That page tells me that the safest way is to have a Google account, with Google Play Services installed on my phone, and to download it from the Google Play Store.
It then gives me an APK link after saying "Danger zone" and "most users should not do this".
If the app developer tells me it's dangerous and I shouldn't do it, can you even expect users to do this?
I don't know how to verify the SHA fingerprint without Googling (I know how it works, just don't do it often to know the exact openssl or equivalent command).
If I'm downloading the APK directly on the phone, there's a lot that's not under Signal's control that could happen.
What if I'm directly under attack, and I'm trying to move to Signal? The attacker could MITM the connection and intercept the download.
I think that's a fair warning to show a user, because indeed most users will likely want to install apps through Play Store, that'll reduce/remove supply chain risks. Users who know enough about APKs would be able to verify the hash, or build it themselves.
Even if I download the APK, I still have to accept a similar warning when installing it on my phone.
F-Droid for as much as I love the open platform, does not provide any security guarantees about what you're downloading. It is a volunteer run project and does not have the extensive security policies and practices that Google has. From https://f-droid.org/en/about/
> Although every effort is made to ensure that everything in the repository is safe to install, you use it AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Likewise downloading and side-loading it from their website, requires you to disable some security guarantees by doing things like enabling developer mode.
If you care about reproducible builds and avoiding trusting Google, you're already in the class of not-most-users.
Signal seems to have usually taken a pragmatic stance of defaults mattering.
Afaicr, that was the argument for linking to phone numbers (it allowed for more lazy users to use it) and encryption by default (few turn on opt-in-encryption).
And it seems accurate to say 'for most users, who don't know what they're doing and don't want to play personal-IT-department, using the Google Play store is more safe and secure.'
Even then
> You need to download it from the Google Play Store.
Factually incorrect, just go to https://signal.org/android/apk/ (and the apk will then update itself) or build it yourself.
> pushed the update to everyone but no one could inspect the source code.
That was for the server code, which you shouldn't care about from a security standpoint for a e2ee messenger such as Signal. AFAIK that was not the case for the clients.
Regarding your other points, they have reasons that have been discussed elsewhere[0] to avoid federation, notably a lot of the progress on the Signal protocol would be way harder in a federated setting. There's no other messenger that has the same usability ("my grandfather can use it and won't have problems using it afterwards") while being at this level security-wise.
[0]: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/