[jonathanstrange]

For me this change is a problem not just because of the ID upload to Google but mainly because it's another nail in the coffin of native software solutions. It increases friction and anything that increases friction is bad.

Concretely, my original plan was to provide an .apk for manual installation first and tackle all this app store madness later. I already have enough on my plate dealing with macOS, Windows, and Linux distribution. With the change, delaying this is no longer viable, so Android is not only one among five platforms with their own requirements, signing, uploading, rules, reviews, and what not, it is one more platform I need to deal with right from the start because users expect software to be multiplatform nowadays.

Quite frankly, it appears to me as if dealing with app stores and arbitrary and ever changing corporate requirements takes away more time than developing the actual software, to the detriment of the end users.

It's sad to watch the decline of personal computing.

[jhasse]

Did your users really consider your app if it wasn't in the Play Store?

[verdverm]

I personally see an unmoderated app store as more detrimental to the end users. The harm happens at scale.

[InsideOutSanta]

That's the status quo, though. Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store are essentially unmoderated. The sheer scale of them and both platforms' technical architectures prohibits either company from properly validating their stores' contents - they can't even catch the easy cases, like all the apps that impersonate ChatGPT. The main thing they manage to do is inconvenience innocent indie devs once in a while.

The result is unwarranted trust from users in stores that are full of scams.

Apple and Google effectively built malware pipelines under the guise of security.

[jonathanstrange]

When there were many different app stores to choose from, nobody would be forced to use an unmoderated app store. What happened to individual freedom and responsibility?