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Android's new developer verification rollout begins, sideloading changes are next (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -39 points 5 months ago* (17 children)

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.

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  • [–] 74 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    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

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    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).

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    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".

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    "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)

    ?!?!?

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  • [–] -3 points 5 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It's well worth the minimum amount of extra typing and reading to say "installing from outside the Play Store" to push back against the idea of the locked down CorpoPhone being the default... or the norm... or the legal requirement.

    It's a small push back commensurate with the small amount of effort, but it's a subject worthy of the attention.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    There's a lot of other cool terms we could use. Indy apps, homebrews, anything that makes you think of a farmer's market...

    Also, we might just push for the narrative that anthing not sideloaded is wrong... Why are people using spoonfed apps anyways? Aren't we grownups?

    Edit: auto-complete typos

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