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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Technology
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This push by google is an anticompetitive/anti-privacy Trojan horse. Just like when government invades your privacy "for the children".
Discussing it like they're acting in good faith is playing their game when you shouldn't.
I think the better question is "is it possible to disallow side loading and keep users safe? From my understanding the Play Store is full of malware.
Most likely the result of two things:
Google’s cost of entry is much lower than Apple’s. The cost of getting banned is much lower and so scammers can try more.
Google doesn’t do nearly the same level of due diligence that Apple does for the App Store. That’s not to say that Apple’s is perfect but it’s clearly a far better model of protecting users.
People that want to run whatever can always go through the crazy levels needed to jailbreak their iOS system, and install whatever they want. And “normies” get more protection.
just make all apps webpages /s
I don't see how, because kinda by definition if you're allowing side loading, the program can essentially do anything. Even if you make a really secure system, there's nothing you can do if people willingly give the program permissions.
Unless there's some way to know what a program will actually do rather than what someone says it'll do. Pretty sure that's impossible if we can't even figure out the halting problem though.
This isn't an argument against side loading. I just don't see how you can get away from the inherent risk.
if you’re allowing side loading, the program can essentially do anything
How is this not also the case for non-sideloaded apps?
Technically true, but if it's in a store, Google/Apple/whatever, presumably it's been reviewed. Doesn't mean it can't have malware in it, but that's the protection stores offer. Side loaded apps could be from anywhere and it's generally on the user to figure out if it's trustworthy or not. Unless you're reviewing the code yourself, you're taking the word of someone.
And what happens when those reviewed apps are still malicious? Like say, Tiktok?
There's never no risk. Only less risk. Far less risk in fact.
You want no risk? Write your own app.