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0 pointsfsflover5y ago0 comments

> without any evidence

Do GNU/Linux repositories count? F-Droid?

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6 comments · 2 top-level

ehsankia5y ago· 2 in thread

F-Droid is orders of magnitude smaller, and its users are generally far more advanced, hence not worth trying to scam. The same applies to GNU/Linux too, though there's also other differences there too. Scale is really the issue, Android has 3 billion users, iOS probably has over a billion too.

Apocryphon5y ago

Looking at the Android model, despite its greater openness than iOS, there is also only one dominant app market with a handful of third part competitors, from well-curated open source repos like F-Droid or XDA Labs to OEM third party ones that no one actually uses or wants to use like the Amazon Appstore or Samsung AppStack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores

Really hard to say what would happen in a hypothetical situation where Apple allowed iOS alternative app stores. Maybe the overwhelming majority of users will continue to download only on the App Store, with a tiny minority of power users going to alternatives.

ehsankia5y ago

> Maybe the overwhelming majority of users will continue to download only on the App Store, with a tiny minority of power users going to alternatives.

That's absolutely what will happen, there's no evidence of otherwise.

But this is all beside the point. The argument is, if there existed a app store that was as large as Play Store / iOS store, it would have similar moderation issues. The old headline implies that these companies aren't trying to moderate, rather than realizing that moderating content at scale is a REALLY hard problem no one has solved.

No Google/Youtube, not Apple, not Amazon/Twitch, not Facebook, not Twitter, not Microsoft, no one.

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zepto5y ago· 2 in thread

Obviously not. They simply aren’t a meaningful target for scams the way the iOS store is.

fsfloverOP5y ago

Yes, they are. Go look how many servers run GNU/Linux.

zepto5y ago

What does that have to do with a billion consumers of iPhone apps?

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