If

They aren't never were, it would hurt they revenue. It's a power grab and has nothing to do with scams.

If they were serious about malware, they would have to permanently ban all Meta apps (potentially even blacklist senior Meta executives so apps from other companies would also be banned if they hired the Meta hoodlums).

But again, Google is a large American technology company; i.e. a rat's nest of crime, lies and degeneracy.

They just want to limit the amount of people who will actually bother to unlock sideloading. Combine it with their intention to force devs to pay fees to publish onto playmarket and you will get a good business model to gather even more money.

It's extremely clear to anyone who is not absolutely dumb that these installation restrictions have never been about addressing scams and malware but exclusively about enforcing control and ensuring their monopoly.

It's cute when people think Google cares about scams. They'll let any number of scams through as long as they get their cut.

Even with Apple’s (theoretically) tighter rules on app submissions, I don’t trust Facebook apps to adhere to system controls.

If they were to ban Meta apps, they'd probably be prosecuted for being anticompetitive.

And it's still not even sideloading with adb. It's just standard APK installations they want to change and are making sound scawy.