FREEDOM PHONE; The Alt-Rights Next Self Own?

[Edge-]

Maybe that's standard legalese, but boy does it sound Trumpist.

It is, just about all their legalese is very standard stuff (i.e. you can search chunks of any of it and turn up dozens/hundreds of results). Just amusing that it's so bog-standard for products from "big-tech", which they're supposed to be hitting back at.

[Sorshen]

https://freedomphone.com/pages/privacy



That sounds...exactly like standard "big tech" to me.



And if/when they go under, RIP your data. That shit's getting liquidated.

Tbh, I don't think there's anything malevolent going on software-side considering the rest of the package. It's just a really bad deal, rushed for a quick grab and run. Most likely running a lineageOS gsi (an Android fork generic system image) and microG (a Google Services implementation).

The real scam is painting this as a political statement of freeing yourself from the shackles of big evil tech, when it's actually a $100-$150 piece of mediocre hardware with rebranded software running open source Google code. The obfuscation of specs should be raising enough red flags, but I guess the target population just lives by the words of these grifters.

[D Luniz]

Tbh, I don't think there's anything malevolent going on software-side considering the rest of the package. It's just a really bad deal. Most likely running a lineageOS gsi (an Android fork generic system image) and microG (a Google Services implementation).

The real scam is painting this as a political statement of freeing yourself from the shackles of big evil tech, when it's actually a $100-$150 piece of mediocre hardware with rebranded software running open source Google code. The obfuscation of specs should be raising enough red flags, but I guess the target population just lives by the words of these grifters.

the last 30 years have shown that the "conservative" movement is just grifters feeding on a large, angry, ill-informed block of people fueled by their prejudices

[DingDongKing]

Freedom Phone. From the makers of Freedom Fries.

[Frolk]

For the fashy kids that loved Gab and Parler, they're gonna go wild over the next "going our own way" piece of alt-right tech:

Erik Finman, the self-proclaimed youngest bitcoin millionaire announces the FREEDOM PHONE:
This is the first major pushback on the Big Tech companies that attacked us - for just thinking different.
Complete with it's own Uncensorable App Store & Privacy Features.
We're finally taking back control.

1. Take a $60 phone
2. Preload it with the Uncensorable App Store Parler
3. ???
4. MArk it up to $500
5. Profit!

Reaction videos for this thing are brutal.

It's almost like one can trace a straight line from this, to Rush Limbaugh selling miracle pills on AM radio.

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

[DarkTZeratul]

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

It's not wrong because the far right made their own thing, it's wrong because they're doing such a bad job of it. They didn't innovate anything, they just took something cheap and marked it up well beyond its value based on branding alone.

[Edge-]

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

Not at all. Note: Nobody is criticizing them specifically for making a privacy focused phone. That's actually pretty great, and there are already a handful of phones/communities towards that end.

This is just not a privacy/freedom "designed" phone. It's a transparent, low-effort grift that drastically marks up a cheap knockoff phone and is being sold without even showing basic information like the hardware specs.

If you want to shell out $500+ for a $100 knockoff phone, an app store with a policy that allows for malware and child porn to be hosted (the legalities of the latter being a problem they'll have to tackle), and is one of the preferred phones of the DPRK because of the ability to bypass user securities and get into the phone, go for it. But don't expect any of us to take the thing seriously when, literally within 24 hours after announcement, it's been shown to very likely be a low-effort grift.

[Biglog]

Since 2016 there has been a whole cottage industry of people making money off of the far-right. There were whole pop-up stores of corny Trump merch where people knew they could take literally anything from a shirt to a pencil to toilet paper, slap Trump or a pro-Trump message on it, and it would sell. Most of that died out once 1-termer lost. But I have to admit that the thought crossed my mind to take advantage of the situation and profit myself on their cultish behavior.

This Freedom Phone idea is just another weak attempt at the same. Take a cheap phone, politicize it, and mark it up 500%. There's nothing secure or special about it whatsoever. In fact these would be some of the least secure phones on the market running a sketchy OS. The funny part is that people buying them aren't intelligent enough to sideload apps (which plenty of teens can do lol), but they are desperate enough to use unsupported apps so they can find other alt-right radicals that agree with their hateful ideas (since the vast majority of people do not) that they'll pay.

[cubby]

Note that not only is it a cheap-ass phone, it's;
A> Chinese-made, meaning it's probably chock-full of spyware stealing your personal data, and
B> It won't get you back on Twitter or Facebook or whatever your shitmongering got you banned from; there's literally nothing this phone could possibly do for you in that respect. It's literally just preloading the garbage Nazi social media platforms. That's it.

I wish I'd thought of this grift myself, frankly.

I hate to say it, but that thought has occurred to me as well - wishing I could cash in on these fuckwads of ignorance and hate. Not that I would ever cross that line, but since we're still free from thoughtcrime....

[beanman12345]

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

This isn't the far right making their own thing, which is pretty evident in the words written in the quote you posted. Did you not read it?

[pathora44]

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

Like others have said there is nothing wrong with "making your own thing" sadly this is not the case. This is repackaging a shitty cheap Chinese knock off phone that will be jam packed with spyware that is going to steal people's identities and financial information. It is one thing to be a grifter who takes cheaply made shirts, flags, and knickknacks slaps Trump or Maga on them and then sells them at Trump rallies at a 500-1000% markup while it is completely another to unintentionally, at best, or intentionally, at worst, ruin your victims lives with phones that steal information.

[uuuhname]

It's not at all surprising the far right wingnuts all love bitcoin. just a bunch of racist sheep that fall for one scam after another.

[pathora44]

I hate to say it, but that thought has occurred to me as well - wishing I could cash in on these fuckwads of ignorance and hate. Not that I would ever cross that line, but since we're still free from thoughtcrime....

Damn my morals and principles that won't allow me to grift people, even idiots, of their money. Reminds of the time when I worked at my first job in an electronics store. One of the other salesman was trying to pitch to everyone else in the department to get in on this "business opportunity" of selling flavored water or get other people to sign up to sell flavored water. When me and another salesmen told him his "business opportunity" was a pyramid scheme he got all defensive and said it isn't illegal. We told him pyramid schemes aren't in essence illegal they just screw over the vast majority of people involved in them. That was years ago and I see his Facebook page through mutual ex coworkers and it seems he was in on the ground floor because he seemed to do real well in that pyramid. I can't say how many people he left out hundreds if not thousands of dollars to climb that pyramid.

[Ursus]

They clearly have a great product, but they're doing a terrible job of marketing it. If I was on their sales team, I'd get the MyPillow guy to endorse it and give away a bottle of hydroxychloroquine with every purchase.

[Edge-]

They clearly have a great product, but they're doing a terrible job of marketing it. If I was on their sales team, I'd get the MyPillow guy to endorse it and give away a bottle of hydroxychloroquine with every purchase.

Speaking of, I haven't seen anything about it coming with Frank pre-installed.

Did Frank ever actually launch?

[Ursus]

Speaking of, I haven't seen anything about it coming with Frank pre-installed.

Did Frank ever actually launch?

The most recent news result about it is from May 3, so I think it's safe to say it was all hype and no substance, kinda like Trump.

Apparently the launch was riddled with glitches and technical issues: https://www.newsweek.com/mypillows-m...itches-1588270

[Mihalik]

These phones are literally like shit that we buy from a company called Vivo.

They are dirt cheap sold in bulk, and we have them preloaded with software for logistics and employee tracking (shipment locations, materiel locations and general safety checks when working in the field).

They cost about 80 euro when bought in bulk.

It's fucking hilarious.

[Endus]

Dosnt the Left say "dont like how X company does things, then make your own company/thing" ? And when the " far right" makes their own thing, its also wrong.

Like others have pointed out, the amusement here isn't because a product was made to appeal to right-wingers, it's that the product is a lazy hack job that claims to be pro-privacy while having less security than standard phones, and which in no way includes anything that justifies its pricetag either in terms of software or hardware.

The amusement is that it's a shitty piece of crap with stupid branding that will probably sell to people too dumb to understand what they're buying. We're laughing because it's a con, not because it's a product aimed at right-wingers.

[pathora44]

They clearly have a great product, but they're doing a terrible job of marketing it. If I was on their sales team, I'd get the MyPillow guy to endorse it and give away a bottle of hydroxychloroquine with every purchase.

Nah you need the dream team of Don Jr. and Kimberly "totally not a stand-in for his step-mom Melania" Guilfoyle coked out of their minds screaming into a microphone to really sell the product.

[Edge-]

https://screenrant.com/freedom-phone...ty-os-umidigi/

Some more fun tidbits -

As spotted by reporter Ron Amadeo, a hands-on video of the Freedom Phone reveals some of the apps that come pre-installed on it. As it would turn out, many of these apps are identical to those installed on LineageOS. LineageOS is a popular open-source operating system based on Android. It first came out in 2016 and is often installed on smartphones and tablets to add additional controls and features that Android doesn't include by default. LineageOS is a fantastic piece of software, but if the Freedom Phone runs LineageOS by default, the claim that the Freedom Phone is using a one-of-a-kind 'free speech' operating system doesn't hold water.

So likely not a brand new OS, but an existing one based off of...Android. At least it's a good one.

Political commentator Candace Owens shared a hands-on video of the Freedom Phone, and in her clip, the app store is on full display. Android expert Mishaal Rahman of XDA Developers points out that the Freedom Phone's app store is really just the Aurora Store — an open-source application storefront that sources its apps from the Google Play Store. Outside of a different accent color, the Freedom Phone's app store has the exact same layout and interface as the Aurora Store. That means the people behind Freedom Phone likely have no say in which apps are or aren't available on the storefront.

So...if true then that's mildly hawkward. They don't even have their own app store.

Finman claims the Freedom Phone doesn't have app tracking, keyboard tracking, or location tracking. This may be true for pre-installed apps on the Freedom Phone, but that likely has zero impact on ones downloaded from the app store. There's evidence that apps like Facebook, Google Photos, and YouTube are available for the device. If those are downloaded and used on the Freedom Phone, they're going to work just like they do on any Android phone. Many third-party apps require permissions in order to function as intended. Whether it be Facebook, Snapchat, Google Calendar, or anything else, all of the normal tracking they do at their core is going to continue on the Freedom Phone. Unless all of these apps have been rewritten specifically for the Freedom Phone — which they haven't been — don't expect all forms of data harvesting/tracking to magically disappear just like that.

And if you use any common apps the phone will not in any way protect your privacy.

I'm not gonna be sad when idiots blow a bunch of money on a transparent, obvious grift, and are disappointed with they find our their phones are just cheap Chinese made knockoffs.