There are alt stores on Android though, it just seemingly doesn’t matter. The root problem is that consumers don’t care about this problem and voted with their wallets for the current situation. That’s not necessarily surprising: most people didn’t care that their clothes/shoes were made by suffering child laborers, so a few relatively comfortable devs having to essentially find a new job is barely going to register.
I think that forcing human recourse _is_ the solution. This problem is much bigger than just the “App store duopoly” axe. A law that required the ability to perform all account actions/appeals/etc realtime with another human (phone, chat, etc) would’ve also minimized the need for the recent unsubscription laws as well since the hassle would’ve been much less in the first place. These are the kind of foundational human-centric business laws we need instead of the reactionary hyper-focused ones that don’t address root problems and usually just wind up further cementing incumbents.
I think that forcing human recourse _is_ the solution. This problem is much bigger than just the “App store duopoly” axe. A law that required the ability to perform all account actions/appeals/etc realtime with another human (phone, chat, etc) would’ve also minimized the need for the recent unsubscription laws as well since the hassle would’ve been much less in the first place. These are the kind of foundational human-centric business laws we need instead of the reactionary hyper-focused ones that don’t address root problems and usually just wind up further cementing incumbents.