He’s fine. His videos come off as a bit whiny. The stance of pirating content as being justified instead of just abstaining from an unsatisfactory service seems entitled to me but I get it. I think he’s mostly right in his analysis of things, I don’t make it through every video that he posts though
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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I tend to like him and the things he has to say. I like that he helps consumers be more conscious of the things they buy, and cautions against companies with bad practices (such as those that are closed sourced, or lock basic features behind paywalls, etc).
He strikes me as a little socially awkward himself, and maybe that manifests as his rage at some of these companies and situations; he could stand to take a breath every now and then. I really enjoyed his breakdown of the Honey scam and LTT.
He’s autistic, that’s why he’s socially awkward. It was mentioned in one of his videos a few years ago.
He's mostly correct about lots of things, but not about everything (for example, he hated on everything GrapheneOS just because its lead dev is a bit socially awkward). Plus he's overly dramatic and verbose which can be annoying. Sometimes you must be to get abstract or complicated points across better, but I still feel he's too aggressive in that regard. I also like what he's trying to achieve with FUTO in general. Overall, he's a great and valuable activist who has almost all of his eggs in the right baskets.
I know this is a Louis Rossman thread but calling Daniel Micay "a bit socially awkward" is minimizing the issue to an extreme. Louis Rossman made his comments after he watched Techlore's in-depth video documenting Daniel's behavior, but keep in mind that even that hour-long video is just scratching the surface. To this day, Daniel continues to act the same way if not worse, and has a giant list of "enemies" that he says are attacking, harassing, bullying, and gangstalking the "grapheneOS project" (aka him). This might be partially caused by him bashing other open source projects and making new enemies any chance he gets. I'm not sure when the "all open source projects get together to personally target Daniel Micay" meetings occur, but maybe the only common thread is Daniel himself. There are tons and tons of receipts out there on the web if you search for "Daniel Micay list of enemies", especially on a site that I don't feel comfortable promoting but which does a very good job of keeping track of this stuff - especially because Daniel always deletes everything incriminating afterwards. If you're going to catch him in the act you need to take screenshots and make archive.org snapshots.
Daniel's behavior is a very important issue to be aware of if you're considering using grapheneOS, and personally it crosses the line of what I feel comfortable with in regards to running his operating system on the most personal device I have. Louis Rossman was even more justified in his decision to do the same, since Daniel is (to this day) specifically targeting him.
I don't view it as badly. He's probably overly defensive and paranoid and interprets some forms of criticism as attacks. But I do not see this as an argument against his competence or contributions to the project, or against using GrapheneOS altogether, at all. In fact, I even kind of like having someone paranoid as the head of a security-focused OS. Seems like a useful synergy to me. Also, AFAIK the GrapheneOS project now also has others posting about the project, not just him alone. I think this was also a result of his "miscommunication" in the past. Furthermore, the project is too important (there are almost zero high-security and high-privacy mobile OSes!) to escalate this into a problem. And furthermore again, there might also be parties involved who are ACTUALLY interested in attacking GrapheneOS and weakening its popularity, for their own gains. And so when your successful and also high-quality project is under regular attacks from various angles, you might get more paranoid and misinterpret some valid criticism as a result. Combine that with Rossman's over-dramatic nature and high reach, and someone paranoid like Daniel might take it the wrong way. And then communication spirals out of control into various escalations. At least that's how I interpret it.
He’s probably overly defensive and paranoid and interprets some forms of criticism as attacks.
I think this was also a result of his “miscommunication” in the past
there might also be parties involved who are ACTUALLY interested in attacking GrapheneOS and weakening its popularity, for their own gains.
when your successful and also high-quality project is under regular attacks from various angles
Rossman’s over-dramatic nature and high reach
then communication spirals out of control into various escalations
You should actually look at any of the copious amounts of evidence that involve this conversation instead of just imagining what it might look like. There's really not much else to talk about until you do. Daniel has given us zero evidence to support his side, while in contrast there's a mountain of evidence against him.
its lead dev is a bit socially awkward
Heh. You're being gentle, and that's good. But that's maybe understating it a bit.
I've seen the GrapheneOS official Mastodon account being an antisocial uncollegial mess.
It's okay to acknowledge that we wish some of our open source contributors were better community members.
Out of interest (because I know nothing whatsoever about GrapheneOS), how does its lead compare to Linus Torvald?
I don't follow either closely enough to make a rank list or anything.
In the same ballpark as some moments that Torvalds has apologized for. Milder than Torvald's worst, but also unrepentant, as far as I've seen.
In short, like anyone else:
He's absolutely right, and utterly annoying
Seems intelligent and I've enjoyed some of his videos. I don't know much about him other than he's a bit... intense? and he's sparked controversy with some people. I looove the FUTO keyboard app he's associated with. It's the best TTS keyboard I've found, and I refuse to use the Google/Samsung/etc equivalents
Also the Grayjay app.
He's very annoying to listen to.
He seems like a great consumer advocate and repair activist to me.
He does go a little over the top sometimes so his videos could be considered to be a bit overdramatic with a little sprinkle of rage bait.
However, I have rarely have disagreed with his views on consumer protection. Actually.... I have never disagreed with his views on consumer protection.
Him getting viewers pissed off is not what I would consider healthy, but the rage might get some people to stop showing their bellies to large companies. Regardless, his videos do walk a fine line for me personally. He should be getting income from his videos, which is fine. If he ever cracks and starts getting people pissed off expressly for the purpose of income, I'll drop his videos really quick.
He isn't a bad person, does a lot of good for the IT and repair community.
But with his recent behavior of bringing emotions into the GN v LMG debacle kind of did sour my opinion of him a bit. There were even comments that were removed by him calling him out on some of the shit he was saying.
I just watched the video and in all sincerity I could not see anything wrong with it. Genuinely asking what was bad about it? He just did an 8 min follow up too which seems objectively right.
Linus asked to handle it privately in a meeting at CES I believe, to keep drama out of the tech space. Linus specifically said he did not want to start drama and hoped to bury the hatchet.
Louis somehow decided it was a good idea to start massive public drama instead of trying to resolve it quietly.
Steve using Louis to fire shots while pretending to be on the high ground and not responding publicly was also rather pathetic.
Linus has certainly made some mistakes but GN framing LTT as the bastion of evil is comically stupid. Especially with the massive improvement LTT went through last year.
From what I can remember, the LTX thing that Louis brought up was after Linus had apologized for and then they did a colab video where it seemed they buried the hatchet on the main channel in a video where Steve and Louis both called out Linus for not doing in regards to Honey. Louis bringing that up again felt like the cliche arguing with your wife that never fails to forget some little slight you did years ago.
It all seems like jealousy on the part of Steve's behalf especially since Linus was recently on the Tonight Show then Steve changed parts of his website to not claim to be a journalist and Louis buying into it hook line and sinker. Steve is better off staying in the investigative journalist role and Rossmann would do better not getting into youtuber drama.
Were they removed by him, or were they automatically removed? I've seen some extremely egregious auto moderating on YouTube lately.
The ones that are speaking out against him have all been removed, and I doubt YouTube would do that automatically. Found a very in depth comment on my TV but couldn't on 3 other devices.
Great consumer rights activist and I have agreed with 90% of the takes I've heard from him, but his videos are mind numbingly long and boring.
He is much too verbose, launches into side topics that have nothing to do with the subject on hand, and he speaks much too fast. But that's his style. I believe he's on the spectrum and doesn't really know how to focus on what he has to say.
Having said that. I think Louis Rossmann wouldn't be Louis Rossmann, or even be as efficient as he is, if he didn't do that.
He does content? He can be a bit aggressive about his topics, that can rub people the wrong way.
I don't think he did anything offensively, legally or morally wrong.
I know just he exists, I don't follow his content.
He had some good points, but I don't think he has enough good points to fill a YouTube channel. He can be a little dramatic.
I don’t like him. He’s angry at everything and his videos are a chore to watch. I also feel like he’s sometimes a bit out of touch (I don’t like ads or paying for digital content either, but if no one pays for it, it‘ll stop existing) and a bit pessimistic (yes, companies aren’t your friends, but not everything you perceive as negative is done out of malice, sometimes people are just not thinking stuff through).
However, I do appreciate him as a right to repair activist.