[endemic]

> I dont want malware or scummy developers on my phone

Despite what many folks say, the App Store review process doesn't protect from bad developer behavior. See the various controversies surrounding social media apps that used many shady tracking techniques. And those apps are among the most popular... you'd think they would be "reviewed" more thoroughly!

[specialist]

What would a future perfect review system look like?

How well do Apple, Google, Microsoft perform against that perfect system? What resources do they dedicate to the task?

There's apparently some ways for malware to avoid detection. So yet another arms race whackamole.

Frankly, as a noob consumer, it's exhausting. It definitely impacts my spending.

FWIW, one of my besties worked on an audit tool which runs apps in a sandbox, screening for malware and whatnot. My impression was that it was a lot of effort for little reward.

In conclusion, sorry for braindump, thank you for reading this far:

Freemium will be sidelined into its own wasteland. Like that recent piece about journalism: "truth is expensive, lies are free."