There are at least a dozen people spending at least several hours attacking GrapheneOS across platforms on a daily basis.
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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.
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.
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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, have you reached out to /r/privacy to discuss this kind of censorship?
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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 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.
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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 It’s a sign you’re doing something right and threatening the income of those who profit on that right thing not being done.
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@GrapheneOS, have you reached out to /r/privacy to discuss this kind of censorship?
@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.
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@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.
@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.
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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 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.
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@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.
@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.
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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 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?
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@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.
@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...
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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
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! -
@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...
@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.
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@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.
@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.
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@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...
@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.
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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 Isn't that just standard regular Reddit moderator behaviour?
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@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.
@neogoth @GrapheneOS Yes, organisations shouldn't relying on centralised social media and platforms for communication.
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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 The answer is they don't. Probably some sort of troll farm with an agenda. Keep up the good work!
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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 It's probably a sign that you're doing something right.
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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 in a weird way this is an acknowledgement, but dealing with that is tiresome
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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 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.
