Anatomy of a MAGA scam

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How about if I told you that there is a totally uncensored and 100% secure phone that you can buy that not only would stick it to those elites of Silicon Valley, but it would also help support good old freedom and democracy? American?

Alright, damn it, I’d say sign me up! Give me 10 Freedom phones and a side of make shit awesome again.

But first, let’s see what we’re getting into. I love Freedom © as much as anyone else, but I’m also a tech journalist. And that means I can tell you how awesome it is!

A picture of a really crappy phone

Here is the phone of the tough guy Freedom!

Specifications:

  • CPU: connects directly to James Woods brain via the cloud
  • Screen: 4K is for liberals and nerds
  • Operating System: Whichever cheapest Android clone we could crush together, it was
  • RAM: No thanks, I prefer Ford trucks.
  • Drums: Google says it’s a Metallica song but this device only plays Kid Rock
  • Ports: You’re an idiot, you don’t care. (Seriously, there is NO information on the site)

Okay, these are not the real specs. I mean, they could be. Nobody knows.

There is a website. But hey, it’s boring. It conjures up the kind of images you would imagine if MyPillow had a news show on OANN at the coveted 2 a.m. time slot and Freedom Phone bought 20 minutes of advertising time.

Do you like freedom? Did you know that Osama, oops, I mean Obama uses phones from American companies like Google and Apple? Are you a liberal, communist, America hating piece of shit like Obama? No? So why are you using the same phone as some liberal, communist, hating America shit?

In all sincerity : On a scale of one at the work of Charles Ponzi, I would rate Freedom Phone the Joe Exotic’s run for governor of smartphone scams.

Here’s a thread from Freedom Phone owner Erik Finman:

In announcing the phone, Finman said it was “complete with its own App Store and uncensored privacy features.” It sets the barker and carnival barker tone Finman adopted for this particular scam (more on Finman later, him and the media a few years back).

Words like “uncensored,” in all caps above, are meaningless buzzwords used to attract conservatives who know little or nothing about technology.

But we know about smart phones here at TNW. Our Plugged sub-brand boasts some of the best reviews in the business. And we’ve looked at hundreds (if not thousands) of smart phones over the years. So trust me when I tell you it’s always a bad sign when a manufacturer does not disclose technical specifications.

What we do know is that Finman’s phone is cobbled together from Chinese parts and has a hodge-podge operating system. That’s not to say it sucks, but there’s definitely a reason it won’t share any of the actual tech specs. And that’s almost certainly because this phone has crappy hardware and a crappy operating system.

Plus, there is nothing quite like uncensored. Finman takes advantage of ignorance. Buying a Freedom Phone will not unblock you from Facebook or allow you to speak your truth about vaccines on Twitter.

All this phone can do is create an in-house app store that allows people who can’t sell their apps on other app stores, like Alex Jones, to access the database. users. In other words: you pay $ 500 for a device using an operating system and an app store that is almost guaranteed to fail.

The app stores take a certain percentage of the revenue to facilitate transparent transactions. In this case, there will be virtually no income for anyone participating in the Finman scam. Freedom Phone only needs to sell a few hundred thousand units for Finman to make another million.

But let’s say you’re in an online ecosystem with 500,000 other users. You are all like-minded, MAGA loving Americans who just want to get your news from the right-wing media and socialize with like-minded people.

No offense, but who the hell wants to develop an app with a 100% saturation cap of 500,000 users? Billions of people play crazy puzzle games on Facebook, and even a single hit in the Apple Store has a million or more users in a single day.

Even among Trump supporters, there is only a very small percentage of people who would so happily seek such an island experience.

Worse yet, purchasing this phone won’t give you more access to right-wing voices than any other phone right now. Because it’s not your phone, operating system, browser, or app store that’s censoring them.

They are not censored. They are distorted. And a smart phone is not a platform.

So when the Daily Stormer is removed because no one is hosting it, it means it is down, regardless of your phone’s personal policy. When Trump gets kicked out of Facebook and Twitter and fails to start his own successful social media network despite no one trying to stop him, that’s not censorship. A Freedom Phone cannot connect you to something that does not exist.

Ultimately, this is a $ 500 “legal” swindle. Finman sells you a phone. As long as it works, he will have held the end of his contract. But you almost certainly get a crappy phone with a barely functioning operating system that doesn’t “decensify” absolutely nothing.

Here’s the worst: Erik Finman knows exactly what he’s doing. I said we were going to join him, we are going.

I started covering the “Teenage Bitcoin Millionaire” in 2018. I was in love with his entrepreneurial spirit, and as someone who went through a pretty big punk rock phase in their late teens, I saw myself a little in Erik’s impetuosity.

An Instagram post by Erik Finman, lying on a mattress holding a gun, surrounded by cash.

Finman and I have spoken several times, but if I remember correctly I only wrote two stories about him. For a few years he and I discussed data – I’ve always argued that we should be paid for our data – and other topics such as the education system, cryptocurrency, and satellites.

a screenshot of a deleted tweet