[Georgelemental]

Personally, I like that they come across as a little paranoid. That's exactly the attitude I want in the people protecting my privacy and security. I hope the developers lie awake at night, unable to fall asleep because terrified that someone somewhere is plotting to attack and exploit them

[finalst]

While I understand you are trying to be positive about this, I don't think it's good to want our team portrayed like this, sorry. Paranoid people are people who'd easily be influenced into doing harmful behaviors because it believes it will stop their problems. Making a response to inaccuracies and bad journalism platforming an extremely malicious actor isn't a symptom of that. We don't have people with severe mental illness on the team. That would be irresponsible and mental illness is not something to romanticise in my opinion.

[Georgelemental]

There is a very broad spectrum between "completely average and neurotypical" and "severe mental illness". E.g. "slightly atypical personality". The world would be a boring place if everyone was exactly the same

[finalst]

I agree for sure everyone should be different and have a diversity of how peoples brains work. The same type of think puts us into a bubble. We are definitely atypical because we are developing something quite atypical as well. Coming as a project member I just sometimes see comments that call us stuff like 'schizos' or 'paranoid' even when it is intending to be positive. I guess somehow they believe someone with a severe mental issue is more likely to an adversary of the government or whatever enemy they perceive? I don't know the justification behind it. I just find that odd, we're quite ordinary people actually. I don't think it does good for mental health awareness and for people who actually have these issues to backseat diagnose how people's minds supposedly work.

[busterarm]

There's healthy paranoia and there's treating even casual commentary/criticism from anyone as an existential threat & coordinated attack...and responding to that with sustained, coordinated attack campaigns online. That's what Micay's history is.

That's not healthy for any project.

[HybridStatAnim8]

This is false. Commentary and criticism is not treated as a coordinated attack. Coordinated attacks are treated as coordinated attacks. Criticism is often used as an excuse to try and hide attacks, and many people unfortunately cannot tell the difference.

[microtonal]

Well, they have had to deal with multiple swattings, constant misinformation from some competitors (e.g. Murena's CEO doing interviews with various media where they insinuate that security-hardened systems like GrapheneOS are only for criminals and secret agents, complete with 'think of the children'-style arguments), and some local/national governments boosting the narrative that GrapheneOS is for criminals.

So I can understand why they are as defensive as they are.

[Cider9986]

Recently, the socials have been more moderate and level-headed, imo.

[user_7832]

Could you share a link or something about this?

> ...responding to that with sustained, coordinated attack campaigns online. That's what Micay's history is.

For the rest, in general, I'm tempted to give grapheneOS the benefit of the doubt. Running any FOSS project is hard, running it against the (implicit) wishes of OEMs/Google (who throw in things like Play Integrity) is even harder, and doing it when 3 letter agencies at the US govt actively hate you is harder still.

Being paranoid in responses to FUD campaigns isn't ideal, but save coordinated attacks, I'd say fairly understandable.

[TehCorwiz]

Based on how discourse in the US has been perverted by inches and millions of mosquito bites they may not be wrong. Stamping out bad information fast and hard seems to be the only way to combat mass coordinated disinformation. Being polite just lets people play the "both sides have merit" game.

[singing_tartly]

not true at all...

There's no coordinated attacks on anyone or projects by GrapheneOS. They respond to misinformation, that's about it.

There have been many attacks on privacy/security projects, not just GOS, recently. If you keep up with the GOS forum you can see posts saying GOS was hacked without evidence. Other claims that GOS is only used by criminals. Theyre not true. Misinformation that aims to destroy the reputation of the project should be responded to.

[uqers]

https://xkcd.com/225/

[Cider9986]

That's hilarious thanks for sharing.

[tokai]

Realistically Stallman would start lecturing them on how his licenses are not open source.

[kibibu]

Richard Stallman would most certainly not use the term open source to lecture somebody about free software.