@vegos There is, sort of. If app developers expose a ".apk" file, people can download that and install it--if they have already enabled installation outside of the Play Store, which is a tiny setting that is sometimes pretty hard to find (same setting is needed to enable F-Droid).

Normies don't know about it, and if they did, they would have to search a while to find it. And every time they try, they'll get a pop-up asking them to enable "Play Protect" which would prevent them from installing the file directly.

And they also won't get updates.