Mastodawn

0bs1d1an 3d ago

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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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.

@Xtreix
What kind of misinformation do you claim about the english Wiki page of GrapheneOS?
I've looked through a few edits and didn't find much that I would call malicious (other than one vandalism where Edward Snowden recommends Classic Amiga OS instead of GrapheneOS)
@GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS 2d ago

@m1k3y @Xtreix It presents an inaccurate narrative about the origin of GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS was started in 2014. It's the direct continuation of the CopperheadOS project. We still have the original repositories from 2014 and 2015 on GitHub which are still relevant. It has an inaccurate narrative about our response to the massive escalated harassment towards Daniel in 2023 too. It's interpreting a primary source (incorrectly) which goes against Wikipedia policy and yet has been there for ages.

GrapheneOS 2d ago

@m1k3y @Xtreix Why is there a separate article for the original name of the GrapheneOS project which presents it as a product from a company and yet it predates the company existed and was renamed to GrapheneOS? It's because Copperhead heavily edited Wikipedia prior to their business collapsing due to us preventing them continuing to fork our code on a yearly basis. Copperhead made a fork of GrapheneOS in 2018, not the other way around. Wikipedia presents a false narrative from them.

@Xtreix @GrapheneOS Your edit had the pretty big problem of replacing sourced content with unsourced content that sometimes uses buzzwords, after which you didn't engage in [discussion the revert pointed you to](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:GrapheneOS/Archive_4#Special:Diff/1324505725). That said, the sources in the article do seem enough to say that Micay was a co-founder and that gOS is meant to be the very similar successor to Copperhead. Without contradicting information from other editors I'm sure I can add this.

Talk:GrapheneOS/Archive 4 - Wikipedia

GrapheneOS 6h ago

> That said, the sources in the article

Articles based on press releases and Wikipedia aren't reliable sources. Laundering inaccurate content through authors of articles taking Wikipedia claims at face value isn't acceptable.

> gOS is meant to be the very similar successor to Copperhead

GrapheneOS is not a successor to CopperheadOS. GrapheneOS is the direct continuation of the open source project formerly known as CopperheadOS. There's plenty of verifiable info proving it.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix It would be very helpful for the encyclopedia to know these sources! That's the hardest part of writing any Wikipedia article content, imo.

Golem Magazine appears to have had close communications with Micay and done their fact-checking. The article links an archived copy of Micay's own r/android post saying "true successor of CopperheadOS", so I'm curious to know what's the case here. Isn't "successor" and "continuation" the same thing?

GrapheneOS 6h ago

> Golem Magazine appears to have had close communications with Micay and done their fact-checking.

The article has major inaccuracies. Communicating with someone doesn't mean they have an opportunity to review the article before publication or that the author and editor are willing to fix the issues.

> The article links an archived copy of Micay's own r/android post saying "true successor of CopperheadOS",

No, that's not true. Daniel never posted any such thing on Reddit.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b8fhiv/comment/ejxoooy/ is a post from https://www.reddit.com/user/Titokhan/ who has nothing to do with GrapheneOS. You're claiming someone posted something they never did.

> Isn't "successor" and "continuation" the same thing?

No, they're not the same thing. CopperheadOS was renamed to the Android Hardening Project and then to GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS still uses multiple of the original repositories from 2014-2018 on GitHub. It was renamed, not succeeded by another project. That's wrong.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix Ah, I see, the post is made by a different user while Micay did comment on it. I found another source that I can use to lend enough weight to include how GrapheneOS says it was a renaming of CopperheadOS. That's the best secondary source I've found, though, so the article can't state that ("in wikivoice") without attributing the claim to GrapheneOS yet.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The biggest issues in the article are the incredibly inaccurate narrative about the history of GrapheneOS presenting it entirely based on Copperhead's debunked claims which they widely propagated with press releases and their own direct edits to Wikipedia. They heavily wrote the content in the CopperheadOS article which is still present there. CopperheadOS is the former name of GrapheneOS and after that was a zombie project based on repeatedly forking our code.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The next biggest issue in the article is how it cites an announcement from us about the harassment towards Daniel completely out-of-context while ignoring most of what we said and misrepresenting it. Interpreting primary sources that way isn't supposed to be happening especially when it involves a living person. We didn't announce what it claims we did and it omits the context of what we said we were dealing with and why it was happening. Why is the main context omitted from it?

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The article very clearly takes something out of context, misrepresents it and tries to present it as a contradiction entirely based on direct interpretation of primary sources. If the article cannot cite the ownership of the original GitHub repositories, commit history and much more to correctly present the history of the project then why does it use primary sources to misrepresent our statements? The standard being used to justify the inaccuracies is ignored to justify others.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The bias against GrapheneOS by the authors of the article including people who work for companies it is extreme.

Take a look at the CopperheadOS article. It's a massive page about something which only ever existed as the former name of GrapheneOS and then a proprietary fork of GrapheneOS only ever used by hundreds of people. They repeatedly forked the latest GrapheneOS code to keep recreating it. Why is it that it has a huge article presenting it as a standalone thing?

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The fact is that Copperhead and companies working with them heavily edited the articles. For years, most media coverage based their basic understanding about both on the Wikipedia articles and started from the point of an inaccurate narrative. Wikipedia is citing laundered information from itself as a source. That golem.de article and most other sources are essentially blog posts. You're just recycling information from Wikipedia written by Copperhead back into Wikipedia.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix Well, I don't know the context and I can't find a secondary source to provide the context, while there are secondary sources other secondary sources claim are reputable that contextualize the early repo history you mention.
I think that's the problem: Wikipedia has yet to find a better objective indicator of truth than being published by the bubble of secondary sources, and I can't think of any either.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix People who aren't subject matter experts doing cursory research based on the equivalent of blog posts by people who aren't subject matter experts isn't a recipe for writing accurate content. The approach is incredibly biased and primary sources do get heavily cited including in this article. Conveniently, the primary sources are cited to take statements in an announcement from us out-of-context in order to present a warped take on it and try to make us look bad based on it.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix The problem with that is you're also a blog post. I really appreciate what you are doing but lowering the RS barrier to interpreting primary sources when people still disagree on a fact would make a lot of fact-finding discussions the equivalent of Reddit toxicity and Truth Social toxicity combined.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix Okay, so remove the paragraph in the article inaccurately interpreting the announcements we made about protecting Daniel from harassment. It shouldn't be in the article unless it comes from secondary sources, particularly since it involves a living person and the current content is an extreme misrepresentation of what was said and the context of it as part of someone trying to make a jab towards us. Why is that paragraph there, but actual facts can't be cited?

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix I think it's a tiny bit plausible that these sources were bought by Donaldson to parrot his claims while also painting Donaldson as the villain. But the sources we have only contextualize the part where you think primary sources favor your view and not when it doesn't, and absent of an official announcement that tries to contextualize the 2024 resignation we can cite, this is what's best.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix If there's already a post on the gOS website somewhere that says Micay will not be succeeded by a different director or whatever you want to add, feel free to link it!

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix You're demonstrating that you're extremely biased and apply double standards. It's not something which is going to stand. We know the reality of Wikipedia which is that it's extremely astroturfed and biased. It reflects the overall bias of the editors. It doesn't reflect a consensus among people who want to have accurate content.

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix Why is it that there's a paragraph based on a manipulative interpretation of our posts without the context, without actually conveying what was written in them and with a Wikipedia editor's own opinions clearly involved in it? Why is it that you can't use objective facts from a primary source but you're fine with an inaccurate interpretation of something directly from a primary source? Why is there one standard for making attacks on GrapheneOS and another for correcting them?

GrapheneOS 6h ago

@aliu @Xtreix The Wikipedia article currently presents a false narrative about the history of GrapheneOS based on Copperhead's debunked claims. Their claims didn't hold up in their attempt at filing a lawsuit against us.

The article also heavily misrepresents Daniel stepping down as lead developer based on an inaccurate interpretation of primary sources. This goes against Wikipedia policy, particularly since it's referring to a living person and making libelous claims about them.

@GrapheneOS @Xtreix Assuming you mean citing Micay's tweet, [primary sources are perfectly fine for uncontroversial claims about their author](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_or_questionable_sources_as_sources_on_themselves). What contradicts that tweet?

Wikipedia:Verifiability - Wikipedia

Alf No Problem 6h ago

@GrapheneOS @aliu @Xtreix
Look, man - Graphene is awesome!!!
Huge thanks to the Graphene OS team - y'all are amazing human beings!!! This is my third de-Googled OS in the last 5 years and I must say, with respect to and love for /e/OS and Calyx OS and appreciating their contributions to the world,... that Graphene OS is simply better.

@GrapheneOS What is with heise.de? Are they articles about GrapheneOS trustworthy?

Kouki Matsumoto 59m ago

@GrapheneOS wait I thought you wrote somewhere on the history or what that you were before making a new project named like Android hardening project over different source but not fully reusing old code. Citing possible departure over CopperheadOS since the fight over rights. Probably also considering previous work were licensed as CC making it hard to be forked. Then later renamed as GrapheneOS or such.

Kouki Matsumoto 58m ago

Idk, I have vague memory when I was researching it and it's all feeling like puzzle that this is likely something like if LineageOS just depart from Cyanogen. But this part, Cyanogen already have a license that makes it possible to fork, just fork old repo. And Idk much of the history of GrapheneOS. So it's direct successor aka. fork?

@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 3d ago

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

Johnny Doe 3d ago

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

Parth Parikh 3d ago

@GrapheneOS reddit is a sinking ship

0bs1d1an 3d ago

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

GrapheneOS 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d ago

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

GrapheneOS 3d 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 3d 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 2d 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 2d ago

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

Rodrigo Santamaría 3d ago

@GrapheneOS someone pays them. Android or Apple

Magical Thinker™ 80lvl 3d 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.