Insular seems similar to shelter, also on f-droid.

fr, fr, no preserve root

Android is not developed by Google. It’s open source but Google adds a lot of stuff on top. There are ways to minimise what apps can spy on you: gboard, keep notes, calendar, calculator, gmail - all can be swapped for better and more privacy respecting apps from F-droid. You can also disable Google and other system (vendor) apps through adb. Some OSs if you don’t want to do that are Lineage OS and Calyx OS.

really necessary?

no but there are some settings in about:config you might want to change

this is a good video (easier to follow if you are on linux) that shows installation of a profile with all the settings already in it

https://lemmy.world/post/2338283

There isn’t really an alternetive launcher but you could download a firewall app like NetGuard and block every connection exept g.whatsapp.net

You can help Aurora by making more accounts to combat rate limmiting

but apart from that I don’t really know how to help - almost all my apps are from F-droid

For me Aurora still kind of works, although I often get the “Rate Limmited Account” message.

You can set Aurora as the handler of Play Store links in settings, that’s not affected by rate limmiting, if that stops working just download apk files directly from websites

~~Most are bots though

Many instances have over 40k total users but only 10 people or so active

I think about 250k is the number of real people (still very impressive)~~