Corporations are Gunning for your Lock Screen

Recent news has come from Apple concerning an ad company here in the US. Many costumers are alarmed with the news that your lock screen could be the next battleground for your eyes.

No longer merely satisfied with forcing advertising on us in every other part of life, companies are now planning to release apps and services that will show "information" on our phone lock screen. As the lock screen is now at the center of iOS 16, that’s not a great development if it goes anywhere.

Furthermore, if we weren’t already disturbed enough with alerts and notifications, we may never be able to escape them when using certain games or apps!

Attention economy

Phone users are in the center of the attention economy and the battle is heating up.

Companies like Glance will be releasing an Android app soon that will serve curated content on Android lock screens. It is already present on over 400 million smartphones in Asia and is coming to the US.

In Asia, the Glance app presents a carousel of news, current affairs, ads and other content on user’s lock screens. So far, so convenient. As if opening an app or a browser to find news is so difficult.

Add Apple’s reinvention of the lock screen in iOS 16 and its intent to offer a more interactive lock screen with similar news feeds or similar features.

So far, everyone involved in this business has tried to paint it positively - a way for us to access essential information quickly and with minimal effort. But we all know that’s not what they want. They want to be able to reach us whether we interact with a device or not. They also want us to become passive consumers, content with reading information they send us and getting us out of the habit of finding things out for ourselves.

You don’t need us to tell you how dangerous that can be!

Hopefully, these new apps will be opt-in and can be uninstalled. Otherwise, I suspect it might be a good time to invest in jailbreaking software, as that market is likely to explode in popularity, and possibly even necessity.