Yeah it was annoying, NewPipe I actually have installed, I just did it from the APK from GitHub I assume.

Making F-Droid an app in the Play Store would just open it to the same environment eventually though wouldn’t it? Pressures to have ads to make money by sponsoring apps that have those things we don’t like, which ultimately drive us back to installing via APK. It is a win for freedom of choice, that’s true… But in the end I wonder if people would actually move from their currently working platforms. I could see the Play store just scalping apps they downloaded most often and adding them and taking a hit on their portion of profit on those apps to ensure the 99% of Android users still stay on their platform.

I mentioned something like this elsewhere, the Democrat president will make announcements to the people over the next 48 hours regarding their health and safety using a platform he knows the majority of his voters do not support the owner of. Not because the platform is better than others, but because it will reach a larger user base.