This is strong evidence that Google just assumes that if you have the permission (and presumably network permission too) then of course you must be uploading the user’s contacts somewhere.
It sounds like there are a lot of other issues or potential bad faith with Google's process.
But this is an entirely reasonable stance to take. Merely touching the permission should be the bar to having extremely strong requirements in place to verify that you're not doing anything bad.
But this is an entirely reasonable stance to take.
Snikket is FOSS. The source code is available to Google. The source code is also a more trustworthy source of evidence than Google simply running the code. How do they know from running the code whether it exports their contacts?
This is good news in the sense that Snikket is forced to promote the better repository (F-Droid). It’s also favorable when some good apps like Snikket are simply unavailable in Google Playstore. If every app is available in Playstore, that solidifies Google’s disproportionate power -- which they abuse. We need more apps to be only available outside of Playstore.
Snikket is also a good app to have that excludes Playstore because of its nature as a communications app. Advanced users likely tend to push their more novice correspondents to install Snikket. So going forward they will have to do their duty in spreading F-Droid.