"""
API level 23 is the first release where search by soname is implemented. Earlier releases would assume that the basename of the library was the soname, and used that to search for already-loaded libraries. For example, dlopen("/this/directory/does/not/exist/libc.so", RTLD_NOW) would find /system/lib/libc.so because it’s already loaded. This also meant that it was impossible to have two libraries "dir1/libx.so" and "dir2/libx.so" --- the dynamic linker couldn’t tell the difference and would always use whichever was loaded first, even if you explicitly tried to load both. This also applied to DT_NEEDED entries.
"""
((and even if that doesn't turn on a lightbulb over your head, it's probably worth reading the rest of the document for what should be the canonical list of all significant behavior differences in the dynamic linker since jellybean...))