Bowing to state actors is a decision individuals make.
If the platform gives specific people the ability to bow on behalf of everyone (as iOS does - reviewers have that power), eventually some of those people will do so.
A centralized app store must at least bow to the state actors where its business operations and servers live. Otherwise the state actors will take their hardware and remove the business from existence.
If the OS supports direct installation, then you avoid the inherent risks of centralized software.
Granted, you gain the risks of decentralized software.
Magic bullets are few and far between.
This isn't new. Apple has always bowed to state actors in order to damage minorities, literally ever since the app store launched with it's censorship targeting sex workers and sexual minorities on behest of the US government.
This one is just more obvious, but not new.
Was it okay when Apple got rid of Alex Jones's app? He was spreading misinformation about vaccines, that's pretty darn dangerous. I guess you could argue that wasn't due to a "state actor", but is anti-Hong-Kong pressure from Chinese citizens all that different?
And here's the thing—I do think platform holders sometimes need to make moral judgements, and I'm glad Alex Jones is banned from the App Store. I'm significantly less glad that it's completely impossible to install his app anymore. It's the difference between not actively giving someone a megaphone, and actually banning speech.
The difference is between taking something down because you agree with the rationale the entity-that-wants-something-taken-down gives you, such that you'd do it even without that entity in existence as long as you knew the information they told you; vs. being intimidated by that entity into doing so, such that without the entity, you'd have never done anything.
In any case, I'm allowed to make a moral judgement. We do this all the time: Breaking the law is bad, but stealing is less "bad" than killing. And so on.
- Have a store with, say, quality control, and the option to side-load
- Have a store with "quality control" (and, as I see it, some rather large levers to fight competition), no option to side-load, but don't bow to state actors
- same, but bow to state actors.
I wish it's the first, I thought it's the second, but we now see it's the third. I think the the third is worse than the second option.