do you really feel this is a good faith analogy? how is a side project in any way similar to a company with billions of users?

i think it is an analogy that is useful in elucidating what people view as the morally relevant aspect.

i don’t think it makes a ton of sense to me that the encryption or lack thereof is the relevant factor - if we think that proprietors of unencrypted messaging should be required to turn over chat logs, then encrypted messaging should probably be illegal or we have left a massive loophole in.

the scale being the relevant issue is another thing as well. i worry that if you somehow create a protocol for dencentralized messaging, you somehow then become liable for misuse of what could have been an academic project, etc.

You mean if you’re also running servers for it that store all the data in a format you can read and refuse law enforcement requests in your jurisdiction.

This is a horrible analogy, is your side project giving free cloud hosting of up to 1.5GB files for 900 million users with no moderation? Yeah, if it is you should go to jail too if you didn't address the issue of CSAM there for a decade.