An accurate title would read something like: Google wants to make side loading apps more difficult by adding extra steps under the guise of security in order to maintain market dominance and continue spying on the user.

I know my sideloaded apps are safe. I have far less confidence with the apps Google allows in their App Store.

Yay, Google adding another hurdle for alternative app stores and their developers...

Ridiculous, mother of bullshit! Switching to Linux appears to be the only option left for a personal computing device.

Sure, to make it safer in the same way Microsoft made you safer by making it harder to install Linux with UEFI.

Let Android be free, fuck off Google.

At some point that stops being sideloading.

I've never wanted to get all my devices totally detached from google until recently.

They are going full mask off right now.

They're prepping to be the surveillance service for the global fascist oligarchy.

Year of the Linux phone in 2026?

In the meantime, we're already verifying signatures for sideloaded apps. Can't say the same about play store apps.

Great, Apple style app notarization is just about the last thing I want on my damn phone.

Every year that goes by mobile computing gets less and less interesting.

Might as well just buy the cheapest one that will do the job and call it done. So sense in spending top dollar very often when it is just a severely limited black box, like a video game console.

Lmao "safer" FOH monopolistic pieces of shit.

Glad i run only LineageOS with no gapps.

I wonder if this will do the same thing that happened to Windows when Windows 11 wouldn't support older devices and people switched on mass to Linux.

Either way, you're gonna have a bifurcated Android. One Android for the plebs where Google controls everything, and one Android for those who know where Google controls nothing.

Sounds like this is going to stop things like me telling my friend to install new pipe from afteroid because they can skip YouTube ads.

can they not just develop a method like they do for verifying websites with an .android folder or something? requiring everyone into a centralised place is garbage.

Oh I see someone already made a post. I can't see how this is enforceable except for highly modifying the OS. It would have to be enforced at the device level correct,?

Can this be bypassed by using adb to sideload, I wonder?