Reading many of the sibling comments just makes me laugh.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
This is just all fear mongering. So stupid.