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GrapheneOS migrates server infrastructure from France
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1991604700882563267 https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1991604700882563267
- Bender 11mo agoThey should consider making their primary site a .onion and then have clear-web portals in many countries that serve as a secondary class site or cache. The physical location of the primary site should be unknown.
- anonymousiam 11mo agoIt's a sad fact that there's just no way for GrapheneOS to win this fight. The intelligence agencies of every world government are on one side, and a relatively poor organization that produces less restricted cell phone software is on the other.
- hacker_homie 11mo agoWe can only use technical solutions to this problem for so long. The real issue is that the public wants a right to digital privacy. The state would not like you to have that because they are lazy and want to be able to look at your messages. Because they have convinced themselves that messages are a crime. This is a political problem not a technical one.
- ranger_danger 11mo ago> The real issue is that the public wants a right to digital privacy. Legitimate question, is there any concrete evidence that the majority of the public actually does want this?
- whatshisface 11mo agohttps://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-americans-view-data-privacy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-american... 80% are concerned.
- 9dev 11mo ago…and if you ask them, most people don't want animals to suffer. Guess what they're ordering next time at the restaurant? It's not the vegan pasta.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- goku12 11mo agoAnd how exactly does that analogy apply here? The current situation is more like the government banning vegan pasta.
- 9dev 11mo agoWhat I was trying to say was that people are "concerned" about lots of things, but that doesn't mean much on its own. As soon as they actually have to give up some immediate comfort for the long-term better option, they will not act upon their concerns but choose satisfaction right now, reliably.
- 9dev 11mo agoThere is not. In fact, many users will gladly give away any notion of privacy whatsoever in exchange for a Candy Crush lootbox.
- immibis 11mo agoIt's amazing to me that everyone even slightly disliked by the ruling class isn't doing this. Like remember when Nintendo took down a bunch of Switch emulators... from GitHub? Why were they primarily on GitHub?
- undeveloper 11mo agoTechnically emulators are not against the law, piracy is against the law. And given that open source projects are all on github, it makes sense for them to just be on github That said, there are many forks of the projects DMCA'd still floating around.
- immibis 11mo agoThey don't have to be against the law - they just have to annoy powerful people.
- undeveloper 11mo agonotably, the yuzu emulator and the associated team disbanded because they had a stash of every game released for the switch and were sharing it. that's plainly illegal, morality aside. of course they got hit with the DMCA
- zamadatix 11mo agoGitHub is a great, free as in $, and convenient place to be. So long as they weren't ONLY on GitHub (they weren't, the source code is still around) they can get the best of both worlds before and after. The deeper problem for the Switch emulators was letting their personal life be linked to it so Nintendo could seek legal pressure against them directly.
- immibis 11mo agoIf you host on any mainstream site, you can expect they're recording your IP address, your ISP is recording who has that address, and both of them will rapidly give it up to anyone who seems official or legally scary enough.
- gruez 11mo agoHow does this increase security? The actual code is distributed over github and is digitally signed. Same goes for the installers/updates. Attempts to replace the contents would be easily detected, and would won't do much, aside from maybe compromising someone installing in that short time frame. Moreover darknet sites have an identity problem. It's easy to validate that "grapheneos.org" is the official site, not least because there's no grapheneos.com or similar. If you're using a hidden service you'll get an address like graphenenlhxh74dsi1kk1k8se0wutcc2v4f7bnohqe8zxbkfk8z3wp8.onion. How do you know whether that's the official site, or graphenenlhxr1uvl0i8oiuzx587fpgcesik0apij5axd1a0xbdvj5eg.onion?
- vbezhenar 11mo ago> It's easy to validate that "grapheneos.org" Is it? Why not graphene-os.org? Why not graphene.org? Why not grapheneos.com? Why not grapheneos.io? How do you validate it, really? Also who REALLY controls that domain in the end? Someone with access to `.org` nameservers. Do you trust that person? What's their name?
- fragmede 11mo agoYou plug it into Google and hope they got it right
- vbezhenar 11mo agoTry putting Putty into Google.
- gruez 11mo ago>Also who REALLY controls that domain in the end? Someone with access to `.org` nameservers. Do you trust that person? What's their name? Same way you trust/verify that you got Tor Browser from the right domain, and the organization behind it hasn't backdoored it (didn't the tor project recieve government funding?).
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago"Majority of Americans block ads" https://allaboutcookies.org/ad-blocker-adoption https://allaboutcookies.org/ad-blocker-adoption "Majority of Americans now use ad blockers" https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/ Was there "concrete evidence" that "the majority of Europeans wanted" the rights granted to them under the GDPR If we examine each of the rights that the public possesses, perhaps many of them would be unfamiliar or unknown to a majority of the public Is it reasonable to imply that for each and every one of those rights there is "concrete evidence" that "a majority of the public" wants them, even when they are not familiar with them or do not know of their existence
- ChrisArchitect 11mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dang 11mo agoRelated ongoing thread: France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46035977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46035977 - Nov 2025 (244 comments) Recent and related: France is taking state actions against GrapheneOS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024 - Nov 2025 (108 comments)
- mmooss 11mo agoI understand the concerns and anger of GrapheneOS's leadership, but the hyper-escalation tactic doesn't do what they hope: First, it sends a message of inexperience in business, negotiation, and conflict resolution: 'I'm going to take my ball and leave' - it looks like an emotional overreaction without strategic thinking. These days you sometimes see powerful parties making similar threats - e.g., Uber threatening to leave certain markets. But those people have significant power and their tactic is really to demonstrate that in order to shift their negotiating position; usually they don't actually decamp, and GrapheneOS has relatively little power so that tactic doesn't apply. As importantly, it sends the message that GrapheneOS can be pushed around and manipulated: A slight hint of a threat and they flee. Others will take note, and many will think the same of other FOSS projects, large and small - they are easily intimidated and dismissed. Another reason people don't use these tactics is that they have other important interests besides the one under immediate threat. A requirement of anyone with significant investments that can't be easily abandoned - which is everyone doing anything of value - is to navigate in a way that upholds all those interests. You don't burn down the house to kill a rat. It can be hard and requires careful, deliberate thought and strategy. One unmentioned interest that might appeal to GrapheneOS's leadership is the freedoms of people in France to create FOSS, and to individual privacy and security.
- elric 11mo agoExiting France when they feel like the freedoms of their software and their contributors are in danger seems like a perfectly reasonable response. GrapheneOS is an open source project. They hand out great software for free. They have no obligations to do this. And they certainly have no obligation to try to "negotiate" with obviously hostile governments. They have nothing to gain from this. > You don't burn down the house to kill a rat. I don't see how this analogy applies here. France is the house.
- mmooss 11mo agoThis is the second time people responded to a post about GrapheneOS strategy with an argument about obligations. It's hard to even explain how vastly different those issues are. I didn't say anything about GrapheneOS's obligations; I talked about strategy and tactics to serve their goals. If you do want to talk about obligations - yes, we all have obligations to our communities, societies, etc., whether we like it or not, whether we deny it or not. GrapheneOS has obligations to the open source community, to freedom, to their users and developers, etc. Defining those obligations is very difficult and I won't try, but if none of us have those obligations then who does? There's nobody else coming to the rescue, there is no authority that will take care of it for you (like parents caring for irresponsible children) - it's just you and me.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ranger_danger 11mo agoFor what it's worth, Micay has a long history of accusing other people of slandering the project without providing any evidence or rebuttals. When asked for details, he gets defensive and accusatory, then creates multiple sockpuppet accounts to argue the same points over and over.
- neilv 11mo ago"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
- protimewaster 11mo agoI was going to say something along these lines. There was a post on the GrapheneOS forums a while back, from Micay, claiming that a well-known YouTuber who had backtracked on recommending GrapheneOS (because of Micay's behavior, according to the YouTuber) had probably actually backtracked because the YouTuber was financially involved with a competing project. My initial reaction to the post was, "Oh, I guess this is that paranoia I've heard about with Micay." My thought was reenforced when it was further claimed, in that thread, that the YouTuber was active in a forum well known for online bullying of people they don't like. The whole thing definitely sounded paranoid. In the thread, though, there was in fact linked paperwork where the YouTuber had registered the company in question, and also links to a verified account on the forums in question (using the YouTuber's real name). So, yeah, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
- jasonvorhe 11mo agoMost people rather trust some newspaper or magazine instead of investing 10 minutes into researching on their own only to then start sockpuppeting for the conclusions of the author who probably didn't do their due diligence in writing the piece in the first place.
- neilv 11mo ago"Sockpuppeting" has connotations that don't apply here, and it's an important term for other pressing purposes, so we don't want to dilute it. Does "parroting" express your intent well enough?
- amatecha 11mo agoAlso cross-posted on Mastodon https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115595997701449168 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115595997701449168
- Lariscus 11mo agoThis looks hugely blown out of proportion. The project founder has a well documented history of what I would consider a persecution complex. Once again he has provided no substantial evidence. The only thing they provided are some, admittedly borderline libelous, news articles. Unless they provide some more concrete information about these supposed attempts of getting a backdoor installed into the system, I will consider this as just another day of GrapheneOS drama.
- dijit 11mo agoI mean, maybe? Multiple accounts have said the same thing in this thread, and I'll be honest here: given the Jia Tan situation, it could be true (in the way that he's being pushed by external forces). It could it be character assassination... Or it could be totally valid: idk. But what I do know is that nobody is providing any citations. I also know that progress depends on the tyranny of unreasonable people.
- aunty_helen 11mo agoDon’t you need that sort of paranoia to go out and create a privacy focused mobile OS?
- jjgreen 11mo agoA world-weary cynicism suffices.
- idle_zealot 11mo agoI expect that most cynics would just keep their heads down and use iOS or something. The intense idealism needed to motivate something like Graphene is compatible with paranoia, but not with weariness.
- bigbadfeline 11mo ago> The intense idealism needed to motivate something like Graphene Yes, the intense idealism of the brainwashed and oblivious prompted the realistic Graphene creators to do something themselves instead of waiting for other realistic folks who happen to be few and far between.
- aborsy 11mo agoCanada is liberal and a better option for hosting privacy projects than EU. Every few months a bad proposal comes out of somewhere in EU. The details of this case don’t matter, the tendency is big government control.
- bluGill 11mo agoThere is no place in the world where there are not bad proposals all the time. Some places are worse than others, but everyplace has problems and needs to be watched.
- wiredpancake 11mo ago[dead]
- palata 11mo agoEU is not a country. There are many different countries in the EU.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mschuster91 11mo agoEU has reciprocal arrest warrants and other treaties to assist law enforcement.
- mbs159 11mo agoThough not an equivalent, the US has extradition treaties and various international agreements for surrendering a fugitive to a foreign country
- tracker1 11mo agoI'm not sure... they've added some pretty repressive language controls themselves already. Let alone proposed legislation. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/canadas-bill-c-2-opens-floodgates-us-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/canadas-bill-c-2-opens...
- sunshine-o 11mo agoHere is the problem France and Europe need to be somehow attractive in the world today: - Energy prices -> nope - Science and technology -> not anymore plus the brain drain is accelerating - Business environment and competitive taxes -> nope Europe still had good living environment, safety, fair privacy and rule of law. But western Europe seems to be dedicated to destroy this too. In the meanwhile a lot of countries elsewhere are progressing rapidly in those domains.
- bedros 11mo agowondering how this will affect veracrypt. which is mostly developed by a French developer.
- rixed 11mo agoIs anyone working on a low orbit Datacenter already?
- d4rkn0d3z 11mo agoThe title should be, "GrapheneOS jumps from frying pan to fire".
- metalman 11mo agothis is all fluff and noise, as we are on the threshold of space based servers, complying with the laws of convienient country next, owned by company overthere, leased to a "guy in taiwan", maybe
- d3Xt3r 11mo agoIt's kinda ironic that they posted this on X. If they really care about privacy and freedom, why are they still active on X, a platform run by an insane person?
- mmooss 11mo agoI'd like to understand the facts: What has government in France actually done in regard to GOS? All I've seen is one comment from one prosecutor, quoted in a news article, though certainly I could have missed much more: Has any government agency or representative in France said anything else? Taken any actions? Contacted GOS directly?
- codedokode 11mo agoWell, we can remember what France did to Durov, still without charging him with anything.
- outside1234 11mo agoEuropean clouds off to a great start
- jMyles 11mo agoWhat do we think about cryptpad.fr?
- andsoitis 11mo ago” In Canada and the US, refusing to provide a PIN/password is protected as part of the right to avoid incriminating yourself. In France, they've criminalized this part of the right to remain silent.”