The newspaper article referenced contains insinuation (linking GrapheneOS to the darkweb, criminal gangs etc), and unnamed sources quoting a police investigation.
But that sort of thing sells newspapers. There didn't appear to be anything about the French state taking specific action (eg passing a law) against Graphene.
> This doesn't have anything to do with how French journalists have responded to the state actions against GrapheneOS but rather the actions and statements by France's state agencies and law enforcement which are highly concerning. They're making highly inaccurate and libelous claims about GrapheneOS while clearly actively trying to justify taking actions against us. They've shown their hand so we're leaving France including OVH prior to anything bad happening rather than waiting.
More importantly this is the smart choice, the only thing, to do: Shake the dust from your sandals, walk away, don't look back.
This is the ongoing horror of the overbearing state, which wants to rule efficiently by knowing everything that everybody is doing all the time. Those who focus on and value law enforcement before freedom.
> "Particularité de GraphèneOS : on peut se le procurer autant sur le darknet que sur des sites grand public." ⇒ "A distinctive feature of GrapheneOS is that it can be obtained both on the darknet and on mainstream websites."
> > I am preparing an article on the use of your secure personal data phone solution by drug traffickers and other criminals.
I think GrapheneOS needs a really good PR expert volunteer, or funding to pay for a non-volunteer.
My non-PR-expert guesses are... If the journalist is in bad faith or flaky, that might need to be handled. But if the journalist is in good faith, this might be an opportunity, to promote GrapheneOS and/or to start to head off adverse gov't actions there.
(GrapheneOS does some great technical work, and has given me what seems to be a more respectful and trustworthy smartphone than I could get from Apple or Google. Right now, I'd think many countries in Europe and elsewhere should be looking at something like GrapheneOS as a possible interim measure on their way to greater digital sovereignty. I understand that the French people especially value liberty.)
The narrative already gets decided ahead of time and often there is nothing you can do to change it. In my opinion it's better to accelerate the distrust of journalists.
The general idea of the narrative might be set, but many times I see a company’s response in the story.
You usually have some influence. Enough people are smart enough to read between the lines to make it worth trying.
Perfect example: I had to fire someone from staff rather promptly. The reasons were serious even that not responding to questions in timely manner would have been a fatal error for the convention.
Unfortunately, there are times you can’t opt out of the game because opting out is a response. Silence will be misconstrued as support.
It would have been better to leak directly to the government. If it he wanted the public to see it he could have leaked it directly to the public. It's the 21st century.
As another aspect we're seeing governments and the system elites craving for more power and control than ever.
I know it's borderline conspiracy theorist but I fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns with the surveillance systems and control gained during them gave the elites worldwide a taste for new levels of power and control.
All in the name of doing it for our own good of course. But ultimately its for more power. What terrors man won't inflict on others for "their own good".
That doesn't quite explain it. The internet has happily been a niche wild west for a long time that has threatened very little power. Besides generally "most people know how evil all rich people have to be to get where they are now"
There's no single mastermind. This current wave of authoritarianism around the world is a consequence of not designing the Internet with democratic principles in mind. Online content discovery and moderation mechanisms are centralized and authoritarian in nature. And since most communication nowadays happens on the Internet on large platforms with millions of users (this is especially true after smartphones and social media were invented), the structure of human society in the real world is mirroring the Internet.
This can be solved, though. We have to move moderation and ranking mechanisms to the client-side, especially for search engines and social media. Each person should be able to decide what they post and see, but not what anyone else posts or sees.
Yeah well there is definitely something going on, a coordinated effort to condemn GrapheneOS with faint praise (and outright scare-mongering). Here I have posted a video url I'd downloaded and watched a few days ago. It's TTS slop narration, but it makes an attempt to characterize GrapheneOS as a 'double-edged sword', because, you know, criminals. Just like the hatchet job from France.
'GrapheneOS Update 2025 Privacy Savior or Hacker’s Paradise'
I get all my utube from the bash-prompt (and never have to deal with algorithm or see who is who and what else is there), so I don't know who posted this video to YouTube, but maybe there's more?
This could be a case study in an amateur low-grade half-ass influence operation.
On the other hand, it could simply be a grudge, a coordinated personal attack on the lead dev.
There are a slew of other videos by YouTube personalities who, at various times, seem to be disparaging the guy, including a very upset Grossman (right-to-repair guy).
Or hey, maybe it's just coincidence. C'est la vie!
Authoritarianism is doing well all over; it doesn't have to be deliberately coordinated, so much as people being basically the same everywhere, and the world sharing some serious problems. What works in one country works in almost any other.
On the one hand this its true that monkey see means monkey can do.. On the other, all the nationalists started meeting up with each other internationally and in public because hypocritical cynicism is apparently so hot now that you can be a xenophobe who worships foreigners as long as they are more impressive xenophobes.
Personally I’ve grown hostile to the concept of anonymous speech but I readily admit that I can’t imagine a way to deanonymize without also losing privacy as most people describe it.
Anonymous posters like what looks like a troll bot that the GrapheneOS account is arguing with have flooded the zone with so much noise its fracturing society imo
Always impressed by GrapheneOS social media painstakingly dealing with these trolls. For those without time the link they post to a 3rd party comparison of Android based OSes is very enlightening:
It's funny. It just struck me that the EU is uniquely well positioned to develop an alternative to Android and iOS.
Start with one of the open source projects - I guess an Android derivative, sans all the Google stuff. Give them funding, maybe regulate (that always helps).
Then mandate that within X years, various key apps must provide for this system - things like bank apps, state admin apps etc. In high likelihood, development would be close enough to Android that it would not be a crazy high burden - and anyway, it seems most people use cross platform frameworks.
EU could regulate, or influence via ownership, privacy controls better tailored to European tastes.
That would give the EU a dose of digital sovereignty without doing much, and ensuring some degree of usability.
It's a shame that instead GrapheneOS seems to get sued.
We weren't given a chance to see what was being claimed and properly respond to it. Our response at the end of the article was to this prompt, which was in the first and only email we received, in English:
> I am preparing an article on the use of your secure personal data phone solution by drug traffickers and other criminals. Have you ever been contacted by the police?
The claims in the main story strongly indicate they're not talking about GrapheneOS itself but rather companies selling closed source forks of it with significant modifications. They refer to features which don't exist in GrapheneOS. Supposedly GrapheneOS which is freely available from https://grapheneos.org/install/web and https://grapheneos.org/releases with sources on GitHub is distributed on the "dark web" and promoted via unlisted YouTube videos. They're clearly conflating products which market themselves by saying they're using GrapheneOS with the upstream project those are forked from. These are largely sketchy products and we regularly have to deal with them infringing on our copyright and trademarks.
One of these companies marketing products claiming to use GrapheneOS, ANOM, turned out to be a company run by the FBI as a sting operation which was hiring criminals to sell phones to other criminals. ANOM told people what they were getting was GrapheneOS when it was actually a mix of GrapheneOS and LineageOS code. The FBI was broadly facilitating crime in Europe by providing them devices they considered secure and safe to use while disregarding most of it to avoid exposing their operation. They were also misusing our brand and harming our reputation us through this. A lot of the claimed criminal usage was directly engineered by the FBI. A detailed podcast episode on this:
It says that if we don't cooperate, they'll take similar actions against us they did against 2 named secure phone companies. Those actions were taking over their servers and criminal charges. It's clear what they want is a backdoor to have access to devices they're unable to exploit due to the advanced exploit protections. They're threatening that if this is not provided, they'll go after us as they did companies they said were collaborating with criminals. They likely consider providing freely available open source software which anyone can use for any purpose to be collaborating with criminals.
The main result will be OVH losing our business to a Toronto colocation provider for important non-static content (discussion forum, email, Matrix, Mastodon, attestation service), Vultr (American) for our anycast DNS + exotic webserver locations, Netcup (German) and perhaps another 1-2 companies for NA/EU web servers where Vultr is extremely overpriced due to double the costs for the same specs and metered bandwidth (it's great for exotic locations and BGP support for our anycast though).
There's another article here, but the paywall isn't bypassed by archive sites (we've read it though):
Another empire throwing a tantrum because it believes itself to be bigger than its citizenry. Lot of that going around lately, but still no real state actors seemingly willing to give sanctuary to these sorts of security and privacy projects beyond Switzerland, and even they seem keen on weakening protections.
If I had Android, I’d absolutely be using GrapheneOS.
I confess I haven't paid much attention to privacy issues in my laziness and indifference over the years. But as I witness the development of escalating violations of personal space and the invasive seizures of sensitive data by corporations and governments and random script kiddies employed for their demolition skills, I am resolving, here and now, to stop shaking my fist at the clouds and yelling to Get Off My Lawn.
Coincidentally, I just bought an old Pixel on eBay today. Because it had GrapheneOS already installed.
My interest in privacy is growing, but I confess I was mostly motivated by an admiration for the GrapheneOS project... They're really good at what they're doing, and they are swamped with work, and attacked by bots, weirdos and authoritarian speculators.
And, because I want to sport that monochromatic minimalist interface. Maybe I'll come out of my cocoon to pitch in.
Is it just a coincidence that the recent action against archive.today and all its other TLDs is also based out of France? It also at least tangentially involves state action against an element outside of state control, i.e., being able to keep records out of the regime memory hole.
I did not follow up with whether there was any kind of understanding or resolution of what was going on with the Archive situation, but it seems oddly coincidental that these types of actions would be going on effectively simultaneously.
That's a hell of an endorsement by the French govt. I use GOS as a daily driver and it's fantastic - it's what android was supposed to be before it enshittified. It's refreshing to feel like i control my smart phone again and not the other way around.
GrapheneOS is a project with really good intentions, and we should definitely give them credit.
But here’s the thing: criminals end up exploiting tech like this, and that makes the project an easy target for law enforcement. We’ve seen the exact same thing happen with crypto.
We need to just accept that any technology designed for security and privacy is always going to be a double-edged sword.
The problem is not that security solutions are a double edged sword, it's that such solutions stop mass surveillance.
When Ross Ulbricht was arrested, they made sure to do it in a way that they got access to his laptop while logged in. I'm sure competent investigators can figure out the login method used daily by someone on their phone if they follow them because they are committing a crime. Just like they did with Ulbricht. But they can't do that for everyone whenever they feel like it, and that's the problem.
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, but just for a few. Remember the French goverment banning encryption in the 90's.
The French elite hates science and math because it was modernly developed by the Brits, and they love to put Arts/Humanities bullshitters like Derrida on top as if they mattered something over Francis Bacon and Newton. Just watch any TF1 talk show and you'll understand what I mean. Or, well, any state supported Homeopathy based "pills" (which is mostly snake oil being sold as sugar). Or the Sokal affair...
France does not reimburse homeopathic treatments anymore. The NHS in the UK went even further, they funded homeopathic hospitals like the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and reimbursed homeopathy until 2017.
Yeah, people be random sometimes, internet can be hostile. But why is @GrapheneOS still engaging? After 2-3 messages you won't really improve on anything, and their goal is probably to just suck energy, so the only way to win is to not engage at all. Also ruins the conversations about the the content, instead people end up focusing on that crazy-on-one-side exchange.
Internet 101: don't provide sustenance to the creatures who sometimes live under bridges.
It's often possible to get through to people who are initially hostile. They were friendlier than a lot of the Free Software community on Mastodon and didn't even link to harassment content. They burned themselves out and stopped on their own so they're still not blocked.
On most platforms if a post's author replies to a reply, that will boost it above others. Admittedly I don't use mastodon and can't spot how many replies that post actually received (I see 25 boosts, 0 quotes, 21 favourites, but not the number of replies/comments)
Goes to show the fundamental UX design flaws of Mastodon and Twitter. If it were on Hacker News or Reddit it would be instantly downvoted. Even if the OP replied to the comment, it would still be buried. But because of how Mastodon and Twitter are designed, if the OP replies it will get amplified.
We can block accounts from grapheneos.social to stop their posts being shared by our instance. If they posted a link to harassment content, all their replies and the replies to those in the linked page would be gone. Our chat rooms have a much lower bar for bans because it's disruptive for everyone using it. There's currently someone raiding our Matrix chat rooms spamming images including CSAM because they're angry we banned them for their harmful behavior in our rooms. Our moderation team turned on the automation for removing this which previously led to someone escalating to a swatting attack when they couldn't spam gore and CSAM anymore. It's best not to ban people if they're not really causing any harm because we have enough people targeting us with libel, harassment and even violence already.
It's because GrapheneOS is very black and white and reactive in their communication. 4chan found them ages ago and there's a daily GrapheneOS Thread on /g/.
100% state bot. I wouldn't even think it was just France, other state actors would love to see GrapheneOS go down as well. How dare citizens have technology we can't access.
It doesn't look like a troll. It's best not to do something which could cause them to escalate to obsessive harassment. It could potentially turn into more violence in the form of swatting attacks or something else.
The newspaper article referenced contains insinuation (linking GrapheneOS to the darkweb, criminal gangs etc), and unnamed sources quoting a police investigation.
But that sort of thing sells newspapers. There didn't appear to be anything about the French state taking specific action (eg passing a law) against Graphene.
The laws already exist. Graphene team is accusing the French law enforcement of this:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115584160910016309
> This doesn't have anything to do with how French journalists have responded to the state actions against GrapheneOS but rather the actions and statements by France's state agencies and law enforcement which are highly concerning. They're making highly inaccurate and libelous claims about GrapheneOS while clearly actively trying to justify taking actions against us. They've shown their hand so we're leaving France including OVH prior to anything bad happening rather than waiting.
and more in the thread.
Which state actions? A police raid? Some mean papers delivered?
That link references the newspaper article but there was no mention of any law in it. Will take your word for it, thanks.
If they consider the country is making laws they can't accept, then the honourable thing is to no longer allow participation within that country.
The honourable thing?
More importantly this is the smart choice, the only thing, to do: Shake the dust from your sandals, walk away, don't look back.
This is the ongoing horror of the overbearing state, which wants to rule efficiently by knowing everything that everybody is doing all the time. Those who focus on and value law enforcement before freedom.
> This
What? What is the French state doing in this case?
Why would they want to stop French citizens from using their creation?
> "Particularité de GraphèneOS : on peut se le procurer autant sur le darknet que sur des sites grand public." ⇒ "A distinctive feature of GrapheneOS is that it can be obtained both on the darknet and on mainstream websites."
You could probably get normal android roms on the darknet also. Maybe not a good idea, but this is not unique to grapheneos.
You can get Windows ISOs from the dark web. Maybe they’ll shut down Microsoft next.
French newspapers are mostly french republic propaganda paid by the state, and laws and political decisions are tested with headlines like this.
This is public data, it's not a conspiracy. Lots of newspapers would not exist without the taxpayer money: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/thematiques/presse-ecrite/tablea...
So… taxpayers’ propaganda?
> > I am preparing an article on the use of your secure personal data phone solution by drug traffickers and other criminals.
I think GrapheneOS needs a really good PR expert volunteer, or funding to pay for a non-volunteer.
My non-PR-expert guesses are... If the journalist is in bad faith or flaky, that might need to be handled. But if the journalist is in good faith, this might be an opportunity, to promote GrapheneOS and/or to start to head off adverse gov't actions there.
(GrapheneOS does some great technical work, and has given me what seems to be a more respectful and trustworthy smartphone than I could get from Apple or Google. Right now, I'd think many countries in Europe and elsewhere should be looking at something like GrapheneOS as a possible interim measure on their way to greater digital sovereignty. I understand that the French people especially value liberty.)
No, one should never ever talk to journalists. Nothing good can come from it. Never assume good faith from journalists.
Having helped run a furry convention, there are times you need to talk to members of the media. Otherwise, you have zero input in the narrative.
If you make the response boring or used a canned legalish message, it doesn’t allow them to say you didn’t talk to them.
A better rule is: don’t let anyone untrained talk to journalists.
The narrative already gets decided ahead of time and often there is nothing you can do to change it. In my opinion it's better to accelerate the distrust of journalists.
The general idea of the narrative might be set, but many times I see a company’s response in the story.
You usually have some influence. Enough people are smart enough to read between the lines to make it worth trying.
Perfect example: I had to fire someone from staff rather promptly. The reasons were serious even that not responding to questions in timely manner would have been a fatal error for the convention.
Unfortunately, there are times you can’t opt out of the game because opting out is a response. Silence will be misconstrued as support.
I am personally quite grateful that Edward Snowden talked to journalists.
It would have been better to leak directly to the government. If it he wanted the public to see it he could have leaked it directly to the public. It's the 21st century.
You're trolling right?
Just a person who should never talk to journalists.
It's true with Indian journalists. You say one thing and they twist it the other way around.
This hostility towards privacy all over the world signals that there is a co-ordinated change happening in the world.
Unfortunately we still don't know what it is or what its goals are.
Specifically, we don't know the goals. Generally, we know it's about control and fear of losing power.
It's a stolen quote but rings true:
Those with power fear one thing above all else; losing said power.
As another aspect we're seeing governments and the system elites craving for more power and control than ever.
I know it's borderline conspiracy theorist but I fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns with the surveillance systems and control gained during them gave the elites worldwide a taste for new levels of power and control.
All in the name of doing it for our own good of course. But ultimately its for more power. What terrors man won't inflict on others for "their own good".
That doesn't quite explain it. The internet has happily been a niche wild west for a long time that has threatened very little power. Besides generally "most people know how evil all rich people have to be to get where they are now"
There's no single mastermind. This current wave of authoritarianism around the world is a consequence of not designing the Internet with democratic principles in mind. Online content discovery and moderation mechanisms are centralized and authoritarian in nature. And since most communication nowadays happens on the Internet on large platforms with millions of users (this is especially true after smartphones and social media were invented), the structure of human society in the real world is mirroring the Internet.
This can be solved, though. We have to move moderation and ranking mechanisms to the client-side, especially for search engines and social media. Each person should be able to decide what they post and see, but not what anyone else posts or sees.
Yeah well there is definitely something going on, a coordinated effort to condemn GrapheneOS with faint praise (and outright scare-mongering). Here I have posted a video url I'd downloaded and watched a few days ago. It's TTS slop narration, but it makes an attempt to characterize GrapheneOS as a 'double-edged sword', because, you know, criminals. Just like the hatchet job from France.
'GrapheneOS Update 2025 Privacy Savior or Hacker’s Paradise'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgi6bJy-qo
I get all my utube from the bash-prompt (and never have to deal with algorithm or see who is who and what else is there), so I don't know who posted this video to YouTube, but maybe there's more?
This could be a case study in an amateur low-grade half-ass influence operation.
On the other hand, it could simply be a grudge, a coordinated personal attack on the lead dev.
There are a slew of other videos by YouTube personalities who, at various times, seem to be disparaging the guy, including a very upset Grossman (right-to-repair guy).
Or hey, maybe it's just coincidence. C'est la vie!
Authoritarianism is doing well all over; it doesn't have to be deliberately coordinated, so much as people being basically the same everywhere, and the world sharing some serious problems. What works in one country works in almost any other.
On the one hand this its true that monkey see means monkey can do.. On the other, all the nationalists started meeting up with each other internationally and in public because hypocritical cynicism is apparently so hot now that you can be a xenophobe who worships foreigners as long as they are more impressive xenophobes.
Personally I’ve grown hostile to the concept of anonymous speech but I readily admit that I can’t imagine a way to deanonymize without also losing privacy as most people describe it.
Anonymous posters like what looks like a troll bot that the GrapheneOS account is arguing with have flooded the zone with so much noise its fracturing society imo
It's palantir.
Wow, that guy in the thread attacking them is an asshole.
Or simply.. drumroll.. THE STATE
It's an AI bot, not a human
Or maybe a pervert.
He made a stronger claim later on by dropping the “maybe”
Does it read like AI slop to anybody else?
Mostly just reads like a mentally ill person to me TBH. Don't see why you'd think it was AI.
I thought that the question was actually really good, the existence of news articles doesn't really demonstrate state action...
Edit: the news article don't mention legal action being started or being prepared...
Always impressed by GrapheneOS social media painstakingly dealing with these trolls. For those without time the link they post to a 3rd party comparison of Android based OSes is very enlightening:
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
It's funny. It just struck me that the EU is uniquely well positioned to develop an alternative to Android and iOS.
Start with one of the open source projects - I guess an Android derivative, sans all the Google stuff. Give them funding, maybe regulate (that always helps).
Then mandate that within X years, various key apps must provide for this system - things like bank apps, state admin apps etc. In high likelihood, development would be close enough to Android that it would not be a crazy high burden - and anyway, it seems most people use cross platform frameworks.
EU could regulate, or influence via ownership, privacy controls better tailored to European tastes.
That would give the EU a dose of digital sovereignty without doing much, and ensuring some degree of usability.
It's a shame that instead GrapheneOS seems to get sued.
France has been authoritarian against secure or private software for some time now.
Veracrypt stopped development in France and moved TLD's to .jp (though they also physically moved).
The referenced article: http://archive.today/I65wv
We weren't given a chance to see what was being claimed and properly respond to it. Our response at the end of the article was to this prompt, which was in the first and only email we received, in English:
> I am preparing an article on the use of your secure personal data phone solution by drug traffickers and other criminals. Have you ever been contacted by the police?
The claims in the main story strongly indicate they're not talking about GrapheneOS itself but rather companies selling closed source forks of it with significant modifications. They refer to features which don't exist in GrapheneOS. Supposedly GrapheneOS which is freely available from https://grapheneos.org/install/web and https://grapheneos.org/releases with sources on GitHub is distributed on the "dark web" and promoted via unlisted YouTube videos. They're clearly conflating products which market themselves by saying they're using GrapheneOS with the upstream project those are forked from. These are largely sketchy products and we regularly have to deal with them infringing on our copyright and trademarks.
One of these companies marketing products claiming to use GrapheneOS, ANOM, turned out to be a company run by the FBI as a sting operation which was hiring criminals to sell phones to other criminals. ANOM told people what they were getting was GrapheneOS when it was actually a mix of GrapheneOS and LineageOS code. The FBI was broadly facilitating crime in Europe by providing them devices they considered secure and safe to use while disregarding most of it to avoid exposing their operation. They were also misusing our brand and harming our reputation us through this. A lot of the claimed criminal usage was directly engineered by the FBI. A detailed podcast episode on this:
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/146/
There's also this second article from the same paper containing the explicit threat referred to in our posts:
https://archive.is/UrlvK
It says that if we don't cooperate, they'll take similar actions against us they did against 2 named secure phone companies. Those actions were taking over their servers and criminal charges. It's clear what they want is a backdoor to have access to devices they're unable to exploit due to the advanced exploit protections. They're threatening that if this is not provided, they'll go after us as they did companies they said were collaborating with criminals. They likely consider providing freely available open source software which anyone can use for any purpose to be collaborating with criminals.
The main result will be OVH losing our business to a Toronto colocation provider for important non-static content (discussion forum, email, Matrix, Mastodon, attestation service), Vultr (American) for our anycast DNS + exotic webserver locations, Netcup (German) and perhaps another 1-2 companies for NA/EU web servers where Vultr is extremely overpriced due to double the costs for the same specs and metered bandwidth (it's great for exotic locations and BGP support for our anycast though).
There's another article here, but the paywall isn't bypassed by archive sites (we've read it though):
https://archive.is/FBc1U
Another empire throwing a tantrum because it believes itself to be bigger than its citizenry. Lot of that going around lately, but still no real state actors seemingly willing to give sanctuary to these sorts of security and privacy projects beyond Switzerland, and even they seem keen on weakening protections.
If I had Android, I’d absolutely be using GrapheneOS.
Since smartphones were invented, seizing a persons phone and going through their private life on it has become a substitute for real police work.
Of course they will hate it if a particular OS and phone combination make this impossible.
I confess I haven't paid much attention to privacy issues in my laziness and indifference over the years. But as I witness the development of escalating violations of personal space and the invasive seizures of sensitive data by corporations and governments and random script kiddies employed for their demolition skills, I am resolving, here and now, to stop shaking my fist at the clouds and yelling to Get Off My Lawn.
Coincidentally, I just bought an old Pixel on eBay today. Because it had GrapheneOS already installed.
My interest in privacy is growing, but I confess I was mostly motivated by an admiration for the GrapheneOS project... They're really good at what they're doing, and they are swamped with work, and attacked by bots, weirdos and authoritarian speculators.
And, because I want to sport that monochromatic minimalist interface. Maybe I'll come out of my cocoon to pitch in.
I hope you used their Auditor app to check the validity of that GOS installation.
Is it just a coincidence that the recent action against archive.today and all its other TLDs is also based out of France? It also at least tangentially involves state action against an element outside of state control, i.e., being able to keep records out of the regime memory hole.
I did not follow up with whether there was any kind of understanding or resolution of what was going on with the Archive situation, but it seems oddly coincidental that these types of actions would be going on effectively simultaneously.
That's a hell of an endorsement by the French govt. I use GOS as a daily driver and it's fantastic - it's what android was supposed to be before it enshittified. It's refreshing to feel like i control my smart phone again and not the other way around.
GrapheneOS is a project with really good intentions, and we should definitely give them credit.
But here’s the thing: criminals end up exploiting tech like this, and that makes the project an easy target for law enforcement. We’ve seen the exact same thing happen with crypto.
We need to just accept that any technology designed for security and privacy is always going to be a double-edged sword.
The problem is not that security solutions are a double edged sword, it's that such solutions stop mass surveillance.
When Ross Ulbricht was arrested, they made sure to do it in a way that they got access to his laptop while logged in. I'm sure competent investigators can figure out the login method used daily by someone on their phone if they follow them because they are committing a crime. Just like they did with Ulbricht. But they can't do that for everyone whenever they feel like it, and that's the problem.
> We need to just accept that any technology designed for security and privacy is always going to be a double-edged sword.
I agree, therefore it should be my legal right to use such technology. Like a 2A for encryption and privacy
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, but just for a few. Remember the French goverment banning encryption in the 90's. The French elite hates science and math because it was modernly developed by the Brits, and they love to put Arts/Humanities bullshitters like Derrida on top as if they mattered something over Francis Bacon and Newton. Just watch any TF1 talk show and you'll understand what I mean. Or, well, any state supported Homeopathy based "pills" (which is mostly snake oil being sold as sugar). Or the Sokal affair...
I can go on and on...
France does not reimburse homeopathic treatments anymore. The NHS in the UK went even further, they funded homeopathic hospitals like the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and reimbursed homeopathy until 2017.
What is wrong with that guy in the comments shouting? Christ on a stick, this is the worst crash out I've seen over something like this
Yeah, people be random sometimes, internet can be hostile. But why is @GrapheneOS still engaging? After 2-3 messages you won't really improve on anything, and their goal is probably to just suck energy, so the only way to win is to not engage at all. Also ruins the conversations about the the content, instead people end up focusing on that crazy-on-one-side exchange.
Internet 101: don't provide sustenance to the creatures who sometimes live under bridges.
It's often possible to get through to people who are initially hostile. They were friendlier than a lot of the Free Software community on Mastodon and didn't even link to harassment content. They burned themselves out and stopped on their own so they're still not blocked.
It speaks to the medium that someone shouting nonsense can absorb so much of the thread
On most platforms if a post's author replies to a reply, that will boost it above others. Admittedly I don't use mastodon and can't spot how many replies that post actually received (I see 25 boosts, 0 quotes, 21 favourites, but not the number of replies/comments)
This would make sense. And would make their repeatly taking the bait even more regrettable
Does mastodon or whatever that UI is not have a way to block someone from appearing on the main commenter's own feed?
This thread is hosted on GrapheneOS's server so I'd assume GrapheneOS team could block multimilliardaire https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115584160910016309
Goes to show the fundamental UX design flaws of Mastodon and Twitter. If it were on Hacker News or Reddit it would be instantly downvoted. Even if the OP replied to the comment, it would still be buried. But because of how Mastodon and Twitter are designed, if the OP replies it will get amplified.
We can block accounts from grapheneos.social to stop their posts being shared by our instance. If they posted a link to harassment content, all their replies and the replies to those in the linked page would be gone. Our chat rooms have a much lower bar for bans because it's disruptive for everyone using it. There's currently someone raiding our Matrix chat rooms spamming images including CSAM because they're angry we banned them for their harmful behavior in our rooms. Our moderation team turned on the automation for removing this which previously led to someone escalating to a swatting attack when they couldn't spam gore and CSAM anymore. It's best not to ban people if they're not really causing any harm because we have enough people targeting us with libel, harassment and even violence already.
Is shadowban an an option? I guess not for CSAM but for the lead up to that?
It must be hard sometimes not to get quite a dim view of the world when pressed up against this part of it. Condolences.
I don't know, but GrapheneOS posts tend to get the most bizarre attacks on social media. It's really strange - outright unhinged attacks.
It's because GrapheneOS is very black and white and reactive in their communication. 4chan found them ages ago and there's a daily GrapheneOS Thread on /g/.
Mental illness sucks. The guy is clearly not doing well.
State actor, without a doubt. They even called them perverts at one point.
He's French.
100% state bot. I wouldn't even think it was just France, other state actors would love to see GrapheneOS go down as well. How dare citizens have technology we can't access.
He has an AI pfp and banner and the account was created last month with almost no content other than the insane replies in this thread
Right? I was like, "why is the official os account arguing with a bot?"
I mean, it's also not great ux that it shows up where it does and with so much real estate.
He said BYE and I was like phew, he's gone but then nope. Doesn't know what BYE means I guess.
BYE four or five times.
LET ME SHOW YOU THE DOOR, MAY I?
Likely a fascist whose sole purpose is to suck energy from the maintainers. An authoritarian trolling an anti-authoritarian project.
Normal troll behavior. I don't know why they keep engaging with him since he's obviously just there to poop on the floor.
It doesn't look like a troll. It's best not to do something which could cause them to escalate to obsessive harassment. It could potentially turn into more violence in the form of swatting attacks or something else.
Yeah it does. It's perfectly OK to ignore abusive people if a good faith effort to communicate has failed.