Posted by rom1v 5 days ago
Of course, if they could do this with Windows, Linux et al they absolutely would. And general purpose computing will, eventually, be closed and locked down, much like what we are seeing with the internet and ID laws. People would have, and did, think such ideas would be unthinkable 10-15 years ago. Yet little-by-little the screws are being ever tightened. The government wishes to tightly control the information flow and decide what is 'best for you' to see. Preferably their chosen propaganda.
Work-arounds that exist today will likely be closed and forbidden in the future. VPNs to bypass age laws, ADB to bypass install-blocks will all be obsolete. You will be required to identify yourself at all times. I half-expect Google to deprecate and remove the concept of VPN's/ADB on Android entirely and laws will be passed to that affect (restricting the apps themselves, or access to the APIs to verified Android devices/Google accounts). If you don't believe me, you only need to see [1] for the direction of travel.
There is little interest from the regulators to stop this. Perhaps the useless CMA will 'investigate' in 5 years time, decide Google perhaps abused its monopoly and then do absolutely nothing because they have no real re-course over an American company. It's likely governments support this position and will not do anything to influence a change of direction.
Eventually, Linux itself will go the same way, people are just waiting for Torvalds to retire from the project to make their moves, but make no mistake, open general-purpose computing is under threat and there is going to be little we can do to reverse the current trends towards closely monitored and controlled computing.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/google/play/age-signals/overvi...
This will most likely be expanded in the future to limit access to certain 'dangerous' APIs like ADB/VPN's etc. This can also be used 'in app' and across the entire OS to shape your experience of what you can see and do. I wouldn't be surprised if 'unlocking bootloader' required an 18+ verified device.
Nah. The only reason Google has decided to lock-down Android is because they think they can get away with it. They would have done it from the first minute except that not doing it gave them a competitive advantage in the market over Apple - back when pretending to be into FOSS and to "not be evil" was a major part of their marketing. They're ready to make the move. If it fails, they'll try to make the move again a few years from now. They don't give a shit about ICE or whatever.
That's why the solution CAN'T be more regulation ...
Again, I don’t really see Google as a ‘moral’ or ‘pro-user’ company since they just pushed out Manifest V3. But unlike ad blockers, they’re not losing millions from sideloaded apps, so the only reason for their sudden policy shift is probably government pressure. With all the ongoing antitrust lawsuits, they’re just trying to stay on the good side of whatever the current or next administration wants.
Thankfully, we can take the last GPL commit of Linux and fork it.
I think defining sideloading as "the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved" is a good definition, because "not vendor-approved" is precisely the part I care about. The owner being able to install stuff without Google or anyone else's approval is a good and important capability for every computing device to have.
In any case, I fully agree with the substantive portions of this article. What Google is doing here is a terrible attack on consumer freedom.
And the fact that `adb sideload` is where the concept originated does nothing to dispel the way the term is frequently used in a derogatory fashion these days. It's wielded as a bogey man to make people afraid of unsigned applications. Despite the fact that many perfectly signed applications are full of malware and dark patterns.
Also, FFS, this is hacker news. Why on Earth would be arguing in favor of Google locking down how I can install software on my device.
They didn't argue for that anywhere in their comment.
I appreciate the fairly high level of review that apps get and I completely back Apple's right to control what runs on the OS they developed. Similarly, if _you_ want to run an OS you got from XDA on your Android device and install random stuff, I'll be the last person to stop you.
Hacker news readers are part of the small circle of people who have probably developed a decent intuition for whether software we download is clean or not. Most folks I know do not have this intuition, and many will not bat an eyelash when their new app asks for access to their contacts, etc. Sideload should absolutely continue to be a term that discourages the average person from doing it.
Praytell, what right is this?
I completely support Apple's right to publish software that makes it difficult for unapproved software to run on it.
Similarly, I support your right to try running something else on it.
Just like my neighbor has the right to publish a browser that makes it difficult to run extensions in it, and I have the right to use a different browser.
Some people would like the phone OS to be regulated like a public utility. I do not support that, and if we _had_ to have it that way, it would be important to have the same standards for everyone and regulate _all_ phone OSes equally. I don't like the thought of what that would do to the chances of any "open" offering.
From the post:
> Regardless, the term “sideload” was coined to insinuate that there is something dark and sinister about the process, as if the user were making an end-run around safeguards that are designed to keep you protected and secure. But if we reluctantly accept that “sideloading” is a term that has wriggled its way into common parlance, then we should at least use a consistent definition for it. Wikipedia’s summary definition is:
> the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved
The opening two sentences of the linked-to Wikipedia page on sideloading:
> Sideloading is the process of transferring files between two local devices, in particular between a personal computer and a mobile device such as a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA, tablet, portable media player or e-reader.
> Sideloading typically refers to media file transfer to a mobile device via USB, Bluetooth, WiFi or by writing to a memory card for insertion into the mobile device, but also applies to the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved.
The phrase after the "but" in the second sentence isn't the "summary definition". It's the part of the definition that best supports your argument. Cutting the Wikipedia definition down to that part is deceptive.
Also in the post:
> Regardless, the term “sideload” was coined to insinuate that there is something dark and sinister about the process, as if the user were making an end-run around safeguards that are designed to keep you protected and secure.
Immediately later in the same Wikipedia page is a paragraph that is literally about how the word was coined:
> The term "sideload" was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically. In 2000, i-drive applied for a trademark on the term. Rather than initiating a traditional file "download" from a website or FTP site to their computer, a user could perform a "sideload" and have the file transferred directly into their personal storage area on the service.
That's funny. The history of how the word was coined and the post's claim about how it was coined aren't similar at all. Weird.
Wat?
Everything after the "but" is what Google means when they use the term sideload and is the only important part of the definition for f-droid's purposes. The other definition is completely irrelevant and, I would argue, hardly ever used anymore.
But that isn’t the point people are angry about. The point is that sideload was a misnomer. Correctly Android users were able to install packages and now cannot. This is anti consumer and breaks the social contract.
Anyway this is so disingenuous that I think it’s astroturf. Here’s the meme we should’ve spreading: Chrome and Android should be broken off from Google. Apple should be forced to allow sideloading, at a minimum, same as any other computer. Phones and tablets should be valid targets for custom OS.
Not only has nothing happened yet, but this is also untrue.
Per the original definition, how exactly am I "side loading" if I go to the epic games store and download and install their epic game store APK?
Features aren’t rights, if you want a phone that let’s you run whatever you want, buy one or make it yourself.
What you’re trying is to use the force of the state to make mandatory a feature that not only 99% users won’t use, it vastly increases the attack surface for most of them, specially the most vulnerable.
If anyone were trying to create a word that gives a “deviant” feel, they wouldn’t use “sideload”, and most people haven’t even heard the term. There’s a world of difference between words like “pirate”, “crack”, “hack” and “sideload”.
If anything I’d say it’s too nice of a term, since it easily hides for normies the fact that what you’re doing is loading untrusted code, and it’s your responsibility to audit it’s origin or contents (something even lot’s of devs don’t do).
If you want to reverse engineer your devices, all the power to you, but you don’t get to decide how others people’s devices work.
"Features aren't rights" > see: Consumer Rights.
"Force of the state making sideloading mandatory is bad" > ...Except we have antitrust laws? The Play Store becomes the only source of apps, all transactions are routed through Google Billing? Not a problem for you?
"99% users won't use" > Except for when Google demands that transactions happen exclusively through Google Billing, which resulted in the release of the Epic Games Launcher for the world's highest grossing games by download.
"Sideloading is too nice" > Listen, either it's the case that "sideloading" is a threat to normies or it's not. Are normies your 1% or 99% of users? I thought according to you 99% of users won't sideload.
"You don't get to decide" > That language ties in pretty well with your fear of the use of the 'force of the state'; that tells me that you support freedom. Great-- you're right, why not let corporations be corporations and do anti-consumer things, they'll be very good to us (while they lobby the state).
Consumer rights aren’t features, and they’re very intentionally written to not be.
> "Force of the state making sideloading mandatory is bad" > ...Except we have antitrust laws?
Then sue them over those.
> Listen, either it's the case that "sideloading" is a threat to normies or it's not. Are normies your 1% or 99% of users? I thought according to you 99% of users won't sideload.
I meant that 99% of users aren’t afraid by the term “sideloading”. That you’re not using something doesn’t mean you’re afraid of it, it just means you don’t want it.
> you're right, why not let corporations be corporations and do anti-consumer things, they'll be very good to us (while they lobby the state).
Because corporations tend to die when they do anti-consumer things, but governments keep doing anti-citizen things without much trouble.
"Then sue them" > My point was that the force of the state is a necessary evil to ensure fair competition. Yours implied that the force of the state is overreach, but if you warrant that, then you wouldn't enjoy protections against corporations afforded to us by antitrust law.
"That you're not using something..." > For you to claim that sideloading presents additional threat surface to the normie consumer, you need to also claim that normie users are sideloading. This means that if 99 percent of users are not sideloading, there is no threat surface.
"Because corporations tend to die when they do anti-consumer things, but governments keep doing anti-citizen things without much trouble." > Absolutely not. The paradigm has changed from the time when you could vote with your dollar. You and I are economically and legally irrelevant (where is Congress, anyway?), and corporations like the Big G are too big to fail. They are -already- colluding with government to do both anti-consumer and anti-citizen things.
Nominatively, this is why both the government AND google do not want you to side-load software outside of their control.
Perfectly reasonable. It's important that people can decide how their devices work for themselves. No one else should decide for them.
But I'm genuinely curious how you see this principle working in practice when there's effectively a duopoly. What's the path for someone who wants to still have any choices for their device? I'm not seeing an obvious answer, but maybe I'm missing something.
Nowadays it’s not even that hard to build your own phone, but it’s not going to be a slick smartphone for sure
-- edit --
Apparently after checking this term in the internet, I am not so sure that this process had been called this way. Maybe I'll leave it here to provoke a correct answer according to the internet rule #1 - to learn what is the correct answer, just post an incorrect answer in the internet and wait