This is something I’m unsure of. While I agree that there should be less obstacles to third party app stores, and sideloading, I’m not sure about taking warnings away is a wise choice. Especially when people are comfort and used to no warnings when using Google Play and other equivalents. Most just doesn’t do basic digital hygine. A better route is to bring down Google Play from its system app status and become a normal one, and warnings for everyone.
GPG is painful. No doubt. But with the pain it gains agility. Any single apps and protocols enables secure communication, being TLS, Tor, GPG or any one you listed, can draw attention. However, apps are more vulnerable. Their traffic pattern can be analysed and block individually while GPG is protocol agnostic. Look how China GFW had block many E2EE apps/protocols.
In today’s world, secure communication apps like SimpleX are more in flavor as it is way easier to use. I used them daily as my main communication method. But it’s also good to learn GPG as a backup when those apps fails.
The government’s move is in line with a recent policy that has targeted services with end-to-end encryption. A host of encrypted apps were blocked at the start of last year — including the likes of Threema, Element, Wickrme, and Safeswiss — and the government is going after WhatsApp to disable end-to-end encryption, although it isn’t clear how that would even work.
This is why GPG is still an important and valuable tool. You can use it on litteral anything and not relying on single point of failure. Paired with steganography no one will know the message even existed. Yet, not many are willing to learn nor support this anymore.
Edit: use of more conservative wording Edit 2: correct spelling