[AlgebraFox]

While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge.The fact that the majority of people don’t care about this censorship and backdoors makes me think we don’t really appreciate the concept of freedom, and maybe we are okay with being slaves—at least until we cannot take it anymore. Maybe that’s why history repeats itself every few decades to remind us about these values.

[gruez]

>While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge

When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.

[AlgebraFox]

What about when Google pushed Android Safety Core to all Android devices out there?

And you also realize they can push modified build of any apps, now that they also own the keys to sign the apps?

[realusername]

It happened a few months ago with Gemini at least for Android, probably similar for Apple Intelligence on iOS although I can't comment since I don't use it anymore.

[knollimar]

The play store doesn't even update my apps for me anymore often

[pjc50]

There was the time Apple dropped a U2 album on everyone, to widespread annoyance, but that's not the same thing.