this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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TLDR: I love sideloaded apps and they r a godsend

So I’ve been using sideloaded yt and Spotify and now I can NEVER go back. Makes me feel like a PEASANT if I do.

So a couple weeks ago I went on a 4 hour drive and sadly my sidestore time expired and I couldn’t renew due to ap ID it so I had to wait a week and by the time I would drive another 4 hours back. And let me tell you FREE SPOTIFY SUCKS ASS. I can’t go back or scrub through the songs, I can only do 6 skips per hour and replay COUNTS AS THE 6, luckily I use a vpn which blocked other company ads but SPOTIFY HAS THEIR OWN DAMN STUPID ADS EVERY 3 SONGS. And I couldn’t add songs to queue by swiping and I had to tap on the three dots and add to queue which I can’t do while on the highway. And of course I can’t play a specific song, I can’t even decide whether I want shuffle or not. And I didn’t even wanna try yt with no playing off the app or while the phone is off.

It’s as if getting into sideloading, piracy, and modding made me feel true online freedom and I can’t wait or imagine the feeling I’m going to have when I start self hosting. I’m definitely going to donate to these projects due to the improvement in my life they contributed to.

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[–] BiomedOtaku@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 hours ago

Don't call it " sideloading " calling it that just reinforces all the conditioning we have been given to believe that when anyone wants to install a software of their choosing on a device they paid for its called " side loading " its not all you did is install an app on your device and that's it.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You shouldn't use the term sideloading to describe installing apps from alternative sources, that just makes it seem like it's some weird and different, possibly unintended thing. When it is an intended part of an open ecosystem.

[–] Steve@communick.news 10 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed.
Alternative app stores aren't sideloading.

[–] prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] idriss@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Side loading is a made up word by mega corpo which implies installing software on the device you paid for is wrong and makes you feel like a pirate

[–] prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 2 points 2 hours ago

I agree. I didn't see the first line of your comments when I replied.

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 6 points 4 hours ago

I love hardware that doesn't require sideloading. I bought the whole house, including the front door, and I will use the front door. If they don't allow me to use the front door, then I don't really own the house after all, do I, so what did I even pay for?