https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117537776055163844
There’s a major state sponsored misinformation and smear campaign towards GrapheneOS in the Netherlands and Germany. The misinformation campaign includes unsubstantiated security claims not holding up to scrutiny to scare people away from it. They’re also heavily misrepresenting who uses it overall.
These smear campaigns conflate GrapheneOS with forks and modifications of it sold by shady companies. Those usually include a device management app to remotely manage the devices of their customers as if they’re employees. These are largely not GrapheneOS devices or have preinstalled malware apps.
France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are becoming increasingly authoritarian surveillance states with an ongoing crackdown against privacy. It’s happening throughout the whole EU and it’s likely both secure devices and end-to-end encryption without backdoors are going to end up outlawed.
There are a bunch of companies based in the EU selling phones with drastically worse privacy and security than an iPhone including Jolla, Volla, Murena and iodé. These products are effectively backdoored by not providing standard privacy and security patches/protections while misleading users.
The real mistake was mentioning it at all. They are the best at what they do, but even compliments rub them and their horde of online defenders the wrong way.
A completely harmless comment like this should be ignored:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50381570
But, like clockwork, in comes the “they have the right to defend themselves.”
I’ll probably regret posting this even though I am on their side.
If an article about your product is bad, or you think it is bad, you make a single post and say “We deny the statements.” That’s it. Don’t Streisand effect yourself.
Also, that new phone is hella expensive! That isn’t being negative to the other OS. Stating that Motorola works (or has worked) with Oracle and law enforcement isn’t painting the OS in a negative light. Everyone knows that the other OS is the best choice for anyone who takes security and privacy seriously.