Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can run Chrome, which has a virtual machine in it. Maybe not the same kind of virtual machine that you're talking about, but this is the kind of virtual machine that Apple has banned: any kind of code that isn't statically compiled, that isn't immediately readable. This is why Chrome (actual, not the thin cosmetic shell over Safari WebView available now) can't run on iOS: Chrome has to download & run JS code, and…
>pulled an Apple and banned anything but statically compiled code in WebExtensions Yes; the point of this move is specifically to render the vast majority of adblocking efforts non-viable.
But I also don't think those security woes justify the horror Google is besetting upon users. I don't think it justifies stripping away agency in such broad course. I think it's hypocritical & shameful in extreme they'd do what the worst most fascist competitor does on their app store. I think the team isn't honest, hasn't presented viable evidence, hasn't made the case, hasn't presented real evidence for their actions in nudering web extensions. I have many many qualms.
But I think I can still see legit cause for what would make them so very very cowardly, to do such a henious & unbespeakable act as they've doing with WebExtensions MV3.
Alas it's just misaligned incentives here. Ideally users would actually see what pages & the extensions do. We could be our own network, our own reviwers, we could warn each other of malware. But Google, like all app-store providers, is the only intermediary of trust, has made themselves solely responsible. Rather than tackle this as a mature problem of great powers that must be watched and regulated, they've taken an extremely convenient & easy route out that makes their job as authoritarian regulators infinitely easier, at the expense of enormous power, at the expense of becoming extreme & perposterous hypocrites at the foot of the Apple tribulations they've undergone, but in a much worse manner.