It appears pretty clear that you are active there too to both inform yourself of your "sworn enemy" (to orchestrate your own attacks) and to denounce the existence of a clearly benign effort, what you just did. Because if it weren't benign, then could you ever point to evidence, for a start? Maybe comments that resort to the same rethoric techniques as yours instead of bringing correct information, and politely so.
It greatly discredits what you say about us, the GrapheneOS community, when not only all you have are ad hominem reactions (against the entirety of the community it seems, as well as against the developers[0]) but you are guilty yourself[0] of what you accuse your enemy of, persecution / harassment.
What further evidence is necessary after your own Discord screenshot in your comment I'm replying to? It is quite bizarre how this platform allows this to go on.
I fail to see how my being in the Graphene discord discredits anything I've said. I use the project, so I remain in the Discord to keep up with updates.
You'll notice that I always say I use the project, I think it's excellent usability-wise and I appreciate the technical work you have done. And that, in spite of that, while you are not my "sworn enemy" I still find your behavior pathetic and off-putting.
I'm all but certain the only reason you often get so many throwaway accounts that attempt to troll the official community platforms is because of how often the core contributors take the bait and 'crash out', as the kids would say.
And the reason why there's more and more real accounts on HN (and elsewhere) that now criticize the behavior of the core contributors (and sycophants) is because it's very off-putting to observe the behavior in real time. Each time you behave this way, when every single critical comment in an HN thread has been flagged due to being posted in the Graphene discord and having a legion of sycophants downvote it, there will be more and more people with raised eyebrows.
Louis Rossman comes to mind, someone who could have been a great ally to the project yet got burned by this "persecution complex" behavior for no real reason.
In that very comment you link to, every single reply of anyone even lightly criticizing the project has been flagged. That's not natural for HN, almost all discussions generally go both ways on here (for any given topic, some criticism, some appreciation) and it's clear the discussion has been brigaded.
You claim HN is suppressing your voice and it's being unfair in platforming "libel and harassment" against you, yet you'll notice none of your replies are ever flagged or silently removed by moderators. HN is simply a neutral platform, you are going to get both criticism and support unless it is explicitly suppressed by the moderators. Yet you keep throwing hissy fits when they doesn't automatically censor any dissenting opinions about you on the platform on your behalf.
There is a significant difference between coordinating community members to brigade and notifying community members about threads which contain factual inaccuracies about the projects technical work or history.
As an open-source project and a non-profit foundation, there is not a PR team or firm. It is perfectly normal to have an opt-in notification role for community members who wish to help clarify technical misconceptions in public discussions. It is a transparent and not uncommon practice.
HN has built-in protections against external voting and flagging. Comments that end up being flagged are rarely (if ever) substantive criticisms related to the OS or foundation. In nearly every case they are comments serving to derail technical discussions into personal attacks, armchair psychology, or unsubstantiated accusations against contributors and community members (like repeatedly calling community members "sycophants" and "pathetic").
Constructive technical criticism of the project happens every day, and is welcomed without issues. Expecting those discussions to remain focused on technical aspects and factual realities rather than personal hostility isn't "crashing out".
> There is a significant difference between coordinating community members to brigade and notifying community members about threads which contain factual inaccuracies about the projects technical work or history.
There is no functional difference when the obvious end-result is sending a horde of external people to influence voting in the thread, the definition of brigading.
> As an open-source project and a non-profit foundation, there is not a PR team or firm. It is perfectly normal to have an opt-in notification role for community members who wish to help clarify technical misconceptions in public discussions. It is a transparent and not uncommon practice.
This is absolutely not a common practice. Point to other notable FOSS projects that act in this manner, I've legitimately never seen it from other projects.
> HN has built-in protections against external voting and flagging. Comments that end up being flagged are rarely (if ever) substantive criticisms related to the OS or foundation. In nearly every case they are comments serving to derail technical discussions into personal attacks, armchair psychology, or unsubstantiated accusations against contributors and community members
The behavior of the core maintainers and broader community is still intrinsically tied to the technical aspects of the project, and the discussion at large. When there are threads about OpenAI (and other commercial AI providers) and the U.S., do people stop at discussing solely technical aspects of both, or do they understandably bring up relevant social and communal points as well?
A security project demands particularly high trust, which is where my concern stems. I would love to use GOS without worry, my hope is that the project can course-correct and eventually put this behavior behind them.
> (like repeatedly calling community members "sycophants" and "pathetic").
The community does in fact have some sycophants. I never asserted that every single member is one, or that they are the majority of the community (as they are not). And I called the behavior pathetic, not the member. Your framing of these comments is disengenious.
> Constructive technical criticism of the project happens every day, and is welcomed without issues. Expecting those discussions to remain focused on technical aspects and factual realities rather than personal hostility isn't "crashing out".
Firstly, the "crashing out" was in the context of random trolls messing with core contributors in official communication channels and successfully getting a rise out of them (IE "don't feed the trolls and they'll go away"), though I do infact argue expecting people to solely focus on technical aspects of an inherently multi-faceted project to be unreasonable, for reasons stated above.
It exists for whom wants it and is a recommended app source, that's all. Something not recommended would not be explicitly supported, deciding whether to use it or not is ultimately on the user who will not be warned against something that is supported...
It is not recommended over vastly more sane alternatives like Accrescent and getting apps directly from their respective developers (as signed by them) given you have an update mechanism of your own (or the app embeds one) and a manner of verifying the app's public signing key's provenance as something actually belonging to the developers you got said app from (where the former is a proper app store in construction and the latter is nigh impossible to perform cleanly due to typical developer non-cooperation). Nonetheless, Play Store ranks below these two for a third-party app source as it engages in weird practices like Play App Signing, etc. Users are not advised to get Play Store apps from non-Play Store app sources because Play Store already ranks the furthest behind, meaning nothing is recommended beyond it.
Aurora Store is recommendable in exceptional cases, namely when an app can't be downloaded from Google Play due to Play Integrity gating on the app's store listing, but which is known to work (eg. not perform Play Integrity checks itself in the intended manner, etc) after somehow downloaded and installed.
Although as you can verify, this recommended app source ladder is pushed on social media and official chat platform community spaces of GrapheneOS, not the website.
You are an account created 8 hours ago parroting an eerily similar point[0] to an account created one hour ago. I have not even scrolled down all the way.
Where do I start. Was anyone ever doxxed or is that an empty accusation? Why do you think PrivacyGuides, banned from GrapheneOS community, would do that for the community they were banned from? Really weird to accuse both (ambiguosly "both", by the way you wrote) groups of that, without evidence no less. Who did they lose support from? Since when are non-Google options not explored?
On that last note, they have been looking for an OEM partner for a long time, and as of the last couple years, were thinking of commissioning an ODM for a supported device. A massive spending of resources but a necessary one since far before that, but that became more pressing two years ago. An OEM partnership is far more favorable, and that is what has been struck with Motorola, who approached GrapheneOS for said partnership and not the other way around.
Ironic, you are being an example of what you project. People come out of the woodwork to say what you do, then respond to comments like mine with "maybe there is a reason for it"... but if you're gonna leave it to "maybe", you should just zip it yourself really.
We are told the OEM in question is not Motorola, and it's likely some benefits of the Mototola partnership aren't yet in effect due to silly bureaucracy. Not sure there is any reason to lie about this.
Embargoed ASB patches started being used in release 2025092500, but I can't find now the message where a Motorola employee (confirmed by a community moderator, spring-onion, in a Side of Burritos interview) first reached out publicly on the GrapheneOS Discord guild about how to obtain further technical guidance than the requirements list in the website which claims to be non-exhaustive, in order to confirm such message's date. Still, GrapheneOS claims (after the partnership announcement March this year) that ASB patches are provided by (effectively) a distinct undisclosed OEM, really meaning an employee is leaking them. Maybe even the person didn't disclose the OEM they work for but they must be associated to one in order to have access to this material.
Accrescent has been quiet for a while, but had claimed in the past they would open the store up for new submissions again soon, it will perhaps happen by the end of the year. Its self-imposed requirements for this are to provide a better developer experience and more common app store features developers (should) expect. They recently announced they will be posting more about the progress made towards such goal, after the big announcements and releases of some months ago.
I'm more worried about the lack of a police to take apps down when it is very clear they should not be there. This is a present problem, presently solvable and that is not acknowledged despite the fact it harms the user.
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Edit: adding to the last point, the same applies to Fairphone but inversely, where they portray themselves as things they are not (sustainable, specially repairable, ethical, even privacy-respecting). Whereas a takeaway from your comment is that GrapheneOS is good but has a negative image (a false premise, in my opinion), Fairphone puts a lot of *effort* to construct a good image that signals the inverse of what they are. Effort ultimately signals intention.
It greatly discredits what you say about us, the GrapheneOS community, when not only all you have are ad hominem reactions (against the entirety of the community it seems, as well as against the developers[0]) but you are guilty yourself[0] of what you accuse your enemy of, persecution / harassment.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217356
What further evidence is necessary after your own Discord screenshot in your comment I'm replying to? It is quite bizarre how this platform allows this to go on.
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