That's the annoying thing with WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, etc. Let's say I've got a personal client (that I'm definitely not using...) which works so much better than the official one. I cannot distribute it or use it according to their rules. It's forced enshitification, even though we have better options.

On the good side though - if you're replicating the official behaviour close enough... maybe nobody will know. But then you have to make sure everything, including key sort order, and JA4 of requests matches. And that's tough...

You don't have to follow their rules but if you don't then you need a backup plan in case they ban you. You need that anyway since people get banned at random, but you especially need it if you're intentionally breaking the rules.