An investigation uncovers a web of influence in the powerful coalition aligned behind the European Commission’s proposal to scan for child sexual abuse material online, a proposal leading experts say puts rights at risk and will introduce new vulnerabilities by undermining encryption.
I think you went on to check literally for the worst possible offender. That’s how they subsidize their cheap phones. They have now monitors (not TVs!) with smart features, only so they can continue to phone home. I’d advise to unlock and install something like lineageos on it.
Unfortunately Lineage OS stopped supporting xiaomi phones at least 2 years back. they only focus on pixel phones now. Xiaomi catalogue is quite big. and the amount of their cheap phones sold is 20 times bigger than pixel. but I guess Lineage is only focused on what phones westerners use.
I mean if you want you should be able to download/compile to your phone model. With lineage its about as simple as downloading the source, running a specific single command that customizes the specific drivers for your phone, then hit compile and go take a coffee. You’ll end up with an installable image you can just copy to your phone.