I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a phone in general. And even more so, I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a phone I cannot even sideload something like Newpipe on.

Since you are seemingly wealthy enough for this - maybe Pixel with GrapheneOS would be a right fit for you? Pixels also have longer support now (although I still think it’s very short, so I’d likely have to switch to Lineage afterwards).

Maybe they mean ads by the creators themselves, which I do understand. While my Freetube has Sponsorblock, I am still exposed to ads - Sponsorblock is not applied to downloads.

I saw something like this happen (major social media gor blocked). Can confirm that those sketchy free VPNs are now on seemingly every phone and it is worrying as hell :/ At least some people use charity censorship evasion projects instead.

I just assumed they operated by collecting and selling user data. So while I knew the business model was unethical, I didn’t expect them to get more creative!

That support is about as long as it goes on mobile. An average poor person can’t afford to just buy new phones as soon as the support ends. Some updates is still better than no updates in this case.

fair

Eight years, minus the few years you’d have to wait until the phone is close to affordable. And updates via LineageOS is still way better than just using a phone with no updates when it hits EOL like you normally would.

What about Simplex? About equally easy to host and doesn’t even give an option to not encrypt. I use both.

I wonder how they’d detect their usage. Signal is understandable, it has central servers (although I thought they were blocked and thus their usage wouldn’t be detectable under a good VPN anyway). But Matrix? Are they looking for connections to known public servers? Or the usage of the protocol itself stands out so that even selfhosted servers would stand out?

If I were in such a situation, I’d start to hide traffic to anything they might dislike anyway.

Is it an expensive contract? I doubt my $3/mo plan would ever have perks like this lol. Especially given that Pixels here are only sold unofficially.

Yes, I know about them extending it. For me, for example, that means four years of official support, which is much less than a usual lifespan of my phone.

Graphene has a relatively short support, especially given that the phones for it are completwly unaffordable new so it’s effectively shorter than advertised. I am now spoiled by using a device that is not EOL so I think I will be switching when GOS’ support ends.