It’s an interesting ethical debate.

I have a hereditary condition which passes only by the X chromosome, so should I, as a man, abort a daughter? Because now the risk is too high and I’ve elected to simply not have children. It would be great if I could fix the single swapped base pair that would otherwise cause disfigurement and life-long health problems.

That’s a unique perspective. Thanks for sharing.

Ironically, in my attempts to find any kind of information about this, it only resulted in news articles reporting on the number of developer accounts banned and announcements from Google warning users about scams and providing recommendations to safeguard themselves.

I don’t agree that Google has taken a singular approach to this problem; there are numerous ways in which they are combating scams, of which this piece is just one.

I believe people in this thread are (deliberately or not) looking at this from a very narrow point of view and not seeing how (1) there is a risk that is mitigated by preventing gullible users from installing malware through sideloading, (2) Google has reconsidered this solution after hearing community feedback and (3) Google uses numerous mechanisms to eliminate bad actors from the Play store.

To touch on the last one, it seems many of those mechanisms are not done transparently as I’ve seen threads on /r/AndroidDev back before I left Reddit about individuals being lifetime banned even by association to a scammer.

At the risk of sounding insincere—such is the nature of an online discussion forum—I’d like to tap into the ways you see the safety and security of the Play store to be deficient. How are phishing attempts successful there? In the articles I’ve read about phishing through fake apps, they all went through the route of sideloading. One example was to get “special features” in WhatsApp by downloading an APK, and another was to enable developer mode to install an antivirus APK because “the device was infected.” While I found articles describing imposter apps, searching for those apps on Google Play didn’t surface any of them, so it seems from my spot checks that it’s working.

To me, this entire discussion is quite conflicting, because on one hand, we all recognize the risk of malware, but at the same time the community is furious about whatever Google attempts to do about it.

Call me naive, but my family and I are very content with our Android phones and have no qualms with the way Google Play functions today. I remain confused about why this comment section is so mad.

The fee is 15% below the first $1M of revenue and it should go without saying that app developers only pay that fee for paid apps, in-app purchases or digital subscriptions. It’s very unlikely that a scam app would be paid, or work off a subscription, and if those phishing ads are doing their conversions, you’ll never see the user again.

I doubt Google’s making more than a few cents off each of these scam apps.

I would understand the outrage if Google didn’t stick to their word, but unless I’ve missed something, they’ve not, have they? Are we now protesting that they reversed their decision? Wasn’t this what we wanted?

I genuinely believe that it was motivated by the desire to deter scammers. What leads you to believe it’s not? There are many gullible people out there who will follow, precisely as you pointed out, phishing links that encourage them to sideload an unverified app.

No system is perfect, and I also believe that Google Play does a fair job of removing malicious apps.

I’m sorry to try to bring some nuance into this thread as I know that discourse isn’t welcome on Lemmy, but I’m just trying to wrap my head around the outrage. Providing a way to let experienced users continue to sideload apps while safeguarding the more gullible seems like a good idea and I still genuinely don’t understand what your preferred solution would be.

Wait, so Google listened to our feedback, and we’re still mad? What would a positive outcome have looked like?

Spoken like a person who has never been involved in the construction of a home. It’s effectively doing the job of (poorly) pouring concrete which isn’t the difficult or time consuming part.