A common pattern in social networks with a political identity, is that bait news stories are less scrutinized for truthfulness and more baited into raging. E.g:

Political group:Right

Social media: twitter

Headline: "the police detained a 15 yo for posting on tiktok"

Reality: "15yo called for violence on a specific event and group of people"

Pol group: left

Social media: bluesky

Headline: "young mother of 2 gets detained by ICE for speaking in spanish"

Reality: "DUI, didn't speak english, translator was used, prior records"

Reminds me of how phishing attempts play to our political identities as well, recently there was a phishing attempt were the platform said that during pride month all uploaded content would have the pride flag added or something like that.

The common pattern is that some things are ridiculous, but people want to believe that "the enemy" is as ridiculous, it's an opportunity to be enraged and vindicated that the injustice is too obvious to hold on its own. That it will all come crumbling down, or at least that any insecurities in our political positioning are reduced, and our position becomes clearer and our certainty increased.

In our case, it seems to be something very specific about external links from the play store. I can't be sure but it seems as if this rule relates to apps distributed through the google play store that in turn can download other apps. This provides an alternative agreement to the rev share model, where app stores can pay per install rather than on all future revenue.

Let's try to understand news and be on the same page before analyzing implications.