Side loading is an interesting hobby horse for hackers. It causes material harm to a lot of people. But hackers want to keep it anyway for themselves for ideological and aesthetic reasons.

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mhitza 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Who says that Google is the one to decide what open source software I can install on my mobile Android computing device?

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rprend 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Wym? Google says it’s the one to decide. They are doing this because side loading causes fraud. There is pressure and lobbying (like this open letter) to stop them from locking it down.

	▲	mhitza 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was a catchy rethorical question. Desired emphasis on the fact that a smartphone is a computing device. If you like to not be able to run whatever software you want on your computer, and the one your family owns, that's your thing. Its another pretense, like disabling full disk encryption, where people came with these ideas (instead of other options), because its convenient to them to pretend its the right thing.

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TJTorola 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ideological is carrying a lot of weight there. Perhaps you can be more specific about the ideological arguments you are hearing that are not worth it?

	▲	rprend 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Walled gardens have less fraud and malware because it's less open. But developers prefer open source decentralized software. Of course, we are technologically literate enough to avoid the fraud. It's similar to drug decriminalization or the legalization of sports gambling.

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jrm4 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Citation please; and remember your answer is incomplete without a comparison to the safety of NON sideloaded apps.

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hypeatei 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay, then every book, every email, every text message, every comment, and every letter should be signed by a third party that's verified your ID. After all, there's speech which can cause material harm and free speech is just an ideological thing. It'd be dangerous if we allowed unsigned messages to be sent between people.