Facebook will demand you use FacebookStore, which will NOT force apps transparency. THAT is the issue!
I think the way things would shake out is that most app developers would want to have their app in as many stores as possible. Combine that with stores competing to have the largest app selection and you have a much healthier market. Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners.
I don't think we should avoid demanding a better market for developers and users just because there are a couple of companies like Facebook that might try to abuse their market position to popularize their own app store.
Apple is in the business of selling phones and has decided that a good strategy for them is to protect the privacy of users against data miners. So their store and payment system by default protect users against practices of data collections.
> Having app stores compete for developers and users would be amazing for everyone except the current app store owners
It would be good for developers, not for users. I don’t think a single non-developer user is grasping for having multiple ways to download and install an app, and having to search for multiple stores with multiple payment systems to get one software. For users, the “iPhone” allows to download apps; none of them gives a thought to the fact that it happens via a single “store”.
I struggle to see how a free market for stores would improve my situation. Clearly the big software vendors won't pay someone a cut unless they have to. So they would either need their own stores, or they'd need an alternative store that didn't take a cut. But if the alternative store doesn't take a cut, how do they afford to moderate the content? It would clearly be a race to the bottom.
The core idea is choice.
"Not being the apocalypse" is a pretty low bar. Is it not the case that Android has a much worse history of problems with third-party software, including security, privacy, battery life, etc.?