Comment by BrenBarn
7 days ago
> Unless we agree to fight for freedom everywhere, the only logical excuse is that the digital world doesn't have real world consequences, except that it increasingly patently does now.
I think the relevant difference is that it has real-world consequences for other people. And the consequences are likely to scale with the magnitude of the audience, meaning that it is bigger players that should face stiffer regulation. And yes, I think some of the examples you give should also be allowed.
Catalytic converters are there because they reduce the emissions your car produces. Those emissions get out into the air and affect everyone around you, and (over time, potentially) everyone on the planet. Rules around selling baked goods exist to ensure you don't sell bread made with rotten eggs or something that would make people sick. (And there are now "home kitchen" laws in some places that do allow you to do this anyway.) Installing a new electrical outlet has potential fire risks which could affect nearby buildings. Building a deck has potential safety consequences, but I imagine there are many jurisdictions where you can do that without a permit, and even more where you can get away with doing so even though it's technically not allowed.
Me installing a tic-tac-toe game from F-droid doesn't have the same kind of ripple effects on other people. It probably has much smaller such effects than installing a mainstream app like Facebook.
> Unless we agree to fight for freedom everywhere, the only logical excuse is that the digital world doesn't have real world consequences, except that it increasingly patently does now. It's no surprise to me then that the argument does not resonate. That does mean we may have to allow people to have an uncomfortable level of freedom, across the board, in order to be logically consistent.
The bigger you are, the more everything you do affects other people. To my mind the "logically consistent" approach is to impose greater restrictions on almost all sorts of behavior the larger and more powerful the entity performing the behavior. By this logic, it would be Google that is restricted from changing its policy like this, simply because it is big.
Google is very clear, sideloading has about 50x more malware than the Play Store. The Brazilian government in particular is absolutely furious about the amount of scams, and was openly planning legal interventions.
Your ability to distribute your app anonymously absolutely meets the definition of real-world consequences for other people.
I personally find it absurd we accept that the government regulates food (people can't detect bad food), and hair cutting (people can't detect inexperienced people with scissors), but the right to anonymous app distribution is sacrosanct, as though food quality is less transparent than app quality. It's not - all of these licenses need to be let go of on the small scale.
Why would you take them at face value? Just look at the Play Store yourself. I've seen plenty of privacy-invading (and worse!) apps on the Play Store, even when (especially when!) searching for a specific app I know is legit and good.
Meanwhile I can download anything with confidence on F-Droid, the subject of the article.
Never forget that Apple's "premium" curation still allowed a fake third party Lastpass (!!!) application onto the store for several days: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
The whole "third parties are scary" shtick really does demand evidence.
How is "50x" measured? Is that number of apps or number of app installs? Are they considering things like Facebook and TikTok as "malware"?
They way they implement the rules also removes the most trustworthy apps. Seems like a bad trade.
> Google is very clear, sideloading has about 50x more malware than the Play Store.
The butcher says that vegetables is bad for your health, and you should only eat meat.
Google is full of shit.