> What about when your smartphone is required to verify your identity so you can work / earn a paycheck? What about when it's required in order for you to engage in commerce?
In some cases, it already is.
We're already far on the path you described, and there is no choice to make on it, not for individuals. To stop this, we need to somehow make these technologies socially unacceptable. We need to walk back on cybersecurity quite a bit, and it starts with population-wide understanding that there is such thing as too much security, especially when the questions of who is being secured and who is the threat remain conveniently unanswered.
The US is not nearly as far down that path as is, for example, China. But two forces are at play here: 1. Near-term concern: F-Droid is getting too popular for Google's comfort and Android revenue ambitions 2. Longer term goal: Control. Much of Chinas's social credit scoring is mediated by their phones. Not an issue yet here in the US but assuredly, if not explicitly on the current's government's list of aspirations. A completely managed device with no freedoms (like f-Droid et al,) is antithetical to a more restricted (managed) device.
> Near-term concern: F-Droid is getting too popular for Google's comfort and Android revenue ambitions
That's good to hear.
I'm entirely on F-Droid, with no Google account.
Well put. Most SWEs on this very site probably require a smartphone for id verification for work. Acting like that is a personal choice is not useful