[kevincox]

Cert pinning protects against compromised certificate authorities. There are hundreds of trusted root certificates in most operating system stores so one of them gets breached every once and a while.

Integrity checking is user-hostile, but certificate pinning can be good for users.

[eugenekolo]

I don't know which users integrity checking the executable would be hostile against. But, I see your point that perhaps their reason for cert pinning is to defend against compromised CAs. It does fit the narrative better with their lack of obfuscation and other layers of defense on their app.

[kevincox]

Stopping users from modifying the software they run is user hostile.