this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
645 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
75792 readers
2602 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Google is doing this to comply with EU regulations supposed to increase security. Now imagine that Google was pushing back against this instead of complying. As per usual, Lemmy would be up in arms against Google for failing to protect people's data and not complying with our laws and culture. You'd be downvoted to oblivion for asked that question and called a corporate bootlicker.
I think these rules come from German legal culture, which traditionally has a strong need to control information exchange and processing.
the way they originally phrased it, it was seemingly because of authoritarian governments like singapore wanting to exert more control (hey google, can you revoke the certificate or doxx this dev for us?) and then they realized that they could make more money if they extended this block worldwide
I'm sure the EU is not the only jurisdiction demanding this sort of thing, but I doubt Singapore has the pull needed to get Google to move.
Brussels effect. Imagine Google were to still allow unverified apps in the US. Most devs would still opt for verification so as not to lose the EU market. The proportion of malware is probably going to be higher among the few remaining unverified apps. Sooner or later, some US scam victims would sue Google for failing to protect them like it protects Europeans. Hard to refute.