If you disagree with the narrative, counter it. Don’t be surprised when no one else cares for your bemoaning the existence of a particular common understanding within a community if you don’t have a worthwhile alternative.
You can have your opinions. But I am only commenting for others to read that what you’ve said is objectively incorrect and that anyone reading should not believe your misguided views - at-least (but not limited to) on this particular comment.
I believe it’s because their reasoning is correct (not mere opinions) and they support their arguments with evidence and proof.
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Its not correct. I see its always accusations of maliciousness, dishonesty, etc. But its dishonest accusations by itself. Its like Putin talk. Accuse others of their own doing, Very circular. Antd others buy into their narrative. Or like Russians love Putin. Or like Stockholm syndrome, there people support their captors. Or when people believe that Trump will take them out of poverty. The world is very surprising place.
Yeah you may want to re-calibrate your thinking on the types of responses that are acceptable on the platform. Comments should come from thought, not emotion.
If you launched a newsletter with your commentary on tech, I’d pay for it. Just saying.
(I saw your comment before you deleted it)
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Guys, once again, we apologize for the exaggeration in the initial article regarding Play Store apps on GrapheneOS. We have updated our article.
We continue to cooperate with SHIFT and iodéOS to look for ways to improve privacy and security with user friendliness and freedom in mind. We really appreciate your constructive feedback.
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You learned the (somewhat) hard way how pedantic and finiky the privacy community can (and will) be with any tech/tool/product in this space. It’s a tight rope walk, everyday. I hope you do well and better with this but also always be explicit and transparent with everything you do with statements/exposition on why (your thinking) for said everything. This way, the community understands exactly what you mean and how. Ambiguity is the death of absolute comprehension so don’t leave any stone unturned with any PR next time.
Also, if you or any someone else from your end can clarify the particular concerns in full (or to the extent you can promise or claim today) everyone has raised on this thread, that would be excellent and will more likely than not find new respect among those who are discounting your work (at-least as it stands today). These are my last two cents on the matter.
Thank you!
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Thanks Wessel 
I think it shows a great deal of integrity when a company’s founder actively takes time out of their day to engage with their community.
In case anyone else hasn’t seen it, Techlore did an interview with Wessel, which was published earlier this year:
Why was he flagged?
I flagged it because they again propped up Nova’s second empty response (with a copy/pasted response from another forum) without stating their disclosure or acknowledging any of the criticism raised.
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I am temporarily closing this discussion until our moderators can sort out the affiliations of multiple people in this thread and grant developer badges accordingly per our forum rules.
Hi guys. I’m Wessel, founder and director of NovaCustom.
I just wanted to clarify a few things here.
We wanted to increase our products span with a mini PC and a privacy-friendly smartphone.
We do this the NovaCustom way, which means a guaranteed spare parts availability of at least 7 years after the product’s launch and 3 years of warranty. The spare parts can be easily ordered online and we are working on repair videos as well as written repair guides for every component of the SHIFTphone 8.1. This makes the SHIFTphone 8.1 really cool hardware.
The smartphone isn’t really a new thing though, it’s a SHIFTphone 8.1 with iodéOS installed by us. The iodéOS team sells this device as well. But we have some additional features like a privacy screen protector, hardware removal options and anti-tamper options.
Some people claim that iodéOS wouldn’t be private. I would love to see the arguments.
At NovaCustom, we want to support privacy-respecting technology. So if the outcome is that the SHIFTphone 8.1 and iodéOS become more popular in general, this means that the companies behind it will benefit and have more money to invest in their product and services. And that means that NovaCustom customers will benefit as well.
We have contacted the GrapheneOS team a few times. The first few attempts were without any response, till the drama with Android AOSP. A part of the response was:
[ … ] Our understanding is that it costs something like 5 million USD for licensing everything and then perhaps around 1 million USD per year of support where Qualcomm can provide that for up to 8 years after they consider the platform to have launched.
Sadly, NovaCustom does not have the financial power to make this happen.
Having that said, the contact with GrapheneOS wasn’t smooth. It was rather complicated. Banning people and deleting their tickets while they have good intentions is a red flag for us as well.
Depending on Google for the delivery of hardware isn’t a good idea either in our opinion. That way, you still make yourself dependent on big tech and you feed your enemy.
Regarding the installation of the Aurora Store on GrapheneOS, it doesn’t seem to be too hard indeed. Admittedly, this may have been a bit of an exaggeration. But a pre-installed experience is, of course, even easier.
Regarding the Proton apps, we are not paid by Proton for this. Why do we offer this? To provide pre-installed apps that respect your privacy more than Big Tech alternatives.
Minimalistic means less feature-rich, this is correct. This also means less to maintain, so maintaining costs are lower.
On another note, from our experience, the iodéOS is rather cooperative, very friendly, and open for financial contributions, even for specific wished features. So please submit your wishes for enhanced security and we will discuss the possibilities with the iodéOS team.
Regarding transparency, please see the repos as mentioned on our forum.
I wish devices, chips and firmware were open source.
- We wish, too. So this is what we are doing in steps and it takes decades.
We have a very long way to go, but let’s continue to get tech in the good direction: more privacy, more transparency, more security, more freedom.
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Thank you for your patience everybody. We can finally confirm the identities/affiliations of people related to NovaCustom in this thread.
I will remind everyone of our conflict of interest policy to keep in mind when posting in the future. Conflicts of interest do not bar you from speaking on a topic, but they must always be disclosed in some form. Additionally, if you are an employee (or founder, developer, etc.) of a company/product being discussed you must reach out to us before posting, so we can add a badge to your profile, which also doubles as the required conflict of interest disclosure.
This policy is in place both for the protection of our community and for the protection of the poster and their company/product, to avoid impersonators publishing potentially defamatory information about tools being discussed.
Thank you everyone, and welcome to the forum @wessel-novacustom.
Please also note the OP has now disclosed some prior relationship with NovaCustom, unrelated to SHIFTphone:
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Feature-parity with GrapheneOS when it comes to permissions in particular would be very nice. Specifically these features are pretty huge when it comes to consent-based control over the apps you have installed on your device:
I’d echo these inquiries as well NovaCustom launches privacy-friendly phone: SHIFTphone 8.1 with iodéOS - #72 by SkewedZeppelin
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Handling COI posts on this forum
Hi, I suspect this won’t be well received because it’s a direct copy of the response you provided to the Techlore forum which was already linked here.
I don’t blame you for not reading and responding to this excessively large thread. I would direct you to specifically @SkewedZeppelin ‘s comments which I think raised legitimate technical concerns.
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And that is what I implied in my comment above. I should have been explicit in my ask but I was trying to be nice.
25 posts were split to a new topic: Are privacy-focused OEMs/companies sustainable?