I guess it’s a) unfamiliarity, b) inconvenience for what they don’t see as much of an upside and c) crypto as a whole being frustratingly seen as a scam, largely because of projects like the one in the post.

Is Monero hard to buy there? Are you doing so on Haveno?

Yeah, there is a whole “separate OS”, but, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been evidence of it casually being able to collect arbitrary data from the actual phone’s OS.

My issue with that is that Pixels are expensive, and in some places are not sold officially (meaning they can only be bought from smaller resellers with usually much less generous return policies). The newest models are outright unaffordable new. The only ones below $150 are either secondhand or out of support, so that’s what poor people are left with? Plus, no headphone jack.

I use Graphene myself, but I dislike absolutism. I don’t in the slightest regret buying my Pixel even though $300 is a painful sum to spend on a phone (and it was on the cheaper end if we’re talking about up-to-date models!), but I know that my mother would never spend this much on a phone - so I look into Divest or Lineage on more common and affordable phones.

Yes, absolutely! But that wasn’t the point - rather that the spyware ones are popular for some reason, and thus can serve as a sad example of “low-hanging fruit to make an example of”.

(TBH I don’t get the need for a separate app in general, seems gimmicky, I just use a normal calendar)

A similar argument I hear is “If they want me, they will find and arrest me no matter my precautions”.

Kinda yes… But why are you talking about threat models that include someone deliberately hunting you down? We are not high-ranking dissidents or criminals that they would put effort and money into finding. Our concern is passive surveillance - maybe the collected info doing us a disservice (like being leaked for scammers or sold to an evil ex), maybe even something mundane getting flagged and us being arrested just to serve as an example.