Apple might be a dictator, but so far they've proven to be mostly benevolent. I'm glad my mom doesn't have the ability to sell her privacy to Facebook via a shady VPN in exchange for gift cards.

The problem is that mobile devices can say "This app changes your VPN settings and installs a root cert". The general public says "Whatever, I want my olive garden gift card." It could could maybe say "This app could see everything you do online", but it really needs to explain "This app can see very site you visit, every message you send, every porn link you click, etc". Until the OS can actually inform the user what they're trading, it's not choice, it's deception.

And that brings us back to Apple. Until devices can do this for themselves, someone needs to be the gate keeper. Letting users willingly install some candy-themed clicker game that steals your contacts, location, and photos is _objectively bad_ in the same way that BonzaiBuddy and CometCursor were bad twenty years ago. Right now, the only answer we have to this problem is Apple and Google playing the role of the good guy and working towards better solutions.

So why do you think Apple can't explain its permissions in a way majority of its users can understand (yes, including the clear cautionary messages that you wrote). Guess what, Android does that! When you install any third party keyboard on Android, it clearly tells you in plain text it can read everything you type, including credit card numbers etc. We just need the information about what can be the worst possibilities for each permission an app asks for. Apple doesn't want to do that. It wants control over everything.