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Japan prepares regulation requiring Apple to allow sideloading

https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/26/japan-regulation-apple-sideloading-ios/

As the Digital Markets Act antitrust law passed in the European Union, Apple has until March 2024 to let users...

Japan prepares regulation requiring Apple to allow sideloading::As the Digital Markets Act antitrust law passed in the European Union, Apple has until March 2024 to let users...

84 comments

pearable

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Having app developers be able to avoid Apples forced 30% fee is great. The fee is pure rent seeking masquerading as curation.

FlorianSimon

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30% might be a bit much, but Apple and Google are offering ongoing services for the price you pay as a developer. From hosting, to payment processing and APIs you can use in your apps, I think what they're offering has some monetary value that would be acceptable if it wasn't so damn much. I don't think it's toxic rent-seeking in and of itself. What's pretty toxic is that there's no way around those fees on Apple phones and tablets.

chitak166

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The #1 thing they provide is exposure.

The vast majority of users simply won't download and install something they find on a website on their phones.

aubertlone

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Thankfully, it seems like places like the EU and now Japan are considering ALL use cases, not just the majority of them.

nutt_goblin

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Unless it's fortnite and has a giant marketing engine behind it

otter

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Even I don't install random apps if they aren't on the playstore or fdroid

pearable

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Agreed, If it wasn't a forced arrangement I wouldn't necessarily nave a problem with the price

Phoenix3875

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The high price is a result of monopolistic exclusivity.

linuxdweeb

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I suspect you're just repeating arguments you've heard, so don't take this internet rage personally, but that is complete bullshit.

Hosting costs nothing. Devs will gladly foot the bill for that if given the option. Even if you distribute your apps on AWS (which is notorious for severely overcharging on egress), your expenses will be no where near 15%-30% of your revenue.
Payment processing is a competitive field outside the appstores. Even 15%-30% is ludicrous when "overpriced" processors like stripe charge 2%-3%
APIs are not something sold to developers. They build them as part of the operating system because they have to. That's how it works. They could try selling licenses, but it would result in devs not building on their fancy new features.

(you didn't mention the ones below, but people with your argument usually do, so I'm adding them for completeness)

Security is also bullshit. The Appstore and Play store are FILLED with malware. It is not physically possible to manually review the sheer volume of apps published to those stores. They also are not incentivized to improve the process much, because each time your kid or grandma accidentally activates a $40/week subscription, Apple/Google take a 15%-30% cut.
Curation/promotion is bullshit. Discoverability on these stores has always been bad, but has been particularly awful since both Apple/Google have started selling search ads in the store. The other day I almost accidentally downloaded a fake ChatGPT app because it was the first result when I searched, it had a very similar icon, "ChatGPT" in the name, 5 stars, and millions of downloads.

These stores also heavily incentivize devs to push subscriptions. I suspect (but haven't confirmed) that the Appstore and Google Play both rank subscription based apps higher than others, and subs tend to pay a lower revshare fee than other monetization types.

I could go on all day about the rotten dumpster fires that are these disgusting stores. The only people who defend them are fanboys and people who have never actually had to deal with them professionally.

AlexWIWA

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Their curation is terrible too. The app store has so much shovelware crap

NeoNachtwaechter

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legislation is expected to be sent to parliament next year and focuses on four areas: app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems.

We also get Linux on iPhones??

And the talk is just about sideloading... :-)

onlinepersona

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I do wonder what they mean with "operating systems". If they legislate that iPhones should allow operating systems besides iOS to be installed, that would be huge. Android, Linux, or BSD on an iPhone... imagine!

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

olafurp

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I personally can't wait for open sourcing of mobile drivers / driver apis. That will finally allow stuff like turning off phone components for Linux mobile system and not have gyro for some specific phones.

Xatolos

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Most likely it means what the OS allows and won't allow. In this case, it will focus on iOS and allowing you to install software without using the app store (3rd party stores)

doctorcrimson

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onlinepersona

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Not if the phone isn't getting updates anymore or second-hand and the user doesn't want to use iOS.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

doctorcrimson

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onlinepersona

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What's up with the creative commons link?

It's for AI scraping to license the comment. Dunno if it is or ever will be useful, I'm just trying it.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

lledrtx

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Are you saying Android has less features and capabilities? Or am I reading it wrong?

doctorcrimson

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lledrtx

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Ahh I see, thanks!

The reason I was confused is that I was assuming this is about older iPhones, you know, the ones Apple is deliberately slowing down. So installing a lightweight Android ROM could give them a new lease on life.

SnipingNinja

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I would assume it's to use the chips but that only works if they're forced to provide proper drivers for the full hardware

electric

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Big if true. Apple owners might actually be owners of their devices.

driveway

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FlorianSimon

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By and large, probably... But I don't think it's true for everyone.

As an iPad owner myself, I would love to ditch the OS! And I suppose alternative OSes would be pretty popular with the people jailbreaking their phones.

I don't want to impose alternative OSes on others. I would just like the option for me!

flooppoolf

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AlexWIWA

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Not true. I'd love to be able to jailbreak again. I'm locked in to the ecosystem by work and a backlog of apps 15 years deep.

Granted I'm on Lemmy so I guess I'm not a normal iOS user

Lmaydev

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Yeah it's literally a status symbol amongst kids.

My kid is desperate for one but can't give me a single compelling reason apart from they're seen as cool.

KoalaUnknown

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I like Apple products because they just work. I have tried Windows, Linux, & Android, but I ultimately decided on just using the Apple Ecosystem (except for my gaming computer) because the products just work well. Sure they cost more and are locked down but I am willing to sacrifice those things for things for the boost in productivity.

Apple isn’t for everybody but their products have upsides.

r0bi

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They just work (usually) if you want to use their products the way they want you to use them.

If you have your own idea how to do something on your own that's any different, you will slowly go insane.

sugartits

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They just work (usually) if you want to use their products the way they want you to use them.

Well.... Yeah? That's the case for most products.

lud

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https://youtu.be/cKSy_KqUX5o?t=4

MigratingApe

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Why downvotes? They are both right, with an exception of MacBooks. Otherwise, you are limited by use cases predicted by the manufacturer, even if it "just works".

I use both iPhone and MacBook, with the latter mostly as a Unix that, again, "just works", but I can even go as far as compile whole GNU userspace natively with Gentoo Prefix (one of many options).

snowe

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Cuz it makes no sense. You wouldn’t complain that the iPhone doesn’t work as a skateboard because they don’t want you using it as a skateboard. It doesn’t work as a skateboard because it’s not a skateboard. All companies design products to be used the way the company wants you to use them. If op is talking about it being super locked down, that’s also incorrect. I can disable plenty of the security features on Mac and it continues to work just fine, compared to windows where if you disable UAC you literally cannot use your computer the same way and it will bug you constantly. It’s just a trope that isn’t really true at all.

AzureRT

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Just give your kid an iPhone from AxiExpress

doctorcrimson

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Telodzrum

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lol right

Good luck getting any of the hardware to work properly without Apple's help.

doctorcrimson

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ipkpjersi

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Based Japan once again. I would love to see other countries requiring this too, but I'm not going to hold my breath unfortunately.

Neon

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I mean, the EU has already done this and now Japan is doing the same. So i guess it's very well possible that other countries besides Japan will also follow suit.

Cicraft

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Hehe Brussels effect go brrrr

Darken

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bamboo

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I think India and Brazil have also made initial efforts.

Linkerbaan

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I tried to install an old version of San Andreas recently on my phone cause the last update broke controller support (which I actually bought with money).

Apparently we don't own our Android OBB directories anymore because of "safety".

So far the "we Android users already have this"...

ipkpjersi

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Yep, it's unfortunate that manufacturers are taking more and more control away from users. That's why open-source software like Linux is so important, you can do anything you want to with it.

doctorcrimson

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Neon

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Not really. Fairphone also has the Bootloader unlocked.

doctorcrimson

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berrodeguarana

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Are Fairphones feasible right now if one wants to play even intense games like emulating PS2 or Switch?

Neon

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Idk. Give me your Emulator and i'll try it for you

berrodeguarana

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No shit, really? You're the man.

The emulator is called AetherSX2.

Now, for ROMs... I'd gladly share the link for one here on Lemmy, but idk if I'd be violating any rules

Neon

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I' m sorry, bu you're going to have to send me the links for the bios, game etc.

I really don't think it's against any rules here.

Codilingus

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God I miss the old days of android...the OG droid, everything was unlockable, no fuckery. Google hadn't yet slowly started adding data collection by ways of slowing moving functionality away from the core AOSP.

It still is open source, btw. But they're just intentionally choking it to death. They've recently announced they're not going to maintain the open source PHONE APP...FOR THEIR PHONES....for christ sake. They've even had a new replacement OS in the works for a couple years.

DanVctr

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Embrace, Extend, Extinguish sadly

doctorcrimson

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FMEEE

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Yeah Android is Linux. But Manufactures are limiting it so hard that it is sometimes nearly impossible to get a custom ROM on the phone.

w2tpmf

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Yes. The openess of the operating system is meaningless if the phone's firmware isn't open.

giggling_engine

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It's open source so that anyone can manufacture a phone for it (good for business), not so you could install whatever you want on the hardware (bad for business)...

ipkpjersi

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Yeah but unfortunately with Android it's what Google wants and not what the end-user wants. That's why Linux itself is very important, the user gets to decide what they want to do with it.

FrameXX

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The restricted access to the obb folder is not a manufacturer related limitiation. This limitation imposed by Android 12 or 11 (im not sure) and newer.

_number8_

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sideloading would be nice; i have no idea how people can get proper work done on an ipad as of now (especially with apple at one point acting like it was only a matter of time for them to replace laptops). everything is so overly glossy and surface level and designed for children or the elderly; you can't actually DO anything!

M500

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Even with side loading, you will still be pretty limited as the iPad is decently locked down. First of all it needs a decent window manager. That alone would go a long way.

But honestly, these things should be running full blown macOS when they are docked to a mouse and keyboard.

They had an 11” air at one point, so screen size can’t be the issue.

tigerjerusalem

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This could be the real "pro" iPhone. Running m3, acting as a phone by itself and throwing a full macOS with Office and Adobe Cloud apps when docked.

M500

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Yeah! Even if not an m3, the chip in the 15 pro is good enough for most people. If you really need more power then, get an m3.

I’d love if my phone was my computer in that way.

M500

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Yuh-huh! Just get a terminal emulator from the App Store. I will be just a few dollars a month. Then you can ssh into a Linux server you have somewhere.

See it’s an entire computer!

Speculater

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So a $1,200 thin client?

M500

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No you do not get it.

At Apple we make magical devices that are unlike anything done before. We have truly revolutionized computing with over priced hardware.

If you don’t have a Mac then you are not cool and not good at your job.

Speculater

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I'm just going to sit in the corner with my 4070 and be poor then. Sorry to not be cool! Also, my bubbles are green.

Telodzrum

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4070 and be poor

I mean yeah, you fell for nVidia's scam.

chitak166

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That's the point. They want people to use devices where information is given to them, but they can't interact with it or give something back.

They literally want us scrolling tiktok all day before it's time to get ready for work.

rottingleaf

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That's also where the Web is now.

People are saying that Flash was bad and HTML5 with heavy JS and all the functionality of modern browsers is good.

Such people are either fine with it, or don't understand that downsides of Flash (or Java applets, or whatever else) were defined by its advantages, which were much more important.

A lot of kids or young people with no particular interest in IT\CS\engineering would use Flash for animations or little cute things which made their simple, possible back then websites more alive. (I've just looked at such one site, abandoned with some trace of a resurrection attempt in 2019, and it's gorgeous.)

You had to know less to make your own stuff in that old Web than you have to know now.

The Web is by its purpose a networked global hypertext system, a living library with common participation.

That some people want to repurpose it, think they've been successful at it, and think others will go along with their wishes, - is sad, but should have no weight.

AlexWIWA

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My iPad has basically become a YouTube machine. There are no useful productivity features, no file manager, and no good games coming out that aren't already on PC with mods.

Back in 2013 I loved my iPad, but now I'm thinking of just getting a surface

Telodzrum

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I don’t take a laptop with me when I travel, because the iPad is more than enough for my work needs for a few days. Working with large spreadsheets is the only thing I absolutely need a computer for.

I have friends who are programmers and regularly work on just an iPad. As I understand it, they only need a computer for some more horsepower-hungry parts of their workflow.

The real problem with iPads is iPadOS. It’s intentionally gimped so you need a computer for some tasks. The iPad Pro has more than enough processing power and memory for full workloads (as well it should, given the price point), the OS is the restricting factor.

Matriks404

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What real work can even be done on any tablet that is not running desktop OS? I guess you could write stuff or edit spreadsheets, but that's it.

locuester

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“Write stuff” and “edit spreadsheets” covers 75% of corporate america.

irish_link

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Cool. This would be great. Hopefully a push to allow that in all other countries.

chitak166

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Now that's what I'm talking about.

steve_floof

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Life finds a way

Suoko

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Usb-C, side loading, what's next? APK or snap packages compatibility?

focalors

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Great, now force them to open up their NFC, so mobile banking apps can skip Apple Pay for their contactless payment feature

v_raton

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It's happening guys, apple is start to a open source platform

Fishytricks

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I was against sideloading, because I’m in it for the walled garden and if governments were to use their own stalls to publish their apps, then, actually it doesn’t matter anymore! Our gov apps still invasive anyway, imo.

For the clueless, the particular app scans your face with various coloured screens being blasted through the phone screen, doesn’t matter if you have face ID enabled or not, its their own scan.

Power to sideloading.

Tosti

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You being paid by apple to fear monger about sideloading?

If you fear this, just leave the sideloading to others.

WhatAmLemmy

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Wherever I ever see a comment complaining about sideloading, I just assume they're an Apple financed marketing shill.

Even if they're just a brainwashed moron, the argument is so stupid they deserve nothing but ridicule.

kbotc

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My biggest issue is cancelling recurring services. The Apple model requires that all your subscriptions appear on a pane of glass that you can notice if you signed up for a free trial and it’s been billing you $2.99/month because you wanted to read your kid Dr. Suess books on a flight when you were exhausted. Good luck figuring that out if you only have “$2.99 STRIPE BABELBOX INC” on your credit card bill.

Fishytricks

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Um, I said I believed before. I don’t believe it works anymore (walled garden). And that the government apps already doing this in the walled garden. Even said power to sideloading….

And I get downvoted to oblivion?

Tosti

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Probably also for the Q-Anon level lunacy with the government apps n stuff.

Fishytricks

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Sorry for wanting privacy then.

Tosti

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Wanting privacy is OK, and your link to the video on the face ID of the bank also helped explain what you where talking about.

It's the way you wrote it that came across if you where some conspiracy nutcase and that causes downvotes.

Many people share concerns about the use and storage of PII by for profit companies and governments without any oversight on what actually happens with the data. It is good that waryness on who you provide what data to is Becoming more mainstream. I remember years ago people would look at me funny if I replied "no thank you" when asked my zip code in a store. Now a lot more people do it.

Nighed

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Your initial comment makes very little sense ( to me anyway)

Fishytricks

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Yeap its my mistake. Poor wording.

squid_slime

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About 90% of my apps from fdroid. A Foss store that will do they're best to ensure no anti or invasive features break through to my phone. I am certain that apple will have a similar store.

JustARegularNerd

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Yeah, I'll even go as far as to say that because F-Droid apps are usually not for profit you get actually good apps without ads or trying to sell you anything.

They're just an app that some dude found they needed and developed, and then made available for everyone else.

This is the most jarring difference I find when I go to the App Store, so a FOSS repository for iOS would be so huge.

Fishytricks

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And I’m sure of that. Suffice to say it doesn’t matter because Apple’s walled garden allowed the Gov’s invasive app regardless.

Just to be clear: it doesn’t matter because the walled garden sucked and didn’t work and I don’t mind a third party store anymore.

Fishytricks

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You guys downvoting me do realize that I’m fine with sideloading right?

locuester

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Your first sentence, after the comma, should say “because I was in it…”. That was a bit confusing.

And then you went completely off the rails with some colored light government conspiracy stuff.

So I think that’s causing the downvotes.

Fishytricks

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Yeap that’s my bad.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=araYz3X2Q5g&pp=ygUac2luZ3Bhc3MgZmFjZSB2ZXJpZmljYXRpb24%3D 40 seconds in.

Yeah I know

locuester

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That’s just financial apps using selfies for id verification. They’ve been doing that for years with crypto exchange apps.