Comment on Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks agoGoogle is twisting the word to justify their purpose of preventing people from installing anything that isn’t from their walled garden. So anything that sounds even close to support for that motive is going to be met with pushback, even if it is a word that existed before Google’s use of it. Google’s implicitly saying that installing something from anywhere other than their store is something nefarious or otherwise bad/risky. Google is trying to perform the same kind of security theatre as the US with the NSA at airports.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me where you install an app from because you’re simply installing it. Whether that’s from Google’s storefront, Apple’s, or somewhere else, you’re installing an app. The circumstances where I’d need a term to specifically say that I’m installing an app from outside the default app store would also be covered by simply saying “I got it from GitHub (or wherever).” It takes the same energy to answer the question of where you got it from regardless of whether you say that you installed it or you side loaded it.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
How is it being twisted? They’re using it in exactly the way it is intended to be used?
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
By justifying getting rid of it as “security concerns”. This is the first time the average user will have heard the term, so it will be linked in their head to this and therefore as risky/dangerous and they won’t question why Google would want to make it harder, if not impossible, for people to install apps or other software without Google’s explicit permission.
The walls around the garden get taller, and those inside won’t question why there aren’t any doors.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
That has absolutely nothing to do with what you said. What you said is that they were “twisting the word”. Once again, they’re using it in exactly the way it is intended to be used.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
So it’s always had a negative connotation to it? Because that’s what I’m saying. That Google is using the word by its correct definition, but adding to the original definition a subtext that side loading is a bad thing. Hence, they’re twisting it from its original meaning to a negative connotation to the average person (who has never heard the word before).
It’s like Windows’ UAC popping up with a warning when you try to install just about anything. To the average computer illiterate person, they’re going to second guess whatever they’re installing as “dangerous” while the rest of us are like “shut up Windows, of course I want to install the Nvidia drivers, that’s why I clicked on the damn thing.”