I have seen *perfect* summary, for google "sideloading" drama.
Aug 27 · 4 months ago · 👍 jsreed5, drh3xx, tenno-seremel
4 Comments ↓
Completely agree with that statement. Think it's part of a bigger problem though. As governments (seemingly all of them) seem to be going hard and fast down the authoritarian/surveillance state road and heavily digitizing everything for increased visibility and control. They are now making it even harder to break out of the duopoly situation we find ourselves in because it suits them (only two companies to strong arm for data access or censorship). I doubt any of their digital ID or CBDC bullshit will use free and Open APIs that can be implemented by members of the FOSS community. They're effectively mandating smart phone ownership and it MUST be Android or iOS. We're all pretty fucked!
The fun times are definitely coming to an end. Hang onto your old tech because that’s the last bastion of freedom.
Pre-2008 laptops are the only ones that pre-date when the government started mandating silicon-level backdoors into everything. Save and collect them while you can.
I don't object to the term "sideloading" per se. It long predates smartphones, and it's always referred to loading data in a way that differed from some "standard" method. What I find ludicrous is Google's assertion that anonymous sideloading is so dangerous, we need to end the entire concept of sideloading anything that's not signed by Google. It's a power grab, pure and simple.
Be aware: Google can only enforce this change on Android devices that are Play Protect-certified. The vast majority of phones are certified these days--I think it's required for official Play Store access--but some phones still aren't. You'll need to look for a phone that is not certified, or look for phones that can run custom ROMs like Lineage or Graphene.
@pista You're absolutely right. Hold on to old tech, repair it as much as you can, and if you must switch to newer devices, do your research and gut them of anything proprietary.
Good thing I have an old ThinkPad tablet, I still want to give it more memory and hard drive space, since it still uses Windows 7 Ultimate. I also have an old Macbook OS X as well too.