Yes and how many users would actually do that vs how many would be even further exploited by apps that bypass Apple’s policies?
For example you can’t release an app right now that requires location services access including background or it won’t start not because you can’t develop one but because it won’t pass Apple’s store policies.
Facebook might be shite for privacy in general but it can be much much worse if they are allowed to do w/e they want and they have a large enough userbase that it really doesn’t fucking matter if their EULA would force you to donate your first born to Zuck most people would still use it out of sheer peer pressure.
That issue surprisingly only is tangentially related to side-loading. We should not be relaying on an other company to protect people from other from an other companies predatory data collection policies. The problem is we allow companies like facebook to exist. It still is a problem on iOS and a problem outside iOS. Like the default safari settings are not strong enough in my opinion let alone on other systems. Also what about users who would like to really lock down things, but can't because apple has tied their own hands? Should they also suffer because majority of people lack self control. Like it's your device at the end of the day. There comes a point where if you install junk it's a matter of personal responsibility too (although large number of people sadly don't understand what they are getting into).
However regarding that point in parenthesis, we can't expect everyone to be technically inclined so we honestly need something stronger than GDPR in my opinion. Again apple can't protect everyone here and even their current set of privacy focused features don't go far enough.
Moreover, the way apple locks down the device from the owners has a bunch of other negative aspects. I would hardly call it the best way to achieve what your mentioning. Like not only is it impeding on property rights of device owners. Apple is effectively using to bludgeon other companies to pay a large portion of their revenue. It also makes it difficult for GPL licensed software to be published for iDevices, as apple will modify submitted binaries to the app store, among other things which makes it difficult to publish said software without breaking a GPL license. So open source developers don't even bother or have to come up with some workaround.
For example you can’t release an app right now that requires location services access including background or it won’t start not because you can’t develop one but because it won’t pass Apple’s store policies.
Facebook might be shite for privacy in general but it can be much much worse if they are allowed to do w/e they want and they have a large enough userbase that it really doesn’t fucking matter if their EULA would force you to donate your first born to Zuck most people would still use it out of sheer peer pressure.