Back in the early days of Russian invasion on Ukraine, where almost everyone on Reddit called to ban users and flag every post praising Russia (as well as ban r/Russia), Reddit execs essentially said they will not do it because of "free speech"
f you find yourself in a position where you can work inside the beast and slow it down or fuck it up.
In this scenario, although the best, people would risk jail time (or other significant punishment). It's easy to say it, but so damn hard to actually do it.
So leaving is actually a great decision that doesn't give (any) risks
If your friend is not tech savvy person, i would go with Mint XFCE (maybe Zorin OS Lite). Surely, it will be not as lightweight as Debian, but it will be much more user friendly for him
If he actually feel comfortable tinkering with OS - along side Debian maybe Bodhi Linux or antiX? I tried both of them on one of (in)famous Intel-based netbooks with 512mb RAM and they worked quite well.
MacBook user:
ThinkPad user:
Essentially average MacBook fan vs average ThinkPad enjoyer