GOS is a great project. This is a FUD campaign.
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Privacy
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-> make most secure os in the world
-> call others out for not keeping up with the security updates like e/os
-> french goverment decides to make security illegal and specifically targets graphene
-> e/os fanboys keep shitting on graphene
"This guy is way too dramatic"
yall the reason we cant have anything good.
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
I wouldn't trust a sane person to do a ultra private phone OS.
You need the paranoia, you need to see the shadows move to do it right.
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.
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.
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.
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
Could you like, post what you are talking about to give some context?
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.
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...
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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
Not being familiar with the controveries referenced in this thread....
All of this reminds me very much of OpenBSD and Theo de Radt (?) back in the 98-02 era.
OpenBSD is certainly not the most popular *nix today, but it's probably the most secure.
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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
Not sure why this completly made up hypothetical scenario has so many upvotes. There is litteraly no evidence of this happening.
Even the opposite is the case, just recently with the preview releases which are opt-in.
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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.
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Such drama has been going on for years. I wouldn't read too much into it.
GrapheneOS has always had a massive PR problem and crazy leadership unfortunately.
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