what exactly is /e/ doing against graphene ?
Existing, probably.
Graphene (more specifically its founder) is always in a vicious cycle of claiming that everyone asking for proof of Graphene being “under attack” is in itself making an “attack”. You can consider yourself Graphene’s enemy for life for your transgression.
Watching these youtube links makes you an attacker also, so be careful: https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0
Ok, first I was very worried when I saw the original message, but after watching these videos… well, The Boy Who Cried Wolf came to mind.
This is actually a really relevant note, because all of us are the “wolf-watchers” in that sense. We’re all trying to keep track of accountability on stuff like this and use what little power we have to protest and counteract government overreach and abuse. When hyperbole and gaslighting are used by those “crying wolf” it makes our jobs that much more difficult. Even after reading through the HN thread I still am not sure if the threat is real or imagined. There are a couple paranoid leaps in logic asserted as fact, and that makes it impossible to know which other “facts” are actually just opinions. By all means, they should GTFO of France if they feel they might be threatened, but turning around and saying they’re being imminently attacked by France makes it so much harder to understand what’s actually happening.
Given this, do we actually know that the French government is targeting GrapheneOS in a significant way, or is this just another dramatisation?
I doubt it. I think these kind of comments are a very classic “divide and conquer” tactic.
We should not be divided, but stand behind both e/ and Graphene as perfectly good privacy defenders.
To me it reads like Graphene is saying /e/ is “actively attacking” them as a puppet of the government of France. How do you reconcile them both being perfectly good when either one is engaging in this behavior, or one is lying about it? It’s okay to support both projects overall and not agree with every action they take, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn a blind eye to accountability when they are making bad choices (to put it lightly). In any other project, criticism would lead to positive changes and correction of bad behavior. Because Graphene doesn’t work like that, I think it’s important to understand their history so that everyone is more informed when they make serious accusations about other innocent projects like this.
all I see is graphene attacking /e/ . I mean yes we get it they are less secure but still in the industry standard. It’s just not for the same users.
Not to protect /e/os and Iode (neither to promote the french laws), but I would like to have real source of what’s happening, what /e/os and idoe didn’t do right, when they conveyed fakes about graphene…
Not to say but the graphene community (mainly his leader) is always having drama with some people. So real proofs and explanations would be greatly appreciated. Wouldn’t like to say black or white to this subject and would like to nuance the post
Gael Duval (/e/os) wrote as a response:
"I’d like to state *very clearly* that Murena and e Foundation are not related in case to this ridiculous and pseudo-drama.What we seek is to totally ignore these guys, and have nothing to do with them.
And again, and again, despite what they are repeating, we are NOT competitors, as we are not in the hardened-security market spaces."
Pretty good response but somehow they will suffer from Graphene accusations
They (graphene) are really playing childish this time
EDIT : misinterpretations
yeah as a graphene user I have been worried for a while now about the mental state of the project head. It also doesn’t seem like he cares much for the opinions of the users
If you’re wondering, I checked a bit online and here’s what I understood :
The 19th November a newspaper in France called “Le Parisien” published an article about GrapheneOS and that it was a dream OS for drug dealer (and whole networks).
That it could erase itself if a intrusion was detected by showing for example a fake Snapchat page (which is btw totally false and doesn’t take part in the official releases), these claims where besides made by french cops.For that, the newspaper contacted Graphene, and they (graphene) answered that the tool they’re providing is simply working and that like a knife it could be used for malicious activities, but as with a knife most people would use it responsibly (to protect their privacy)
At this point I think that the Graphene reaction was pretty great and acted to defend citizens privacy.
But what follows next didn’t make the same impression, by quitting the France they are not really focusing on the good topics :
1 - France cops are no exceptions to others, surely all of them around the world would like to break encryption and privacy (grapheneOS for example)
2 - That’s not the government that propagates wrong statement about graphene, but the journalists from “Le Parisien” (if they can be called “journalists”)
(The authorities maybe lied (not the first time btw) to scare the public, the newspaper shouldn’t published it with fakes in it…)And accusing any French based initiative is not an argument (at first they didn’t have anything to do between french authorities and graphene)
Even if FOSS projects have a country on the paper, it’s not really much more of a negative aspect than to respect the laws in place…
So why Graphene doesn’t blame Framasoft (guys that are maintaining peertube) for example?And lastly in Europe many initiatives gets money from governments (whatever they’re doing)
Note : I’m not saying that /e/os and Iode aren’t guilty of anything sketchy but that in this case Graphene are just insulting FOSS privacy projects…
To conclude, I would say that Graphene done right by replying and arguing to a bullshit article.
BUT they shouldn’t generalize to all french projects and promote hate against frenchies and/or french projects (Btw they moved their servers from France to Germany and Canada, these countries are no more private than France and any others countries)The Venn diagram of privacy focused and paranoid has a good bit of overlap.
But anything private enough for the most paranoid dev is private enough for me.
Just for convenience (since it’s hard to read the screenshot on a phone), here’s the text:
GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted by the French state because we provide highly secure devices and won’t include backdoors for law enforcement access. They’re conflating us with companies selling closed source products using portions of our code. Both French state media and corporate media are publishing many stories attacking the GrapheneOS project based on false and unsubstantiated claims from French law enforcement. They’ve made a clear threat to seize our servers and arrest our developers if we do not cooperate by adding backdoors. Due to this, we’re leaving France and leaving French service providers including OVH. We need substantial help from the community to push back against this across platforms. People malicious towards us are also using it as an opportunity to spread libel/harassment content targeting our team, raid our chat rooms and much more. /e/ and iodéOS are both based in France, and are both actively attacking GrapheneOS. /e/ receives substantial government funding. Both are extremely non-private and secure which is why France is targeting us while those get government funding. We need a lot more help than usual and we’re sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the server because this is a particularly bad situation. If people help us, it will enable us to focus more on development again including releasing experimental Pixel 10 releases very soon.
we’re sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the sewer
That’s one way to describe Discord.
So in the drama between the Graphene team vs every other privacy-focused Android dev - who should I trust?
Don’t trust graphene lol
Examples of who is on the other side besides “everyone”?
Graphene was going against Calyx or said Calyx was going after them. I only ever seen the Graphene part though so don’t know who was right.
CoyoteFacts posted those videos above https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg https://youtu.be/4To-F6W1NT0 so it seems like the other side is literally everyone, from every other android project, random other software, to big yt channels that actually promote GrapheneOS… I wonder how long it will take for the lead dev to start saying his own userbase is after him…
Pixels are very expensive in my country but I was looking forward acquiring one in the future, if my finances permitted, just because of GrapheneOS… but honestly, after discovering its creator is a real mental case, unless the project gets forked out of his control, I wouldn’t trust it.but honestly, after discovering its creator is a real mental case, unless the project gets forked out of his control, I wouldn’t trust it.
I know it’s different (Lemmy isn’t supposed to protect your privacy) but are you familiar with Lenny’s lead developer? Interesting fellow, to say the least.
Lemmy is federated and not an OS. Many different clients also.
Speaking of unsubstantiated accusations, do we have actual, reliable information about what is really going on? Any link in either French or English appreciated.
Lol graphene bros are crazy and paranoid, as always. Don’t trust them.
Eastern Europe is more democratic than the western one.
