Android

It's the latter, but GrapheneOS gets pushed a lot because it's the biggest name in the custom ROM scene. The astroturfing is more in relation to the constant attempts to defame anyone they perceive as a threat, whether that's other custom ROM projects, YouTubers or anyone else.

All that stuff was being sent around in the .ml Privacy community again recently, including their favourite conspiracy theory involving Techlore, Louis Rossmann and Nicholas Merrill (founder of Calyx Institute and CalyxOS). According to the GrapheneOS cult, Techlore and Rossmann are paid employees of Merrill's and have been attacking GrapheneOS on his behalf. Zero evidence, of course. Just the usual "source: trust me bro" you expect from GrapheneOS.

And as usual, a lot of it was orchestrated in the comments by a moderator of the GrapheneOS community here. Guess what the thread was about? Yes, another attack on the security and privacy of /e/OS. It's all so predictable.

I think it's more likely that people involved with GrapheneOS are just very passionate/obsessed with security, and take an almost evangelist approach to discourse in this space that is completely devoid of any kind of nuance. Anything that is not as secure as GrapheneOS is extremely bad and a danger to the movement, from their perspective. They're not even necessarily wrong on the individual facts a lot of the time, but their approach is always hyper-aggressive with very high modality language that makes things seem worse than they are. For whatever reason, many of the people associated with the project seem to be completely lacking in social skills and are incapable of having a two-way conversation. They also have a massive victim complex and are constantly accusing anyone who is even remotely critical of them of being part of some big corporate conspiracy, so even an one-off exchange between someone associated with another project and a GrapheneOS team member can quickly spiral into a gigantic fake drama (as happened with CalyxOS several years ago).