"sideloading" is a stupid made up term invented to delegitimize installing software.
Heres a bunch of other things I'm doing while "sidestepping" some supposed central authority:
- sideshopping (buying stuff from a store that isn't amazon)
- sidedining (eating or making food that isn't from mcdonalds)
- sidethinking (using my own brain instead of asking chatgpt)
- sidelistening (to my own music instead of on spotify)
- sidechatting (irl instead of online)

#android #sideloading #google #bullshit

@StaticR Eh, the analogy doesn't quite work. When you cook a homemade dinner, you're not interacting with McDonald's at all, but when you "sideload" an app onto your Android phone, it's still Android.

A more accurate analogy would be "bringing homemade food into a McDonald's", which... well, would be banned too.

However, adding your local music library to Spotify, and adding your own local video games to Steam, both are a thing.

The real question is whether Android is a service Google provides to you similar to a McDonald's restaurant (which by sideloading you're illegitimately changing) or a tool similar to a file manager, which can be used however you please.

I'm also on your side obviously. It was just a bad analogy I think.

@lianna @StaticR
If you really want to go that way, sidedining would be to bring you own food into a building that used to be owned by McDonalds, before you bought it.
@leeloo @StaticR Android is still a Google product; that'd only be accurate as a metaphor if sideloading was about installing custom ROMs on formerly-Android phones.

@lianna @StaticR
Product sure, but once they've sold the phone, it's not their property anymore.

Hence, bringing your own food into a building formerly owned by McD.

@leeloo @lianna @StaticR uh, actually the correct analogy would be licensing a franchise of a McDonald’s in a building that you own, and then breaking the rules of that franchise agreement by selling or eating food outside the dining standards. don’t license the franchise, i.e., don’t run software you don’t agree with, even if you need it for technical reasons.
@jazaval @lianna @StaticR
No, a franchise is a contract. No matter what big tech wants you to believe, a phone is something you buy.
@leeloo @lianna @StaticR and the operating system that comes installed, is this part of the phone? you own this series of bits and have the right to do whatever you want with them now?
@jazaval @leeloo @StaticR That's the point. So far, yes. We want it to stay that way, rather than Google defining our local copy of an Android operating system as a service they own.
@lianna @leeloo @StaticR it’s not, though. just in the sense that you do not own the order of the words of a book you purchase, you do not own the cleverness of the OS. you own the ink the renders the words, and you own the electrons that represent a copy of that cleverness. The cleverness is licensed to you, not sold.

@jazaval @lianna @leeloo This was actually the point I was gonna get to earlier when I said I'll post something "in a bit".

The difference is a McDonalds franchisee works for McDonalds and represents their brand and sells stuff under their banner, so they have to uphold the expectation what a McDonalds is.

A private person using the android OS themselves does not work for google, does not represent their brand to others so they shouldnt need to uphold the brand's expectations.

@jazaval @lianna @leeloo The customer or end user is not an actor whose job it is to further the brand values of the companies they are a customer of. They're the customer not a billboard.

They're the end of the chain so there's no one under them they need to uphold brand values and expectations for.

@StaticR @lianna @leeloo yet if a sideloaded application is used as an attack vector it is the OS brand who suffers an image crisis 🤔
@jazaval @StaticR @lianna @leeloo Is that different from a gun manufacturer (rightfully) getting blamed for a mass shooting involving their products?

@jakobtougaard @jazaval @StaticR @lianna
Does that ever happen?

Around here, the shooter gets blamed. Maybe the security at wherever he stole the gun. And of course when it happens kn the US, the insane laws that hands out guns like they were antidepressants.

@jakobtougaard @StaticR @lianna @leeloo so you’re saying in this case, the manufacturer is trying to build in a physical safety measure that stigmatizes “side-sales” that occur outside ATF-sanctioned sellers, and we would… scorn this?