Enshittification

Oh hey, it's the owner of the linuxsucks .world community who says he hates "FOSS commie garbage" while not only using, but moderating a community on a FOSS platform.

F-Droid was a huge problem for security. I hate Google more than anyone, but they're totally right to make side-loading more difficult

Does F-Droid have some security tradeoffs in its operation? Absolutely. But you're conflating a security decision with a market control decision. The restrictions target alternative app stores and payment systems that compete with Google Play, not specifically malware vectors. Google has a $300 billion advertising business and a vested interest in controlling what software reaches Android users. Using security as the justification for that control doesn't make the control itself a security measure. This is the same playbook being used to push surveillance. The goal is monitoring and data gathering while it's proclaimed to "protect children." It's using a moral panic while being used while the technical literacy is severely lacking. Something you're familiar with in our other thread, I'm sure.

It offers no curation

Plainly false. F-Droid requires apps to be open source and explicitly flags known anti-features like tracking, ads, and non-free dependencies. Just because you prefer ads doesn't mean its not curation.

The Play Store version of software is often better (sometimes they do add ads, but I'd rather have ads and support a dev along with peace of mind)

Sometimes true and sometimes the opposite. Play Store versions of apps frequently include tracking SDKs, mandatory account creation, and analytics outside of simply just "ads" that F-Droid versions specifically strip out. For anyone using F-Droid because they're trying to avoid exactly that (for peace of mind), the Play Store version isn't better, it's the opposite.

Google charging a gate fee from developers to reach Android users and then restricting alternatives to that gate is literally the opposite of supporting a dev.

And to highlight the irony of "better," if this was a security issue, as you claimed, is that a defensible position when Google's data shows they removed over 2.3 million policy-violating apps in 2024 alone, and that's just what they caught? Researchers have repeatedly found active malware campaigns running in the Play Store for months before removal, including banking trojans and spyware with millions of downloads. The stuff that slips through aren't just one or two here and there. It's a constant trough on the platform you're implying is the best place to get software.

The difference is F-Droid requires apps to be open source, meaning the code is auditable. Malware hiding in open source code is significantly harder to sustain because anyone can read it. Play Store apps are closed source by default, meaning Google's automated scanning is the only defense for users and whatever a developer decided to bundle in. Sounds more like a way to silence criticism and remove transparency than it is to "ensure security."