Yes, but that didn’t happen overnight. The authoritarian creep had been happening long before, but it’s important to remember that they don’t yet have total control; they can do a lot of horrible things with impunity, certainly, but they need to keep up appearances and move more slowly with other things so they have less resistance from whatever remains of the judiciary.
…yet. Authoritarianism creeps, it crawls silently, strategically, meticulously, knowing that far too few will notice or care until it’s too late.
My work will not provide me a work machine for the very optional WFH benefit I have. Either I use my personal machine, or I have to go into the office, and fuck the office.
So, I put my work stuff into Virtual Machine jail; if they want to spy on me, they’ll have to figure out how to break out of that first.
Also note that this is now the second time (that I’m aware of) where they’ve censored or helped to silence journalists or activists.
https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/proton-mail-journalist-accounts-suspended/
They basically did the equivalent of a YouTube takedown and left it to the affected people to show why they shouldn’t have their accounts suspended, rather than doing the reasonable thing of making the original claimants prove why the victims should have their accounts suspended. It’s decisions and actions like these that make me wary of the company.
Wow, what a great service. Definitely a bastion of privacy.
https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/proton-mail-journalist-accounts-suspended/
Alright. I leave it to you to show where I’ve made a mistake in my assessment. I’ll change my tune if you provide a compelling case.
The Proton CEO has said multiple times how much he admires Trump—and this is after he started displaying his fashy colors. He might care about privacy, but I can’t trust him not to sell me out if his favorite celebrities “ask nicely.”
Edit: And they just recently censored journalists “by accident”: https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/proton-mail-journalist-accounts-suspended/
As a wise person once said, “No company is going to break the law for you.”
It’s fine to have some trust in your services, but it should never be without exception. The responsibility for privacy is always ours to ensure.
I’ll add that if someone knowing your phone number is an actual threat to your safety, you should already know better about using something more anonymous.
Privacy ≠ anonymity
Remember when they said they wouldn’t do things during their confirmation hearing that they later did, like, a year later? Yeah…
Fuck them and their lies.
No idea, honestly. I’ve never had a device that was supported, so my knowledge of it is limited.
/e/OS has similar goals as Graphene (not exactly), but it supports many more models than Pixels. Check their list and see if it fits your needs.
Gee, if only there was an alternative to Meta’s stinky apps…some kind of decentralized, federated network of servers and users that’s funded by the community instead of ads and user data sales…
Ah, well. We can only dream. /s
Oh, neat! I had no idea something like this existed!
Hopefully people who use SecureBoot have plans in place
Only downside is it’s based in Italy, the government of which has been somewhat hostile to privacy as of late. Still, AirVPN itself has been a longtime supporter of privacy and projects like Tor.
You have to create a second partition or use a Virtual Machine. Look for dual booting instructions, if you want to install alongside your current distro.
Bruh, as an American, have y’all (politicians) learned nothing from our slide into authoritarianism? JFC, you can practically see the fingers of clandestine fascists pulling the strings to make you (politicians) dance.
Same. I have my eye on Cosmic and will likely be hopping over, since I’ve essentially set up Gnome to work a lot like Cosmic
Exactly. It’ll be a 3-day workweek, and you’ll only get paid for three days of work. They’re not gonna give us the same wages for less work.