I have actually found the “tankie” moniker to be useful IRL:
Tell someone you’re a Marxist-Leninist and you just get a blank stare.
Tell someone you’re a socialist and they think you mean you’re simpatico with AOC and Bernie.
Tell someone you’re a communist and they will just shut down and not hear anything else you say.
But “tankie” seems to convey enough truth - that you support past and current efforts from AES states to build socialism - to be useful.
I used GOS for about a year and a half, it’s pretty great. Tbh I didn’t feel I was really losing anything from the standard Android experience, but of course gaining more privacy and security.
Sandboxed Play Services works great. The only downside is you still need a Google account to use it, even if you only use the account for that purpose. And Google has really clamped down on not letting you create an account without providing a phone number.
But overall I definitely recommend GOS.