Comment by VladVladikoff
4 days ago
>Ruining Android for everyone
Are they really though? does the average person really care about side loading? I think we are in an echo chamber. I can't picture any of the people in my life installing things from outside of an app store on their phone. However I realize that's purely anecdotal, it would be nice to see actual statistics on this to have a more informed decision.
When I point out that Apple listened to the Chinese government and removed apps that protestors were using to communicate during the Hong Kong protests, they seem to get it.
They removed VPNs at the request of the Russian government too (they have no operations in Russia). They are actively participating in government censorship.
If you phrase it as "sideloading" then probably not, since it doesn't sound like something they might want to do, it also sounds difficult and technical. If you phrase it as installing your own software then it might garner some interest from the general populace, as who wouldn't want the option to install their desired software.
A lot of people won't even understand the question, because they can install their apps from the app store, because that's where the apps come from, the app store has what phones crave.
Some of them will even be frightened by the question because they consider their devices scary and dangerous enough already.
A lot of people don't need general purpose computing devices either, but some people, myself included, do want them. I want to be able to install applications from any source of my choosing, including developing my own software.
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Of course the average person doesn't care. Similar to how the average person doesn't care about age verification for social media. '
But it will affect them all the same.
Of course nobody is doing that, because Google and Apple made it too hard already.
Even Fortnite gave up on direct installs. If one of most popular game in the world can't make it, who can?
This "sideloading" thing is mostly to enforce US sanctions against countries like China, Russia and Iran.
So yes, hundreds of millions of people care about this.
I don't think it follows that the entire population of each of those countries automatically cares about this just because it's, ostensibly, being done to enforce sanctions against them.
I never said anything about "entire".
Normies in sanctioned countries install banking apps by "sideloading" APK's downloaded from an official site. They all know exactly what "sideloading" is and why Google is banning it.
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It sounds like you're not grasping the meaning of the linguistic construction being used by the person you're quoting. (Or you're being deliberately deceptive about your understanding of their intent. But it's probably just the former. I'm guessing you're ESL.)
"Ruining Android for everyone" ("to try to maybe help some") does not mean, "Android is now ruined for X, for all X." It means, perhaps confusingly, pretty much the opposite.
It means: "There exists some X for which Android is now ruined (because Google is trying to protect Y, for all Y)." (Yes, really. The way the other person phrased it is the right way way to phrase it—or, at least, it's a valid way to phrase it.)