It’s hard to draw an exact line somewhere too. You have to compromise or you’d end up worse than Stallman and Snowden combined. All technology ends up off limits then but still. Avoiding obvious and actually avoidable pitfalls is a good practice I think.

Defining and finding those pitfalls on the other hand…

That’s basically where I’m at as well.

Ignorance is/was bliss… I used to not care as much about security concerns but these days I’m a bit more paranoid when it comes to IT security overall.

True, these days I wouldn’t really flash a phone that’s till supported… but when they hit end of life it’s another story. Using an unpatched android phone isn’t exactly optimal.

That is a pretty good point to be honest.

It might be a bit safer… but you still have to trust the source?

But yeah, I flashed an official Lineage OS nighly that I got from their own site… It still bugs me though and I kind of wish it didnt. :P

It is a fair point to be honest.

Closed source could be a bit safer due to liability I suppose?

If they were to do something really nefarious and would get caught they’d get sued to pieces and probably lose most of the reputation?

Sure, a shady rom would lose it’s reputation as well but that’s about it. There’d be new ones out pretty quickly.

And for what it’s worth… I don’t think they’re doing anything shady… but still.

I mean, I use Linux on my main machine at home. That’s open source. I do trust that though…

This all struck me after flashing an old phone I had laying around (My main phone is supported for 2+ more years) and then feeling like… do I want to use this now? I got a slightly dirty vibe from in. :P

Being security conscious is annoying at times…

Yeah but how?

I mean, who’s going to verify the code? And then there are new nightlies every day. Sure they don’t contain that many changes, but you’d need to monitor them, for every rom on every phone. Well, maybe just for the one rom and the one phone model that interests you but that’s still not feasible if it’s not a paid full time job. If someone were to do that on their spare time they wouldn’t have much of that left :P

Exacly my concerns… and I don’t have the time or energy (hell or even the motivation) to go through all of their source code to find shady stuff.

I probably wouldn’t even find it if any was in there and hidden by someone who knows what they’re doing. :P

They do yeah, but they could technically include some shady stuff as well.

I don’t know. I do like custom roms since they revive old phones. But I’ve recently started feeling a bit iffy about it to the point that I’d rather get a new phone that’ll be supported for like 4 new years or something.

There’s F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/

That’s pretty much exactly what you’re looking for. :)

Edit: Never mind me. I read Google Play, not Google Pay. :P

They might just like the google sync part? If they use chrome on their mobiles and other computers and so on?

Yeah, same. Not creating all that many posts of my own, but still probably more than on reddit. At least if you count posts per unit of time :)

Yeah. It’s easier to switch out reddit since that’s never really eas about the social aspect. I was only there for the customized feed of interesting topics.

Seems I’m getting both that and a lot more social aspects over here. Feels like I’ve soon posted more here then I ever did on reddit.

Yeah, that could work. The “problem” though is that I mainly post on Instagram to keep in touch with friends and family.

Not sure what I’d post on a network where no one I know is subscribing. It’s not like I’m a good photographer or anything.

Interesting!

Sadly the only reason I’m on Instagram at all are family and friends… wish I could move them as well.

Same here actually. Haven’t tried Matrix at all and use Signal daily for regular messaging. Matrix looks promising though. Looking forward to seeing what instances people use our if self hosting is common.