[thinbeige]

What is the right term then?

[PeterisP]

Who knows? The whole problem is that "darknet" is a label that doesn't mean anything definite, a buzzword but not a term.

You may say that a tool/network/protocol is decentralized and/or secure and/or anonymous and/or censorship-resistant and/or routed through Tor and/or doesn't leak identity and/or tamper-resistant and/or has plausible deniability etc etc and all these labels would mean something - "darknet" does not.

A "darknet messenger" might tick any set of these boxes, but the meaning is completely different depending on which of these labels apply.

[Angostura]

Difficult to know in this context - what meaning do you think they weed trying to convey, assuming that “designed for illegal use” wasn't it.

[PaulAJ]

How about "secure against spying by governments and criminals".

[Angostura]

So 'highly secure' would be better than darknet

[meowface]

Not quite, because that leaves out the important fact that it doesn't operate over typical networks.

[gcb0]

mesh and distributed networks.

unless you think providing Bluetooth is "darknet" .