For those unfamiliar, GrapheneOS is a privacy and security enhanced custom ROM endorsed by Snowden. Despite these big names, plenty of people give it backlash
Even @[email protected] gives it backlash despite being a moderator of Lemmy’s biggest privacy community. A quote here: “grapheneOS trolls are downvoting every single post and comment of mine, and committing vote manipulation on Lemmy. They are using 5-6 accounts.” That was in response to downvotes on a comment posted in the c/WorldNews community, which is entirely unrelated to technology.
One of the reasons is that GrapheneOS can only be installed on Google Pixels due to security compatibility, which makes complete sense considering Android should be most compatible with Google’s own devices. GrapheneOS even lists the exact reasons they chose Pixels, and encourage people to step up and manufacture a different supported device.
One year ago, Louis Rossmann posted this video outlining his reasons for deleting GrapheneOS. Mainly, he had multiple bad experiences with Daniel Micay (the founder and main developer of GrapheneOS) which put his distrust in the GrapheneOS project. Since then, he has stepped down and will no longer be actively contributing to the project.
So, I am here to learn why exactly people still do not like GrapheneOS.
because you NEED a pixel.
You don’t need to give money to Google, it’s trivial to find a second-hand.
not in my country, they are expensive and unavailable. and you have to be ok with their form factor and features over the other options.
overall needing to have one specific phone can get very restrictive.
Is it a reason to hate the GrapheneOS project? Pixel phones are simply the best Android devices for security. You should hate other phone manufacturers that don’t care at all.
i don’t hate graphene in and of itself, i simply can’t use it. and its not much use to most people when most people don’t own pixels.
we should hate most phone manufacturers because they are pretty much all shitty.
For a good reason. Pixels are currently the only phones besides iPhones with proper hardware security. Only Pixels support hardware memory tagging, have a secure element (Titan M2) that supports the Android StrongBox and Weaver API, insider attack resistance and hardware key attestation. They also have a programmable USB controller, that allows you to fully disable any USB data connections while the OS is running. The GrapheneOS team maintains a list with hardware requirements at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Why is ur comment showing up blank for me?
Because Lemmy.ml mods are morons
How are they blanking a replay to a comment just cos the comment being replied to is on .ml thats cooked is it cos ur banned or cos im banned or both or are they just morons and screwed it up?
I don’t know why it’s blank, but when checking the c/privacy modlog from my instance, I can’t find anything.
But when I go to lemmy.ml and check the modlog from there, I see this:
Thats photographic proof of .ml selectively federating the modlog to do all sorts of dodgy things such as hiding who committed what actions and generally trying to hide mod/admin abuse.
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So .ml ia broken and nobody has fixed if for months now? U expect me to believe this bullshit. Also pretty sure the modlog doesnt include any posted link just a link to the post which should now no longer exist. The only reason I can imagine fucked shit would be in the modlog was if the .ml moderators where posting it in the summary field themselves.
Bla bla I will just keep the same phone I’ve had for years
Also I don’t care about the form factor of Pixels
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The guy you were replying to is saying “People hate GrapheneOS because it requires a Pixel,” they were not saying “everyone in the world should be using a Pixel” as you seem to have mistaken.
You’re getting very fired up and heated in the comments here… maybe take a break?
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Hey man, nice to see you raising hell again. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in a bit.
BTW, I followed most of your guide, and my phone battery is lasting me upwards of 5 hours of screen on time since I applied your secret sauce. Never mind the ridiculously low data usage.
And if anyone here is wondering, @[email protected] and I don’t see eye to eye 100%, and we started our conversations sort of being pricks to one another, until we started to finally get along. He does have some very valid insights and knowledge for privacy and security on Android devices and most with solid evidence, which raises the bar on trust. Having said that, regardless of how you choose to take his posts, I do urge you to at least consider his points. I’ve found them invaluable.
Can you please give a link to this guide? Thanks.
Sure, here it is:
https://lemmy.ml/post/128667
Be aware that there are new apps out there that can replace some of the ones suggested here by the OP, but the bottom line remains the same today.
It’s a bit… shorter than I expected, but thanks
Lol
It is ironic, but that’s the best you can get in terms of security on Android, which is why GrapheneOS supports nothing else
A lot of people here have higher priority for privacy over security. If you wanted maximum security you should be fine with using even apple products, they’re incredibly secure. But privacy- that’s a completely different thing. Hell, even the community is named privacy. The freedom to compromise alleged security features for privacy should be an option for users.
I’m sorry, but that’s just not how security works. Most of the “security” features exist because of patching known vulnerabilities. What this means in real terms: vulnerabilities and how they work are published to the public. There are people who specifically write and sell malware to exploit these known vulnerabilities. This is happening all the time. If you have a permissive security model, you are opening all of your information up to compromise
You cannot reasonably expect privacy on a system that makes major concessions to security. Security is necessary for privacy. The two are not the same thing, but one is needed for the other.
But also… GrapheneOS is in fact a very privacy-friendly operating system. I would consider it the most privacy-friendly in fact.
For me it is a matter of trust. What does it matter if you’re getting security updates faster than everyone else if you’re getting them Solar Winds? In other words, if you don’t need security against nation-state actors, the highest threat is Google / Apple themselves.
Your logic doesn’t escape me but in point of fact, when we’re talking about GrapheneOS we’re not talking about volunteering usage data to Google. GrapheneOS does a better job of protecting user privacy than any other mobile option I can think of.
The problem I have is treating security and privacy like they’re opposing forces. They’re not. You don’t need to make security concessions to ensure privacy and that line of thinking doesn’t make sense when you examine it.
Genuinely curious: what your privacy metrics (what does this actually mean to you) and what is an organization that you trust?
Not too many unfortunately. I trust Proton bc I am not breaking any Swiss laws, and I know they leak recovery emails so I don’t have one listed, but that’s about it.
To be honest I’m not an expert in this, definitely haven’t achieved de-googled life yet, but someday I dream I will. Even if they are not collecting usage data they’re surely getting metadata
I think that’s a good baseline. Not placing unnecessary trust is definitely a priority. The idea is definitely to remove as much of the need as possible for trust.
You have good goals and they are attainable. I wish you luck.
I don’t think it’s ironic. Google benefits massively from their projects like AOSP or OpenTitan being open source, and they even benefit from projects like GOS doing some heavy lifting for them in developing bug fixes that get integrated upstream.
The fact that their mobile phones are relatively friendly to alternate operating systems is of pretty significant benefit to them.
Google is invested in security research, albeit usually for reasons that don’t benefit users.
Google is a tech giant, which abuses peoples privacy with every click
Their phones enable users to (at least partially) escape that bs
that’s what I found to be ironic