Those ordinary people, who may not realize it even, depend on us to push back hard.
Nobody else will. Few are qualified even.
It is strange to be living in a time where law, government is so damn unaware and apparently, uncaring about these things.
Many of us really smart geeks thinks Stallman is the way. If we can't see the source code of every single thing we have, we don't have it. Free or die!
Many others of us think that it's more important privacy is respected. Smooth user experiences are more important than perfect freedom of code. So Apple is the way. You may not know the code on your device, but at least it isn't being sold to the world.
And still others think the Google/Facebook way is right. They provide great services to users! Yes they make money selling private data, but their free tools are invaluable to our life.
With such a divided view among the "tech elite", how could we really stop anything?
Agree that federal law is really the only hope for this kind of stuff, but that is rather hard to do for many reasons.
This is not about "the one, right way" at all.
It is all about what makes good sense for humans and that it continues over a longer period of time.
And many of these things are not exclusive.
Smooth does not have to mean closed.
Free with ADS does not have to also mean no privacy.
Etc...
Open, in the Stallman sense, is not always important. Open data vs open code, and machines, who owns, what is actually a rental, etc... can be resolved to something more livable without being draconian, or useless.
The nice thing about tech is that it's possible for us to push back by hacking on stuff and opening it up rather than resorting to legislative tools, and this can have the same effect of forcing those manufacturers hand but without the artificiality of law.
By going this route, they almost certainly make more money.
Hacker news users are not normal users.