It is extremely hard to live without the internet - it's almost impossible - everything from your bank to your doctor to restaurants to the barber that wants to be paid by Venmo. Taking away your parent's internet connection is even harder than taking away their driver license. (And also more isolating.)
There is no law enforcement; there's no consequence for scammers; there's no technology stack that is safe for the less able. It's a brutal Wild West where the weakest are attacked without recourse, flooded with misinformation and lies, and targeted by significant financial scams.
We also don't trust old people to live on their own, that doesn't mean we force every adult into dormitories.
Hint: it does not. Look around the play store, it's 80% malware and scams.
Why is this the case? Because it has to be or Google goes bankrupt. Google is an inherently parasidic company. They make their money off of advertisement, scams, and conjobs. The more shit the digital world is for you, the better for them. You will always have an adversarial relationship with Google.
They don't want ads that don't lie. They don't want apps that are honest. They don't want to limit notifications. They don't want to get rid of email spam.
The reason Apple devices are so much more pleasant for everyday use and there's so much less scams and adware isn't because Apple is a saint. Its because ultimately Apple doesn't give much of a fuck if they screw over con artist, because that's not the thing keeping them from bankruptcy.
Having a license doesn't mean you are restricted in where you can go unless we start considering the fringes like provisional (learners') permits complete with curfew. Therefore, your example doesn't fit. But OP's does, because it is equivalent to asking "do you think your refrigerator should refuse to cool items manufactured by an entity it doesn't like... to Keep You Safe(tm)?" Maybe you buy from non-verified cottage industry workers at the local farmers market. People who maybe didn't upload their PII and licenses to the refrigerator manufacturer, so it refuses to operate until you remove the offending item. Out of the utmost respect for your safety, of course.
Imagine if Charter Communications/Spectrum decided to block you from using their service and modem/routers from accessing any media created by Universal (owned by their rival, Comcast). It doesn't really have anything to do with safety, but they could pearl clutch and blame it on some risqué content that Universal releases via its imprints.
Google has chosen the path of duping their customers by selling them to the highest bidder. That's their business model across the board.
Apple has chosen to sell devices at a significant markup with the inherent agreement that they won't sell their customer to the highest bidder. After building trust in that arena for years, it wouldn't take much to destroy that credibility. So far, they know this. I'm getting concerned about them starting to plug ads into their core applications, so only time will tell if they get MBA'd to shit.
I've helped elderly family members and non-techie ones who barely know how to open a facebook account - none of them had "malware apps" installed. Their problems were mostly these:
- Websites asking for notification permission just to spam with unrelated malware or porn notifications
- Their calendars being filled with events that are nothing but links to porn or gambling sites, leading to constant notifications
- Apps that don't work yet are filled with ads - blood pressure meter on your phone, sugar level measurements, step trackers - filled with ads and trying to get 1000$ purchases
- An app actually being a launcher filling your screen with ads.
- Hell, even I, as someone who has deep intimate knowledge of Google Play Billing, got scammed by an app when upgrading from their weekly to their monthly offer, with them now charging both.
Google can intervene at any point here, they have reviewers, they control the store, they control the browser, hell, they basically control the device. And they have rules and policies for it, but it's convenient for them to ignore it. They have their cash cows and will fight tooth and nail to protect them as long as it makes them profit.
I was able to remote in and close it. Then I noticed the message saying uBlock Origin had been disabled in Chrome (because Google broke ad blocking).
Thanks Google.
People have been giving Apple shit forever for not supporting this "web standard" in Safari, but it's 99% used nefariously for this exact purpose. Websites should not be able to send push notifications.
I do not want websites to have equal capabilities to apps. Installing an app on my device is a very purposeful decision I make that I only do if I'm trusting it and willing to manage its permissions. Visiting a website is not.