The reason why GrapheneOS has become over night the "gold standard for private and secure phone OS" is because of Snowden. I tell you, if Snowden never had praised GrapheneOS, there would be no Graphene cult. The thing is, Snowden is the privacy pope and he has massive influence on privacy minded people. He is smart and he did an important job in unmasking our surveillance society. But he has no clue about GrapheneOS/Pixels and he can't objectively say, if it actually is what it promises to be. His recommendation was based on his gut feeling and not technical facts. But this was the moment the Graphene cult was founded and everybody started to repeating the line: "Graphene phones are the most private and secure phones in the world!"
Anyone with a little bit of tech knowledge knows, this is a oversimplifcation and misleading. But the propagandists were louder and they repeated this lie often enough, until it become the truth. I would like to hear a statement from Snowden TODAY about GrapheneOS. Is he still using his Pixel? Or is he staying silent, because he knows that he is responsible for this massive shit?