This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Whole thing is well worth a read, but just from the title alone I was ready to write a long rant about the term 'sideloading'. Gladly that's covered on the text too:
It bears reminding that “sideload” is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk.
It's really a pet peeve of mine, that term. So typical for what Google/Alphabet is doing to control the narrative around what's "secure" and what isn't.
That's exactly what's going on here. Narrative / concepts are in stake here. By controlling the narrative you can influence or alter the perception of people about things.
I'm just glad people are waking up to how fiercely controlling Google is even in its "free" and "open" source endeavors.
"Installing" is also a made up term. We made up both those terms because they are useful for describing distinct things that exist in our lives. "Side loading" further specifies "installing". I really don't get why this is so controversial to a certain segment and I suspect I'm just not that kind of autistic.
If I browse a piece of software from play store and click 'install' it's "installing" and if I do the very same with F-droid it's suddenly "sideloading". Fundamentally every language is just made up, but on this occasion the newly coined term is used to obfuscate things and attempting to paint things something they are not.
I can claim all day that grass is blue and sky is green, but no one will take me seriously. Same thing should happen with 'sideloading' vs 'installing. Or if you really insist, sideloading might be something like injecting code to a system in a way which is not normally possible, like how some rootkits for devices work. But 'sideloading' is very different from 'installing' and installing anything on a general purpose computer doesn't include any particular tool (like play store). I can install things on my workstation with 'apt-get install' or from source via 'make install', but the end result is still that a piece of software was installed.
Does this mean sideloading is going away on Android? Absolutely not. Sideloading is fundamental to Android and it is not going away.
This statement is untrue. The developer verification decree effectively ends the ability for individuals to choose what software they run on the devices they own.
...
Wikipedia’s summary definition is:
the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved
By this definition, Google’s statement that “sideloading is not going away” is simply false. The vendor — Google, in the case of Android certified devices — will, in point of fact, be approving the source. The supplicant app developer must register with Google, pay a fee, provide government identification, agree to non-negotiable (and ever-changing) terms and conditions, enumerate all their current and future application identifiers, upload evidence of their private signing key, and then hope and wait for Google’s approval.
I'm glad to see this bullshit called out.
Why can't we ever have nice things for more than about 10–15 years. 😭
Ask Cory Doctorow, he has good answers well beyond that one term he coined.
Sorry, you lost me. What term?
enshittification
I'm not sure why Google just doesn't track who opts out of Play Store protections to side load and then refuse to support anything further. Power users will be happy, they're power users. Grannies have been warned. Where's the problem?
Block by default, opt out of blocking explicitly. Give users that choice. If I want to riddle my phone with viruses and bitcoin miners that's my problem.
This was never about security. That's just the excuse.
This is about removing user freedom, and consolidating corporate control. This is about ensuring that every app and service you use is approved by the big G, and consumed in the way they want - with ads, with tracking, and with nothing you can do about it.
This was never about security. That’s just the excuse.
Every technical decision is an excuse to fulfill a social desire.
There was a time when I was 14 and happy and saw such things in everything around me, and all the fiction I was reading often touched that trait of the surrounding reality. Those books are not considered something for intellectuals or artists, and I have nothing to discuss with such people - that is, strictly speaking not true, but I never know why some things I know and mention are interesting or not, and why some my opinions meet hearty agreement and some are politely ignored. And I never find continuations for those agreements and interests. But I feel as if that planted something deep in my head that has endured all the degradation.
So. You should also look at things where it seems that technical decisions were made for technical reasons.
The desktop paradigms, the platform paradigms, the OS paradigms, the ergonomics, - of course. But also aesthetics and visibility, how separate or mixed with the offscreen reality everything is. Also why the Internet is built as it is, why multi-user operating systems and Java really exist, what really is Unix and what really is Windows. About software design and why what embedded developers make when allowed is considered bad design, while what web developers make is considered rather good design, yet the former is usually more stable, secure and maintainable than the latter.
Not just software, but why is our consumer hardware is what it is, what do we need such complex systems for.
Not just computers, but construction design - the world now is very different from the world where that brutalist idea of making apartment buildings having a terrace as a "street" to which you have another exit from your apartment was bad due to all the crime. And also there are plenty of covered passages and malls with the same idea, except the framework building is always privately owned, having a different juridical status than a street or a bridge. While Soviet-style microdistricts, and things similar to them, are similarly bad due to crime, yet honestly the "right and good" modern European urbanism moves in that direction.
All the choices around us are made by humans, driven by social stimuli - that's the meaning of the word "social", all the stimuli are there, and economics and technology act more like framework of the possible for the social.
Give users that choice
That's the one thing they want to get rid of. Security and other bullshit is just a theater around it to get validation for even bigger walls for their garden.
I call it "installing software".
Sideloading means not being forced to use the monopoly provider.
I echo the criticism of the term 'sideloading', before it started to mean just installing software, I assumed it meant using a separate device or software on the side, like a PC with a debug interface or memory inspection tools, to inject custom code into a running system or software.
Similarly to preloading libraries into games or other software to replace functions in order to change or enhance the game or software. For instance used with script extenders or game mods. There it is 'pre' because the software is not running yet. 'Side' would be on running software.
But installing applications (the distribution doesn't matter) is in no way side loading.
And I really hate that the press or whoever picked this term up from apple or google and ran with it without question.
And now, because that term is so strange and useless in that way, its definition keeps getting changed into whatever the industry needs in order to squeeze out more money and personal data, while taking away the freedom and rights of the owners.
I assumed it meant using a separate device or software on the side
That's what it is. I remember actually sideloading apps to my BlackBerry 10 devices (Z10 and Z30) (though it really wasn't that long ago not to remember it...) using a PC with a Chrome based browser (though it worked on Firefox too with some minor fiddling) to push and install .bar files to the phone. That is what sideloading to me.
Now this term changed, so everything you install from a different source than the built-in appstore is called sideloading, which is ridiculous IMO.
I shall make a donation once again
