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Zaktoday at 12:44 AM1 replyview on HN

It's pretending to address a serious issue while giving Google significant power to limit distribution of apps Google doesn't like, which could sometimes include legal apps that certain governments don't like such as the recently famous ICEBlock.

Google says they don't intend to do that, but even if I believe that's their current intention, they have a strong incentive to do otherwise in the future. Incentives predict outcomes more reliably than intentions.

I say it's pretending because scammers are good at shifting tactics. If convincing users to install malware ceases to be the path of least resistance, they'll convince users to install legitimate remote access utilities, hand over credentials directly, or some other scheme I haven't thought up because I'm not a scammer.


Replies

fc417fc802today at 1:21 AM

> they have a strong incentive to do otherwise in the future.

The reality is far worse than that. Remember FBI vs Apple? That defense came down to Apple not having software in place that could facilitate the demand being made of them. If they'd had such a system they would presumably have been required to comply.

The government can presumably get an illegal app forcibly removed from an app store but at present you could still install it yourself. With this system they could compel Google to block it entirely.