In part one I explained why I keep doing things the hard way, and in part two who is actually prying the doors open. This is the hard way itself: the choices I made turning a Pixel 10 Pro running GrapheneOS into a phone I can live with, what worked, what didn’t, and what I still haven’t solved. If you’re thinking about making the switch, I hope it saves you a few of the Saturday afternoons it cost me.

In part one I argued that convenience is the bait, and that doing things the hard way is worth the friction. I also conceded Cory Doctorow’s point: individual choices won’t fix enshittification. Policy will. This post covers why GrapheneOS needs that policy to survive, who is actually writing it, where they should point it next, and what you can do to help.

If I had a dollar for every eye-roll my refusals have earned me, my new phone would have cost me nothing. My partner’s arrives whenever I say “no, I’m not on WhatsApp”. My tech colleagues have their own version, usually when I explain, again, that I’m not on Twitter, or X, or whatever its owner has decided to call it this week. Friends ask why I can’t just use the family group chat like a normal person. Collaborators send me Facebook event links and then a second message, slightly weary, with the same details in plain text.