this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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DeGoogle Yourself
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1/ I know Pixels are technically the best. That's not the issue. My issue is: I am not giving my money to Google, and certainly not for the purpose of escaping the Orwellian dystopia they're building around us. It's not a technical problem, but a question of principle.
I know some people argue that buying Pixel phones specifically to install a deGoogled OS sends Google the message that people are willing to pay for the privilege of preserving their privacy, and the more people buy Pixel phones for that purpose, the louder the message and the more likely Google will finally listen and convert at least part of their business model away from corporate surveillance.
But you know what? That's bullshit. Google will never stop violating people's privacy and monetizing people's data. They just take your Pixel phone money and laugh all the way to the bank at how naive you are.
I will NEVER give Google a single dollar. Full stop. It's not even an option. I'll take the additional risk of using a non-Pixel phone - which, for my threat model, it completely insignificant anyway.
2/ I'll pay whatever it takes to escape Google, and also give the throwaway economy the middle finger. As a well-to-do first-worlder with plenty of disposable and grown up children who have left the house, I have the means to buy overpriced equipment that's compatible with my worldview.
3/ I don't care about drama regardless of where it comes from. Quite frankly, I don't even want to know: I've read enough about and around what was going on with DM to just give the whole thing a pass. Besides, like I said, the man seems crazy enough that it basically invalidates any trust I might have in his code, and it's precisely the type of application for which I desperately need trust. I don't trust DM nor his code, and that's not even a community issue.
I have neither the time nor the desire to review MD's code. I need a working cellphone OS that I can place a reasonable amount of trust in. The Calyx Institute looks 100% legit, run by normal, rational people who aren't off their goddamn minds, and I trust what they do a lot more than GrapheneOS because a lot of GrapheneOS was put together by a nutjob.
Yes. There are deluded, wide-eyed idealists who believe Big Tech should be shown that there are honest ways to make money off of direct sales and they don't need to put people under surveillance, and the best way to show them is proving it with their wallets. What they fail to realize is that Big Tech is unprincipled to the core, and the unprincipled way of making money off of people's privacy is orders of magnitude easier and more profitable.
I have nothing against people who have mental problem. Hell, many people who get heavily involved in computers and into free software are on the spectrum and I have no issues with them or the software they made, which I enjoy using.
What I have a problem with is code made by people who make threats. I don't care why they make threats: if they can code, they can code revenge code. And I have a problem with code made by people who have a persecution complex for the same reason.
DM thinks he's persecuted and he did make threats. Repeatedly - unlike Linus. I'm sorry for him and I sympathize on a personal level, but that makes his code quite untrustworthy, because his motivations for making the code and the state of mind he was in when he made the code make the code inherently suspicious. And like I said, I don't have the time nor the desire to go through and vet his code. I have enough projects to take care of myself without having to second-guess someone's suspicious code.
He may be a genius security researcher and he may be the most talented individual on planet Earth. But in the line of work he chose, having a squeaky-clean reputation and credentials is everything, and his personality issues unfortunately damaged both and tainted his work.
Personally, I preferred not to take the risk and I went with Calyx's work which, while perhaps not as hardened as DM's libraries, is adequate enough for my threat model and - most importantly - made by people with a clean rep. At least it was one of the factor, since I was never going to buy a Google phone anyway, and GrapheneOS only supports Google phones.
GOS also got code upstream in AOSP.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
his not a people's person
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.