GrapheneOSJolla has spent years disparaging projects based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) for marketing. SailfishOS has a largely closed source user interface and application layer with no equivalent to the open source AOSP. It's far less private and secure than AOSP or iOS too.
Jolla recently launched a new product so their supporters are understandably trying to promote it. As part of that, they've been posting about it in replies to posts about GrapheneOS. We've replied to some of it with our perspective within threads originally about GrapheneOS.
Since we dared to post accurate information in threads about GrapheneOS where they mentioned us in replies to promote it, their forum is being used as a place to attack GrapheneOS including libelous attacks towards our team referencing harassment content:
Sailfish OS: Clarifying claims about open/closed source, security and privacy
Actually Jolla say that “Sailfish OS is partially open source, but not fully open source in the sense of “every part of the OS is free/open-source.” After digging deeper and discussing I found GrapheneOS comments: Jolla is a for-profit company misleading people about what they providing. Their OS has extraordinarily poor privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project or iOS. Their own OS code is mostly closed source and there isn’t an open source subset that’s usable. Jolla ...
Several of their supporters are taking the usual approach of calling us crazy and delusional while referencing harassment content at the same time as calling the factual info we posted aggressive. They're brigading discussions about GrapheneOS with attacks so we made this thread.
Brigading threads about an open source project and attacking the team with libelous claims is toxic. Defending ourselves from it with factual statements is not toxic. Repeating dishonest attacks on our team based on similar attacks over and over doesn't make it any less untrue.
LukefromDC@GrapheneOS I find it interesting that people would be shitting on Graphene now given it's importance in protecting people Trump doesn't like from attacks via their phones.
Projects like Graphene are going to be critical going forward to bypassing on-device support for everything from Chat Control to age verification. Google will make it harder to install unapproved software (e.g apps that don't comply with surveillance mandates) on stock Android phones, but cannot stop Graphene and other 3ed party OS projects from allowing them.
Graphene strikes be as being unique among all of them in its resistance to exploits. If one of these unapproved apps turns out to be malicious it will have a much harder time trying to take over your phone. Same for government officials trying to plant things like Pegasus or Graphite(ICE's favorite spyware). Same for Cellbrite, which admitted a bit over a year ago they could not even get into a locked Graphene phone much less one in "before first unlock" condition at that time. I consider that to be quite an endorsement.
Viacheslav A@GrapheneOS Is it a viable approach to purchase their product and develop an attack vector to crack it, and compare how GOS fairs under the same attack?
katwahyu@GrapheneOS well, this is life dude.
schuelermineI think that it’s important to recognise that simply stating facts that show something to be subpar directly is perceived as very aggressive and rude. While this is certainly something one could lament, it does mean that the reactions I see in this forum (though I admit I didn’t scroll through the entire thread, only about half of it) are to be expected and even reasonable in the right informational environment. I think if your approach is to bluntly state the facts, then it might be a good idea also to never attack these comments based on whether they misperceive you as aggressive. I didn’t see any outright harassment in that thread, but if there was any, that’s not what I’m talking about. The fact is simply that what you did was aggressive, to them. Simply stating facts in the way you do on social media is perceived as aggressive.
jjlinux | X unverified 😅@anselmschueler @GrapheneOS by some. Not everyone. I'm old, so maybe that's why I prefer facts with no sugar on them.
@anselmschueler There's libel and harassment towards our team in that thread including references to Kiwi Farms harassment content. One of the people in the Mastodon thread was claiming we're delusional and live in an imaginary world after spinning what we said into things we didn't say. In the thread on their forum where their people were directed towards us from, multiple people make personal attacks on the GrapheneOS founder which explicitly reference false claims in harassment content.
@GrapheneOS I didn’t see that. I will look further if I find time. My argument about many of these attitudes, though not the ones you describe here, being reasonable, remains. If there is harassment as you describe, then I do not think we disagree. I didn’t see it when I looked initially.
@anselmschueler This started with claims being made about AOSP and the GrapheneOS project which are not accurate along with promotion of SailfishOS not mentioning that it's a massive privacy and security downgrade from AOSP not only the much more private and secure GrapheneOS along with the fact that it's NOT open source. When people are making many attacks on us they should be able to tolerate us replying with verifiable facts defending ourselves and criticizing what they're promoting.
@GrapheneOS The truth of these claims about SailfishOS is not very relevant to the discussion I tried to have, which was whether these feelings are to be expected. The people making the attacks are different people from the people who I am defending. When I read the thread, I saw posts like this, which express opinions that are misguided, but entirely to be expected given your social media strategy, and unworthy of moral condemnation.
> However they’ve always been relatively dodgy; I remember Daniel Micay (was that his name? the lead developer guy until a few years ago) was caught blackmailing Louis Rossmann. Daniel, in the process of trying to dismiss valid criticism, decided it was a good move to demolish his own reputation.
This is a reference to extraordinarily dishonest character assassination content from a Kiwi Farms user (https://kiwifarms.st/members/larossmann.132201/) who started their harassment towards us.
OK.
Do you disagree with my statement when it comes to posts like the ones I quoted?
If not then I don’t disagree with you about these quotes being wrong and my argument not applying to them.
@anselmschueler The post you showed is an incredibly dishonest take on what's happening where Jolla and the SailfishOS community are attacking us and we're responding to it. It's painting it as a false narrative where us defending ourselves in threads where they're attacking us is somehow us being on the offense against them. It's not just someone's opinion about us, they're dishonestly presenting the situation. Lying about this is a major component of encouraging harassment towards our team.
@anselmschueler That person is absolutely encouraging harassment towards our team with libelous claims. It's not one of the posts which is directly engaging in harassment but it encourages others to do that. It falsely presents us as being on the offense against people who have disparaged our work for many years and finally reached a point where we responded to some of the attacks by their supporters on Mastodon. They can dish out years of inaccurate attacks claims but can't tolerate a response.
The charitable interpretation is that the post I showed is not any intentional lie or an attempt to present the situation in any particular way, but an expression of their feelings. It is entirely possible as an outsider observing the situation to come away with the wrong conclusion if you don’t see some of the events. It is strange to assume that someone presenting a wrong and harmful opinion is doing so intentionally.
I understand that these attacks personally affect you, and that it’s therefore difficult to view the situation from this perspective. I can’t expect you to do that. It’s also unfair to ask you to tone down your voice. Unfortunately, I don’t know of the proper way to resolve what I perceive as a sort of deadlock. But I ask that you at least consider this perspective.
To clarify what I think I’m observing: I think that an outsider observing this situation passively can come to the conclusion that no actual harassment against GrapheneOS has occurred and that GrapheneOS’ claims about security are exaggerated. From there it is not difficult to come to the subsequent conclusion that attempts to defend yourself are in fact attacks, which inverts the victim-perpetrator roles, and ends up confirming itself.
Therefore, I refuse to condemn the post I showed specifically. I do not believe it actively encourages harassment, but I can believe that it contributes to it. To me, active encouragement requires intent, which I don’t think should be assumed here.
@anselmschueler > However they’ve always been relatively dodgy; I remember Daniel Micay (was that his name? the lead developer guy until a few years ago) was caught blackmailing Louis Rossmann. Daniel, in the process of trying to dismiss valid criticism, decided it was a good move to demolish his own reputation.
This is a reference to extraordinarily dishonest character assassination content from a Kiwi Farms user (https://kiwifarms.st/members/larossmann.132201/) who started their harassment towards us.
@anselmschueler Do you condemn the ongoing libel and harassment from Kiwi Farms including Louis Rossmann? Do you condemn the libel and harassment by Henry Fisher?
Jolla is responsible for permitting libel and harassment content on their forum along with it being used to organize attacks on GrapheneOS. We have every right to document that and continue to respond to it. If you want to talk about aggressive and toxic, why are you overlooking the actual personal harassment they're engaging in?
@GrapheneOS I’m not overlooking it. I am simply talking about something else. Nothing that I have said excuses anything I didn’t say anything about. If you don’t want to talk about the topic I was talking about, that’s fine, but then please state so outright.
@anselmschueler The ongoing harassment including in the Mastodon thread and in that SailfishOS forum thread is not separate from the rest. It's closely tied into it and the people who are participating in attacks on us alongside others engaging in harassment are directly involved in it themselves. Every person who posted attacks on us in that thread and said nothing about the personal attacks based on libelous claims is part of that too. They're supporting it by adding their voices alongside it.
@GrapheneOS I disagree, I am strongly against guilt by association. We may very well describe the whole thread as being libelous, or part of an intentional campaign, but to state that all individual participants are themselves libelous, lying, or harassing is IMO not something I can conclude.
I won’t take away your right to conclude it yourself, though, since you may have additional information I don’t have.
@anselmschueler GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted with attacks and it will continue regardless of what we do. There are state attacks on GrapheneOS trying to portray it as being for criminals, heavily used by criminals and somehow complicit in that along with multiple of these companies including Murena actively trying to support that narrative for their benefit. Things are already actively on fire for us and will remain that way. Our team is heavily targeted with harassment and violence.
I disapprove of harassment campaigns and government-directed misinformation campaigns. I like GrapheneOS, and have seen plenty of incorrect information about it.
However, that is not relevant to my point in the previous discussion whatsoever.
I will further note that I don’t know enough about the harassment campaigns in order to condemn them; given your statements, I would condemn them; but I believe that this knowledge is immaterial to the points I made in my posts above.
If you want to complain about any implications that my posts might contain, or that me discussing this topic in this way itself implies something problematic, I would appreciate it if you made this switch to meta-discourse explicit. My own posts were themselves a meta-discourse, which I believe I have expressed by using words like "perceived". I can’t tell if you are doing that right now, but it could possibly resolve some apparent disagreements here.
Perina@anselmschueler I love and use @GrapheneOS but can't recommended to others for posts like this. Pls listen to people and get person with skill of communication, not just being constantly under attack from everybody while being right. Communication isn't binary code. #NoDramaOS
@perina @anselmschueler You're welcome to recommend people use iOS instead. Apple is involved in plenty of drama including many legal battles with other companies, governments, etc. and corporate infighting. If you prefer having PR people between yourself and the people running the company so you aren't aware of what's going on, that's fine. You can choose what you want. GrapheneOS is an open source project, not a corporate entity itself. It doesn't aim to have a sanitized corporate approach.
@anselmschueler Do you condemn the ongoing libel and harassment from Kiwi Farms including Louis Rossmann? Do you condemn the libel and harassment by Henry Fisher?
Jolla is responsible for permitting libel and harassment content on their forum along with it being used to organize attacks on GrapheneOS. We have every right to document that and continue to respond to it. If you want to talk about aggressive and toxic, why are you overlooking the actual personal harassment they're engaging in?
Satoshi Nakamoto
TheZorseThe Sailfish forum won't let me view it with all my privacy toggles on. Or maybe it's the VPN. Either way, the GrapheneOS forum does let me.
Real Name TBA@GrapheneOS And when I used it, on a Planet Gemini and a Sony Xperia phone, a person in the US needed to use a VPN to buy a full version because they wouldn't sell to American customers. At that time, Jolla was largely owned by or had significant investors in Russia, which raised eyebrows. I stopped using it for those reasons, that the Sony battery swelled up and there was not an economical replacement, that I got real Linux working reliably on the Gemini, and because Sailfish kinda sucked.