[a2128]

F-Droid allows random people with no verifiable information to publish apps, and AFAIK there's never been a single case of malware or something malicious.

The same can't be said about Google Play where I can usually find malware at any time with specific search queries. These are apps that should have never been approved in the first place because they're blatantly impersonating another app.

The people who make this malware won't be accountable, because they don't register their own developer account and verify their own identity. They go around emailing the contact email of every small developer on Google Play, saying that they'll buy their developer profile or pay for them to upload an app. I got many such emails as it is.

[pxoe]

Yeah, I wanted to add that it may be less of a problem when there's source code, but sideloading and third party app stores includes apps that don't have source code available, like random loose apks people just download and install, or just third party stores that aren't open source oriented (like game stores, phone maker stores, etc.) Checking source code is also not an option on play store itself, so they might want to have some other ways of verifying where something comes from and letting other people check something for themselves.