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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Of course they have other motivations

But for 1 person wanting to run their own software there are hundreds of people with the potential to install malware/crapware/etc

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Had to read that sentence twice. You really think that there's more people getting scammed via "please tap the build number seven times and then go to extra settings and enable untrusted installs and then go to this website that I will dictate the URL of and you should ignore that install warning" etc etc etc. to install an apk to run software that can barely access more than a simple webpage could, than there are people (like HN'ers) who install apk files from github and f-droid?!

(Also note that "crapware" describes basically every app you find in google's store. I try on occasion, when nobody made an open source this-or-that, and it's such a minefield. If that's the thing you're trying to avoid, I don't know how you could possibly feel positive about a requirement to only use the Play Store for the tech-illiterate)

> You really think that there's more people getting scammed via "please tap the build number seven times

Yes, because this whole procedure is new

> Also note that "crapware" describes basically every app you find in google's store

Go back to emacs then I guess

Installing apks has required going into settings for years now. 'Scary' steps aren't new

> Go back to emacs then I guess

way to have a conversation

> more people getting scammed via "please tap the build number seven times and then go to extra settings and enable untrusted installs and then go to this website that I will dictate the URL of and you should ignore that install warning" etc etc etc.

I don't really understand. You seem to be against the 'annoyance' of the protections, but that annoyance is precisely why the scammed count is lower, no?

I certainly believe _more generally_ that the market for scam victims is much bigger than the market for sideloaders, for example.

What I'm against is the mandatory registration to get a key signed by a party we don't elect, who controls all (soft-mandatory^1) devices that aren't controlled by the other party we didn't elect, and both are controlled by a government that we have no say in and is acting increasingly hostile towards everyone but fellow belligerents (Israel, Russia.. seeing a pattern here).

Your "it's just a bit annoying" argument seems irrelevant compared to that, even if it would reduce scams, which I have seen no evidence for or against. Did you find or come across any evidence for it?

^1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940687

> the market for scam victims is much bigger than the market for sideloaders

That makes no sense. Of course the market for "scam victims" is current-earth-population.com minus one (the person doing the scamming); this is a universal constant you're comparing against

If you mean the number of people who would potentially get scammed by being told to do a dozen steps to install some app which can barely do more to aid the scam than a webpage could, then I'm interested in how you end up with those figures!

Given that maybe every 20th person is decently tech-literate and that I have yet to come across a scam where installing software on your phone is a component of it (including via google's; just any kind of mobile software installation), the way I figure the "market sizes" are about 400 million to somewhere around nil

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