[rpgwaiter]

In what way is knowing the full legal name of a developer relevant to end users? I work in the App Store analytics space and even I have never once thought “I wonder what the full legal name and address of the app developer is. I’d love to drive to their place physically or mail a letter 1800s style to discuss their app”

The most I’d ever wonder about is maybe their country of origin.

[rietta]

It’s for serving legal notice!

[a2128]

For the 1 in 10,000 case of someone actually legitimately suing someone, publicly showing this info to everyone will also create a 100% chance of being sent spam or phishing emails with your real name and country, 1 in 2 chance of some troll signing you up for something nasty, 1 in 50 chance of someone ordering pizza to your house that you have to pay for, 1 in 500 chance of an angry user demanding you add some feature or delete the app else he'll do something bad with your information, 1 in 1000 chance of being SWATted, etc...

If your app is something that's currently politically controversial (e.g. it's an app for trans people), multiply these probabilities by 10.

[pxoe]

If people don't want to be accountable for their app in any way, maybe they just don't have to have their apps out there. There are other venues, app stores, sideloading, where apps can be put up by random people with no verifiable information and even less trustworthiness than some random app from play store.

[a2128]

F-Droid allows random people with no verifiable information to publish apps, and AFAIK there's never been a single case of malware or something malicious.

The same can't be said about Google Play where I can usually find malware at any time with specific search queries. These are apps that should have never been approved in the first place because they're blatantly impersonating another app.

The people who make this malware won't be accountable, because they don't register their own developer account and verify their own identity. They go around emailing the contact email of every small developer on Google Play, saying that they'll buy their developer profile or pay for them to upload an app. I got many such emails as it is.