alt Hacker NewsNeed to rethink the system that allows for (and encourages) this kind of plausible deniability. From "Oh we need this permission for [non essential feature] and you need to accept it if you want the app at all" -> to giving the user ultimate control over what happens on their personal device. Virtualize what the app can see and use fake data/identifiers/devices if necessary to get it to do what its supposed to. If the App isn't going to act in good faith why should the user? Fine grained permissions don't really work in practice because the app can keep annoying the user until they give in and hit Allow.
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What you want is basically how it works. On both phone platforms and PWAs, all permissions are visible to the user explicitly. All of them can be revoked at any time. Apps are disallowed from requesting an already-denied permission.
Obviously apps can tell if they haven't been granted a permission (even if you tried to fake this, they aren't dummies and will know if it's not working), and obviously third party software isn't under any obligation to work without them.
But the platforms have done what the platforms can do, at the architecture side, really. The next stage is human-audited enforcement of malware, which this AliExpress nonsense might hopefully run afoul of.
Also perhaps AI agents are now capable enough to run these apps the way the user would and recognize these dark patterns. Flag those and feed it back to a warning at the point of sale that users can upvote there to signal their disapproval and a threshold score that risks removal of the app from the store. Because bad behaviour continues to make business sense if the rules allow it. Moreover, it penalizes and puts pressure on the good actors as a "missed business opportunity".