The Freedom Phone is not great at privacy

The guy in the Freedom Phone video seriously compared Donald Trump to MLK and Abraham Lincoln. lol?

He also says "we don't ban apps, period", and the website even calls it "truly uncensorable" – I wonder how that works, but there's no technical details. I also wonder how they'll deal with spam, scams, malware, and other stuff of, ehm, questionable value that will inevitably pop up.

I couldn't find much of this "truly uncensorable" app store on the Freedom Phone website, other than the name "ClearAPPS", so I assume it belongs to ClearOS. The ClearOS website is anything but clear though; even the corporate maze sites of HP, IBM, Lenovo, etc. are more clear than that ... thing. I eventually found https://www.clearos.app, and I assume that must be it(?) I installed it on Android Emulator, and it's installed as "ClearAPPS", so I guess so.

The thing bills itself as "The Marketplace Built On the security of Decentralized Storage", whatever that may mean. If I press "News" on the app's homepage there are exactly four apps: "Fox News", "Fox Nation: Celebrate America", "America's Voice", and "Just The News". Actually, that's not true: if I select an app and go back I have 8 apps: the app list gets duplicated. If I select "Categories" and go to "News" I see much more. As will surprise probably no one, the entire thing is a buggy piece of crap.

When you first start their app it downloads the repository list from their servers; this must be the "truly uncensorable decentralized storage" they're talking about shrug. I couldn't find any clear Terms of Service for this entire thing in either the app or on the website.

Source isn't available either as near as I can find; ClearOS has a GitHub, but last update is from 2019.

[1]: https://www.clear.software/pages/marketplace-terms-of-servic...

It's also called 'cringe' in gen Z speak

Probably a Fairphone since it values sustainability and worker rights in their supply chain even if the value for buck of their devices is lower than the main corporate brands like Apple/Alphabet/Samsung. (Plus support for unlocking the bootloader, flashing a custom ROM and relocking the bootloader which means it recently got CalyxOS support)

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fairphone_4

I found more info on the frequency thing: https://www.clearhealth.coach/clearscan-remote.html

After scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling some more ("is this literally peddling clairvoyance?") I finally encounter a... DNA test kit at the bottom of the page. Oh. So this is either the internet equivalent of overnight infomercial TV (oversell oversell oversell) or they actually are doing Weird Stuff to the DNA that gets sent in.

Going further and checking out https://www.clearhealth.coach/ClearTUNE.html, the latter does seem to be the case: they've apparently come up with the idea that DNA is "quantum-entangled" and that when you send your DNA swab off to their lab, exposing that DNA swab to frequency (how?) transmits supposed benefits back to you via a "quantum link".

Congratulations, you giant acorns, you've just provided all the raw material to enable some unfortunate numpty with us-vs-them syndrome to come along and "discover" the conspiracy of But What Are All The Other Testing Companies Doing To DNA They Might Be Transmitting Harmful Frequencies Making People Stupid???

Please stay a niche. Please stay a niche. Oh, good, it's $500, hopefully that prevents it from scaling.

*Headdesk*

The unhinged/unbounded nature of the way this has been presented sadly only serves to weaponize the impact of any reactive conspiracy theories: the claims this makes about purported benefits (there's a list just above the price section, which includes such humdingers as "EMF protection", "essential nutrition", "GMO detox", and "injury regeneration", along quite a few more) are entirely vacuous and without substance (understandable and par the course) - but if you flip this sort of non-closed-ended mindset around in a what-if setting, no amount of substantiation and concrete data will fill the sort of false information vacuum (for want of a better way to put it) that gets created.

(On a side note, it's curious how everything in the aforementioned list fits reasonably comfortably into "can be influenced by the placebo effect". The bit about "Covid Care" neatly sidesteps claiming significant effect too. Really gives me the impression this was definitely sniff-tested by a lawyer or two - whoops, there go several bits of plausible deniability out the window...)

Poking around the little web of shell^Winterconnected organizations this setup has cobbled together, I noticed:

- MLM identified at https://www.clearcellular.org/ - down the bottom, "reward yourself": "...a robust rewards program for those who refer their friends and family."

- The little "made in china" stock image at the bottom of https://clearfoundation.co.nz/ is cute

- They really do appear to have registered co.com to get clear.co.com, but despite co.com having an A record the IP times out, nice

- After drowning in the word "decentralized" everywhere on all the cryptocurrency fluff, https://clearfoundation.co.nz/webwallet obtusely notes front-and-center that "This password encrypts your private key. This does not act as a seed to generate your keys." ...k

- While poking around https://www.clear.co.com/clearcenter I was curious about the VM offeri--oh it was shut down. Why is it the 2nd callout?

- Clicking around between different websites I cannot straightforwardly figure out what any of them do. Yes there are PDFs and value propositions and case studies and interconnections but there's so much information it's overwhelming and I cannot see straight. Oh. That's the strategy. Wait where did all my money go??? ...What business overheads? Consulting? Consulting for what? What have I actually gotten out of this?

I was wondering if HPE even realized what they were associating with. I now wouldn't be surprised if they don't realize themselves.