I hope this will be received with the same good faith it was written in. I’m thankful to GrapheneOS and all its teachers and supporters. Happy New Year!
Cheers,
TPD
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Interesting article. But I do not feel it presents the debate’s core. Phones are not burgers, digital identity is a core of modern world, and it is built around phones. Phones are also hard to turn private, but many people’s lives depend on it being so. Unlike burgers, which are heavily licensed and regulated, private phones are the wild west of snake oil salesmen.
I would take the liberty of giving you the analogy of banks, where it is not a desire for flavor that makes customer choose, but the value of their valuables.
Now there are only two major banks for depositing stuff, with one directly owning all its branches and other having franchises that use it’s branding and core software. For users, first offers convenience and the other offers choice. But both are prone to have CCTVs in their branches. Some users dislike this and others call it a feature. The first bank is very secretive about their workings, which some users dislike.
Now a third option comes in, which has not CCTV in the branches and uses open practices of the second bank. They also have additional security outside their bank and they offer separators for keeping even your own items reasonably separate. Some users are obviously afraid of switching as they might have a higher fee than other franchises of second bank. It is also hard to trust. After all, a bank is a critical place.
But then some seedy salesmen stand outside and say if users keep valuables with them they will be just as safe, and they will even let them customize the banks building better than current best practices allow (like creating a tunnel under the safe if they wish to). They say the banks are all out to get them because they cannot build a tunnel under the vault there. The gullible users fall for the fear being peddled.
The users should stay away from them since the original purpose of the bank is to allow you keep stuff safe, and everything else is unrelated and tangential. Arguing in favor of these seedy salesmen will hurt the customers who think they are just as safe, and will also take away potential funds from the third bank, reducing their capacity.
I think it is actively harming people when you tell them to start with XYZ when the XYZ is not close the serving the original purpose they need it for. The time wasted on non-solutions is better spent on educating self on actual solutions.
I also object to “GrapheneOS crowd”, as if their assertions are subjective opinion parroted by individuals, when they are mostly objective truths. Do you also call people “Modern Medicine crowd” and ask people to allow grifters to get people to use magic crystals because they are cheaper and have more color options and users can eventually shift to real medicine? This creating a monolith and soap boxing on them seems slightly off color to me.
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I like your analogy but the presentation of the situation can be a bit more fair. The popular options are generally not seedy salespeople but probably normal people who probably don’t have the focus/wisdom/depth of experience/industry connectedness in banking and financial security, but believe enough (or are financially motivated enough) in providing an alternative to the big banks without acknowledging the failings in their own knowledge.
will also take away potential funds from the third bank, reducing their capacity.
There was at least one seemingly competent service provider before Option 3, and at least one other closed down after O3 that was honest about not being able to provide the same security but adopted similar practices (separators, no CCTV). In general, alternatives can indeed be done fine. However, I think I understand that you’re mainly referring to the funds lost as a result of misrepresentation/false advertising.
Generally I agree that education is key here for both the smaller financial service providers and for the potential customers. I don’t envy anyone that has the privilege of giving advice.
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I kind of started my privacy journey with LineageOS because I didn’t know GrapheneOS and had a Samsung. I later got to know GOS and started to use it. I guess that a lot of people had a similar experience.
I agree that alternative Android distributions at least help to get to know something else than the duopoly, they at least contribute to pique people’s curiosity about alternative OS.
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Fair point about ‘crowd’ in a way, but on the other hand, I seem to mostly get the same response from GrapheneOS proponents. I like the responding analogy a lot - thanks for that.
The point you ignore and I think many will continue to ignore is the core message in the analogy: the blind spot about what life looks like when all you know is Google and Apple and think that is normal. This is in my personal experience a persistent blind spot in the GrapheneOS community and one many cannot seem to see beyond.
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Awesome read, I hope this gets understood! I think the attitude of GrapheneOS makes the entry for people unnecessarily difficult
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I also tend to get the same response when I ask around about the shape of the earth. Must be the round earth crowd 
The way I see it, there are objectively correct agreed upon ideas in all industries among experts after years of consensus, and there are people who are experts/generalists in other fields who think they can understand the reasoning behind it and make arguments in few hours of study (sys admins seem to be plagued the most by this thinking, followed closely by hn commentators in my humble opinion).
So whenever this objectively correct idea is floated, the second community tries to match the first in discourse. And the more opportunistic among them try to milk their credentials across domains.
This creates unnecessary issues for the general audience caught between people they trust (albeit in different industries). It would be like if my stock broker advised me about my real estate investments since “they are close enough”, when they are not.
This can be seen in anti-vax, anti-wayland, anti-rust, pro-pgp, anti-apple, and other movements that coalesce around dogmas they inherit from people who are not experts and who cannot back their arguments with consensus. When cornered, they wriggle with arguments like do your own research, it is what I am comfortable with so YMMV, if it ain’t broke why fix it, etc. not realising that getting them up to speed on the necessity would need a lifetime.
GrapheneOS twitter account is a victim of this issue, often at mercy of nameless accounts flinging deep accusations, trying to get the general audience to catch up with why the other options are not an option. It is the same with convincing people who have convinced themselves that using some flavor of the month messenger is better than signal, that rust in kernel is some giant anti GPL conspiracy, etc.
Not everyone who follows these ideas is malicious, but maybe an unwitting victim of anti-intellectualism. It is unfortunate. Thus stand victims of unplugged mobile, anom phone, etc. (and soon phreeli? White labelled redistributors are not exactly my idea of a private ISP. But people who do not know the capabilities of state might think it works.)
I think you and I disagree fundamentally on this issue, and that is fine. Thank you for writing up what you perceive is an issue in the mobile OS community.
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What do you think about my point that, in general, the pro-GrapheneOS community has a blind spot on how it comes across in these discussions?
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I do not think of it as a blind spot. For people who have used Apple and Google their whole life, I do not understand why Lineage is less foreign than GrapheneOS (in fact google’s android is closest to GrapheneOS). If the issue is “oh I will brick my phone so I better brick something cheaper”, the solution is more education and awareness.
Active rejection is not ignorance or a blind spot, it is “active” rejection. When I am sick, I take medicine on advice of an expert, instead of starting with leeches to cure it in fear of wrong medication bricking my organs. My understanding is that my phone is just as essential for my digital life as my organs are for me, so I prefer to not use non solutions on it.
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actually every person ive interacted has no clue whatsover when it comes to LineageOS, let alone GrapheneOS or other oses and even cousins who own a pixel have no idea they could have Graphene and won’t care if they did. Truth is custom roms/oses is pretty niche among the ‘ordinary person’
In burger town it would be like, there’s 2 underrated restaurants, one requires pixel coins while the other can accept many coins but almost none knows about either because they are clueless or ignore it and stay in their creature comfort psychologically refusing to make the change.
My friends and one of my cousins (who actually has an iPhone not a Pixel) only ever heard of Graphene and Lineage etc. only because im the one to be using it or have told them. My friends are yet to grasp into switching into linux I do not yet expect them to get into the world of custom roms and they will definetely be asking my help for it.
And forget the idea of custom oses/roms of those if they utilize something like google’s notorioous google pay
I am not here to doompost or say it is hopeless, I am trying to say that based on that like 99% of people (percentage varies from country to country) to them custom roms/oses (Lineage/Graphene) is a foreign concept and you would have to have a “nerd” like me to hear about it and being terrible as is at explaining, convincing can be tricky.
And hence the point about
Both are equally foreign. The conversation is about people who are curious about these things, because a large majority of people are happy to “google” instead of search the web, get a “Xerox” instead of photocopy, and have no backups except google drive, same as people who want “McDonalds” and not burgers.
The conversation is always about people who wish to explore a niche. When people say year of Linux they wish the niche of PC users to explore the niche of Linux OS, excluding the billions who have access to only mobile devices or to nothing at all. It is fine if not every conversation uses those qualifiers, and it is not doom posting. If it was easy to get everyone to focus on something we would be in a utopia already.
“Nobody cares” is the same boring filler “it depends” is, both true and yet needs no repetition.
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I suspect everyone would be completely fine with it if the goal was:
- Upgrading the OS on an old phone to experiment with OS features or supported apps
- Experimenting with development, device support, reverse engineering, customisation etc.
- Upcycling a phone to use sans-wireless for a smart/audio/video/sensor function
- Just directly educationally experimenting with various custom OSes and so on…
The friction mainly comes from the reasons behind experimenting with these alternate OSes being “DeGoogling”, “Liberating”, “Taking back your Privacy”, “Independence” where there is strong disconnect between understanding and desires from a few different perspectives.
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Thank you very much for this text and the comparison with burger joints. Here’s to peaceful coexistence in 2026. All of us FLOSS fanbois should pursue common goals; we shouldn’t tear each other apart.
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There is a difference between tearing each other apart and debunking rather bad advice and misunderstandings or lack of willing to understand. Of course people should stay civil, but breaking down bad advice should not be put away as tearing someone down. Speaking up if something just isnt good is rather important.
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Wow! I love the anology. Couldnt agree more. Using methods like promoted here are indeed similar to alternative medications.
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This story was written for GrapheneOS proponents; it not directed at anyone else.
I couldn’t comprehend it at all.
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Yes i am. And you are not quite right.
The GrapheneOS account on Mastodon has told you that you’ve constructed a false narrative and I agree. In your story you don’t say what’s good about the “experimental burgers,” you only say this:
Layers employees are in many ways right, as hygiene and reliability are good across all three burger joints.
These, like Layers, also aim to serve healthy burgers to the populace, but because they are small, experimental affairs, they cannot deliver the level of hygiene and reliability that the three others can deliver. What’s more, some of the employees of the alternative shacks are either unaware or deliberately vague about the lower health value of their products, when compared to Layers, which often ends up confusing interested citizens.
This is constructed in such a way that you don’t commit yourself regarding one of the characteristics of the burgers: how healthy they are. According to your comments, these experimental establishments “aim to serve healthy burgers”. Healthy in this story is equivalent to privacy (apart from the other mentioned characteristics, which are equivalent to security). If you notice, you don’t dare to say they are healthier than the other two big brands, you only say “aim to” and “some of the employees of the alternative shacks are either unaware or deliberately vague about the lower health value of their products, when compared to Layers”. And in comparison with the duopoly?
That’s why it’s a false narrative. Are they more private (LineageOS or whatever) simply by uninstalling Google Play Services than AOSP, ColorOS, PixelOS, etc.? I think that’s where the clash between the communities lies, and not simply in the “there’s no privacy without security.”
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What do you think is the main point of my story?