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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1535 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 25, 2026

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I made the switch to GrapheneOS and a telemetry-free Linux distro a few years ago for related reasons. I believe that ads are active attack on my mind, stealing my attention in order to change my buying habits, opinions, world-view, and emotional regulation in ways that are contrary to my own interests and in the interests of the highest bidder. Besides that, it corrupts the service that displays the advertisements, incentivizing them to keep your eyes there longer to increase ad impressions, usually to your detriment.

To Hell with all of them! I refuse to use any product that serves me ads, and I shield my family from the same. I am at the point where I am extremely hesitant to buy any product that uses closed source software, closed standards, or requires Internet connectivity to do a job that does not inherently require it. I've seen too many times the ratchet of enshittification slowly boil our collective frog. So, yea, I'm a bit of a zealot on this.

How's it working out? Pretty great to be honest. My banking app works with GrapheneOS. (Though it didn't when I got it; I wrote to them complaining about it and later it did work. I don't know if my complaining did anything.) I can't imagine going back to the advertising and digital restrictions management hellscape I see other people put up with.

To Hell with all of them! I refuse to use any product that serves me ads, and I shield my family from the same. I am at the point where I am extremely hesitant to buy any product that uses closed source software, closed standards, or requires Internet connectivity to do a job that does not inherently require it. I've seen too many times the ratchet of enshittification slowly boil our collective frog. So, yea, I'm a bit of a zealot on this.

I recommend using a service like NextDNS that can enrich your effort on this front like nothing you’ve seen before. I use it and it works great wonders for my peace of mind. You can essentially add any lists you want and regularly update them as well. The only caveat/drawback I’ve experienced is they can break compatibility with certain apps, and you may need to whitelist some things in your profile.

Glad to hear it's worked well for you! Have you found Graphene has any usability issues? How is the messaging app? That's what I'm most concerned about - my friends and family have group chats requiring MMS and RCS, and I'm unsure if the stock app supports anything more than SMS.

Also, what distro are you using? I'm still determining which one I should install. I enjoy occasional gaming, so I've been eyeing up CachyOS (an Arch fork) but I'm unsure of its privacy features.

Sandboxed Google Play gets you Google Messages, which fully supports RCS. Also, GrapheneOS has announced an inhouse re-write of the Android Messages app, which will also support RCS. There's no date for release yet, though.

I never used any other android, so I can't really compare. I don't have any usability issues, but a group chat I'm a member of had to move to a different service because I couldn't receive RCS messages. MMS is fine. You'll have to decide how much Google (in the form of Google Play Services) to allow into your life. If the answer is none, then some apps won't install or work.

I use NixOS, but it's a bad choice for a beginner to Linux. Any other distro will serve you well.

NixOS might be a bad choice for a beginner, but it's an excellent choice when you want things to just stay configured and working.

You're preaching to the choir, my brother.

Yes indeed. Insane community aside, it's solved so much.

Manjaro FTW.

The default GrapheneOS messaging app supports MMS but not RCS. You can install Google Messages to get RCS support, but then you have to use Google Messages. They plan to add RCS to the default app eventually, but who knows when that will actually happen.

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