Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers

If you click ”more info” on the SmartScreen notice you should be able to bypass it (unless you are in environment where admin has blocked this).

More walled gardens. Hooray.

This is why we need WASM and web-first development. If the platforms won't empower us to develop and distribute without levying their tax, we need to take our business back to the open web and spend our money on making it the best platform.

Besides, it's a nightmare to have to develop for every single platform when the web is universal. Platforms should pay the cost of making things work on their devices and operating systems, not tens of thousands of independent developers and engineers paying this price N-many times for each walled garden.

We also need to get Google's claws out of the open web (AMP, standards balkanization, etc.)

Eh, honestly, that's what getting an SSL cert used to be like 15 years ago. They can knock it all they want, but really, the process functioned pretty much as expected.

Like a lock on your front door, the purpose is not to prevent unwanted people from ever getting inside (no lock will ever accomplish that), but to both make it take long enough the likelihood of being noticed is high, and to put enough hurdles in place that the attacker looks for a more lucrative target.

This is done through time, capability, and money. It takes time to jump through the steps. This presents risk to an attacker as it leaves them exposed for much longer, and susceptible to being tracked down in various ways as they expose themselves. It takes capability to jump through the steps, requiring the attacker having compromised the target in multiple different ways (phone system, employee, etc). This increases the complexity of the attach and thus the risk to the attacker. It takes money. This helps the providing company recoup the cost of verification (and if it's anything like web SSL certs is also about insurance), but money also provides another path to racking down an attacker, and provides a cost to them that isn't just their time. It also makes it less feasible to attempt a bunch of these attacks at once, as it's expensive.

People can complain about the inconvenience all they want, but the inconvenience is part of the point, so I doubt you'll see it change all that much.

I agree in general with what SmartScreen tries to do. There are a lot of non-technical folks clicking on stuff willy-nilly so adding barriers to prevent spyware / virus infections for totally unknown binaries is a good thing. A "Let's Encrypt" for code signing may be a good idea, but the cost of a certificate is itself a barrier for spyware distributors, so i'm conflicted on that... not sure what the right fix is.

Not the case at all. It's about the fact that they build reputation off installation data from all Windows users, and the catch-22 that can create for new developers just starting out with their first app.