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Comment by welljh | Hacker News Reader

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On the other hand, there are state actors whom will profile you for using a Pixel phone as they assume you're running GrapheneOS, so the promise of privacy seems to be working for a lot of people if it's scaring them that much.

And with your logic, you would also need to say that QubesOS / Whonix / Tails are all Disappear/Honeypot operating systems since he's known to run those as well. It's much more likely that the disappearance is due to the fact that his adversaries are very powerful state actors and it takes just one slip up in your OpSec for them to pwn you.

Is it scaring them or are they acting scared?

Graphene being pwned is not mutually exclusive with authorities targeting individuals for using a phone marketed toward people who don’t want to be pwned

I'm just going by occam's razor. It's good to be skeptical/paranoid and to know your threat model. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a powerful entity out there with a zero day for GrapheneOS / Pixel hardware and used it to target Medhurst. But I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater even if that actually did happen. We're in the middle of the storm with the advent of highly competent AI-assisted cybersecurity atm.

There's nothing public about anything happening with him. There's certainly no basis for claiming it has anything to do with GrapheneOS. The post above is making a completely baseless claim about GrapheneOS based on someone who said they use it and has no involvement in the project. The claim is based on him last posting on X on August 23rd and previously posting about using GrapheneOS. That doesn't indicate he disappeared and certainly doesn't mean it had anything to do with GrapheneOS in any way. He likely just stopped posting on X.

This just reads as a smear on GOS. "Something bad happened to a journalist explicitly seeking out hardened privacy software, therefore the software is the problem". There is nothing out of the ordinary about this situation, unless you also read every arrest of a Tor user as evidence that Tor is a honeypot.

Source? Seems like bombastic allegations there that would really benefit from evidence.

The linked post is the product announcement for the Motorola Signature 27. It's promoting a smartphone, not GrapheneOS. Our partnership with Motorola Mobility was publicly announced in March 2026 and this is the first device meeting our security requirements and providing official support for it. It shouldn't be a surprise that there's an announcement about the first device with support for it following the announcement of a partnership. There's nothing strange about it.

Richard Medhurst isn't in any way part of the GrapheneOS project and hasn't ever worked with us. GrapheneOS has over 500k users and he's only one person who asked questions about it on Matrix and made several positive posts about it. Claiming GrapheneOS must be a honeypot because a person who said they use it stopped posting on X is utter nonsense. What's strange is a freshly created account making such ridiculous unsubstantiated claims to try to push people away from using or supporting it.

Reporter goes missing but uses GrapheneOS which equals honeypot?

That is the biggest conclusion jumping and lack of critical thought I have ever seen/read.

I'm starting to doubt that you're even a real person. This all comes across like an attack on an OS that is already battle tested and has remained steadfast through the years. There's zero evidence to support that are a honey pot. There's commits for the last 12 years, the project is open source it's all auditable, not one single shred of evidence to back up anything you're saying lol

Richard Medhurst has never had any involvement in the GrapheneOS project and we've never worked with him. He's one of over 500k people who uses it. He made positive posts about it on X as many others have done too. There are a bunch of much more prominent people using GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS users are spread around the world and come from across the political spectrum. Many people using it have much different views from Richard Medhurst. He's one guy who uses it and doesn't represent the overall userbase or the project.

Your claim above that he disappeared since August 24th appears to be based on him last posting on X on August 23rd. However, he sent a question about Pixel 11 support for GrapheneOS via his Matrix account on August 31st. We answered on September 1st and received read receipts. We don't follow him on any platform and don't have any regular communication with him so there's nothing unusual about lack of any activity since then. Prior to messages in August, his last Matrix messages were sent in February. There's no basis for claiming GrapheneOS has anything to do with him not posting on X for several months.

You can audit and build it yourself, using local AI if you need that level of privacy. https://github.com/GrapheneOS

If you are not intelligent enough to do that, and have no trusted friends that are then consider a career change, perhaps potato farming?

Which of the 196 repositories should the potato farmer audit? Why should he trust the clanker? How can the potato farmer audit the hardware and its specs?

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