This is a weak argument. If things have slipped through the cracks with someone actively reviewing it, the alternative cant be 'lets not do any checking whatsoever'.

There are better arguments against this that other commenters here have provided (including "my device, my rule") but this isnt a strong argument.

That's the thing, they don't review their apps, and they actively ignore people flagging apps that are scams or otherwise malicious. Much like their ad empire, its all bots and people making money for pretending to care.

The number of malicious apps that Google has removed from the Play Store is far from zero.

It is false to say they are great at it. It's also false to say they don't review it. They remove some, but they're not great at it.

Even worse, they DO review their apps. And they make huge hassles for anyone to submit apps, including forcing you to create a new account if your tiny side project with 0 permissions didn't fill out a form in time (grumble grumble).

Meanwhile they let shit like this go live

It's not "let's not do any checking whatsoever", it's just "let individual users choose between Google's ineffective checking and alternative app sources that users can trust or not trust with zero involvement from Google".

This.

That would make sense except they aren't doing any app reviews lol. They're just scanning your government ID. It is a farce.