those geography skills. Another augmented reality one. A history whitewasher. Uses shape/facial recognition to call up the fairy tale version of history for statues, plaques, paintings, books, faces on money, battlefields, the app has 'em all. The conscience nullifier. Goes through your photos and videos, identifies all the crimes and moral assholery you do, and calls up Bible passages, and theologian ramblings to tell you it's okay. Most of the theologian shit? From the middle ages. Natch. The rest are from Pat Robertson and Dennis Prager. The argument winner. One where you say or type in the awful authoritarian thing you want to do, then similar to the conscience nullifier, it tells you how you're not fascist, then a thesaurus spits out language suggestions of how to word it so it sounds less fascist to stupid people. If you run into a smart person it doesn't work on, you're connected to an army to Tamars to blackmail and bully the person into silence. Then the app tells you that's not fascist.
A diet app that notifies you every time a vegan enjoys a meatless meal, so you remember to eat twice as much meat just so stick it to them. Another diet app that reminds you to eat a bunch of bacon every time Muslims are supposed to pray. Fitness tracker that includes a list of which exercises have ever been done by communists, so you can avoid doing them. And then we just sit back and wait for heart attacks to do the rest.
Is trump going to pitch for this thing? Because if he is I might want to invest. Yes, it is a terribly obvious grift to sell you a shitty phone marketed with a bunch of apps you can easily get with any smartphone as long as you can get to a site that is not owned by apple or google. It is not like you have to go through their stores, but it is just so easy for the idiots that they cannot figure out how not to. I am actually mostly OK with fleecing the rubes who are are all about being gullible and stupid. That is the point of being MAGA. They are not just stupid, but they actually run away from any truth towards the obvious grift because falling for the grift makes you one of the group. I am at the point where my ethics and morality have ended. If I was not so worried about actually getting scammed out of my investment money by a Trump who will steal both the idiot and investor money I would be investing in some of this. I do not have the money or connections for such a wide level marketing campaign to do it myself. I would need a GOP insider to get to the MAGAt customer list and I am pretty sure my idea would be stolen by one of them before I could see profit from my investment because that is what their system consists of. However, if I could market a Trump phone, or get a share of that shit, I would do that over any crypto scam any day. I would not have to feel guilty of stealing money from the victims at all. There is no ethical or moral downside to stealing from the MAGAts.
They forgot to mention the part where the CCP can backdoor into your phone and sell your data to the FBI. For a bunch of commies, the CCP sure know how to make a profit!
CCP: Hey FBI, you have a bunch of traitors in your country willingly giving us info, and it concerns us enough we're telling you. Grease our palms just a little, and we'll be concerned enough to give you the info!
The best part was the tweet where the Freedom Phone guy his all the replies pointing out the security flaws he was setting his consumers up with
It's all one big grift. But they tell you you can hate the people you want to hate, so it has a lot of converts.
Y'know what I like about the Ferengi? They put the Rules Of Acquisition right out there for anybody to read. They're 100% honest about being completely full of shit. Conservatives can never admit what they are, they have to wrap it all in religious piety, and flag waving patriotism, and this creepy thing of "everyone's out to fuck your white daughter". And they never drop the lie, every generation has to figure this shit out all over again. It's most tiresome.
How about the "Hey Siri! I'm being pulled over by the Capitol Riot Task Force" app that instantly deletes your Facebook, Twitter and Parler profiles and wires bail money from your bank to a predesignated party... hopefully, not a friend who also participated in the insurrection. That one actually sounds pretty cool.
