Mounting home and temp partitions with noexec should prevent that.

Why don’t you have to use a VPN on a private tracker?

I use Yattee to connect to a Invidious instance.

Third party YouTube frontends will not be accepted in the App Store. Maybe with sideloading this can change.

Yeah. I think tcpdump/wireshark is the way to go.

The best solution is to create an issue and attach the pictures there. You can then link in README and not bloat the repository.