Will Google pay me damages if they let someone distribute malware on the Play Store, as has happened before? As far as I know, they won't, so how is Aptoide any worse?

Still true, heroin or not.

Is there a hard drug equivalent of Godwin's law?

you are right, we should ban Chrome and Google search for providing access to pirated apps

That wasn't the point I was making.

My point is that saying it's all the consumers responsibility is a highly one-sided argument in favour of the vendor/service provider.

The amount of work a person would have to do to research every facet of every product they buy is insurmountable. There is no possible way for them to know everything about a product they are thinking of buying or using.

Expecting the average user to know which apps on any given app store are ridden with malware is a mighty tall order.

The customer will always have some level of ignorance about the product, so some measure of consumer protection is required.

It's unrealistic.

default aptoide repo has only free and verified apps, blaming them of providing malware it's stupid on par with blaming Chrome or Google search