Privacyguides isn't very good in my experience. It's got a real "blind leading the blind" thing going on, where a bunch of half-truths are repeated ad-nauseam because at some point, someone told them that thing X is bad for your privacy. It's probably best exemplified in how they can't seem to stop recommending Brave, even though you're probably better off just loading up literally any other browser that isn't Google Chrome with privacy extensions instead.
Practically speaking, you should just assess the following threat model; which is going to be a greater threat to you:
* The F-Droid servers, where the most realistic threat is a rogue actor obtaining the keys.
That second one is also mitigated by the fact that F-Droid generally prefers to practice "reproducible signing"; basically they'll distribute the developers apk, not the one on F-Droids buildserver, if the F-Droid release matches the GitHub release (minus the signature obviously), making the signature problem mostly a non-issue.
For most people, I'd argue the former (a "surprise update" to insert anti-features[0]) is a greater risk than the latter, so F-Droids model fits them better. The sole exception would be extremely privacy sensitive apps where trusting the developer is more paramount than having the second man in-the-middle that F-Droids maintainers are. (A basic example of that would probably be Signal.)
[0]: As defined here, although not all are relevant for users: https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/ , although I'd just add de facto adding pointless microtransactions and subscriptions to this list. They're just not included since F-Droid wouldn't ship them.
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Privacyguides isn't very good in my experience. It's got a real "blind leading the blind" thing going on, where a bunch of half-truths are repeated ad-nauseam because at some point, someone told them that thing X is bad for your privacy. It's probably best exemplified in how they can't seem to stop recommending Brave, even though you're probably better off just loading up literally any other browser that isn't Google Chrome with privacy extensions instead.
Practically speaking, you should just assess the following threat model; which is going to be a greater threat to you:
* An application developer who can be bought out and have their tools replaced with adware. (Ref. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505229 )
* The F-Droid servers, where the most realistic threat is a rogue actor obtaining the keys.
That second one is also mitigated by the fact that F-Droid generally prefers to practice "reproducible signing"; basically they'll distribute the developers apk, not the one on F-Droids buildserver, if the F-Droid release matches the GitHub release (minus the signature obviously), making the signature problem mostly a non-issue.
For most people, I'd argue the former (a "surprise update" to insert anti-features[0]) is a greater risk than the latter, so F-Droids model fits them better. The sole exception would be extremely privacy sensitive apps where trusting the developer is more paramount than having the second man in-the-middle that F-Droids maintainers are. (A basic example of that would probably be Signal.)
[0]: As defined here, although not all are relevant for users: https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/ , although I'd just add de facto adding pointless microtransactions and subscriptions to this list. They're just not included since F-Droid wouldn't ship them.