Pretty sure that is it. A lotta people in response to seeing him decry certain technologies tend to say, "that uncompromising nature on privacy is why GrapheneOS holds up so well." Which I gotta be real when I say that it really does make me feel more comfortable with GrapheneOS' development. I can't keep up with all news on it, I'm not wanting to completely audit all the source code, but having a development team led by someone like that does bring a sense of ease toward my phone.

He gets away with it because he makes a high quality OS that people want to use. I don't see it as much worse than e.g. using Linux when Torvalds is kind of an asshole.