Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?

Well maybe let's start small and cover the people that do first, just to see how that goes. Instead we're starting with all people on the planet, and it will be declared a success because the metrics will say it was, there's no rolling this back.

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.

We literally did start with that… that’s the current situation, everyone has parental toggles and yet millions of people get scammed for billions of dollars a year. You’re acting like we (and these massive corporations) haven’t been trying for decades at this point. And you’re saying we shouldn’t be trying more stuff, we should just stop and give up and let innocent people get scammed because you want to be able to run whatever on your phone.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I have never seen Apple or Google suggest that someone use the parental control tools on a vulnerable adult person's phone to prevent them from hurting themselves. They have never run such a campaign for awareness or changed those tools to make them more palatable to controlling adult's phones (these tools are always sold as things to enable on a child's device). So no, I don't think we've started with that. We've started by adding some toggles and scary warning, and I agree that hasn't worked. I never suggested we stop trying, I suggested we allow the trusted owner/admin of the device to be more easily assigned to someone that person trusts, not just forcing Google into that role without consent.

You do not want to live in a world where that's normalized. There are legal processes for determining when somebody's "vulnerable" enough to need a guardian. Those process are heavy and strict for a damned good reason. And sometimes still not strict enough.

If I'm drunk and give my friend my car keys and ask them to not let me do anything stupid, I'm not giving up my legal rights to autonomy. I don't think this is any different. Legal guardianship is entirely unrelated, unless we're having some slippery slope fun.

So you expect aging parents to actively ask their children to put controls on their devices, and not to reverse that decision when it matters most?

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.

I'm expecting us that come up with something better than "give all computing control to two US companies" Yes this idea has flaws that you're an expert at picking at, but there's gotta be some middle ground that doesn't treat all of us as the most tech illiterate or scammable people.

> let innocent people get scammed because you want to be able to run whatever on your phone.

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.

> You're laying it on too thick, give us a break.

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.