That catfriend post was... a bit strange

They could have been hacked or forced.

Where did you see that? Couldn't find anything on the repo.

Will still go with nel0x's version tho

For me that's an uninstall unfortunately and looking for another solution at the moment.

I really don’t see why there are so many people around saying “it’s probably fine”

Because there is currently no direct evidence of anything amiss. From the linked article:

Technically, the changes made so far have been reviewed by some people and no obvious malicious modifications have been found; F-Droid also builds the app reproducibly and verifies whether the published code matches the binaries

Granted, someone could be playing a long game here. Get control, wait for the controversy to die down while playing nice, then do then rug pull when no one is watching anymore. That's possible. It's also quite possible that the previous maintainer got tired of doing a hard and thankless job for no pay and wanted to shed the whole thing. They found someone to hand it off to, and the new maintainer is just shit at open communications. That happens and is also possible. Whether or not it makes you change your usage of the package is down to your risk appetite. But, jumping at every shadow gets old quick and at some point you have to accept some risk. So, unless and until there is more evidence to backup the claim of foul play; or, if you have a really low risk appetite, this is one of those things which falls under "keep an ear open, but it's probably fine".