I have come to the conclusion that the powers that shouldn't be subtly promote it, yes. Together with Signal's unwillingness to fix security of metadata or drop the phone number requirement, it seems like a trap. I don't think they can read messages though (yet)
Discussion
You might be right, I have no disagreement with this premise.
However in this case, we're only using it for a public chat on Linux. And the phone number is to help keep spam at bay.. which you saw from the SimpleX room.
Yeah, I get that and mega chatrooms offer little security anyway. Just a warning to those who want to communicate privately that Signal isn't the solution