The defence against this is widespread truly peer to peer messaging services, where there is no company at the middle to tell you add backdoors.
Who is working on that? I suspect the main challenge is not technical, but human - persuading users to switch messenger apps is almost impossible.
Simplex
Session was recently shut down due to lack of funding.
True P2P implies knowing the IP addresses of the people you're talking to.
Not P2P but Delta Chat
Or you can just host your own server like IRC. This is beyond idiotic, if they think that pedophiles will begin to suddenly use WhatsApp then I very much doubt about their basic literacy.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
> The defence against this is widespread truly peer to peer messaging services
Spain would label you criminal for merely using alternative Android builds: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crim...