There are Linux phones available. I,m going to guess popularity of those devices to increase soon.

The more I think about it, this may finally convince me to...shudders...switch to an iPhone. I've always stayed on Android because despite the recent Google bullshit, it still for the most part lets me do whatever. Side-loading apks is a huge part of that.

If it's turning into a shittier iOS clone, what's the point?

Also, didn't the EU declare that Apple needs to allow other app stores on their devices?

This seems like a bonehead move all around..

Google : "You don't own your phone, we own you."

Yes, that's the implication, and it's certainly intentional for you to think of it like that.

I've had people clueless about tech tell me that:

using Linux and not buying Windows I rob MS's developers,

not doing things the way big corporations want I deprive them of profits and thus rob their workers,

using your own device the way you want it is a crime if you have to bypass what the vendor does,

GPL and BSD licenses are not real sovereign citizen stuff, and if I'm not paying someone for software, I'm robbing the working class,

repairing things yourself in your house is robbing people working in those trades,

reading things in the Web is robbing university professors and book store workers and publishers,

having to learn a particular technology while doing my task at work means I'm a fraud and rob my employer or our clients, because apparently I have to keep all the today's tech in my head before needing any of it,

if I don't know some single thing another person knows, they are obviously better qualified than me (say, that other person can write Windows device drivers, while the job is about systems integration),

...

and I don't remember more stupid shit from those people and I don't want to, but generally being not a dumb ape in today's world is considered suspicious apparently.

After that wonderful experience I might be silent about my views with people usually, but really I'll never stop being anarchist (whatever kind of anarchism that is).

"side-loading" is literally the norm on Windows and Linux

There's a bank here that refuses to let you log into their app if you have developer options enabled. Their service was getting much better until that point, but I dropped them completely after that.

I use developer options to get better screen density on my large ass screen, and to you know...develop apps 🤷‍♂️

FUCK THESE ASSHOLES WHO THINK THEY CAN TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN NOT DO WITH MY PHONE

According to the dumbfucks making the government application of Belgium (to read official communication) trustworthy means having developer mode disabled.

Man I really hate how they stripped your permissions to access the internal and external storage, files can no longer access data from other apps even if you say allow all file access. Also if your phone supports SD cards, you might notice that you don't have write access to it for some reason on later versions of android. (I really struggled with this with my Galaxy S9 on Lineage), had to use apps that remounted my SD card and what not

No but you see we at Google aren't locking down sideloading. It's the individual app developers. With the api we gave them for that express purpose. Totally not us locking stuff down though, so EU please ignore us trying to indirectly close doors in our walled garden?

This is just Google's clever way of not removing the sideloading feature from their OS.

They let app developers to prevent users from using sideloaded app.

This way they can avoid antitrust lawsuits.

You mean like literally every single attempt at DRM since the Big Bang?

Good luck when banking apps start doing this.

I hope so. I don't want Android to become the new Apple