PopOS isn't going anywhere?
They've been working on their own Desktop Environment (COSMIC) for quite a while, an alpha and a beta already exists and the release is planned for December 11th (source).
I like your spirit, but I don't think a Chinese equivalent to Google Play Services would be more desirable
What worked for me at my old school was using a ShadowSocks proxy. ~~Basically what this does, is it takes all your traffic and just makes it look like random https traffic (AFAIK).~~ ShadowSocks is just a proxy. The description fits the Cloak module, mentioned below.
I believe multiple VPNs support this, for me with PIA VPN it's in the settings under the name "Multi-Hop" (PIA only supports this on the Desktop App, not on mobile).
This technique is pretty much impossible to block, unless you ban every single VPN ShadowSocks Proxy IP. If that is the case for you (chances are practically 0), you could also selfhost ShadowSocks in combination with the Cloak module, however this method is a lot more complicated.
I just read the full article, and I'm not even that concerned about storing the key in plaintext. I find the possibility of copying the files, and then being able to run the same session simultaneously a lot scarier.
As the article states, currently all processes are able to read the file which contains the key. Instead, you could store the key in the macOS Keychain (and Linux/Windows equivalents), which AFAIK is a list of all sorts of sensitive data (think WiFi passwords etc.), encrypted with your user password. I believe the Keychain also only let's certain processes see certain entries, so the Signal Desktop App could see only its own encryption key, whereas for example iMessage would only see the iMessage encryption key.
If your hate only goes towards touchscreens and not having physical buttons, Mazda is (or at least was) very anti-touchscreen. I haven't done any research on their current stance or if they have good EVs, but a neighbor of mine was really happy with his Mazda ICE car for having a button for everything.
In that case you can try adding before:2023 or similar to your search
It's not decentralized, everyone connects to one central server.
I will once again shill for Proxigram (not my project), the only? remaining FOSS instagram frontend. You can try it out on one of the public instances.
I'm not entirely sure if it supports opening Instagram links though.
Most mobile devices won't work without batteries. The best way to work around this is to supply it with 4.2V (anything between 3V and 4.2V will do) over the battery connector.
That shouldn't be too restricting for people using discord to chat with their friends though.