What did they keep?
And now I’ve ditched Proton. Andy Yen’s comments made me skeptical, but I was still confident that their mission was intact. This move, to a social media platform with a demonstrated willingness to censor non-corporatist views, confirms my fears that they are giving up their principles.
Exactly this. I left after the previous comments but still felt they had integrity. That’s also starting to change
Why
because their ceo came out as fascist and mastodon is calling them out.
I’m not super informed on that. Didn’t he say that he didn’t mean it that way? Could you clarify please? I wonder what other options there are? Tuta?
Tldr, the CEO is an idiot, Proton is bad at (social media) and there is a cultural difference between how people in the US look at politics
Thanks for the link, that’s a lot more context than the usual reactionary “Andy Yen said one nice thing about a Republican therefore he’s fascist pro-Trump MAGA” takes I’ve been seeing. Not only does it more or less disprove that narrative, it makes me question how much of the hate against him lately is genuine and how much of it has been seeded and signal-boosted by nation-state actors who don’t want people to use encrypted communications.
Yen is clearly trying to be nonpartisan and praise what he sees as good for privacy while pointing out abuses of power, regardless of who has the power at the moment. He sees this as his way of adding weight to the scale in favor of better privacy and tearing down big tech. I know many in my country and on the web are hyper-polarized and addicted to anger, to the point that if someone says anything even slightly positive about their perceived political enemy, it’s seen as legitimizing and aligning with that enemy, but I don’t believe that’s a healthy or productive mindset to have. I believe that kind of divisive attitude is preventing us from uniting with those who should be agreeable to our cause, and that’s exactly what the oligarchs want. It’s making us weak.
I’ve been on the fence for a while since this whole thing started, because I do use a paid Proton email, and it sounded bad, but I kept getting this nagging feeling I wasn’t seeing the full picture. That’s gone now - Andy may be politically and/or socially inept, and he may have a different perspective on what it means to support privacy and democracy, but I think it’s clear his heart is in the right place, and the work he and Proton are continuing to do for tech privacy is helping to erode authoritarian power structures, including Trump’s.
I am inclided to agree with you that Andy Yen is just an idiot and that Proton is doing it’s best to stay natural and make the most of the situation. However their communications team is pretty lackluster.
On another note, the article I linked is an opinion, so while it is laid out pretty well it is probably not telling the entire story. I have a custom domain on my Proton account so I can Switch if it ever goes to hell. I would advice you to do the same.
Yeah I looked further into the article and it indeed does not seem to paint the entire picture. Especially with the omission that after leaving the FTC, Gail Slater became vice-president for legal and regulatory policy for the Internet Association which is a lobbying group for companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook.
And The Internet Association had been covered by EFF before highlighting some things they didn’t agree with.
The Internet Association—a trade group for big technology companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon—spent nearly $176,000 to lobby the California legislature last quarter, according to the Washington Post. It is now running misleading ads on social media asking Sacramento lawmakers to weaken the law.
The group claims that surveillance-based advertising technology, which slurps up and broadly spreads consumers’ personal data without their knowledge, should be exempted from the CCPA. In truth, surveillance-based adtech is one of the worst privacy hazards that the law was designed to stop. It also provides little benefit to online publishers, and erodes trust between companies and their consumers.
So medium article just glossing over who Gail started working for after leaving the FTC makes the omission a sign of incompetence or intentional with the knowledge it might weaken their argument. And who even is ovenplayer? We got no idea who this random person is so not covering the whole details makes me wonder why this medium article keeps being posted. Rather funny actually that the Trump tweet provided in the medium article omits this part too.
You can read past discussions here
Wow! That’s shocking. Any alternatives you recommend?
I haven’t fully committed to a new email yet to fully transfer over to, but I have been testing out tuta with it being one of the emails recommended by privacy guides. Still undecided though on what paid option to move to.
Tuta is located in Germany which is part of the fourteen eyes intelligence aliance. Germany also had a conservative party and a far right party win the elections.
Not saying Tuta isn’t good or anything, just wanted to share the info I have about it which might be relevant.
Already well aware of the CDU and AFD. As long as nobody forms a coalition with the AFD not too bothered. Of course, if they do then it becomes a big problem.
Thanks for the link
Mastodon is built misanthropy, that’s why Mastodon people are a spaz.
Mastodon is a self-hostable software, not a service controlled by a single person. The servers are hosted by inviduals so you should be saying “Some people on Mastodon thinks X”, instead of the whole platform.
Mastodon rules say for those who have the approved opinions in line with admins, it’s fine to wish death on individuals that Mastodon admins want to see killed.
Misanthrophy?
This is very disappointing.
They have a large following on Mastodon so this doesn’t really make much sense. I’m inclined to believe that they left due to the hate they were getting because of the recent controversy.
I think this is right on the money.
What is the recent controversy?
The CEO came out as a fascist
Like Elon Musk recently?
This is just…not accurate.
CEO is what I describe as a Right-wing Libertarian. Dude not only praised the trump FTC appointee, but also said “republicans are on the side of the ‘little guy’”. Andy Yen is one of the members of the Board of Trustees of Proton Foundation, the non-profit that owns a majority of Proton AG. He initially used his personal account, then later used the official account (so I’m assuming the other board members did not object to it), then later “apologized” for it and said he would use his personal accounts. The reddit account has a username with the number 88 in binary, which led some to speculate its a nazi (88 = HH = Heil H*tler) dogwhistle, to which Andy Yen says its his year of birth 1988. Kinda weird, but he could just be that clueless, who knows 🤷♂️.
From what I could gather from his public statements, including twitter: Andy Yen is also supportative of Ukraine and have donated to Ukraine, and is supportative of the Hong Kong protestors, and is against Russian censorship and against US red state’s Age Verification laws.
My view is: Andy Yen is an idiot, and there shouldn’t be any immediate threats, but its still not a bad idea to pre-emptively move, if you can, just in case he pulls a “Musk” and does the salute tomorrow.
We unfortunately live in the world where saying “Trump is an idiot” and “Actually I was kidding. He’s the second coming of Christ” might only be a day apart.
Never heard the 88 thing till now. Not everyone is tied to what shit bags are doing all the time.
Its a really old one. Neo nazis have ysed it for multiple generations now
Like the “14 words”
The reddit account has a username with the number 88 in binary, which led some to speculate its a nazi (88 = HH = Heil H*tler) dogwhistle, to which Andy Yen says its his year of birth 1988. Kinda weird, but he could just be that clueless, who knows
I mean this part I give him a pass on. It was right for people reading him to raise an eyebrow, because political signalling like that does happen, especially in a context where he’s making comments like he made. But in this case it was just a nothingburger.
It doesn’t make his “wasn’t intended to be a political comment” excuse any less gibberish though.
He also used the word “triggered” in the Reddit comments in the way right wingers are wont to do, and then tried to play the “I’m not American, I don’t understand how that word looks to you” card. Never mind that plenty of non-Americans know perfectly well how that looks.
No, it’s far more likely he picked up that word and knew exactly how it was used because he’s been hanging out in far right spaces.
as a european I have no idea what tertiary meaning does “triggered” have
The whole 88 thing is not generally know except probably in Germany and the US.
He is an idiot yes, but the internet is also making it seem like if you agree with one statement you agree with all statements of that person/party which is just wrong.
Always use your own domain on Proton and others. The laws in Germany aren’t as friendly as the one in Swiss so that can be causing issues as well.
Yeah. They can’t get Mastodon moderators to suppress negative publicity like they can on Reddit and other platforms.
if they cant suppress on reddit, they will go to facebook, which give them ability to do alot more.
They haven’t left bluesky but they got backlash there too and have stopped being active for the past couple of weeks compared to on Twitter.
So glad I moved away from Proton a few weeks ago. They seem to be going downhill.
I wonder if the “limited resources” are due to them potentially losing a whole load of customers recently.
You know, if their tech truly is as open-source as they market, then they’ve still contributed hugely to the ecosystem. If it turns out it’s not actually operationally open-source, then this will be remembered in a hugely negative light.
Edit: I did just see their post about being impacted by the US spending cuts. I can’t imagine Proton would be super happy about that administration at the moment. But then again, who knows these days.
The backend isn’t open source. Iirc, its just the clients.
big sad
I’m seriously starting to consider moving from proton to Fastmail. My renewal is coming up in May.
There’s also Migadu which I currently use. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that providers like Proton and Tuta have with their E2EE but they don’t use any shady marketing or track you. Requires a custom domain though.
I never heard of them, I’ll check them out. Thanks!
Is Fastmail US based?
Australia
Ah, so 5 eyes. Tuta is German so 14 eyes. Not a lot of options out there
Consider mailbox.org too.
Cool, I’ll check them out.
I switched after the whole CEO issue, but tbh I was annoyed at how limited proton mail was because of encryption. Super happy with Fastmail in comparison! Got 2 domains linked, multiple servers using it for SMTP, a bunch of aliases and masked emails. Calendar and contacts setup on android with DAVx5 to de-google some more. So good.
This is my exact setup, too. It works without any problem using either thunderbird or their web UI.
I tried Proton years ago and didn’t find it that useful (I can manage my own PGP keys, thank you).
Started switching to Fastmail seriously this month, after having had mail delivery problems with mailbox.org because of DNSSEC issues (they use a deprecated SHA1 signature still) - I have used migadu.com for a different domain for a few years as well but the webmail is a bit sluggish and the spam filter too aggressive, I might end up consolidating on Fastmail for now
Sure it’s Five Eyes so a slight regression from mailbox and migadu, but if it works well enough I might be able to get my family to move off of Gmail so a net win
I switched after the CEO came out supporting Trumps nomination and the republicans being the party of the small guy
Of all the fuckin places to move to they chose reddit 😭
Because they can control the dialog on reddit
Can someone recommend a good and privacy oriented alternative to Proton Drive.
It’s sad that Proton bought SimpleLogin because I was and I’m currently using it before the acquisition.
CryptPad. It doesn’t needs email to sign up.
Tuta mail
Tuta are also enshittifying.
How so?
They show you ads as a premium user and spam your inbox with “news” that’s just poorly disguised upsell attempts.
Do they? I haven’t experienced either of these. Where would I find the ads? Curious if my pihole is hiding them
Nextcloud on a paid plan from some company (e.g. Hetzner) or, if you’ve got the stones for it, Nextcloud self-hosted.
Aww, is someone booty blasted they can’t control the dialog no more?
Glad I ditched proton.
What do you use instead?
Represent
I don’t use email all that much. I have a tuta account for now.
I went mullvad.
I’m disappointed…I tried to not care about this CEO supporting Trump, but come on…now they ditch Mastodon, tomorrow they close source their clients…I’m losing trust to them, I used to think about them as knights in this capitalist world, but well. As someone once said “You either live and die as a legend, or live long enough to become evil”. I don’t want it to happen but yeah, I guess we all gotta find a good replacement for Proton services, sad but it is what it is.
Again??? Isn’t this like, the third time they do this?
For real? Man, at this rate, I might have to switch away from their products, I really hope they get their act together really really soon…
