I see you are getting some down votes, it’s not me, I swear! Your views on this are sound in my eyes.

I should have said I liked the rest of your post, it was only the bit I quoted I wanted to add in my opinion, but I kinda forgot to mention that :)

I’m with you on the misinformation bit. But while it wouldn’t be honest to report that Google is restricting developers now, I think it’s absolutely fair to criticise and react to them building the scaffolding for such abuse down the line.

Like the UK isn’t outright banning websites promoting trans rights or other “undesirable” political movements, but they now have the technical and legislative tools to easily expand on it.

I’m not equating the two, and I agree it’s important to differentiate between what’s currently happening and what could be.

“Google refusing to grant an account to people they don’t like, although they haven’t done that yet”

I have no trust that they will play honest or cleanly with that. Google has a knack for banning accounts randomly, and that’s a ban for everything, gmail, YouTube, AdSense. Now give them a reason to ban me for any of the apps I choose to sign. Created an app for tracking ICE agents? Good bye gmail account. A VPN app to circumvent porn bans and the government said that’s a no-no? No, more account for you.