alt Hacker NewsJust like Linux can mean "the Linux kernel" or "a Linux distribution" in "common use of the terms", Android can mean "a device that can legally be advertised using the Android trademark" or "whatever looks like Android to people".
Now when someone says "Break free from Android... by installing Android?", either they are having fun by using the two different meanings in the same sentence, or they are confused and genuinely believe that using GrapheneOS does not allow you to break free from the system running on a device that can legally be advertised using the Android trademark.
To that, I answer that GrapheneOS is not a system that can legally be advertised using the Android trademark, but rather a system that is based on what is commonly (and can legally be) called AOSP, which is made of the open source codebase that builds the system that can legally be advertised as Android.
Similarly, in a discussion about kernels, Android is a Linux system, but in a discussion about OSes, Android is not a Linux system. If I write an article about "breaking free from Linux by using Android", where the context makes it exceedingly clear that I'm talking about Linux as an OS and not Linux as a kernel, and you say "it makes no sense, you're talking about breaking free from Linux by installing... Linux", then I think you're confused. As in: you did not understand what the article was talking about.
You're vigorously defending a poorly thought out title by inventing irrelevant contexts and falsely accusing multiple people of being wrong because they claimed such uncontroversial things like "AOSP is Android". Sure, if we want to be strictly correct then AOSP is not Android, but rather the name of a Google project that distributes the source code of Android - but that's not how the term is commonly used in these discussions nor how you used it either.
What people objected to is the concept of "breaking free from Android" by using a distribution of Google-developed Android. Interpreting the title as "break free from flavors of Android that can use the Google's trademark in their marketing; here's one that can't" is just ridiculous and not what anyone will think about when reading it. The current one ("break free from Google") is still objectionable, but slightly less since one could perhaps make a somewhat correct point that relying on Google-developed codebase that's soft-forked by someone else actually is significant enough step away from using something that comes straight from Google and tightly integrates with their proprietary services. It's still quite obviously hyperbolic, especially when actual non-Android alternatives also exist.