A case aginst forced updates

Tiraon
2025-06-03T16:16:42Z

I am arguing here in regards to personally owned hw.

I personally think that the arguments in recent years were very heavily skewed in support of this and I would like to propose here counterarguments that I don't feel are considered enough are when I see this come up in various places. Or at least not said enough.

First and foremost what forcibly pushing updates actually means is the developer being given blank check to change the functionality of your device in any way they please. In case of various locked down hw such as smart things, game consoles, tvs, ereaders or others there is often not even a choice to use different sw because it is artificially blocked. Only real check against negative effects of this is legislation and potential of enough public outrage to impact future sales. From the state of various mainstream sw products it can be seen how well it works.

It creates a culture where pushing anti features is significantly easier and tech literacy is significantly harder to attain if only as a secondary effect of less transparent, more obtuse and more complicated systems, frequently with no actual need for more complexity which is not rooted in desire to increase monetization.

It also means it is harder as a user to guard against faulty updates.

Normalization of this behavior also means that any can do this with no pushback because it is the fabled default, the one where fundamental flaws are brushed aside while alternatives are rejected over cosmetic problems.
There could be argument meant for critical parts of critical sw such as os or browser, but if so it should be made individually and not be implicit. There is usually no meaningful individual control over feature updates, not just security ones. I also don't think forced updates for games on Steam for example can be argued to be something that benefits security.

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