̶S̶̶i̶̶d̶̶e̶̶l̶̶o̶̶a̶̶d̶̶i̶̶n̶̶g̶ Installing
Yeah, but installing from the Play Store is also installing, and “sideloading” is shorter than “installing from outside the Play store”, so I’m not sure this is a winnable fight.
It’s installing regardless from where you get the app, by labeling it as sideloading these giant corpos want to label it as doing something outside the norm, something that is “unsafe” so they can have control over user behavior and market dominance
Yes that’s what I’m saying, it’s “installing” regardless of where you get the app, so if an article wants to talk about something concerning installing apps from outside the Play Store, they can’t just say “installing”. That would be incorrect if the things they talk about don’t concern installing from the Play Store.
So you need a different description than just “installing”.
E.g. in this example the article title couldn’t be “installing changes are next”, it would need to be something else.
“Installing” is not a drop-in replacement for “sideloading” without changing the meaning of what you say.
I’ve had the play store install, remove, and modify installed applications without so much as a hint they were doing it, the “Play Store” does what would be considered “sideloading” applications (i. e. a third party app managing your applications from a location other than the package manager), feeding an apk to a package manager would just be “installing” an application like it always has been.
By co-opting the term to be something bad, they are trying to make it seem like they are the only safe source for applications (even though the Google-managed stores have just as much malware as WinMX did 20+ years ago).
Correct, but what do you propose? In your terminology installing from the Play Store is “sideloading” and installing directly is “installing”. But surely you agree that if an article was titled “Google makes installing apps on Android harder, but sideloading will be as smooth as before”, everyone would understand the opposite of that.
I would personally like to just go back to calling it installing, but I doubt that is even less likely than getting back “-lications” to my programs (just a dumb joke about how applications slowly became apps).
Its all good though, I’m just an old man bitching on the internet.
Installing from other app stores. Installing, but not from the Play Store. Installing from not-Google-controlled stores.
It’s installing. Context can be given using this wonderful semantic device called “subordinate clauses”.
Yeah exactly, and we reached all the way back to my original comment: you can’t just replace “sideloading” with “installing”, without adding additional clarification.
“I installed from apt get, and then I sideloaded from flatpak, and sideloaded from a .deb file”? Or “installed from the windows store but sideloaded from an .exe file” (literally everything I ever installed was through .exe/.msi on windows)
?!?!?
I’d just call all of that “installing”, “sideloading” doesn’t really make sense here. Importantly you already specified how you installed in each case, so it’s perfectly understandable whatever verb you use.
For those who haven’t seen this excellent video:
It’s not that “excellent.” It’s just ‘for the evulz’ mustache-twirling comical villainy, which ends up downplaying what’s actually important to know about enshittification, which is how self-serving and abusive it is. When companies enshittify products and services, they’re not just making them worse; they’re specifically making them more exploitative.
A lot of the examples shown in the video – cutting holes in socks, sawing off a chair leg so it wobbles, drying out a marker, etc. – are not enshittification. Enshittification is stuff like putting spyware in devices so that you double-dip on the purchase price and the value of the data, or turning products (as opposed to services) into a subscription. Stuff that extracts unearned value from the customer.
It touches on it in the latter part of the video, but for the most part misses the mark.
You know, it was funny. Bit long in the tooth. The best thing about the video, it was actually produced by Norway. The government produced the video. That’s pretty freaking cool.
Alternatives
Fairphone https://shop.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-e-operating-system
GrapheneOS https://grapheneos.org/
Sailfish OS https://sailfishos.org/
LibrePhone from GNU/Linux https://librephone.fsf.org/
The weirdest part to me: this comes after the EU determined that Apple’s locked store is too restrictive, and Apple agreed to allow 3rd party stores. Why the hell would Android go in the opposite direction? Will this put them in violation of the same EU regulation?
Ummm… Isn’t this precisely against the whole EU’s make sideloading (ie. installing) as easy as main app store installing thing?
Taking steps backwards…Apple shat all over those regulations with their implementation and got away with it so now Google are doing the same
It took years and legal pressure and fines to have other app stores decently recognized and allowed. I don’t understand how we are going so back. I mean I understand. Capitalism + monopoly + orange guy.
How is it even legal for a company to decide what you can or can’t install in your own device?
