Comment by gjsman-1000
7 days ago
Google is very clear, sideloading has about 50x more malware than the Play Store. The Brazilian government in particular is absolutely furious about the amount of scams, and was openly planning legal interventions.
Your ability to distribute your app anonymously absolutely meets the definition of real-world consequences for other people.
I personally find it absurd we accept that the government regulates food (people can't detect bad food), and hair cutting (people can't detect inexperienced people with scissors), but the right to anonymous app distribution is sacrosanct, as though food quality is less transparent than app quality. It's not - all of these licenses need to be let go of on the small scale.
Why would you take them at face value? Just look at the Play Store yourself. I've seen plenty of privacy-invading (and worse!) apps on the Play Store, even when (especially when!) searching for a specific app I know is legit and good.
Meanwhile I can download anything with confidence on F-Droid, the subject of the article.
Never forget that Apple's "premium" curation still allowed a fake third party Lastpass (!!!) application onto the store for several days: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
The whole "third parties are scary" shtick really does demand evidence.
How is "50x" measured? Is that number of apps or number of app installs? Are they considering things like Facebook and TikTok as "malware"?
They way they implement the rules also removes the most trustworthy apps. Seems like a bad trade.
> Google is very clear, sideloading has about 50x more malware than the Play Store.
The butcher says that vegetables is bad for your health, and you should only eat meat.
Google is full of shit.