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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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And this is why having 3rd party app stores is important. It’s why it matters that Google is killing side loading, if two fucking companies get to decide what you can do on your phone, we’re in a bad spot technology wise
We're in a bad spot technology wise
No doubt. I’ve gotten to the point where I have like 6 apps on my phone and it’s in lockdown mode on iOS. And I’d be on grapheneOS if I wasn’t required to use iOS for work.
Can you have your job pay for an iPhone while you have a different personal phone? I’m a big fan of keeping a work device that’s separate from a personal device.
I probably could, but I’m also a recovering drug addict and my partner is pretty hesitant about a second device as it’s another way to hide things. However I’m the head of the MDM team so I’m not really nervous about what the company can see
I thought you were head of the MDMA team for a second and thought that could be rough as a recovering drug addict
I do this. Highly recommended.
And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the 'left' as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.
Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you're just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.
Right? The collective dismissal of Mastodon from leftist influencers when the Muskening happened was eye opening.
Like, there's a collaborative, volunteer-based platform right over there. You want mutual aid? Open-source is as mutual-aid as it gets.
But it's nerd shit.
Because they are controlled opposition.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok and you saw how quickly both parties went to ban it in 2024 after normal people started talking about Gaza genocide in every day conversation. The American Congress worked together to ban it even though they couldn't agree on anything else.
It went from an Asian platform where Asian people in the West connected with each other outside the mainstream blue pill/red pill false choice and shared culture as well as history that isn't taught, to "here's the truth about Jesus" and "the world is flat debate me" after that vote. Now it's full on MAGA.
Mastodon is harder to control because servers can pop up organically, but I guess Threads was a hedge against that threat.
I'm not sure what you mean by controlled, but how I got to know it was as the malware that's recommended to everyone on the front page of the google play store, and then even factory preinstalled on a lot of them.
Also, on xitter are all these assholes I don't care about. I can't leave that platform. Pathetic!
I originally got introduced to sociallist idiology through Richard Stallman's speaches. I know he had some, uhh... "interesting" things to say about Epstein's victims (which I believe he has since redacted), but his speaches are absolutely still worth listening to just for the content alone.
Yeah, very disappointed by RMS' creepiness (the Epstein stuff isn't the only thing), but he was 100% right about software freedom.
Redacted or recanted? One of these is definitely preferable to the other in this context.
Recanted is the word I was thinking of.
https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong)
Those same people are also still using Twitter or Instagram or TikTok.
People will never understand intricacies like that. On the other hand, the big tech corps do. We are doomed
We rapidly need to switch to Linux Mobile. PostmarketOS and Mobian are the two most promising projects, and I would highly recommend anyone reading this to donate to them if you have the means.
Both projects directly use your donations to hire developers to build and polish the critical essentials to get this alternative viable as a daily driver.
While I full heartily agree with you, I'm pessimistic you will ever reach enough people with these alternatives. Even on privacy forums you hear people fervently defending how banking apps are mandatory. Those will never run on anything that isn't locked down. The eID proposal for the EU is also dependent on Android and iOS.
It doesn't necessarily need to achieve mass adoption, it just needs to get to a 'good enough' point to make it viable for those who are willing or desperate to get away from big tech.
Linux still has plenty of people giving reasons why they won't switch, but it's now finally viable for many, including myself. I just want mobile Linux to get to that point too, even if there's still rough edges.
This i don't get, i'd rather use home-banking from my home PC.
A lot of banks require their personal apps as 2FA to access your account. I would never agree to that.
Just technology wise? I think it's a little deeper than just technology unfortunately
Oh yeah, of course, but it feels like it's never part of the conversation, even among people whose opinions I respect and are, for example, super critical of AI and talking about enshittification and other issues in the online sphere, they never seem to take the step to check out Linux, or get off Twitter or whatever.
"Sideloading" is their term, invented to make it sound like something it is not. We should not use this word. The correct word is "installing".
You don't "sideload" on Windows when you install software outside of the Microsoft Store™️. There is no real difference or distinction with software on phones, so there is no need for a special word.
I can see Microsoft moving to the same sort of thinking as well. Apple already made Mac OS users jump through hoops when you want to install something from the internet or even through a third party package manager like homebrew.
Microsoft has been trying this for years already. That eventually led to Valve incresing their efforts in the Linux gaming front and releasing the Steam Deck.
See this
I wonder if Valve would ever get into the Linux Phone market.
But for the platform itself to be open, I wonder how much would have to be recreated.
Does anybody actually enjoy gaming on the phone or just do it because there nothing better to do?
I would perhaps buy a valve phone but I wouldn't want to game on it which sounds weird.
Unless it was like a switch and had detachable joycons.
Oh same here. I'm hopeful that valve brings us a linux phone, not a gaming phone. I've never really gotten into gaming on mobile either.
However, if they DO make a linux phone, I'm sure it will be Steam branded and have all kinds of gaming-specific tweaks.
But again, to me that just sounds like it will have good hardware specs. So not a problem!
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-and-windows-11-in-s-mode-faq-851057d6-1ee9-b9e5-c30b-93baebeebc85
Not to defend it, but the first time I encountered the term was when BlackBerry released their Playbook tablet. It ran their bbos10 and they created an android emulator so you could run some android apps. The process of installing the apk into the emulator was called sideloading.
I miss BlackBerry is all I really wanted to say.
Not yet.
"Install" includes installing from an app store no matter how closed down and exlusive. The correct term would be "install from other sources than an app store" which is just clunky. Calling it "sideloading" won't change that nor will calling it "your mom". Considering how many corporate-speak terms are in use and how many braindead abbreviations and terms shortened to a word's last syllable -completely distorting the original meaning- generally are in use, the term "sideloading" is pretty irrelevant. Either lose your mind listening to the bullshit people permanently are emitting or just live with it...
No, it's not.
"Installing" is innocuous and easily understandable (by those tech-illiterate dumbfucks that get spoonfed FUD by lobbyists); whereas sideloading is eerily similar to sidestepping and is prone to being interpreted as "working around a safeguard".
Words are not irrelevant.
Right? Anyone who has been paying attention to the healthcare thing in america should know that what you call something influences immensely what people think about something. Just look at the difference in support in polling when they call it the affordable healthcare act OR obamacare.
Right, we should just completely ignore any power words have over people, because we personally don't like it. Let's also ignore all sorts of other manipulation tactics cause it's more convinet to pretend they don't exist. 🙄
Your phone is fucking you no matter what you do.
If people were more aware of how to make and install mobile web apps it would be less of a problem.
At least on the iPhone you can still add a site to your screen that can behave a lot like an app, including camera access, location services, and even gyro. And it’s just a website like most “apps” are.
Most people don't care about any of that. Firefox with AdBlock to surfe YouTube without ads? Nah, they want the app, which is basically the same, but at least they can't block ads. I stopped trying to understand
Yeah, me too.
There is a great app called 'hermit' on android that gives you a better wepapp experience. Basically a browser tuned to make webapps act native.
Honestly, this thing should just been a PWA. Making this naive app was dumb.
“Hurd OS? Isn’t that obsolete?” “Not obsolete. Just… illegal.” ~Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
Webapps for the rescue!