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

InsideOutSanta 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	verdverm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why do you expect another app store to be different? At what scales do the dynamics of what you have described change?

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jonathanstrange 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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?

	▲	verdverm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I would need to see a widely used and trusted 3rd party store before leaving Google Play became a consideration. I'm interested, but not an early adopter. It's also unclear if any store that reaches this point doesn't institute similar moderation techniques. Scale incentivizes bad actors, which in turn requires good moderation.