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Europehttps://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117537776055163844
There's a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign towards GrapheneOS in the Netherlands and Germany. The misinformation campaign includes unsubstantiated security claims not holding up to scrutiny to scare people away from it. They're also heavily misrepresenting who uses it overall.
These smear campaigns conflate GrapheneOS with forks and modifications of it sold by shady companies. Those usually include a device management app to remotely manage the devices of their customers as if they're employees. These are largely not GrapheneOS devices or have preinstalled malware apps.
France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly authoritarian surveillance states with an ongoing crackdown against privacy. It's happening throughout the whole EU and it's likely both secure devices and end-to-end encryption without backdoors are going to end up outlawed.
There are a bunch of companies based in the EU selling phones with drastically worse privacy and security than an iPhone including Jolla, Volla, Murena and iodé. These products are effectively backdoored by not providing standard privacy and security patches/protections while misleading users.
There’s a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign towards GrapheneOS in the Netherlands and Germany. The misinformation campaign includes unsubstantiated security claims not holding up to scrutiny to scare people away from it. They’re also heavily misrepresenting who uses it overall.
OP seems to conflate technological illiteracy and incompetency of Bureaucrats with malice.
Not that the outcome cannot be the same, I just don't see any Central European government to be competent enough on technology matters.
You giving authorities the benefit of the doubt removes any credibility you have in truth.
You think in the age of age verification and constant attempts to force backdoors into encrypted apps that it's just incompetence that has them slandering Graphene? No, they've been advised well enough to know exactly what they're doing here. They're intentionally discouraging people from using secure devices.
I unfollowed the GrapheneOS account because 1. They are now taking AI code and 2. They post these huge rants on a platform not designed for it spamming anyone who follows them. 3. They always sound paranoid as fuck. But hey, maybe they have reason to.
Completely honest opinion here as a software developer, if you don't use AI in coding now, you are probably not working effectively. That's the unfortunate reality. To be clear, I am not talking about vibe coding, that's something completely different.
Saying "I don't follow GrapheneOS because they accept generated code" is your view, then you probably can't use any piece of software that is still actively maintained.
To me it's ironic that you mention GrapheneOS account is too paranoid, while being paranoid about AI code yourself, just because it has "AI" in it
Yeah - it's a unrealistic to try to avoid "AI code", whatever that may be. We know that Microsoft is using it for Windows. There are patches in the linux kernel that were generated with the help of AI. Google is using it for Android development. And Apple, too. So this user here is going around smashing a small, independent OS for using AI while posting from a OS that was created with AI.
But hey, maybe they have reason to.
They do, but they also just spout bullshit sometimes. Not mutually exclusive those two things.
They are now taking AI code
Isn't that every Android variant because Google is using AI to develop it since quite some time already?
Sounds like someone has lost their marbles at GrapheneOS. They don‘t seem to understand the German state or German law at all. Germany is one of the countries with the tightest privacy laws on a constitutional level. So if you‘re looking for someone who‘s out to get you you should probably look somewhere else. Because if you‘re accusing Germany you better have receipts.
Oh? If you are Israeli anyway. Fuck Germany.
Sounds like someone has lost their marbles at GrapheneOS
It's been pretty well known for years that one of the main devs is a bit of a weird character, so to say. He supposedly stepped back from social media but it's still his style of writing in a lot of the posts from the official accounts.
Didn't Germany change their minds and is now in favor of ChatControl (the latest Danish proposal)?
Sounds like someone has lost their marbles
Some people think that one of the founders has the keys to the social media accounts and they also say that person is paranoid. I feel like many adjacent communities have similar toxic behaviours or can be too heavy-handed with responses to criticism.
::: spoiler spoiler Like the PrivacyGuides community :::
The GrapheneOS people always sound like everyone is out to get them. Maybe many are out to get them, but maybe the people are just stupid, or a mix of both.
Journalists just parrot what the police tell them because they don't have access to experts, don't want to do the work talking to them or think the police must be the experts.
GrapheneOS is a great project and I'm sure many politicians and surveillance state actors want them to fail. But a big part of why GrapheneOS is slandered is that the common person doesn't understand their privacy geek talk.
Considering how morally bankrupt fascism and big tech propaganda is, I have zero doubt Google and other surveillance fascism corporations are funding smear campaigns against the project that has great potential to severely impact their dragnet surveillance capabilities and profit margins.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by the greed and psychopathy of the profit motive.
The real mistake was mentioning it at all. They are the best at what they do, but even compliments rub them and their horde of online defenders the wrong way.
A completely harmless comment like this should be ignored:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50381570
But, like clockwork, in comes the "they have the right to defend themselves."
I'll probably regret posting this even though I am on their side.
If an article about your product is bad, or you think it is bad, you make a single post and say "We deny the statements." That's it. Don't Streisand effect yourself.
Also, that new phone is hella expensive! That isn't being negative to the other OS. Stating that Motorola works (or has worked) with Oracle and law enforcement isn't painting the OS in a negative light. Everyone knows that the other OS is the best choice for anyone who takes security and privacy seriously.
'Somewhat opinionated' is what comes to mind for those last two paragraphs.
I know the makers of GrapheneOS are effectively privacy activists, so that is to be expected. I not sure what to think of this kind of alarmism however. 'Chat Control' is largely rejected and laws regulating security have been altered specifically to acommodate FOSS projects. I also really dislike the way they shit on companies and other third party OSs. They may be right, but it feels like a weird way to go about this
They shouldn't be surprised imo. We all know the tor network is used by two very different groups: journalists and human rights activists on the one hand, and criminals on the other. Not saying they deserve a smear campaign, but saying that if you build something with high privacy, you can expect the criminals to be interested.
It is a bad thing though these 'free countries' become less and less free, I do see that.
