You can never assume that one company represents your interests better than another: the solution to reducing addictive patterns is to enable other developers to build more privacy-oriented and dark-pattern-busting apps (one sec is a good example of this).
Apple makes certain aspects of the phone addictive as well (i.e. the app tray that can't be disabled, Screen Time is a joke for actually trying to restrict how much time is spent on apps, etc.), and the lack of 3rd party APIs to modify the addictive behavior makes it difficult to control.
The easiest way to reduce addiction to devices is design UX roadblocks that prevent seamless, mindless interaction with the device, and the "digital drug" providers are never going to willingly build that themselves.
I agree that we should be talking about the addition problem of these apps.
But I reference these specifically as being the gateway to more bad behavior.
The idea of Facebook being able to introduce their own App Store for example that would allow other developers to engage in the same shady behavior.
I only mention those apps since I feel like they have the addicted user base to be able to pull it off in a meaningful way, but I don't mean that those apps are specifically my concern.
Any technology can be abused and misused. If the bar for introducing any new technology was that it couldn't do harm to anyone, then nothing would ever change.
The current marketplace for apps gives us very limited choice in many ways, it's more of an illusion of choice in many cases. If 3rd-party marketplaces allow us to build more and less-private apps at the same time, I see that as a net positive.
Apple makes certain aspects of the phone addictive as well (i.e. the app tray that can't be disabled, Screen Time is a joke for actually trying to restrict how much time is spent on apps, etc.), and the lack of 3rd party APIs to modify the addictive behavior makes it difficult to control.
The easiest way to reduce addiction to devices is design UX roadblocks that prevent seamless, mindless interaction with the device, and the "digital drug" providers are never going to willingly build that themselves.