Pixel A's are quite affordable. GrapheneOS is open source so if there was a need, people could get it to run on insecure devices that aren't Pixels. Expecting that to be done by GrapheneOS developers who care about security just seems weird.
Reluctant? Guess I'm more of an extremist. I'll rather stop using a service and delete my account than to jump through hoops to get my face scanned. I'm willing to die on this hill.
I don't get what's so user-hostile about Android. Everything negative about the ecosystem is mostly Google Play and the legacy of every OEM forking Android for the better part of a decade. Sure, file pickers are inconsistent, filesystem is chaotic but it's performing quite well on most hardware, runs on phones, TVs, laptops, tablets and mini PCs and AOSP doesn't contain any hooks for Google to siphon off data. GrapheneOS isn't so much undoing evil Google stuff but extending upon their work and improving memory protection and adds security features that can be easily toggled based on assumed threat models of the user.
Google's ownership of Android is definitely headed towards user hostility though, I'm not arguing against that. But just the source that GrapheneOS is based off of doesn't contain too much stuff that shouldn't be there, to my knowledge.
I used to not use one either, and used Aurora Store for certain apps. But at some point, my bank's app stopped working if I installed it from Aurora Store, and would only work from the play store. Since then I've seen a lot more apps that work this way.
Google isn't reliable. They'll present you whatever the current thing dictates, without any nuance whatsoever. Sure you can hunt down some exceptions here and there but post 2020, most publications are inviolacy captured by various interests that aren't yours or mine.
But of course there are regime critics but apart from those already captured by US/Israeli intelligence are either people without any perspective or those smart enough to know that a US regime change will worsen their situation even more, so they rather not participate in riots. At least that's what I've been hearing. It's just an anecdote, make of it what you want.
We’re talking about opposition here. Don’t straw man the “regime change”. So much mental gymnastics because you can’t accept the reality that the people of Iran may not fit the imaginary picture you had in your head based on what someone (very credible anecdote) told you.
Yeah Iranians who don’t want to be oppressed have no agency or human dignity, or deserve to decide their own faith. They must be either captured by US, lack perspective or not smart enough. That’s some 19th century imperialistic attitude right there. You might want to reflect on that.
Because ATProto is specifically designed to allow being NON-centralized. Unlike Pinterest. Yes, ATProto is new and most of the traffic is through a single site at the moment, but it is specifically designed to allow for that to change.
Then again, Egypt was definitely driven by Western agitators, as was the case Iran recently. Iran probably got Russian tech to trace starlink users during the blackout which put a target on many Western assets in Iran. I'm not saying the Iran government didn't also kill and torture independent actors nor that I support state violence (against its citizens, in this case). Just saying that any government will use violence to stay in power and to ensure regime change doesn't happen outside of whatever system the state upholds.
> If they didn't have a hand in the protests, that seems like a stunning failure on the part of the US State Department to support their own policies
This is nothing but evidence free speculation. What you’re doing is undermining the validity of the protest movement and parroting the line of the Iranian government. It’s disgusting. Take this shit somewhere else.
No my point is that the idea that the protests aren’t organic is deeply fucking ignorant and gross. It’s this whole line of thinking that everything turns on US action in the world, which is how 19 year olds think after they read Howard Zin or some essay by Chomsky for the first time. It’s unserious on top of robbing a lot of brave people of their own agency.
> No my point is that the idea that the protests aren’t organic is deeply fucking ignorant and gross.
Scott Bessent, at the WEF [0], explained that:
> President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
So it is organic insofar as the US is working hard to water and nourish something. This has been a huge push to destabilise and unseat the Iranian regime, the idea that they didn't have some people involved in the protests is hard to countenance. It'd be incompetence of the grossest variety. Technically possible? Yeah. A reasonable prior? No.
It's hardly evidence-free, this stuff [0, 1, 2] has been making international news headlines for months. And the last time the US was involved in toppling Iran they used paid-for protests [3] so it is barely speculative to say they'd do again what worked last time. That is just common sense on their part. If they haven't done that, then people will be fired in the US executive for incompetence because that is the cheapest way to achieve their rather clear goals of rolling Iran's power structures. If you don't believe that they did that, who do you think is responsible for that failure on the US government's part?
It is unfortunate that the US's actions right now undermined whatever validity you feel the protests had. I certainly agree it is disgusting - and also bad for US interests so it is curious why they're doing it. Take it up with them if you have a problem with the idea, I'm not a US general or policy maker.
Evidence to the contrary abounds regarding Egypt. Secretary of State Clinton famously rejected the popularly-elected Muslim Brotherhood government and pledged support to Mubarak. This tacit approval led him to have a successful coup against the popularly elected government.
If by "western" you meant some other power then you should be specific. Western as a term is imprecise and can be interpreted differently depending on the audience.
But where, outside of some smaller, isolated platforms? YouTube has gotten a bit more tolerant since COVID and Musk definitely mastered the art of masquerading X as a free speech platform, but a lot of people on the left are spread out to Bluesky, Fediverse while the right wing is on Truth Social, Gab, etc and each have their niche media platforms as well. The days where you could reach both sides of the spectrum are long gone so most just virtue signal their Allegiance's without thinking much about arguments the other side might bring to the table. For some, most mainstream media is either constant bombardment of Trump Derangement Syndrome or Leftist Communists laying siege to some major city. If I don't want to get bombarded by what I perceive to be closer to the side or spectrum I'm mostly aligned with, I'll ignore the obvious platforms where I expect then most personal annoyance.
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