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.

I should declare a bias before I start. I grew up in regional Austria surrounded by agricultural co-operatives. The Lagerhaus sold the seed, the fertiliser and the diesel. The dairy co-op collected the milk. I’ve known them from the farm gate and, briefly, from inside the farmers’ league that runs alongside them. I’ve seen what they do well when their members actually run them, and I’ve seen what happens when governance gets comfortable and they start behaving like the corporations they were founded to keep at bay. They remain, perhaps sentimentally, a favourite of mine.