[hackernudes]

Signal does a far better job than most. They have open source clients. They sign their builds. The android build is reproducible (you can build it yourself and it will match exactly what they publish, see https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...). Presumably some people in the world do it.

Now of course I personally don't check the app shipped to me from the Google Play Store, but at least I could!

It's not that I disagree with your point at all. There are still many places for world powers to compel companies to spy on users (in both hardware and software). Just want to call out that Signal is doing pretty much the best they can.