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?
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.
They’re being threatened by the entire French government. Its not drama. This is a very real situation.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
I don’t care about the community, I just care about the experience of using it.
You’re not the only one. It’s one of my biggest reasons for staying away from it
What do you use instead?
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.
GrapheneOS has always had a massive PR problem and crazy leadership unfortunately.
While I do find GOS drama a bit annoying, they aren’t wrong about the lacking security of many AOSP forks. iode and /e/OS have a history late patches for security vulnerabilities in both the OS (https://web.archive.org/web/20241231003546/https://divestos.org/pages/patch_history) and for the forked apps they bundle with it. Each Android monthly and Chromium patches usually contains dozens High Risk CVEs, so taking a month or 2 is unacceptable. Neither are good for privacy or security.
See a comparison between some Android ROMs here, especially noting the update speed section: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
I understand security implications but I’ll be getting Fairphone 6 with /e/OS over Pixel with GrapheneOS. For me FOSS ranks higher than HW security features, and buying Google device goes against FOSS principles.
Buying a used Pixel lets you use the hardware without funding Google.
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 ;)
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I would prefer my privacy software to be developed by people like this, rather than people who are calm and flexible
Its all fine until their approach of privacy or security differs with what’s best for the project, then there’s no reasoning with them to fix it because they’re not calm and flexible. Then ya gotta fork it and get everyone to transition to the new fork, and get developers back onboard, etc.
A crazy, but pointed example of something like this could be: the dude could just claim grapheneos going forward will not have networking anymore because thats an attack vector, and at that point the project doesn’t even suite anyone’s needs to be used as a smartphone anymore. How are you gonna reason with someone like this that, while keeping networking in the project is an attack vector, its necessary to be able to use the project for it’s intended use case? You probably aren’t
The guy being paranoid asshole is passable, what I thought a really shit move is calling the community to create alt accs to harass people from other projects and saying he will ban anyone that complains. The Rossmann video is quite shocking, you see the dev’s complete disassociation with reality… yeah the code is open, but how many people outside the project are really auditing it? Even people inside the project, are they auditing each others’ work? If the guy doesn’t get treatment, how long until he decides his own userbase is after him?
admittedly i’m not up to date on all the drama, but i thought that graphene saw themselves as victims of alt attacks?
So yeah, it seems like he accuses everyone of persecuting and harassing him, but in those videos there are several examples of what he considers persecuting and harassing. Both channels were highly supportive of the project and actively promoted it, but because they would also promote other projects and do benchmark tests, they were “spreading misinformation”, “being biased”, “campaigning against him” and so on. And in the second video he accused the guy of campaigning against him just for saying “This is informative, and unfortunate” about the first video lol. So him being a “victim” is just his lack of proper medication, because anyone who asked him about such attacks, if he had prints or so, was also accused of attacking him lol
https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg
https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0Undoubtly GrapheneOS is the best project out there, so yeah, this is unfortunate.
OR, France is an evil, genocidal, ethnostate full of pedophiles, so we should maybe apply our Israel-tinted glasses and presume France to be the villain until we have concrete proof otherwise rather than blaming the victim.
None of the content above has anything to do with France - but he did take the opportunity to claim two other projects based on France are persecuting him as well, so he kinda has a pattern. As I commented to some other user in the other post, it’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf problem - those two videos are full of documentation of his modus operandi.
He is literally claiming that the French police and state are behind this campaign against Graphene, and I believe him knowing how the French are, but believe what you want…
Again, those videos aren’t about this French stuff, but about him claiming every other Android project is after him and that everyone who asks too much about his project is after him. The first video is from 2021 and the other from 2023. No relation to him claiming the French government is after him now.
Sure sure first it was the CalyxOS guys, then youtubers and now the French Government. Lets say it is true I don’t believe him cause he’s a crazy asshole.
Guys an asshole and has always been one.
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I’ve accepted for a while that the lead developer is extremely paranoid and could probably genuinely do with healthcare intervention. Like in much open source development I think it isn’t helped by overwork and burnout, so I hope that at some point Graphene gets a better governance structure which spreads responsibility and which hopefully will limit the incessant drama that only harms the project. I don’t see him being willing to give up his grip, but I can always hope.
I’ll continue to use Graphene unless things go entirely off the rails though, as it is a great OS and I don’t really think there are many great alternatives.
Who benefits?
Who benefits from sowing a narrative around “drama”, “accusation”, and/or “paranoia”. Seriously.
I think given the following circumspect; GrapheneOS’s reaction, to move project pieces out of potential hostile environments/jurisdiction, is perfectly reasonable.
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France’s Support for EU “Chat Control”, scanning proposals. France has been one of the governments most supportive of EU‑level proposals that would require scanning of communications and devices for illegal content.
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The general French framing and approach to cybercrime. As in other EU countries, French authorities are pushing for: Expanded powers to compel cooperation from service providers, and developers. Strong rhetoric against tools that are seen as systematically obstructing investigations.
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The main GrapheneOS dev creates beef with a bunch of other projects. It’s not some shadowy organisation, it’s him having stupid takes in GitHub issues and spreading false claims about other projects.
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