I think we are in agreement, assuming that near side refers to the side facing Jupiter.
By tiny, I’m not even sure what order of effect it would be, as it would be coming from the air mass that is raised by Io causing tides on Jupiter.
But then, not so tiny, in that it is that imbalance that keeps Io from reaching a point of equilibrium and causing volcanism. Even though it would be an inverse-n[sup]th[/sup] power effect, that effect is what provides the energy to stretch Io back and forth and keep it hot enough for all the volcanoes.
I think if it was just Io and Jupiter the vulcanism would be considerably less. Io’s orbit would rapidly circularize and the tidal effects on Io would become constant. In the current situation, Io’s orbit is eccentric (due to the effects of the other big moons), leading to varying tidal effects - and the variable squeezing is what drives the volcanoes (I think)
Even if both Jupiter and Io were both perfectly rigid, you’d still see some slight difference in weight on the two sides of Io, due to those high-order effects in the shapes of the equipotential. Though, yes, we are in agreement on the sign of the effect, and I’m not sure how I misread that.
As shown in that fine documentary, Io (1981, with Sean Conery and Peter Boyle), on Io blood drips up. And in the main settled part, they have earth-normal gravity. Scientists have struggled to explain this, but filmmakers just know.
I tried to find clips of this, but a quick search doesn’t turn up anything.
Over a long time, an observer would see Jupiter slowing down and the orbits widening, but yeah, to an observer with human like perceptions and human like time scales, there is no difference.