Google serves ads with known scams and nothing seems done about it.

Yet, they are concerned about this.

It has nothing to do with safety, but everything to do with control.

I remember when Google disabled call recording in Android, so you no longer could record scammers. Thanks to recording I was able to get money back from insurance company that claimed they absolutely didn't sell me this and that over the phone (paid for premium insurance and got basic).

> I remember when Google disabled call recording in Android, so you no longer could record scammers.

Citation needed. My Pixel 7a with the latest updates has settings for call recording in the phone app. Since I never screwed around with it, I'd assume these are the defaults:

Call recording is turned on, with "asks to record calls" set

Automatically delete recordings is "never"

Automatically record calls with non-contacts is off

No specific numbers to automatically record calls are set

There is also a note that you have to agree to their ToS to use it, and I'd also suggest being careful if you live in a jurisdiction that requires two-party consent for recording.

In any case, I'm of the opinion that if F-Droid goes, I'm basically going to treat this as a feature phone and stay away from third-party apps in general aside from "musts" like banking.