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>but it isn’t super easy It's pretty easy, in fact when I got a new phone and tried to install the f-droid apk, android took me directly to the setting to togg

>but it isn’t super easy It's pretty easy, in fact when I got a new phone and tried to install the f-droid apk, android took me directly to the setting to toggle side loading apps. The permissions seemed even a little more fine grained than before with a seperate one to allow f-droid to install apps also, but still only one tap away once I actually tried to do it.

dan-robertson 7y ago
I don’t disagree that you found it easy. I’ve done this in the past and found it easy too. But the things that you or I may find easy are not necessarily easy to the large fraction of the population who are not particularly good with technology. I’m not sure how I found F-droid. I think it was from knowing I wanted free software, finding myself overwhelmed with crap in the regular App Store and some combination of luck/determination. In the case of the protests in Hong Kong I think there is sufficient motivation to go through these potentially tricky/scary steps and there would, if necessary, surely be resources on how to do it. But that’s also a situation where following instructions from some crowd to download some apps from some non-google source is risky. It seems that if people were doing this then it wouldn’t be long until there was a reasonable chance of being tricked into downloading CCP-sponsored malware
- grawprog 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you actually read most of what I said or are just responding to the part where I said it was easy, but, at least on android 9, it automatically takes you to the setting as soon as you try to open an apk, acquiring which, is pretty much exactly the same as downloading an .exe file on a computer. Depending on your browser, it will even ask if you want to open the file upon completion, thereby taking you to the 'enable apps from unknown sources' option without even leaving your web browser. I like to have faith that most people capable of downloading and opening a file from the internet, should be able to read a message pop up and tap a toggle button.

dan-robertson 7y ago

I don’t disagree that you found it easy. I’ve done this in the past and found it easy too. But the things that you or I may find easy are not necessarily easy to the large fraction of the population who are not particularly good with technology. I’m not sure how I found F-droid. I think it was from knowing I wanted free software, finding myself overwhelmed with crap in the regular App Store and some combination of luck/determination. In the case of the protests in Hong Kong I think there is sufficient motivation to go through these potentially tricky/scary steps and there would, if necessary, surely be resources on how to do it. But that’s also a situation where following instructions from some crowd to download some apps from some non-google source is risky. It seems that if people were doing this then it wouldn’t be long until there was a reasonable chance of being tricked into downloading CCP-sponsored malware

grawprog 7y ago
I'm not sure if you actually read most of what I said or are just responding to the part where I said it was easy, but, at least on android 9, it automatically takes you to the setting as soon as you try to open an apk, acquiring which, is pretty much exactly the same as downloading an .exe file on a computer. Depending on your browser, it will even ask if you want to open the file upon completion, thereby taking you to the 'enable apps from unknown sources' option without even leaving your web browser. I like to have faith that most people capable of downloading and opening a file from the internet, should be able to read a message pop up and tap a toggle button.