Aaaahhh no no worries, I talk a lot 😆 Sorry for making you read that then!
I'm just out of the loop. I haven't interacted much with Hexbear and I'm a bit confused about the response from Lemmy World, so I'm trying to get some understanding. I look forward to federating!
Yes, GrapheneOS is a popular pixel-specific OS!
It is rather ironic that to de-google your phone you need to get a phone from Google. I was skeptical at first, and thought that Google was trying to play us for dumb 🕵️ But after reading through their faq and reading through some online discussions I'm somewhat convinced that it makes sense. The general concept as I understand is that Google phones have very secure hardware-specific features, and they allow you to strip-off the OS and install a new OS that still has access to those security features. It is said that phones from other manufacturers are not as secure and they don't give you access to the hardware security features through a custom OS. Please don't ask me to go into detail though, because I'm not sure about the specifics 😅