The drama and accusations the GrapheneOS developers are spewing and engaging in are giving me a bad taste in the mouth and make me doubt the OS’s reliability am I the only one?
Not as bad a taste as the French government is giving me.
If its do I trust GOS or a confirmed pro chat control governments side of the story, its an easy choice.
There are many more sides than those 2. GOS is screaming about a new “harrassment” campaign every week.
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Who said anything about a forum?
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Look at their social accounts. Half their posts are complaining about some sort of “harrassment”. They claim their branding was being used to sell these devices without any evidence. They claim this is a “state-sponsored attack” without any evidence.
Knowing nothing of the situations details, when you’re a thorn in the side of the most powerful interests on the planet,it seems reasonable that a small group would face deliberate, concentrated pressure from business to legal and the state and any other mechanism. That’s generally what power does, assuming the little guy isn’t subsumed.
What is the evidence of foul play by GOS, or why would they not have a pretty extreme bias of support?
I think everyone would love some evidence here, but so far it was one journalist from one newspaper talking to one cop that said criminals are using GrapheneOS because it destroys evidence. Afaik Daniel didn’t post any notification, inquiry or general communication he received from any government official or agency…
from business to legal and the state and any other mechanism.
I’m not referring to any of those “mechanisms”, I’m referring to basically the entirety of the privacy/security/sovereign communities. They disparage other Android “privacy” platforms and communities on a regular basis, then claim to be victims of “targeted attacks” from those communities. Louis Rossman and Techlore are also 2 people who have also been accused of “harassment” without evidence. Just for starters.
Their past dramas are irrelevant to this issue.
Giving into a straw man argument such as their other dramas somehow devalue what’s going on now, only plays into the French propaganda campaign.
They’re not irrelevant, they’re both symptoms of the same problem. The Developer Who Cried Wolf.
Its nutjobs like them that are pushing progress further. State security apparatus doesn’t want to work by law. That can be observed worldwide.
French went after Telegram even though it doesn’t market itself primarily for security. It was just that some public channels went against their strategic objectives and they felt the need to bruteforce their way.
So GrapheneOS is very right to be nervous and pack their bags before they come knocking at the door.
They literally said that French police are being told to treat Pixel phones as suspicious, which if true, shows why they’re concerned.
Having a secure phone / secure messaging has been seen as suspicious by the police in france for several years now.
This has already been used against eco activists to detain them preemptively and a few times to increase charges towards terrorism / organized crime when possible.
Could you post what you are talking about to give some context?
The main reason why I decided not to use it, despite it being an obvious choice. But I’m also that kind of old dude that is not very receptive to drama… this may explain ;)
In my opinion both the evident ego of of the project lead as well as his naivety (tethering the project to Google) are huge red flags despite any assumed technical superiority.
They’re literally working with a manufacturer to make non-google phones. Tethered to google is a wild mischaracterization.
No it’s not. This is a recent development that has not yet actually come to fruition. It may exist in 2026.
Before that GrapheneOS dismissed any idea of targeting other phones than the ones build by one of the most anti-privacy companies on earth, that seeks to consolidate control of Android.
This isn’t true, they’ve supported other devices in the past. They’ve been Pixel-focused for the security features that other manufacturers haven’t offered
Yes, before Google made phone on it’s own they supported some Nexus devices (google-partnered) and the Samsung Galaxy S4.
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I don’t need a phone, GrapheneOS needs one now that Google is trying to force them out. I wonder if their new phone will actually meet all the requirements, if it comes out.
As for complaining, GrapheneOS is the one bitching about other Android versions existing since forever. Now, they 've started making unsubstantiated claims of them attacking them somehow.
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No GrapheneOS is not just calling them out on lack of security.
It’s apparently from their discord, so it took me a while to find it again.
It’s not about the personality of it’s directors, it’s about it’s effect on the (alternative) Android ecosystem as a whole, which is not just about security but also privacy and user control.
Even with regards to security, their choice of limiting devices apparently makes their users targets for extra scrutiny and harassment. That does have actual implications for people whose threat model includes authorities unless they already are guaranteed to be targets.
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They chose Google because they are the only major OEM to allow you to relock the bootloader after installing a custom ROM. Samsung, Motarola, Huawei, Xiaomi etc all don’t.
Pretty sure calyx relocks the bootloader on moto phones.
In addition to this, they are working with an OEM to produce their own Graphene phones. It sounds like they’ve made significant progress on that front so I’m hopeful.
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Exactly. The lead dev can come across as frustrated or confrontational on his social media posts but really the amount of noobs criticising Graphene for nonsense reasons or repeatedly bringing up other ‘secure’ OSes to him that he’s already thoroughly debunked again and again like e/OS would drive me insane
Too be fair (not French but aware of their culture and government) the French are pretty smart, for people and don’t fuck around with serious issues. I bet you if they got access, it wouldn’t be long till issue a long warning before a ban if it were to cause harm to others.
I don’t care about the community, I just care about the experience of using it.
GOS is a great project. This is a FUD campaign.
I also feel concerned about GrapheneOS. Here’s why.
I got banned from the GrapheneOS Matrix chat simply for asking a question, it was worded similar to this:
“Hey there! GrapheneOS is cool. I noticed CalyxOS added support for eSIM, are you planning to add that as well?”
The post got deleted, I thought I had not sent it and posted it again. It was deleted again. I asked something along the lines of “Wait, where has my question regading eSIM support and doing the same as CalyxOS gone? Seems to have disappeared, lol”.
THAT was also deleted.
Then I posted something along the lines of “Huh, my questions seem to be disappearing”.
That was NOT deleted.
Then I asked something like “Anyway, are there plans to add eSIM support just like CalyxOS? :)”.
That was ALSO deleted.
I got a private message from a mod saying I was banned.
That was alle the interaction I ever had with the GrapheneOS project. I might have started contributing, but I could not even ask a simple question. It seems that they don’t like it if you mention any other custom ROM, I guess.
(This has been a while ago, so I don’t remember my precise wording)
It seems you were rightfully banned.
Which channel on Matrix ? They seems to have many ones so mods in general if questions get asked in wrong channels ban which is weird I would expect them to reply that go to #relevant room and ask there
I’m pretty sure it was a general GrapheneOS room, but as said it’s been a while, so idk.
At least asking the question did not seem wrong.
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GrapheneOS has always had a massive PR problem and crazy leadership unfortunately.
Unlike say Google? Why is there an expectation that a group working completely against some of the most powerful actors on the planet, openly, against the grain of mainstream society often and having to bear that responsibility would be charming, at ease?
I cannot even begin to imagine the mental stress from constantly having to think ahead, in a global David and Goliath, in a maze designed to get you to give up. I probably have half the issues the GOS team does and I can’t claim it’s for doing anything on the scale of what they are.
You are mistaking what I am saying. I have nothing against the project as whole and the mission is fantastic.
They just have zero PR skills, don’t know when to keep their mouth shut or how to communicate properly when they need to. A little bit of consultation would go a long way for them. Obviously I am not expecting Google levels of PR/marketing, but it’s not great to see just ranting Discord/matrix messages. If it wasn’t an issue, these posts wouldn’t exist at all.
They’re being threatened by the entire French government. Its not drama. This is a very real situation.
All secured OSes and messaging systems are threatened by European governments / EU institutions at the moment, and the French government has been doing so for a few years.
This is not a grapheneOS only issue and it is not new.
I don’t think it’s in any way limited to the EU lol
Being French, I am not knowledgeable enough beyond Europe 😁.
For context, Germany recently did a last minute blockage of a European move towards mass surveillance of messaging (called chat control), and a v2 is already being prepared for another attack on privacy at European level.
We are living in interesting times.
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Two things can simultaneously be true, Daniel can be an individual who engages in very problematic behaviours and GrapheneOS can still be the most-secure and reliable OS out there.
Can we get a tldr of the “problematic behaviours”?
As a casual who bought a pixel 9 specifically for Graphene, I not too embedded in the culture/dramas, and surely many others reading here are similarly unfamiliar
His «problematic behaviour» is simply callingäoutäthings for what they are, with no soft wording.
Basically this. The project head might be a bit too paranoid, bellicose and problematic, but at this time a phone with GrapheneOS seems to be by far the safest way to have a smartphone, and the project head’s personality might be a part on this as their stated objective is to be able to resist state-level actors, you likely need someone who’s more than a bit “out there” to have the right mind for this
