3d ago

GrapheneOS Under Threat: EU Age Verification And Google Changes Endanger Privacy-Focused Android

www.forbes.com

Google Pixel Privacy ROMs Face EU Regulations, Google Limits

How EU digital identity rules and Google's restrictive policies threaten the future of privacy-focused Android operating systems like GrapheneOS.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250810234024/https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2025/08/10/whos-afraid-of-privacy-focused-smartphones/

60 comments

If govts actually start making stuff like grapheneos illegal, maybe I'll just stop using smartphones. If they're gonna be that blatant about wanting to be a surveillance state, then I see little reason to help them.
- I think it is quite hard to avoid smartphone nowadays because some necessities such as: ID, messaging, banking etc almost requires smartphones.
  
  While it'd be difficult, you can usually make do with a browser or visiting in-person (e.g. with a bank, they need to know who you are anyway, so visiting in-person is mostly just an inconvenience). Physical ID is likely still going to be a thing for the forseeable future since at minimum there are bunch of old people who basically don't know how to use smartphones (or at least use them well).
  Messaging is more problematic. You could probably use a combination of something that functions on your computer and a dumb phone for urgent things (although since texts/calls wouldn't be E2EE, you'd have to assume the govt knows the contents of the convo).
  IMO it's entirely feasible just quite inconvenient.
  
  These are all no necessities whete I sit. I use TAN generators for banking. I use Signal and Matrix for messaging.
- No maybe about that. A MiFi router and a tablet would be a workaround. If they outlaw general computers that would be it, no more computers for me.
has anyone questioned who is behind all this age verification all over the place, including forcing the credit card bans of the games, on one reddit post, someone said russel vought is behind all of this, but i cant find anymore info other than the post.
- The credit card game bans are all coming from one Australian Religious group.
  Similar Astroturf groups are being used to create fake grassroots community groups to PrOtEcT tHe ChIlDrEn.
  
  I think it's not so true. MasterCard wanted an excuse to do this anyways. You can tell because the bigger backlash does not sway them at all.
- It's a cooperation between:
  religious fundamentalist christian groups, many of which done some rebranding to appeal at least somewhat secular (Collective Shout, NCOSE - formerly Morality In Media, or even the European CitizenGo), while others are still primarily religious fundamentalists (Exodus Cry, Seven Mountain Dominion),
  big tech companies like Google, who want to tie their users' data to real identities, want to lock down their ecosystems even more, and don't really care about potential bans under a far-right christian theocracy as long as they benefit from it economically and finacially.
  
  It’s literally neither of those lol.
  Governments are doing this because they want control and they want to know all the stuff that Google and Apple etc know. It’s got nothing to do with religion or big tech lol.
- It's 100% the WEF.
  
  Its not the Jews bro
- The American led world is clearly losing its position as the global leader. These supposedly free societies are clamping down, because their economic situation is getting more dire, and because discontent will be arising naturally out of that and they know.
  This is the natural conclusions of a ruling class at odds with humanity and at odds with our class, the working class.
I've been saying for YEARS that the EU has been overstepping their bounds by forcing companies to do things that they should have no right to force them to do, and that the EU is becoming a threat. I was downvoted every time and called a "bootlicker" because people loved the EU dictating terms to the "big bad american corporations".
Well now the EU have gone full nanny surveilance state, and people like those who argued against me have no one to blame but themselves. Congratulations.
- Yeah, I totally agree. Lots of people don't seem to understand centralized authoritarian control is the big evil, even if it reinforces your personal politics (for now).
- The EU is good when they're doing good things, and bad when they're doing bad things. Someone has to reign in international corporations and their anti-consumer anti-planet bullshit.
  people .. who argued against me have no one to blame but themselves. You really think people agreeing or disagreeing with you on the internet have/had anything to do with it?
  
  No, not everyone is good when they’re doing good things and bad when they’re doing bad things. The EU have been doing things that many, especially on here and reddit, consider “good” only because of their biases. They’re not objectively good things, but subjective. Things like forcing Apple to allow other payment methods was championed, but imagine if your business is forced to let your customers pay someone else to use your system, and then you’re the one that had to handle all their complaints because they got scammed.
  The EU has been overstepping their bounds for years now. The difference now is that they’re doing things that everyone knows is authoritarian. They’ve been authoritarian all along, but the lefties were ok with it because it was authoritarianism that they agreed with.
- The EU must be less of a state and more like EFTA
- It’s still amused by the whole USB-C push to “Reduce eWaste”.
  By legislating that everyone should use USB-C, they generated a lot of eWaste in the form of legacy USB-A, B, micro, lightning, etc, as well as requiring more cables in the form of USB-C to USB-A, B, micro, lightning, etc. cables in the transition phase.
  The various different types of USB-C cables (power only, data only, Thunderbolt 4, etc) as well as the glut of different incompatible USB-C interfaces has made things much worse.
  It reminds me of the XKCD comic about introducing new standards to reduce the number of standards.
I wonder what future there is for non google phones like fairphone, or even apple. Do apple phones use google things?
- Yes. I'm unsure of where I heard it so take with a grain of salt but I've heard they make about the same number of calls to Google servers as a stock android phone.
  
  As far as I know it's only the case with Safari using Google Safe Browsing service and Google being the default search.
  
  Although I would prefer to roll-my own but Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS and SailfishOS all run on the FairPhone.
  YMMV for software support, but the non-Android Linux-based phone OSs will suit most people’s needs, as long as Angry Birds isn’t a killer feature of their phone.
- nope, the google chrome is just reskinned apples own browser.
  
  This is like saying that Safari is just a reskinned version of KDE Konqueror. It is patently wrong and oversimplifies the development processes.
  While Apple did use Konqueror as a base for WebKit, and some of that code was pumped back into Konqueror, they are not the same. Chromium was also based on WebKit but has had so much code replaced that it is also essentially different code.
  I recommend Ken Kocienda’s book “Creative Selection” about the development of the iPhone and WebKit.
I wonder how home-grown European companies like Fairphone will be affected by this.
- Mixed. They sell phones with "standard" Android and /e/OS. "standard" Android could potencially have strong Google Play Integrity API support, while /e/OS which uses open source MicroG can only get basic Google Play Integrity API support.
  But since API check can be required by app developer for any reason, it can easily be abused or mandated by law like age verification or chat control.
Third party app stores would also break this
So far as I can see, this is just speculation (and propaganda!). Regarding European Digital Identity Wallet which the article says is under development, this would be an app you don't neccessarily have to install on your phone (and it might not be possible to install if it requires some google-pay api).
- European Digital Identity Wallet is the reference implementation under which each member state can model their own to access all governmental services. It will effectively be mandatory for citizens to do anything. It's also planned to be part of the EU age verification implementation.
- If they depend exclusively on the Google safety net attestation service this is true. GrapheneOS supports even stronger attestation though, they just have to choose to implement it properly: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide

60 comments