This is the price every small sender pays. The unblock request process is essentially designed to make you give up or move to a large ESP. There's no appeals process, no SLA, no acknowledgment that your reputation data might just be wrong. You're at the mercy of a system that treats false positives as acceptable damage.

The awkwardness after your answered was the interview telling you something important. A team that penalizes picking the right tool over an impressive one is a team where you'll spend years creating complexity nobody needs. The lesson isn't "next time pretend Google Sheets doesn't exist." It's that you found out early what they actually reward.

I dont think the argument is really about child safety. If it was tiktok would also be working on fixing their algorithm that can send minors toward harmful content, which is a far larger documented vector than encrypted DMs. This is about preserving access.

That's the entire point of verified boot with custom keys, you don't need to trust Motorola or Lenovo. You can control what runs from the first boot, the threat model for a compromised supply chain is different from a backdoored chip. If you are worried about the latter that applies to every manufacturer including Google & Apple.