By definition apple can’t do anything in that situation, because people don’t want third-party app stores and sideloading to be managed or notarized by apple at all.

This is the very definition of bad-faith motte-and-bailey argumentation, and it’s logically incoherent to boot. Get apple out of regulating apps and App Stores, no more telling developers what they can do! Oh and i guess they can tell developers to do one thing…