Comment by PunchTornado
20 days ago
I agree with high friction sideloading. it is the best of both worlds. no friction sideloading is too easily exploited by scammers. having a member of my family exposed to this kind of thing in the past taught me some things.
I don't agree with the word "sideloading" though. It's just _installing_.
"Installing" has the connotation of doing it directly from the Play Store. This is also known as "Downloading" (because the data is on a server, in the cloud, and you're fetching it "downstream" to a local device.)
"Sideloading" doesn't refer to the installation process, but to the file transfer process. You're sideloading when you transfer, e.g. APKs from your notebook to your Android. Or, from a USB stick into your phone or something.
In general, though, "sideloading" also refers to any "non-app-store" installation. It's a kind of colloquial shorthand. It's not really a technical term. But it's adequate for getting the point across.
If you just called it "installing" without qualifying it, how would anyone know that it's a different process, or that it's accomplished not by navigating to the app store? It seems that you would invite ambiguity here!
The point is that before walled-garden app stores, that was how pretty much every normal person installed software on their PC's. Using the term "sideloading" for that is a clever invention to try and retroactively rebrand what is actually super-normal as something scary.
3 replies →
Honestly, no. Not for everyone.
As someone from Germany, I don't want Google to nanny family members computing devices. They don't want it either. It is completely absurd for an ad company in a surveillance state an ocean away to play IT services for everyone. This has already gone to far.
Rather, there should be tools for value-aligned IT services and technically minded family members to help.
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