First of all, to anyone downvoting my Comments about /e/ being a piece of shit, because…
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they advertise themselves as degoogled, but instead let you connect to Google/Microsoft/etc services
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replace all the propriatery not at all Secure Services from Google, with… Drumroll please… Propriatery and not at all Secure Services from themselves and actively encourage it.
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They are For-profit
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and being MORE out of date then even Fairphones stock roms.
… I told you so. Dm your Instance admin, pay them to send the DB entries of your Downvotes on a Thumb drive (or anything else from SSD to 3.5 inchHDD, depending on your preferences), and shove it up your rectum.
But a TL;DR:
/E/ is not Private. They just switch one bad comany to another one.
This is a FUD post. Honestly this is just doing a disservice to privacy in general.
Of course /e/OS is not perfect but the title is wrong (/e/OS didn’t suddenly start sending data to OpenAI without user permission, they are relying on OpenAI for a service that is optional PLUS they are explicitly saying that they setup a proxy to anonymize content!) but the content is also wrong :
TL;DR: /e/OS is not perfect but it’s damn well better than Google!
Also important clarification, the Murena services (backup, STT highlighted there, etc) are NOT MANDATORY! When you boot you can decide to use them, make an account, etc (yes, like other services, including Google) but you just as well refuse and use your device. There is NO account required. The goal is to help people who are not yet self-hosting everything have an alternative rather than… have nothing then give up and fallback to iOS or Googled Android.
Let me stop you here.
Every phone /e/ supports, Lineage or calyx supports too. Lineage and Calyx are both non profit, implement an actually secure Backup system by default, and do not try to sell you a subscription.
So why should I be defending a company that’s worse then the Alternative, that’s obligated to extract the most possible profit from its costumers, that says it is Private, yet sends your backup and Photos unencrypted to murena servers?
And no, you can’t jUsT uSe aNoThEr bAcKuP sErViCe. These require root access by default, so you can’t just install Seedvault.
Also, I don’t give a fuck if the data to OpenAI is proxied or not. OpenAI is still not Private, and Murena has other, on device, Open source Voice to text options. Yet they, the self proclaimed Private OS, rely on a non private service
You’d have benefited from not stopping there, at least reading the bold parts : nobody has to use Murena servers. You turn on the device, say no, use whatever alternative services you want, that’s it. What Murena (not /e/OS) offers is buying a phone with a working deGoogled Android device. There is a market for that. You don’t have to buy from them and it’s enough. You can criticize it as much as you want, here and elsewhere, and honestly your criticism is welcomed so that they can improve, just don’t make things up.
Source : I’m backing up my photos locally with Immich, no Murena account, no Murena services.
Edit: thanks for sharing https://github.com/seedvault-app/seedvault looks interesting.
There is ample validity to complaining about pushing for profit services, though. Just like we all hate MS for pushing an online account for Windows, we shouldn’t be blanket accepting someone pushing a service here either.
Making it truly optional is great, but it’s still promotion.
Im just saying, that Murena, with their current services, is in no way better than Google. Also, that can change at any time, since the one making the Services and the one making the OS is the same Murena, so theres nothing stopping them to vertically integrate their Services more and more, until it becomes the only real option
just like Google and Apple did it.
Google started as a company that gave extraordinary Services for cheap to people, and only once it got popular, they started selling user data and doing questionable shit as result of them not really caring about Data Security and storing data unencrypted on their Servers.
Murena is a company that is giving extraordinary Services for sometimes Cheaper than the non Privacy friendly option, and once it gets popular, they still will be reserving the right to start selling user data and do Questionable shit as a result of them not caring about Data Security and storing data unencrypted on their Servers.
Yes, they did not sell your data. Yet. They did not release your Data to authorities. Yet. Their Service, being unencrypted, baked deep into the OS (with their Backup) shows just how much they could go that route at any time, and by having a mostly noobie audience, they wont get much shit for it probably
For me, its just like the Mastodon vs. Bluesky thing
Yes, /e/ is currently better than Google, but /e/ can turn as bad as Google any time. Unlike something like Proton or other Backup systems, since they have the option to encrypt your Photos and therefore make them Availible only to the user.
Honestly you seem to understand the technical side of things but I don’t think you fully grasp the economical scale of Google. Murena is literally nobody, like 10 guys in a small shop in Paris, the CEO walking around, few extra staff international, some contributions here and there, it’s not symbolic and I don’t want to diminish their effort but it’s really tiny. Your local supermarket probably has more staff than they do!
Meanwhile… Alphabet who owns Google is nearly ~200k people on payrolls, thousands more outsourced via 3rd party services (e.g. data annotation, social network “cleaning”, etc) and the 4th largest corporation in market capital.
Honestly the comparison is not even apple versus orange.
Same for Apple, 3rd market cap, ~150k employees.
Yet… maybe more importantly, Murena has 0 lock-in, none. Meanwhile Apple and Google literally own the mobile market. It’s practically impossible to buy a phone without at some point using one of these 2.
So finding imperfections in /e/OS and Murena is fine, again hopefully helping them to grow out of those potential problems, but the comparison … I don’t even know why do it in the first place. Murena literally can not become Google.
Google and Apple were once the 10 employee nobodies going against behemoths.
Google also used to have no lock in, as well. It’s original selling point was an open ecosystem with no lock in, unlike Apple.
You’re like a walking definition of ‘those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it’
Check my post history, I often link to Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian that precisely has chapters on lock-in. If you are not aware who Hal Varian is he was Chief Economist at Google. I don’t know how much you think you know about “history” but I’m sure you do not know what I did study or not on the topic.
PS: if one day Murena becomes the size of Google or Apple according to pretty much any metric, I’ll buy you a bottle of Champagne and kiss your feet to apologize of my naivety. You can archive that post.
Nothing you wrote was a response to what I wrote.
I also don’t care what you ‘studied’. I lived it. Google and Apple were literally, and this is a quantifiable fact and not an opinion as you seem to be treating it in your response, the 10 person startups that were going against industry behemoths.
Yahoo was, at the time, was a Juggernaut.
I.B.M., at the time, was a Juggernaut.
Just blocked… you don’t seem to care for a proper polite conversation so no matter what you know, or think you know, that might make you special is not worth it for me. I don’t have any need for toxicity.
Google was just a comparison. Of course Murena will not become as strong globally, but if we look at it relatively to the Costum ROM community, they have quite a fair share already.
Don’t take everything literally. I just said, that having the track record that /e/ has regarding actual Privacy and not relying on big tech, which dosent take much effort since they literally fork LinaegeOS, which already dosent rely on big tech, I don’t think its a good idea to let them become any stronger than they need to be, since, like I just pointed out
Murena does not do any substancial Development of Costum Roms. They just take Linaege, remove all the Open source software like Seedvault, and instead implement their own security nightmares.
And no, tracker blocking is not a good reason to make your own Costum Rom. There are literal free apps on Fdroid which do it already, and better. Don’t like it? Switch to the DNS server of adguard, they do that too. Or mullvad. Or whatever.
Murena as a company is literally a leech just like Iode, which Attach themselves to Linaege (which dosent say they are Private at all), add a fucking DNS blocker, call it a day, and act like they just made Linaege Private.
Murena or Iode aren’t about development or customization, it’s about being able to actually buy a phone and use it without Google services, no tinkering. You might not be the audience, you might have other criteria for what constitute privacy, but basically if you can AND want to install a custom ROM, you are not their market.
None of the actors you mentioned, e.g. LineageOS, AdGuard, MullVad, SeedVault, and all the other “OS” in the name, etc do that so it’s not relevant. I’m not saying they are not important but it’s a different product entirely.
There are 3rd Party stores for Those too.
Its just not plastered on the Main page of the project
But I wouldnt argue that if you already want a degoogled phone, you have researched enough to at least know where to Ask for such websites
Say less. You do not fight efficiently.
Libre software. ‘Open source’ is a deliberately ambiguous phrase, engineered to derail libre software.
Selling libre software is good. Stay on target.
https://lemmy.world/post/35312231