Comment by artisin
3 months ago
If a giant red warning saying 'THIS APP MAY BE MALWARE' doesn't stop someone, then they've either made an informed choice to proceed or it's willful negligence. In other words, users aren't 'trained' to ignore warnings; they're simply being willfully negligent.
It’s because on the other side of that warning is a cracked version of Spotify that removes the adverts.
The user can’t make an informed choice because it’s literally impossible to audit the safety of the app or the author. So they will click passed any warnings, follow any number of steps to install the app that gives them something desirable for free.
So what?
Those same users can now install facebook, and facebook does this: https://medium.com/@ak123aryan/facebooks-hidden-android-trac...
And facebook is and will be verified in the future too.
As someone who is usually careful I too have found myself clicking past warnings and error notifications in recent times, mainly because I want to do something and the software is actively preventing me from doing that. It isn't negligence, it is just wanting to get something done and not having the time or the nerves to carefully read through and think about messages, dialogs, and screens.
Back in the early days of the Internet there was the Joel Spolsky article on why users will always do anything to see the dancing bunnies.
It doesn’t matter what adjectives you apply to them - they do it and they’ll do it again. Most people are not equipped to evaluate the veracity of that statement, and if a few good apps don’t register with Google (that these will exist is the whole reason this move is problematic at all, right?) and ask you to click through on the website or whatever, they’ll get used to touching the stove and not getting burned.
c.f. the Windows “it could be malware” blurb. You basically can’t use any software from a small publisher without clicking through it, even if they pay for the code signing certificate.
But then you get situations like, "THIS PRODUCT MAY CAUSE CANCER," being cautioned everywhere, with no distinction between, "this is certainly harmful," and "we just haven't verified it isn't harmful".
Have you met a human before? Most will simply click past anything that’s impeding their immediate goal.
The fact that you don't even realise why that wouldn't work is kind of telling.
> users aren't being 'trained' to ignore warnings
Of course they are. Every time they click "continue anyway" and it actually isn't malware (which is 99% of the time) they are being trained that the warning is nonsense.
And they're right! What use is a warning that an app might be malware, if a) it actually isn't almost every time you see the warning, and b) you have no way of telling if it is or isn't anyway?
I hate this move too and I don't think they should have done "just make the warning even bigger!" is obviously dumb.