Sure. I suggest skepticism as a starting point. Maybe come up with a dozen alternative theories to compare to your pet theory. It’s quite easy to accept something without alternatives.
The human brain has immense ability to correlate things, justifiably or no. Ultimately anecdotes like yours are frustrating because so many possible things could be happening but people treat your hypothesis seriously anyway.
Err, isn’t the google play store exactly the type of walled garden people bitch about? It has walls and locks all over the place. To what are you referring?