[cbolton]

I don't feel like I'm the one playing semantic games here, I'm just arguing that the term "sideloading" is a useful distinction vs "installing through the main channel" (whatever that is: could be the Play store, or F-Droid, or Huawei App Gallery).

Google's store has malware, but the point is there would be even more if Google was not monitoring the apps there. The store is less risky than getting apks from the wild web, TikTok, etc.

Sure F-Droid is safer (as you would expect from a curated store of a few thousand open source apps compared to a store with literally millions of apps). But I wouldn't call that sideloading either when it's your regular channel to get apps.