- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new “king”
Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it’s an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!
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Oh, goddammit.
The writing was on the wall for proton for a while now
No it hasn’t. Back this claim up with some evidence
I wouldn’t call it “writing on the wall,” but they have done some not-so-good things over the last few years:
- Handing over data for their email services (which was legally required) (ref).
- Releasing a Bitcoin wallet. The problem for me is that Bitcoin is inherently not private.
- Lying in marketing. Proton claims “no data or speed limits” for their free VPN (ref), which is just plain wrong. If you download a few gigs, it will slow you down to a few Mbit (if I remember correctly). I even contacted their support about this, and they just said, “They are balancing the servers for the free VPN.” But then why was it fast in the beginning, and if I reconnected to the same server, would it be fast again. Just to be clear: I have no problem with the speed limit/balancing itself, just that they are lying about it.
- Proton incentivizing free email accounts to connect to a Gmail account to get 500 MB more storage. (You need to go through the “tutorial” steps to get the 500 MB extra, and one of them is to have a Google Mail account send all their emails to your new Proton inbox.)
This is why I personally decided against Proton.
These are useful data for making decisions about using their service, but not exactly indicative of support for a right wing authoritarian leader who lies more in one day than he has hairs on his entire body.
Edit: typo
Mostly true, that’s why I opened with “I wouldn’t call it writing on the wall.” But for me, it shows that they are not as privacy- and consumer-focused as they like to present themselves. Supporting Trump is just five steps further in this direction. (That’s just how I feel about it.)
that’s why I opened with “I wouldn’t call it writing on the wall.”
Damn; you’re right. My bad. I somehow missed your opener saying exactly the opposite of what you were saying.
Everything you said is true and verifiable, and worth considering when you decide which service to use. It’s a lot of reasons to favor the .onion/tor version of their service to limit what they have access to depending on your privacy stance.
They are indicative of opportunism and greed, which is exactly in line with preemptively sucking up to a future dictator.
Woah… an actually rock-solid account of problems with Proton! Nicely done.
This contrasts with the incoherent conspiracy theory spaghetti that has sometimes been trotted out to make the case against them.
1,2 and 3 are completely irrelevant. 1 is completely normal, 2 missed the point that the wallet (which I don’t use, I never owned crypto) has nothing to do with privacy and 4 is an optional marketing strategy to incentivise migration from google. Nothing is wrong with any of this.
This is interesting. I’m current using btguard, but was thinking about other vpn providers. I have a free protonmail email account and was wondering about their vpn service. Sounds like they are not so privacy oriented. And I assume NordVPN is a similar story?
Well, I’d say Proton is still better than most other options (open-source software, no ad trackers on the website and in apps). However, specifically for VPNs, I would recommend Mullvad or IVPN. If you are a bit more tech-savvy, you may also take a look at Cryptostorm. Of all three, only Mullvad is police-raid-proven to not store logs or other PII. The most important thing for me personally would be that the VPN company is not owned by a larger parent company, which in turn owns multiple different VPN providers. This alone excludes a lot of the heavily advertised providers (Private Internet Access, NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, OVPN, and probably a few more).
What did you go with out of curiosity?
Drive - Selfhosted Nextcloud
Email - Posteo/Tuta
VPN - Cryptostorm (IVPN/Mullvad are more user friendly)
Passwords - Keepass (Sync over my Nextcloud.)
Yea! I’m interested, I did not see that coming…
Neither did I.
They’ve been cooperating with law enforcement and handing data to the cops proactively since 2021.
Pay attention.
What do you mean with “proactively”?
Is this what you’re referring to?
The proactive part is when they shut your account down and report it to the cops but yeah, the cooperating with interpol by providing data that they claimed they didn’t keep is damning.
Where do they claim they don’t collect this information?
And then we have the communists making Lemmy. Is there any moderate developers lol. Valve is the only big company I can think of that isn’t annoying. All the faceless Linux devs are good too
Glances at the child gambling enabled by the steam marketplace, an issue being blatantly ignored by Valve leadership.
Buddy, I don’t know how to tell you this. I love Valve for all the good they do, but they got some serious skeletons, too.
Valve representatives were asked point blank if the third party gambling sites have a positive influence on their bottom line, and the dude replying sweated bullets for several seconds before nervously going “we… don’t have any data on that” while the rest stared daggers at him.
Coffeezilla has a recent video on the situation.
I love Steam, but thinking about switching to gog over this. Anybody have any ideas how we can let valve know this isn’t okay?
I mean I always use GoG, if given the option. But there’s almost always no GoG option. Publishers want some form of DRM.
I did this years ago and have like 500 games on GOG. Ended up going back to Steam due to features that gog just doesn’t have. Sigh.
I have a feeling I would feel the same. Its nice having everything in one place. What was missing for you?
All the social features, the workshop, easy browsing, and guides just off the top of my head. GOG is still good for those really retro 90s and early 2000s games though
I understand your frustration but I’m not casting some wide net here. I’m simply talking about political ideologies being in your face.
Link to whatever you’re talking about?
The timestamp in the coffeezilla video.
Watch the whole thing for more detail.
If it’s between fascism and communism, the answer is pretty fucking simple imo. Only one of those ideologies considers all people to be equal.
And no, I am not a communist, and I would not choose communism unless it was the only alternative to fascism.
Totally understand what you’re saying. Obviously I am on Lemmy. Just wish we didn’t have ideologies in our face all the time
I fear for what will happen to valve when Gabr step down in the future
I have a bigger fear of what happens to Linux when Torvalds retires. He took a break a while back, and it was an absolute shit show of a power struggle.
Give some credit. Even if they aren’t politically aligned with your, they did make Lemmy open source for others to run with.
fuck off booooooot licker
The fuck are you on about?
The official @protonprivacy@mastodon.social account replied and doubled down
protonprivacy@mastodon.social - @jonah
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
1/2
protonprivacy@mastodon.social - @jonah By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
2/2
(Less importantly, my response)
Standing up for the little guy. Huh. Is that why billionaires and CEO are throwing literal tens of millions at Trump? Why he staffed his cabinet with billionaires? Why the center of his policy is tax cuts for the giga wealthy, at the expense of everyone else and the national debt, at a time where wealth inequality is literally tearing the country apart?
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/trump-windfall-fundraising-500-million
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/09/trump-wealth-cabinet-politicians-billionaires
These are objective, public facts. Like, I’m way more conservative than Lemmy’s center and willing acknowledge any good Trump does, but what reality is this guy living in? Who is this statement for? Who the heck does he think is using Proton services? He just pissed off his employees and customers for… What?
Probably doesn’t want to get banned in the US… Or so my copium tells me.
Silver lining is that Proton is owned by a non-profit.
I was thinking this for a second, but is this really plausible? Normally when we talk about corporations we talk about how powerful they are and how they use different nations to locate headquarters and offices in order to mitigate legal and tax obligations. We regularly talk about how governments can’t reign them in and how they act with impunity.
But now? “They HAVE to capitulate. They are just doing it to survive.” Really? Do we really believe that? Or is it more likely that this is what they want and if they didn’t, they’d be fighting tooth and nail to stop it? I’m with the second option honestly.
That’s what I don’t get. If the proton CEO was actually raging MAGA, the last thing he should do, strategically, is stoke fires by stirring this up. That’s business 101.
…He must want conservative’s ears for some kind of policy issue, maybe to the detriment of Proton’s competitors. But what?
OpenAI has taught me that the non-profit stuff is meaningless.
Seems a lot of people share this view that somehow he’s for the little guy, despite quite clearly being for the opposite. It’s the same over the pond, there’s a paranoia held by many that the government is out to persecute the common people. Very strange on both sides, it’s almost Orwell levels of Newspeak.
Taking the time to remove Google, embraced proton mail … Maybe it’s time to just write letters and send meme post cards.
Meme post cards are a great idea actually.
deleted by creator
That’s pretty cool, nice tool for the communication toolbox
hand drawn, because of these fingerprinting yellow dots
Same here; but I’m switching to tuta
So Proton is out.
Sorry, I won’t trust a service that licks fascist boots.
People somehow still surprised by Switzerland being neutral on Naziism
I see a lot of good discussion here. I’ve been on proton for years now, using my own domain. While true that Andy is one of 5 board members, and it’s a nonprofit etc, these statements are raising hairs on my neck, personally.
Does anyone have a good guide on problems associated with self-hosting email?
Been using their paid service for months. I have so many aliases. I’m just surprised. Surely this company knows its biggest user base has to be too educated to let this slide.
Why can’t we have nice things?
Very disappointing that this is the CEO and founder of Proton. I’ll be moving my stuff elsewhere and deleting my account this week.
Just canceled my subscription.
Where are you moving? I’m interested in alternatives to Proton Mail and Proton Drive
Mail I have sorted it out with Tuta and passwords with bitwarden.
Now I need a Drive alternative. Any suggestions?
Self-hosted Nextcloud?
Why does he think Trump is against big tech when he’s working side by side with Musk?
I wonder what is the percentage of nuts tech ceos.
Seems to be abnormally high
I literally just switched over from Google a few months ago and finally got all settled in. Just great. Does anyone know of any good alternative? I know Tuta exists, are there other options?
There is no way Trump wrote that tweet. It is full of punctuation and clearly gets a point across. It was clearly written by someone else. Nevertheless, time to delete protonmail.
Sure, yeah, anti-big tech.
Maybe Waluigi will make a prominent appearance at the inauguration too.
