Sideloading is important to Gays. What it is, why Gays need it.
To bypass corporate censorship and government censorship.
Subscriptions are free.
Google pulls gay dating app Blued from Google Store in Indonesia upon government request.
https://www.metroweekly.com/2018/01/google-axes-gay-dating-app-blued-indonesian-store/
Turns out Google pulled 73 LGBT dating apps from their store in Indonesia.
https://www.mambaonline.com/2018/01/31/indonesia-google-removes-gay-dating-app/
It is now known as Heesay. It is way bigger than Grindr and serves primarily the East Asian market.
This article is about apps being censored by Samsung and Google in South Korea.
To censor or to not censor for businesses is just a business decision.
Apple removes Telegram, WhatsApp, and others upon Chinese Government request.
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/apple_appstore_china_censorship.php
What is Sideloading?
Side loading is where you load in an app to your phone not using the Google Store, Apple Store, or Samsung store. You load it from a 3rd party source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideloading
Google and Apple stores repressively regulate Gay Apps in the United States.
There was a concern that Grindr and Scruff would be pulled from the Apple store. They didn’t but there was this concern:
Still, internet freedom advocates say Apple’s vast power over the App Store poses unique risks to members of the LGBTQ+ community. The company has been accused in the past of censoring certain apps in the store, especially outside the US.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community, sex workers, and other marginalized groups stand to be most negatively affected by Apple’s “continued monitoring, surveillance, censorship, and blockage of apps”, said Sarah Roth-Gaudette, the executive director of Fight for the Future.
Though the concerns expressed were more about what happens outside the United States, restrictions do also occur in the United States.
Squirt wants to have an app in the Iphone store, but Apple won’t permit it.
This is a story from 2009 and Squirt was never able to get into the app stores.
Some quotes:
Gay cruising website Squirt.org released a mobile-friendly version of its site this week, but don’t expect a Squirt iPhone app anytime soon: Apple prohibits those that involve nudity or sexual content.
On Dec 10, Grindr sent a message to its users, reminding them to comply with Grindr’s guidelines. “These guidelines are meant to ensure that Grindr complies with Apple regulations. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in a ban of your Grindr account and also put Grindr at risk [of] being removed from iTunes by Apple.”
Grindr, a popular gay iPhone app, has taken the opposite approach: it’s bending over to meet Apple’s app guidelines. Grindr allows iPhone users to find nearby gay guys via the phone’s built-in GPS system. It is marketed as a “friend finder,” even though many of its users are looking for quick, nearby sex. The drawbacks? It’s limited to iPhone users only, leaving Blackberry-toting businessmen out. And good luck uploading a cock pic to your Grindr profile.
https://xtramagazine.com/power/will-prudish-app-guidelines-sink-the-iphone-35540
The above article is why Grindr isn’t going to be removed, Grindr is willing to censor you.
Apple presumes to run your sex life so many liberal to conservative anti-sex groups aren’t upset with them.
So the apps might be allowed by Apple, but that is because these apps self-censor.
Gay art apps fear censorship.
Corporate App store monopolies is likely the reason hook up apps follow trans activist dictates.
You can’t filter by sex on Grindr, just by “gender.” So if you want to find men who have a cock, you can’t, but you can filter for those who declare themselve men.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/08/grindr-issues-today/
Corporate App store monopolities allow all sorts of moral scolds to try to control Gay desire.
Moralistic actions like this make it difficult for men who date Asian men to find Asian men on the apps.
Through the restrictions against sideloading all sorts of interest groups get power over the sex lives of Gay men.
Sideloading would allow bypassing the Apple, Samsung, and Google stores and their censorship.
With Sideloading there could be apps which allow nudity and would work towards the needs of Gay men. There could be Gay art apps without censorship.
Further the popularity of sideloaded apps would put pressure on Grindr, Scruff, and all the others that have caved into Apple, Google, and Samsung censorship. They would start losing members. They might stop giving moralizing lectures to Gays about transmen.
No more showing up for a meet up and finding out that it is a transman who had lots of filters on the portrait. No studying the profile to make sure it is a transman. An app for Gay desire, not a mindfield of avoiding unwanted encounters.
Sideloading would mean that the censorship of South Korea and Indonesia could be bypassed.
Sideloading is opposed by Apple and Google.
They make a lot of money charging for the apps to be in their store and other monopolistic practices.
The biggest hit to the iPhone maker could come from a US antitrust trial against Google, where it emerged that the fellow tech giant had paid more than $26 billion in 2021 to make its search engine the default on Apple devices and other smartphones and browsers.
Should Google lose the case, it could be forced to stop making regular payments to Apple, which Eric Seufert, an independent analyst, estimates as being worth a quarter of annual revenues earned by Apple’s services arm.
And:
Its services arm, which includes income from the App Store, video streaming arm, and Apple Music, has steadily increased as a proportion of the company’s total revenues, which is still dominated by sales of devices such as the iPhone.
So they are trying to raise alarm over side loading.
“Apple’s Federighi delivers dramatic speech on dangers of sideloading”
Title of this article is, “Apple exec: “Sideloading in this case is actually eliminating choice” Sounds Orwellian.
Another anti-trust ruling against Google.
Remember, with your personal computer you can download any software you want and this has been done sine there were personal computers and the internet.
Governments are opposing these monopolies.
“Apple should be required to let iPhone users sideload apps, Biden admin says”
The EU is pushing sideloading, “Apple announces sweeping EU App Store policy changes—including sideloading.” But the change is restricted to Europe.
Android phones are resisting sideloading.
“Newer Samsung Galaxy Phones Will Block App Sideloading by Default.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/newer-samsung-galaxy-phones-will-block-app-sideloading-by-default
Samsung bans Gay apps in South Korea but has the nerve to give this guidance.
https://insights.samsung.com/2021/07/14/what-are-the-risks-of-sideloaded-android-apps/
This is a recent article about software providers protest against Samsung policies against sideloading.
https://www.androidpolice.com/epic-removes-fortnite-from-the-galaxy-store/
This 2023 article has a long involved process for sideloading and some scare thrown in. Restricted to India.
Always be careful of ratio statistics.
Google hasn't published detailed stats about the dangers of sideloading in a while, but in 2018, it used to publish yearly security reports with statistics on malware installation sources. Back then, Google found that 0.04 percent of all downloads from the Google Play Store were "PHAs" (potentially harmful apps), while sources "Outside of Google Play" had a 0.92 percent PHA install rate. That means you're 20 times more likely to install malware outside of the Play Store, and considering that is basically a comparison between having some malware controls on Google Play and none at all on the free-wheeling Internet, it's not a huge surprise.
It is less than one-percent and likely you might choose a store to download that has a known reputation and does its own policing.
HOWEVER, at this time I am not sure that you can actually sideload anything in the United States at all, or only if you are some advanced expert.
Further the operating system of the Samsung phone use Android but have its own customizations, so even if one Android phone might allow it, Samsung might not.
LGBTQXYZ media coverage of sideloading.
If you know of any let me know.
There is reporting of apps being banned, but not reporting on sideloading. Sideloading would make interest groups unable to regulate Gay desire. It would mean Gays would be able to do what they wanted to do.
Sideloading should be in the LGBTQXYZ medea, but they are really the L_BTQXYZ media.
What to do?
Support sideloading politically. That is in online forums, at public meeting, in political donations, in voting, support sideloading.
When sideloading becomes possible, sideload some Gay useful apps. Be careful, with what you load, but load some. If people were on sideloaded apps instead of Grinder and Scruff, they might change their behavior.
We should be alert to a 3rd choice in phones. The Microsoft phones have stopped and they would be censored also. However, in the future there might be a new source for phones. Maybe Elon Musk might have a phone offered. Don’t be screaming about Musk, consider X versus Meta for the censorship of Gay art and censorship in general.
We really should own the apps. We are the product. The software can’t be that complicated. The hookup app could be a community app also.
If we had our own app that could be sideloaded, we would be in control of our own communities.
I agree for the sideloading. But I see there's a rooting problem before sideloading. No rooting = no admin rights over our own phones.
As you've said, there's a risk for infection and/or sometimes making phones unusable.