alt Hacker News> I don't see a way out of this except government regulation.
IMHO governments are partially behind those initiatives so they are unlikely to regulate themself- reason in last few years they intensified work on Digital ID, Age Verification, Chat control, KYC, etc.
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For the limits on side-loading in particular, there are a few southeast asian nations (I can't recall, Vietnam? Thailand?) where almost all internet access is via Android, including banking. And social engineering fraud, where they call someone up, pretend to be the bank, and get them to side-load malware, has become a major financial, and political problem.
AIUI, they have told Google to find a fix, or else.
There are different governments and different subdivisions within any given government. The only thing you need to get a government that had been pushing Chat Control to do some trust busting is to get more votes.
EU is schizophrenic enough that it often produces very conflicting directions, opinions and policies.
One thing EU loves is regulation though, so I expect they will introduce preemptive regulations to enforce strict ID verification as well as regulations to fine big companies for breaching user privacy with strict ID verification policies.