You really need a VPN to torrent safely, and the UK Government is in the process of restricting VPNs.

That’s not the point. This is a protest by the company running these sites against a system that’s not fit for its claimed purpose (age restriction of websites) but is very fit for surveillance.

Then we just need a hero to route all our traffic through the House of Lords.

I think we’re dealing with weasel lawyer words here. Meta can boast that messages E2E encrypted between you and the recipient, but that implies nothing about key storage or security, or about other channels through which the app could send message data before it is encrypted. It may be E2EE between you and the recipient, and also sent in plaintext to Meta. Plus E2EE of messages implies nothing about message metadata.

Your threat model seems to be an app whose published source code doesn’t match the published app, and whose published version uses a side channel not in the source code to leak messages in plaintext to a server. If that’s what we’re worried about then decentralization of the app’s main messaging channel makes no difference. The sneaky side channel could still be there in any app, centralised or decentralized.

That’s a theoretical worry to be mitigated through integrity checks on published open-source apps. The worry with Meta and WhatsApp is much more immediate: a known bad actor with a closed-source app, many domains they could use to leak keys or unencrypted messages, and a fawning relationship with the fascist and surveillance-hungry US Government. I’d still put significantly more trust in Signal even though it is centralised.

ICE actually are sending their best, though you wouldn’t know it.

To some country they’ve never been to.

Team America, World Gestapo.

It’s never really about protecting children. It’s about making sure the government can monitor everything you do online and tie it back to your real-world identity. Encrypted channels are to be eliminated. The government wants to hear every word and see every action. And age verification is an excuse to demand ID.

Traditionally this kind of surveillance has focused on left-wing and environmentalist movements, anything that challenges the interests of capital. Today it will be the same, but with a side helping of transphobia and the looming threat of all this material falling into the hands of fascists within a few years, something that everyone but the terminally dull Keir Starmer can see coming.

So never buy OnePlus products. Got it. Thanks OnePlus for making the advice so clear!