Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions!
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 week ago
We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren’t tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer.
Translation: if they want scamware, it’s gotta be from Google Play, where Google gets a 30% cut.
And if anything thinks I’m being hyperbolic, go on Google Play and search for pretty much anything.
The fee is 15% below the first $1M of revenue and it should go without saying that app developers only pay that fee for paid apps, in-app purchases or digital subscriptions. It’s very unlikely that a scam app would be paid, or work off a subscription, and if those phishing ads are doing their conversions, you’ll never see the user again.
I doubt Google’s making more than a few cents off each of these scam apps.
Google gets a cut from the Google Ads click, which takes the user directly to the Play Store (or, if on desktop, the Chrome extension store).
If it’s some free shovelware app, they get a cut from the ads spammed onto the user’s screen. If it’s a sham subscription app, they get a cut of that. I see this a lot test clicking ads these days.
If its legit phishing, that’s a fair point; they don’t get a direct cut of the scam, other than the attention it drives towards their app stores and the data they collect for the user’s profile. But the point I’m trying to make is that it’s incredibly hypocritical to paint 3rd party apps (and indeed any competing app store) as a danger when they do such a poor job policing their own store.
Buckshot@programming.dev 1 week ago
Helped a disabled pensioner recently with her phone that kept plaging loud obnoxious ads at her even while locked.
She had 4 different “virus scanners” that were all fake adware.