At which point we arrive at OP’s closing remark: “Either way, it’s a win for Norway.” And that’s hard to dispute for any country taking its claim to being a democracy even halfway serious, considering the manipulative shenanigans that are par for the course at anything Meta.

Well, why should the average end-user use Linux, actually? If your answer is privacy, taking control back or something in that general line, you’re essentially advocating for a technological solution on the individual level as a solution to what essentially are and always have been political and ideological problems. Expecting that to work out is wishful thinking at best. I have growing suspicions, though, that it’s more like a different ideological layer, and in that regard quite akin to making the climate catastrophe about choices of individual consumers (of which they often have very few, actually).

Dumbed down Linux exists. It’s called Android.