this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS en masse leading to Catalan police suspecting anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer

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[–] Amberskin@europe.pub 4 points 2 hours ago

Feds???? WTF!

[–] Flockwit@lemmy.nz 4 points 15 minutes ago

Reminds me of when the US tried to fight "terror" by kidnapping people and shoving them in Gitmo because they were wearing Casio watches, which is apparently a brand favoured by terrorists.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS

Gonna guess that's probably a lie.

[–] icegladiator@lemy.lol 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] tourist@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I don't doubt the claim, but I would imagine others do because there's a relatively minor technical skill hurdle on replacing a phone's operating system which would turn most people away.

I never used a Pixel or Graphene OS, but when I installed Lineage OS on a Redmi, Xiaomi made me wait a week to unlock the bootloader. Huge pain in the ass.

Or there might be a better "drug-dealer-friendly" OS. I only know of Lineage and Graphene as open source alternatives, so I could just be speculating.

Also, all my former drug dealers used WhatsApp on the stock vendor OS. But then again... I live in South Africa, so the police are more focused on violent crimes (both enforcement and perpetration)

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