I recently learned about the Jolla Phone and that got me pretty excited. I am very eager to part my ways with anything big-tech related and the idea of entirely European Linux-based phone sounds great. However, I have some… concerns.
One concern is that Jolla seems to be pushing towards AI and that does not sit well with me. Quoting from the company’s About page:
we are transforming the mobile OS landscape into the human-centric AI era (…) Our name, meaning “small dinghy” in Finnish, symbolizes our agility as we continue to lead innovation in mobile OS and AI. (…) . With over a decade of expertise, Sailfish OS is now enhanced for AI-driven applications
What does that mean in practice for Sailfish OS and Jolla Phone users? What AI features are there currently (or planned?) and can they be opted out? I don’t want to have AI nonsense installed on my phone.
The second concern is about this specific forum. For some reason, registration requires providing full name and date of birth. Normally this would be suspicious for any forum, but when asked by a company that claims to focus on privacy it just feels absurd. Not sure whether anyone from Jolla is actually reading the forums, but I would very much want to hear the motivation for requesting this kind of personal data for the purposes of creating an account on the forums.
Regarding IA, I am not aware of any kind of IA that would be integrated or planned to be into SFOS.
There is Jolla Mind2, a local tiny computer embedding a local, private IA, but that’s a separate project, I believe. I have the feeling (personal feeling based on few vague information randomly grabbed here and there), that Jolla people are very busy with the new J2 phone. So not sure they focus 100% on IA atm.
Regarding name and address to register on the forum, I didn’t remember it was asked. The question is valid to be discussed/answered, IMHO.
This refers to the Jolla Mind2, a separate project, and not to Sailfish OS for smartphones.
None at the moment. As I am not a Jolla employee, I cannot comment on planned features, but I assume the development team is already quite busy with other projects.
There are no AI features integrated into Sailfish OS at the moment.
I don’t remember providing that information when I registered, only my username and email address. That may have changed since then, but I see in my profile preferences that the full name is listed as optional.
This refers to the Jolla Mind2, a separate project, and not to Sailfish OS for smartphones.
Does that mean that Mind2 also runs on Sailfish OS and it is simply that computer that is enhanced with AI?
There are no AI features integrated into Sailfish OS at the moment.
While I trust your experience here, I do stress that the official website claims otherwise.
don’t bother, just give random data
Obviously, I have. Will everyone do? I speculate not, so the company inevitably ends up collecting more personal information than it should. Again, not a good move when privacy is one of, in not the crucial selling point.
Nos very sure if privacy is not giving data or data not being exploited… Wide question.
Anyway, when we order a phone or payed for a license, we give some information.
If I remember correctly, the Mind2 runs on Sailfish Core, which might share some low-level components with Sailfish OS, but it is a separate operating system.
All I see on the website is marketing jargon. I’ve never seen anything resembling AI features (whatever that means) in Sailfish OS, so I don’t really know what we are talking about exactly.
Don’t know if real name and birthday is a mandatory data field because I’ve got this account since 6 years and was never asked for my birthday and real name.
Old login into this forum and also Jolla shop still works as always. Tested right now.
Privacy means to know what you sing up for and chose yourself if you want to or not. And from the company/service side, to describe what data you collect and how you use them. Not to hide in a cave or cut off from the world.
That aside, as far as I know no one from Jolla will ask you to confirm with an ID if your name is really “John Doe” and you were born in 1967.
This is probably some GDPR requirement that they had to use and picked this template for the forum.
Paying for a device, a license and/or a subscription means that the necessary details are administered by Shopify, a Canadian company that does the administration for many small enterprises. Shopify has to comply with European GDPR.
Fairphone now also makes use of Shopify’s service.
The difference is what data they collect, how much, and what they are doing with it. While I find it also strange what the real name is for, even if the account is also used for device registration for the device licensing, it is one thing to collect that data and another to collect every possible metadata to create huge profiles on you to sell those to advertisers.
I think the reason is that the forum is not separate from the business. They sell mobile phones and software licences to registered users, and this customer account allows to access a forum. They could have made a forum entirely separate so anyone could register on the forum, but that’s not the case right now.
