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This isn’t a fight over security, or even the control to form a walled garden. This is to eliminate privacy, the ability to run anonymously written code. This forces every bit of code to be tied to a name and face. It shortens the legal legwork needed to pin down who made what, this will be used to eliminate anonymous groups compiling their own E2EE communication network. Time is important when your trying to use a compromised member of a group to make a honeypot trap.
ETA: Whoops, hit the wrong reply button
This isn’t a fight over security, or even the control to form a walled garden. This is to eliminate privacy, the ability to run anonymously written code. This forces every bit of code to be tied to a name and face. It shortens the legal legwork needed to pin down who made what, this will be used to eliminate anonymous groups compiling their own E2EE communication network. Time is important when your trying to use a compromised member of a group to make a honeypot trap.
The number of people I encounter, even on Lemmy, that genuinely believe and rigorously argue that being able to install or distribute software on devices you own is actually bad because “security” is beyond horrifying to me. They have been brainwashed into thinking that corporate monopolies are not only acceptable but desirable because you can completely and blindly trust Mom’s Old Fashioned Robot Oil to make all your decisions for you, for a modest fee and no opting out, of course.
This is why society is collapsing.
Dude, I’ve been fighting this fight for over 10 years starting on reddit.
The amount of people, even supposedly?!? tech savy people that bootlick and excuse corporate behaviour is maddening. To the point makes you want to be conspiratorial and think they are saboteurs.
What I will never EVER understand is being loyal and “loving” a company. No matter if it’s Apple, Samsung, Google they ARE NOT your friends. In fact they are the exact opposite and will make your life worse if it means they can squeeze an extra cent out of you.
Lately I’ve been thinking that what it is, is people trying to eliminate that overwhelming sense of existential dread which springs from all of this, by buying into it, just like fascists do- “if I join them they won’t come for me”. They start telling themselves that “maybe it’s for the best”, that “maybe good things will come of it”, and once someone makes that jump it’s easy for them to become zealous or fanatic, not only because it gives them an even greater sense of empowerment because they’re now part of an ingroup or a club, but can also get off even more on perceived moral or intellectual supremacy over others.
These are extremely uncertain times, and uncertainty makes human scared and anxious, and scared anxious humans latch on to anything that gets them out of those feelings, in this case like surrendering before this gargantuan machine that they can neither understand nor control.
It’s like with cultists. They crave the comfort of someone telling them what the truth is, to give them certainty. I don’t know, something I thought about.
Some of these comments are wild.
The OS should not at all stop me from doing what I want to do. Ever. Not even if that means I can fuck it up.
They can warn me when I attempt to do things that could fuck shit up. They can make it a bit harder to navigate to certain things so I’m less likely to fuck shit up. But it’s my god damn hardware. I should be able to run and configure the software on it as I see fit.
But we subsidised the cost of your phone so we could make sweet sweet recurring revenue off your usage habits and targeted advertising!
You wouldn’t want to take that away from us would you? Won’t SOMEBODY think of the shareholders?!
I’m getting really sick of products being only available subsidized by a level of invasiveness that should be illegal.
The government should need an individualized warrant to purchase my data. And honestly Google should need one to collect it
I’m getting really sick of products being only available subsidized by a level of invasiveness that should be illegal.
You mean like smart TVs?
An early metastase of the cancer.
I realise you’re being facetious, but if anything Google made my phone more expensive with the certification process.
meh both on mac and windows you’re not the true admin of the machine. mac requires disabling SIP and some others to even be able to delete default applications for example and don’t get me started on windows. linux ftw (as I type this from my old ass ios device)
And on any Intel hardware the true root account belongs to NSA anyway.
To be clear, Kolanaki is saying that that is not how an OS should behave.
oh yea I agree I was just venting further; prefer less hand holding
you can get all the right you need with a little trickery. I mean, psexec is made and distributed by Microsoft, freely. a simple download. and I don’t think it’s bad that the average user can’t run everything immediately as TrustedInstaller or SYSTEM.
that’s a nice option to have, at least. i’ve s few more complaints left for each OS, but in the end i’d prefer a linux style and level of control over a machine and overall less abstraction. we’re getting software locked out most hardware nowadays: cars, household appliances, public transit, airports, privacy and so on
I think that just falls under “make it a bit harder to navigate to certain things so I’m less likely to fuck shit up.”
I mean nobody is shocked that they both suck. If it’s not open source you are not in control.
From a personal freedom POV, I agree. But, if it was easy it would be a support nightmare.
Google and Apple scan every app that gets loaded into their app stores for malware. There’s also a lengthy review process, even just for updates. Some malware does still slip through, but it’s a trickle compared to what gets blocked. If sideloading apps were easy, my younger sister would be in so much trouble. She’d have various accounts phished within a day. She’d install something that drains the battery within an hour and not understand what was going wrong. And, she’s relatively tech savvy. I have no idea how the older generation would survive.
Of course, since Apple and Google make 30% of every sale on the app store, they’re not purely motivated to just keep their users safe. The real problem is that there is a duopoly in smartphones. Apple and Google have essentially the same policies, and if you don’t like them you have no other options. If there were a dozen OSes, there could be smart phones for Granny that had everything locked down, and smart phones for h4x04z that didn’t. Companies that struck a good balance between protecting their users and allowing their users freedom would do well in the market. Companies that didn’t would shrink and fail.
Sure, but there’s a good argument that that should be an end-user issue, and not something that the OS/Phone manufacturer should be trying to mitigate. It’s a risk you take when owning a device, that you can also break it, or get it infected.
Otherwise, why bother selling the phone in the first place, rather than contracting it out under a rental agreement?
my younger sister would be in so much trouble.
your younger syster should have parental controls on, and it’s worrying that you suggest it is not the case. I don’t know their age but most probably they shouldn’t be able to install any apps from anywhere without parent approval.
She’d have various accounts phished within a day.
guessing fron what we already know, she probably shouldn’t have half of those accounts.
My younger sister is in her 40s. She’s a pretty typical cell phone user.
in that case parental controls would still solve a lot of problems, including this one
I think your parents should turn on their parental controls because you’re going a bit wild, buddy.
I mean you’re basically arguing for parental control, it is just done by google.
K
oh don’t worry daddy google will turn it on for all of us thanks to the deranged irresponsibility of your kind.
if someone is so tech illiterate that they are breaking the phone’s software and leaking their information all over the internet, they cannot be responsibly allowed to use that device without restrictions.
I bet you are one of those that want forced government ID based age verification everywhere because you agree with people who can’t be bothered to set limits on their kids phone.
K
So? Don’t run fishy files off the internet unless you’re open to the risks. Have secure walls that require either a setting change or individual permission grants before they can access secure apps.
Operating systems are prone to natural monopoly or duopoly. Furthermore there’s anti consumer incentives here in that governments want surveillance data and os companies sell it.
Where competition fails to protect consumers governments must. And that includes protection from governments. I know it’s ironic today as we’re in a fascist regime, but that’s one of the basic principles of my country. So anyways please Europe protect us worldwide consumers from American companies.
Have you people never worked in IT support? Like its all fair and good that you, a power user, dont want the OS to restrict you at all. But for your averrage person to be treated the same is just asking for disaster.
I have worked in IT. People still manage to screw up shit that’s locked down. Babysitting everyone because some people are just technologically incompetent is stupid and does not solve any actual problems.
Can’t IT lock things down if they so desire? That is the owner of the device using it as they see fit: Locking it down so the non technical users of the device can’t break it. That you keep suggesting that devices should come out of the box restricted would make your IT job obsolete and in fact impossible to perform.
Edit: And before you ask yes I have worked in IT support, although I currently do not.
Not corporate IT, but IT for home users, back in the days when things were much less locked down basically every computer i got access too was completely crawling with malware. Had tons of people lose all of their data including family photos and the like because they dowloaded something dodgy off limewire and their system just let them run it.
Why cant you guys understand that the vast vast majority of computer users are not technical? And as such need those safety rails in place to save them from their own ignorance?
We’ll always need safety rails, I think the thing you’re missing in most of the arguments you’re seeing here is that people want ways over or around those safety rails, and that those safety rails do not need to be as strict as they’re becoming. That is not the case currently and that is definitely not the direction AOSP or iOS are interested in going.
Also, just for the record, comparing the modern era of computing to the limewire era is bananas.
Exactly.
I have no problem with safety rails for those who need it, my problem is that with each passing update these rails become obligatory and non-removable.Is that not what sideloading is? A way over the safety rails?
Not at all. Root access would be a way over safety rails.
Also the context of this post is that Google is attempting to make “side loading” harder.
they are crawling with malware today, from the factory, except it is harder to remove, especially on smartphones.
safety rails are not steal walls. instead of walls education is needed. education can happen not only in schools.
Most Android phone owners don’t even know they are Android phone owners.
A hidden option to unlock power user mode solves this
Yeah exactly. Though i would personally say a bit more obfuscation is needed then a simple hidden switch.
Don’t hide it. That’s pointless. Make it so someone has to type “I understand what I’m doing and my username is blah” into a box to activate “advanced” mode, after reading a warning, sure.
I don’t disagree, but it’s very funny that LinusTechTips went through that exact process a moment before publically destroying his desktop on PopOS
Right, but pretty much everyone but Linus and his sycophants agree that was a bone headed mistake. If you type “I understand what I am doing…” and you do not understand- you are asking for trouble.
Granted, that bug shouldn’t have existed in the first place but I feel like the warning should have raised a big red flag for a ‘tech expert’. It almost feels like he did it on purpose to prove some sort of point about how Linux ‘isn’t there yet’ but ofc there is no way to prove that.
“Why isn’t x working! I set x on my [insert device here] and now it won’t turn on!”
They can piss off, there is no way I’m dowloading Google’s ad ridden garbage apps of of their store. I’d rather stop using mobile phones alltogether
The worst part is, the vast majority of people will opt in by default, and when 99% of people do, that impetus will pull everything else in together with it. Us privacy and liberty minded fringe cases won’t matter, because the tech will keep moving in whatever direction is dictated by the giants because they will have ensnared the global population in their schemes, and it will pull us along with the drift.
It’s pretty god damned bleak. We need to seriously organize and coordinate resistance.
Same. Or keeping a shitty one around just for emergencies
We really really need an open OS for mobile phones that is actually competitive with commercial offerings.
I don’t think the OS is the problem - it’s that some of the critical service/apps people rely on (government ID, banking) only exist for the closed systems. Third party OS’s try to “solve” it through various container approaches running the official apps, but since they see that as a security problem it’s not something you can fully trust to be working at all times.
That’s the only reason I’m still on android. If I install a different OS I won’t be able to login to do anything government related. I won’t even be able to pay with my credit card online. I could get a physical code device from the government, but I’m not gonna lie, I really like the ease of access of having an app for that stuff, instead of a seperate device I have to have on me at all times.
I will probably have to go the route of two phones soon. One for my stuff and communicating with friends and family, and one (maybe one of the cheaper iphones?) for all the “required” apps.
Funny enough, you tend to see quite some people in China do this. I wonder why.
All those “apps” are websites. You could say NFC is special, but so is gps.
Exactly. Locking basic services behind apps should be illegal. Services must be accessible to everyone.
same goes for the weather app …
(context: some years ago they locked the publicly-funded german weather service’s API, so common people can’t access it anymore. you need to use a spam-ridden app to access it now.)
At the very least you can still pay a small one-time fee for the DWD WarnWetter app (or enter a code for firefighters).
Best 3€ I’ve ever spent purely out of spite, even if the reason behind it is complete BS.
They sometimes hand out codes “to be used only by firefighters and paramedics, wink wink”.
Yea… Like some of those parking applications. Ugh.
To be fair, a lot of those depend on some client side trust. Which is conceptually stupid, but it is the way it is.
I think they’re both pretty big problems. An open OS and hardware that supports it seems to be a huge hurdle, but at least there is a clear vision of how to solve it. The problem you bring up though… It seems like we’ve almost gone too far at this point and it’s gonna be really hard to put the cat back in the bag. It seems like something we need to solve with legislation potentially?
The people writing the legislation are the same people who don’t see a problem with a government-furnished app using Play Integrity
Yes there is a general ignorance to this problem among law makers, in my country at least, as well as a bit of regulatory capture with respect to tech in general. The boogie man of “security” is also a very persuasive concept for a lot of people. This is not a problem that will be solved easily.
This. Alternative OS exist: Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, SailfishOS, just to name a few.
What is missing are the apps people want. And those include mostly commercial apps, where the developers need to weigh dev hours vs profits, and decide to only target the big two for obvious reasons. That is the key problem.
Doesn’t android allow this?
That’s what the OP is referring to: Google just announced they will do their best to kill off sideloading.
I had no idea. Damn…
didn’t apple just get forced to enable side loading in the EU due to the DMA?
Yeah, but I think they implemented the same restrictions Google is planning, so I’m not very helpful that EU is gonna stop Google…
They claim this is about security but when your system is compromised there is fuck all they will do to help you.
Fucking hypocritical, control-hungry pricks.
It’s about the security of their brand. No sane company wants people walking around, talking about shit their phone is because it keeps getting infected.
Well, the only instances I know of modern phones getting infected are Apple devices where a text message somehow gets into the kernel with zero clicks. Apparently apple insists they’re too incompetent to fix this.
I can only hope the EU will set Google straight, the way they did Apple.
The EU will, at some point, cave to the interest of global capital. I am proud that they have fought as well as they have these past few decades, but as long as capitalism rules the planet, capital will always supersede rule of law and democracy in the end.
America is about to, if it has not already, succumb completely to that state of affairs, and once that power is consolidated by the capital, EU will be (one of) the next targets.
Considering:
A) You can still install any app you want beyond the Play Store (the rule is that developers need to get all their apps signed, and doesn’t effect the end user technically)
And
B) Its most likely being done because of the EU, it’s a part of the DSA (https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act_en). The “trader status”, and other parts against illegal content)
The EU most like has already set them straight and this is the result.
Signed by who? Google? If so how does that not basically give them a monopoly on what can be installed?
And what about privacy? If somone wants to build an app to help whistleblowers, they have to expose themselves to a shady shitty mega Corp like Google?
Also why? Every other week there is some article about malicious apps leaking into the playstore. If they can’t even control their own store, why would they police everything.
Megacorps gonna megacorp.
Monopolies gonna monopoly.We can fight these giants by not using their services & products.
It only gets harder to fight them the more we give in.
I can’t even get people to switch to LibreOffice, not cuz they use some advanced MS Office feature but because the interface “looks dated”. So they’d rather pay a subscription for life to use software that spies on them than download free software that does what they need but has a 2010s style interface.
Humans suck so much.
Ngl, I installed a few OnlyOffices just because of UI.
It has ribbon UI and about the same placement of buttons as MS Office stuff.It’s fine.
(Based in Latvia, but they had a Russian momma, now Singapore.)
Humans are creatures of habit, and risk averse most of the time. Risk, being change of any sort when things seem “stable.”
All you can do is lead by example and enjoy life and tell those poor souls they’re stupid for spending money for something they can change the look like MS Office easily.
because the interface “looks dated”.
The real issue is M$ intentionally not following standards, so that opening an Office doc may or may not properly render in other suites. Hooray for EEE. Fuckers.
Eh, I haven’t had that issue in years. Maybe its a problem for office workers who make extremely complicated documents and spreadsheets, but those aren’t the kinds of people I’m talking about.
EDIT: Not implying you’re wrong about M$ fake open standards bullshit, just that I don’t think its a huge concern for the average home user.
I get what you are saying but is it really too much to ask for an interface that looks like it belongs there?
I prefer the old school style menus and such. I stopped using MS Word around the time that they came out with the ‘ribbon’ style menus or whatever it’s called, so if they ‘update’ it I sure hope it’s as an option or a fork.
I can understand people who grew up with it or who have spent years using it might like it better though.
I’m not willing to pay for it, are you? If no then its to much to ask.
No, it’s too much to demand but simply asking they keep the interface as clean looking as any other free cross platform open source project is not an outlandish request.
They update the ui in most of their patches, theyve made the ui incredibly customisable. They have the classic header or a ribbon header. Its open source software it can’t afford a redesign every few years to keep up with Microsoft design trends. The team is like 8 people.
I might be wrong but i feel like the people complaining about the ui dont really even use it. After a week of using it you get used to it and it looks normal.
I can use libreoffice. I just don’t. My Mac has Apple numbers and pages and they are enough for me and when I finally make the jump to Linux full time I’ll just have to adapt to libre again. But this is a complaint that many others have which is why I bring it up.
I “pay” LibreOffice.
Why not??
For legally free and open software that has to maintain UI consistency across Windows, MacOS, and the plethora of open desktop environments? Yes, yes it is.
No it’s not. There are other free and open software offerings that function cross platform and do it more cleanly.
For a project as big and old and full of legacy code as LibreOffice, I think their interface is pretty great. And its way more customizable than MS Office. Its just not the absolute latest and greatest in styling.
And, if MS didn’t make it so hard to maintain compatibility with their “open” file format, TDF might be able to put more resources into UX. As it is, they have to reverse engineer all the nonconforming BS that Microsoft puts in their OOXML implementation.
You know, it’s true - I have never heard a Linux user refer to something as sideloading, even though Linux is the platform that originated official software repositories.
The key thing to understand is that there’s a big fucking difference between a “repository” and an “app store.” One is designed for the convenience of users; the other is designed to exploit them.
Exactly right. The message of the post is that “side-loading” is only used in reference to exploitation services. We could just as easily refer to side loading in Linux and it would be accurate in every way, except that there is no exploitation.
It’s literally the exception that proves the rule.
There is no functional difference.
This does feel like a bit of a double-standard to me. I’ve hated how Microsoft and Apple have introduced app stores on Windows and macOS and try to push people to only install from there instead of directly from the developer. And yet on Linux the advice seems to be never ever download directly from the developer; you should only download from the package repository provided by your OS (which sure feels like an App Store). And that package probably wasn’t even provided by the developer or the OS but some random volunteer that you just assume has good intentions.
The key difference is that one is advised, the other is enforced.
If you used Linux before the repos were fully developed then you understand why they were created.
Who else remembers “dependency hell?”
Corpos just took the same idea and twisted it into something else.
Dependency hell was what drove me back to Windows. Fortunately, I didn’t stay there and I learned how to apt-get.
It may feel like a double standard but it’s not
Most Linux stores are created and maintained by volunteers
Those stores aren’t limiting software they host based on what makes them the most money. Money isn’t involved.at all
Linux won’t stop you from adding more stores
Linix won’t stop you from manually adding any other software, either as a package or even manually building it from scratch
My package manager installs all of the dependencies the program needs and takes care of updates, too. If I install directly from the developer, I have to do all that myself. Fuck that.
Nothing ever comes “directly from the developer”, and any developer that attempts to do so ends up in a level of hell not yet documented. There are way too many distros, way too many architectures, way too many moving targets, that also includes iOS, macOS and Windows. No single developer can hit them all. There’s no standard packaging either. So, usually they only package for one or a handful of popular distros, or one container format. But that’s the magic of FOSS. Anyone can take the source code and repackage it, redistribute it and make it available for others. This is assumed to be a strength and not a weakness of FOSS and Linux. Thus, the distros create their own official repositories where they make themselves responsible that everything will mostly work nicely with one another.
The difference is that package repositories are safe havens of compatibility. While appStores are enforced cages that cannot be escaped. If a package repository tries to fuck up with users, hurt the FOSS space (looking at you Ubuntu Snaps), or gets compromised by a bad actor; you just move to another repository, another distro, a different format, another safe space. If Android or Apple decides to enshittify and fuck over customers, users, get compromised or do something to hurt developers, you are fuck out of luck. This difference matters.
Because the Linux repositories are apathetic third parties (ie they have no reason to care whether or not you download any given app) while Microsoft and apple are financially incentivised for you to buy buy buy.
This means that when you download a .exe from a vendor instead of going through the windows store you’re cutting Microsoft out of their cut of what you paid and you’re denying Microsoft information about what it is that you bought. But the flipside is Microsoft didn’t impartially verify that it’s not malicious.
When you download a .deb instead of going through apt, you’re also denying them their cut (of nothing) and you’re denying the repository managers the ability to see what you’re doing, but Linux people generally trust repository managers to not be selling their habits to advertisers and governments.
I will say there is a reason to side load on Linux though, paid software is sometimes unavailable through repos.
I measured the heights of myself and my niece and found them to be different, clearly a double standard must be involved.
You yourself mentioned a lot of differences between corporate app stores and distros’ software repositories. Why are you surprised people rate them differently?
Perhaps because your standards are different from more Linux users’ standards.
I for example would rather take my chances with a random volunteer rather than trust a corporation that had a history of breaking laws and I know it to want to make money off me.
And yet on Linux the advice seems to be never ever download directly from the developer
That’s just advice for making life easy for new people, because distro-packaged software is more likely to work well with the operating system. I run packages from devs, even nightly automated builds of stuff, all the time.
Installing from a repo via a terminal does not feel like an App Store at all. It’s only the GUI apps that do and those are all entirely optional. Exactly how it should be. God’s in his heaven. All’s right with the world.
And yet on Linux the advice seems to be never ever download directly from the developer
Are people really giving this advice that often and that strongly? I find myself building more and more things from source these days. Especially with modern languages that OS maintainers are actually having a difficult time packaging in the way they’re used to.
My feed is curated by the Illuminati
That’s what they want you to think.
Only in the US, I guess. In my country and in Europe this will not fly…
Nope
These requirements go into effect in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. At this point, any app installed on a certified Android device in these regions must be registered by a verified developer.
2027 and beyond: We will continue to roll out these requirements globally.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-android-security.html?m=1
We can hope…
edit
To clarify, I hope it will not fly outside the US, but looking at the world around I feel this is not very realistic hope
Aren’t they claiming this move is specifically to comply with the EU’s Digital Services act?
Apple just enabled sideloading in the EU to comply with the DMA. I highly doubt that android will be allowed to remove sideloading
they are everywhere one just has to learn how to read the signs 🔝🔜⚛️
(/s)
Not only we have basic right taken from us, the available software made by corporations is much buggier and less usable than ever. I am grateful that I am actually going away from tech/IT and pursuing other hobbies/interests, because I am less frustrated that way.
And I’ve decided to switch to Linux (Debian with KDE btw), because aside from its learning curve, it’s much easier to manage than Windows installation.
I had to ‘sideload’ the secret of mana port because play store would refuse to validate the license offline after purchase. If I can’t play offline a single player game that i bought, than what should i do.
I also have an apk of wayward souls, because it was removed from the store and i like that game. Also a premium game. So yes. Running software as i see fit.
I finally want to switch to android and boom: Custom ROMs and “sideloading” gets swept off the platter. Well ok I guess I‘ll just wait for a good linux mobile OS
So annoyed that just bought a Pixel 8a for Graphene. I thought I’d get to use it til 2030 when it stops getting security patches and now I might not even get a full year out of it.
GrapheneOS still intends to support all the supported devices until EOL. The sideloading change doesn’t affect them. It won’t apply to GrapheneOS. It only applies to certified OSes and GrapheneOS is not certified because it doesn’t license Google Mobile Services. As per the rip out of the device trees for Pixels, that just makes Pixels like other phones. GrapheneOS has been able to expand it’s automation to build that device support themselves. For new devices, making the support will take longer than it did in the past though, but they will still support those Pixels, as long as they meet the hardware requirements and still allow third-party OS support with all security features intact. Besides that GrapheneOS is actively talking with a major Android OEM right now in order to help them reach the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. They are very optimistic about that.
That’s all great news. I think they deserve another donation from me.
SailfishOS. Fun fact, it’s also finnish.
Just an FYI I think they still did not deliver on the promise of open sourcing.
And I believe you’re still supposed to buy a license unless that’s changed recently.
SteamOS. Outside of Ubuntu and other corp distros, if steam made a mobile-specific os or invested in arch enough to make a mobile friendly UI I would be interested
Heh, good luck trying to sideload anything on Linux…
Right? Linus Torvalds keeps that source code under lock and key.
If I ever go insane and write a manifesto this will be on it.
Sounds fairly sane to me.
This is fine, but the other 582 pages contain some real doozies.
