[theginger]

When app stores act in a way that puts their own interest ahead of the user it harms security, especially when there is no transparency.

If I want this app I am now being sent to download an APK, I lose all the protection of the app store. If they cry wolf enough people will get used to doing that. Then when something comes along that is harmful and they want to yank it genuinely to protect users, people will still download the apk.

[YoshiRulz]

In this case you don't have to find and sideload an .apk though, it's available in the main F-Droid repo.

I'd argue that it would be safer than the Play Store version because F-Droid builds are at least reproducible, while it's not clear what checks are actually done by the Play Store before publishing an update. Most of what Play Protect claims to do could be from a simple malware signature check.