Or of course, each developer themselves becomes responsible for “registering as a developer” and thus loses all anonymity as a dev.

Google’s announced plans aren’t actually about restricting “sideloading” (aka installing). They’re about restricting actually running the code, and developing/distributing the code.

Content distributed through these “other app stores” and elsewhere will remain installable, but your phone will refuse to run the software if that content isn’t signed with the special Google’s Favorite Boy token that the developer got by providing personally identifiable information to Google. Get that “certification”? Your app can be run on Android no matter how you distribute it, including “side loading” (download APK file, install app).

Don’t have the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality Verified Developer token to sign your app with? The only way a user can run your code is by connecting to a PC and installing your app with adb (a development tool).

This would allow them to share their screen + system audio excluding Element’s own sound while playing a game, like Discord does? No extra hoops like installing OBS to function as a webcam? If it really is that easy, I’ll absolutely install this stack as soon as I can. But every time I’ve tried discord “alternatives”, there’s always either a whole series of steps you have to jump through to screenshare (and forget about screen sharing a single app instead of an entire monitor, and forget about sharing sound without causing the streamer to echo the viewer’s voice), or the screensharing has multi-second lag (no matter how good the client and server’s connection is - testing this was done on purely local setups on Ethernet).

You’d think a direct peer to peer connection or “server” connection that’s… Functionally a peer would have less lag than the one that needs to phone home over the internet and perform downscaling on the feed to upsell Nitro, but that hasn’t been my experience.

Is a domain name required for this, or can you replace all instances of “example.com” with an IP address and port combo?

If I run this stuff, what do my clients / less techy friends need to install to get a Discord-like experience for screenshare/IM?

it’s Element/Matrix if we’re lucky. Revolt is just another Discord - surely this single company will last! With Element/Matrix being an open protocol, it won’t be a “platform” you have to leave when it goes corporate.