Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?

If people still go for it, then it is their responsibility. A lot of things in life require responsibility because otherwise the results can be disastrous. But we don't forbid them, because it would be a huge violation of freedoms.

You have to take into account that the threat model here is vulnerable people, often older, being taken in by scammers who talk to them for weeks and gain their complete confidence. To the victims, it feels like a real romantic relationship, not someone who could even possibly be a scammer.

Also, scams also happen outside smartphones.

What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%.

Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".

Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time.

> Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction.

Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.

And it doesn't have to be children of parents, that's just the common example that's brought out every time this comes up.

Give the knowledgeable the freedom to use their skills. Separately, develop ways to help/protect specifically those that need it.

Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely.

As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.

... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.

The proverbial grandparents will follow the instructions of the scammers and will click through all of that. We've had decades of empirical evidence: people will keep clicking and tapping on dialogue boxes to achieve their goal.

People have physically driven to cryptocurrency ATMs on the instructions of scammers:

* https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136...

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-...

Warning sheets will do nothing.

We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated:

* https://xkcd.com/1053/

Many, probably most, of the people most at risk aren't going to do that.

When you're (somewhat) drunk, you know that you're drunk, and you're still able to comprehend how that will slow down your reactions while driving. When you're being scammed, you think you're right... and if you begin to doubt that, you may tend to push the thought out of your mind rather than follow it through, and to evade things that might bring it back. And it's very hard to admit to yourself that you're permanently impaired in that sort of way... especially when you're impaired in that sort of way.

Because at the end of the day the scammer is going to convince your grandma to go to the bank, withdraw the entirety of her savings and send them to the scammer in an envelope.

Any technical restrictions therefore only harm our personal freedoms and don't actually protect those who are vulnerable because those people's problems aren't technical in nature.

As always it comes down to insulting and emotionally guilt tripping people to screw them out of their freedoms and of course there's never even a shred of evidence to support any of these incredible claims. You're laying it on too thick, give us a break.

> You’re acting like we (and these massive corporations) haven’t been trying for decades at this point.

You're acting like this would make a dent in the total number of people who are scammed every day.

And it just so happens that the only acceptable remedy necessitates infringing on billions of people's personal freedoms which will, incidentally, secure trillions in future profits for these corporations. All that for a temporary speed bump that would only affect a minority of scammers who would adapt in a month.

Those of us with elderly parents and piblings (aunts/uncles).

Says the person that thinks they are losing personal freedoms when a company makes a product change and they just don’t want to bother switching to a different product.

Buy a different phone. This isn’t affecting your personal freedom.

And yes, it does affect the number of scams that people fall for, as evidenced by iOS’s hiding of links in scam messages. It forced scammers to try and get the scammee to jump through several more hoops just to be able to open links. Immediate drop in scams.

There are tons of things to be done. None of them are affecting your freedom. Buy a different phone.