[Wonderfall]

> False dichotomy. I still have the sandbox with F-Droid. This is chaff.

I didn't imply that you wouldn't benefit from the app sandbox by using F-Droid. I meant that the practical approach to privacy should come from relying on the permission model instead of trusting third parties.

In that sense, F-Droid adds very little to the fact that you still have to trust the upstream code with the permissions you're willing to grant.

If you choose to trust F-Droid, that's perfectly fine and I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop doing that. I also won't comment on your statements that Play Store is spyware because I have very little interest in that topic. You're free to believe that, and I respectfully disagree given the great service (whilst not perfect by any means) offered by Play Store.