>While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge
When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.
>What about when Google pushed Android Safety Core to all Android devices out there?
You mean the package that apps have to opt in to use? I guess that's technically counts as "unwanted apps/services", but that's like complaining about firefox "pushing unwanted apps/services", because they added some javascript function to every firefox installation out there.
>And you also realize they can push modified build of any apps, now that they also own the keys to sign the apps?
If you read my original comment more carefully, you'll notice I'm not denying they have the capability to do so, only that there's no precedence of them doing so.
It happened a few months ago with Gemini at least for Android, probably similar for Apple Intelligence on iOS although I can't comment since I don't use it anymore.
When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.