Mastodawn

There are at least a dozen people spending at least several hours attacking GrapheneOS across platforms on a daily basis. It's a very strange situation. How do these people have so much time and dedication to keep making posts across platforms attacking us? It's relentless.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Every day, dozens of new accounts join our chat rooms to spread the same fabrications about GrapheneOS including via direct messages.

On Hacker News, one of the accounts making personal attacks based on fabrications in most threads about GrapheneOS has been doing it for 8 years.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Y Combinator has a financial stake in numerous surveillance and exploit development companies. Hacker News is a platform they own and the moderators on it have permitted years of vile harassment towards our team which they'd normally remove if others were targeted.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Hacker News mods micromanage it enough to repeatedly ask us not to reuse a bit of text across our comments. Meanwhile, they do nothing about disgusting personal attacks and harassment content consistently being spread in threads about GrapheneOS on their heavily moderated site.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

The largest privacy community on Reddit /r/privacy bans any discussion or mentions of GrapheneOS. A bot automatically removes any post mentioning GrapheneOS they'll very actively ban people who evade their filters. The mods of the subreddit misrepresent this as something we want.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Many privacy subreddits have mods who are hostile towards GrapheneOS. We were banned from posting on /r/Android for multiple years. The mod who banned us said our official project account on Reddit was ban evading because they once unjustifiably banned one of our team members.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

On Wikipedia, a company attacking GrapheneOS project made years of edits to the site pushing false narratives about us. They cited articles based on their own press releases. Other content was made paraphrasing Wikipedia which ended up being cited by it. It continues to this day.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Articles about GrapheneOS on most platforms often have comments engaging in baseless personal attacks towards our team, linking to harassment content and making many clearly inaccurate claims about it. We've found chat rooms coordinating this including attacks on the X platform.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Privacy projects are more vulnerable to these attacks because the userbase and supporters largely avoid social media and other platforms where it happens. Many people believe what they read on social media if it isn't countered and it builds echo chambers hostile to GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS 17h ago

Many people think these must be state sponsored attacks. However, our experience is these attacks are primarily orchestrated by companies selling dubious products marketed as private and secure. We did get targeted by state sponsored smear campaigns in France and Spain though.

@GrapheneOS nice that you caught a circular reference problem

@GrapheneOS The French Wikipedia page for GrapheneOS is currently the only accurate one and I am one of the contributors, another community member started rewriting the page, and I joined in. I haven't contributed to the page in quite a while, but everything looks fine to me.

The US page is managed by people hostile to GrapheneOS, as you already know. If you change the content, a member will revert your edit. I’ve tried several times with no success, it’s deplorable.

Attacks from scammers and companies selling snake oil seem to have intensified since the collaboration with Motorola Mobility. It’s absurd how many trolls and malicious people I see on X, and it’s almost impossible to respond to them all. This social network is terrible, I’ve rarely seen so much violent content on a platform, fortunately, there are also people who support the project.

@GrapheneOS what do you expect? Reddit is full of arrogant mods that think they know everything better and censor everyone who posts something they dont like. I abandoned that site years ago when i was censored because i said something they didn't agree with. I believe they are also partially sponsored by big tech that don't want to loose reputation or money by someone criticising them.

Johnny Doe 15h ago

@neogoth @GrapheneOS Yes, organisations shouldn't relying on centralised social media and platforms for communication.

Johnny Doe 16h ago

@GrapheneOS Isn't that just standard regular Reddit moderator behaviour?

Parth Parikh 14h ago

@GrapheneOS reddit is a sinking ship

0bs1d1an 17h ago

@GrapheneOS, have you reached out to /r/privacy to discuss this kind of censorship?

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an On Reddit, an account blocking you prevents you from replying not only directly to them but to any of the replies to them. Malicious people were using this to cycle through new accounts blocking hundreds of people to prevent replying. They were heavily maliciously attacking GrapheneOS and our team in /r/privacy and elsewhere. /r/privacy mods were not addressing it, so we kept privately complaining t o them. They were never willing to seriously deal with the abuse of their community.

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an Instead, they rewarded the people attacking GrapheneOS by completely banning any discussion of it. It's not permitted to make any post about GrapheneOS or even any comment mentioning it. Even comments indirectly mentioning it to sidestep the rules will be removed if they find them and people get regularly banned for it. They'll check their comment histories and ban them for previously talking about GrapheneOS or participating in our subreddit if they even vaguely allude to GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an Multiple of the /r/privacy mods are hostile towards GrapheneOS themselves and have directly participated in making public attacks on the project with dishonest claims. Reddit should take away the moderation powers from each of the /r/privacy mods on every subreddit they moderate and give moderation control to people who aren't going to abuse it. The largest privacy subreddit banning discussion of GrapheneOS is ridiculous and Reddit should take away all power from these mods themselves.

0bs1d1an 16h ago

@GrapheneOS, what strong objections do the mods of /r/privacy have towards GrapheneOS? Have they not reached out to you or explained themselves in any way?

At least /r/privacyguides covers GrapheneOS well...

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an Privacy Guides as a project supports GrapheneOS as a project but the leader of the project was part of one of the main groups attacking us. Privacy Guides has multiple team members who have directly participated in the attacks on our founder with fabricated stories and baseless personal attacks. They permit absolutely vile content towards our throughout their communities and regularly participate in it and encourage it. Their community is overall far less bad than the project members.

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an Jonah Aragon was part of Techlore and participated in his attacks on GrapheneOS which are what led to the swatting attacks by the Techlore community aimed at killing our founder. Jonah took these attacks on GrapheneOS with him to Privacy Guides which he leads. He has regularly used his position there to make personal attacks on our founder and attacks on GrapheneOS. He's one of the people orchestrating attacks on us with the numerous threads with inaccurate claims about our team.

Indigoat 14h ago

@GrapheneOS @0bs1d1an i'm out of the loop, that seems wild, any legal action going on ?

GrapheneOS 12h ago

@indigoat @0bs1d1an We intend to take legal action against several of the people who orchestrated most of the harassment towards our team but we need to do it in a serious way where we aren't handing them another way to attack GrapheneOS without being properly set up to win the case against them.

GrapheneOS 16h ago

@0bs1d1an See https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116297018021309116 for an explanation of what happened on /r/privacy. The solution to the problem would be Reddit taking away control of the subreddit from the abusive mods. There are many people who could do a better job and treat open source projects fairly instead of abusing their position to cause harm to them.

David Culley 1h ago

@GrapheneOS I'm sorry for all the shit you have to deal with.

I'm a very happy user of GrapheneOS (I also donated).

@GrapheneOS it is mostly clear to me that the rules on r/privacy (e.g. "R8: No discussion of alternative mobile/phone OS/ROMs") are inappropriate when an OS can be a solution for improved privacy. Have mods ever shared why they autoban GrapheneOS talk? Is this because the mods want to keep their subreddit as simple as possible?

David Culley 1h ago

@GrapheneOS How can I still take r/privacy serious when they treat the most secure mobile OS this way?

Rodrigo Santamaría 17h ago

@GrapheneOS someone pays them. Android or Apple

Magical Thinker™ 80lvl 15h ago

@GrapheneOS in a weird way this is an acknowledgement, but dealing with that is tiresome

@GrapheneOS well at least I like ya! 😁🙌

@GrapheneOS State sponsored, or something close perhaps.
Lets face it, the establishment don't like not having control and power over the people.
You were always going to be a target I guess.

David Culley 1h ago

@greenpete https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116296978495760125

GrapheneOS (@[email protected])

Many people think these must be state sponsored attacks. However, our experience is these attacks are primarily orchestrated by companies selling dubious products marketed as private and secure. We did get targeted by state sponsored smear campaigns in France and Spain though.

GrapheneOS Mastodon

@GrapheneOS It’s a sign you’re doing something right and threatening the income of those who profit on that right thing not being done.

David Snyder 16h ago

@GrapheneOS the type of work I do I usually say if I haven't made at least one person froth at the mouth in hatred of me by the end of the day, I must doing something wrong.

Still though that's incredibly annoying. Thanks for all the work you do.

Blackout VPN 16h ago

@GrapheneOS
Yeah sounds financially motivated. Surely even the lowliest people have better things to do than smear a genuine privacy tool.
Keep fighting the good fight!

The Great Llama

@GrapheneOS
I had someone jump onto a reply I made the other day saying some things about Graphene that didn't make sense. I scrolled their history and about half their posts are the same sort of thing from various perspectives. I questioned them about it and they slightly backpedaled while still trying to subtly throw shade. I called them on it and... crickets.

Meanwhile, I just checked and they're busy barging into someone else's conversation to do the same thing. Extremely weird.

Mike Fraser 15h ago

@GrapheneOS The answer is they don't. Probably some sort of troll farm with an agenda. Keep up the good work!

crumbletiltskin 14h ago

@GrapheneOS most of them are <10 years old

unable to decrypt message 14h ago

@GrapheneOS I wouldn't assume they're people. Bullshit generators make it trivial to generate harassment these days.

GrapheneOS 12h ago

@be They're definitely people but they heavily use LLMs to generate their attacks on GrapheneOS to make content which appears technical to mislead people.

Orb 2069 14h ago

They'd really rather have Jia Tan's brother running your project.

@GrapheneOS Some people have nothing better to do I guess. Rather complain than do anything themselves.

Drew 🇵🇭 ♾️12h ago

@GrapheneOS It's probably Google.

GrapheneOS 11h ago

@drewtowler No, it definitely isn't. In fact, the attacks on us have largely been put in motion by companies selling dubious products marketed as avoiding Google and giving people privacy. Those products don't actually provide what they're claiming they do and they feel very threatened by GrapheneOS. They've attacked us themselves and started their supporters going attacking us which they aren't capable of stopping even if they tried. They're doing the opposite of trying to stop it though.

Two-Track-Mind 12h ago

@GrapheneOS it's most likely their job at Google or Apple or within the government,.... they can't stand that you're not parasitic like they are.

GrapheneOS 11h ago

@KnobbyTiresOnly It isn't Apple or Google. In fact, the attacks on us have largely been put in motion by companies selling dubious products marketed as avoiding Google and giving people privacy. Those products don't actually provide what they're claiming they do and they feel very threatened by GrapheneOS. They've attacked us themselves and started their supporters going attacking us which they aren't capable of stopping even if they tried. They're doing the opposite of trying to stop it though.

Nicolás Danelón 10h ago

@GrapheneOS I guess this is the proof, you guys are doing the things right!

@GrapheneOS to be fair to them, it is not allowed to discuss any custom ROM. Not just GOS