The contempt Proton is showing for their users is astounding. They not only think people will fall for this transparent act of damage control, but they also have the gall to shift blame onto the users.
Go read the comments. Obvious bots are posting praise and many critical comments are being deleted by the moderators.
perception is more important than truth
That’s all I need to read.
Proton have marketed themselves exceptionally well, comments suggesting they are not what they seem have always been met with a lot of downvotes. They marketed themselves into a brand receiving the same blind adoration as a sporting tam.
Sometimes it feels like the other way around too. So much hate and few reasonable discussions, like where to go?
I’m on proton, and maybe I have been fooled but then where to go? Switzerland has one of the best privacy laws on the planet, the services are stellar (IMO), and yeah fuck the C-Suits, but google, mullvad, etc? No thank you.
It’s so infuriating.
I like having a single stack of integrated features, so that I don’t have to shop around and figure who is the current best in slot far as service providers go. Yen is making it hard for me to stay with Proton, making it feel much less trustworthy.
The redeeming feature is that Proton is in Switzerland, for the reasons you gave. I figure a European country with good privacy standards might be able to rein in this bullshit. Might.
I will be watching this, and hope we get a Proton replacement - be it as a service, or the ditching of conservative leadership from Proton.
Yeah I feel likewise. Also I feel europe might take a bad route and cramp down on privacy, even if it’s revoked (chat control and more) so Switzerland seems the best place to be at the moment.
Also, so we don’t forget, Mullvad is funding fascists:
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
Privacyguides.org has some generally solid info. For email it looks like your best bet is Tuta and for a VPN it’s Mullvad.
They mention Mailbox.org and ivpn too, but both of those have pretty clear deal breakers for me.
Just so we don’t forget, Mullvad is 1.000x worse, so if you leave Proton, don’t go there:
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
Dudes, the funder of mullvad sponsors the fashists in sweden, have you already forgotten?
Or are you some undercover mullvads or what.
One source: https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
Mullvad doesn’t seem to allow port forwarding, while Proton VPN does. Does anyone know of a good VPN provider that does port forwarding and isn’t a shittier company than proton?
AirVPN
Stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use ai more
Well, that’s true, as a business.
It’s an unfortunate reality, very poorly (too honestly?) worded by Andy.
Consumers need to do much better in that respect, we need to hold corporations, and politicians to account, we need to put more effort into our choices.
Charitably, it means the incorrect perceptions cause damage regardless of the truth. Do you dispute that position?
See how much harder it is to dismiss a position when we don’t shortchange it?
I myself don’t care what happens to Proton as a privately held company, and I don’t buy their services. I just don’t like cheap shots. The level of discourse at the fediverse doesn’t need to devolve into another reddit.
Reddit is actively deleting dissent. How the FUCK is this anywhere near Reddit levels?
You got it right. I saw the thread and the entire thing was a gigantic manipulation. But still, even in the context of that manipulation, it meant get out there and talk because others have perceptions that are out of alignment with our reality.
Somehow Proton is making it even worse. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.
Watching this CEO ripping down his own company & calling employees losers is wild stuff. But many saw it coming after his pro-gop remarks. He is who he is, and this was imminent with Andy remaining in charge after that.
Yeah, already gave Mailbox.org a try via their free trial and it’s great. So, now I’m not switching back even if they clean up their act. Thanks Proton! Lmao
Proton is not rushing into AI without concern for safety, it is actually being done very carefully.
“stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
One of these is not like the other.
If you are choosing to use “AI” right now, that is proof enough you do not have “concern for safety”: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol40/0996/2026/en/
There are no ethical commercial models. IBM Granite is the closest you’ll get, and the last model that claimed training data set that allowed the output to be freely redistributed failed the first time someone independent looked.
Even training your own is suspect. Distillation of a commercial model means using it. I’m not sure about the ecological impact of training your own model, but I know commercial training has set back sustainability goals at multiple companies by more than a decade.
Christ, who’s doing their damage control? The church of Scientology??
Maybe they’re using AI to write their damage control strategy lol
Hate to say it but even AI couldn’t fuck up this bad
“Leakers”
“This hurts me”
Obvious appeals to emotion, like all big tech manipulation.
At Proton, the engineering and product management roles are merging and we call this new discipline “Product Engineering”. Proton also mostly hires product managers with engineering backgrounds. It means we stop hiring engineers who just code, and hire instead product engineers who also exercise product judgment that AI doesn’t have, not that we don’t hire engineers at all.
eugh
Oh no. I have been dragging my feet on leaving Proton. This means I need to make it a priority before they fuck things up irreparably.
i signed on posteo because i had to pay and the sunk costs hopefully help me switch. Also their service/website looks almost exactly like 10 years ago so im hopeful that its a safe option for mail that websites accept
I will look at that one. Tuta and Mailbox.org are my current top picks.
Posteo doesn’t do custom domains so mailbox.org still has my #1 so far followed by fastmail for cost reasons
Read through the post and the comments. Most of the comments are people pointing this out for what it is - a sanctioned attempt by Proton (from someone who appears to be a personal friend of Yen) at changing the narrative. It doesn’t change my mind at all, and actually hardens me to the idea of moving.
A genuine post by a lower-level employee below was more interesting, but the core of it is: Yen goes or we go.
Just so we don’t forget, Mullvad is 1.000x worse, so if you leave Proton, don’t go there:
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
They need to change CEO
If they change the ceo, they are not going to fire most of his hires; company is ruined long term
Dude is the majority share holder and he’s on the board of the controlling non-profit. It sucks to say it but he’s not going anywhere.
I read someone on Reddit saying the board could remove him without his approval. Guess it wasn’t true.
Can they?
ThE CeO pRaIsInG FaScIsTs DoEsNT AfFeCt tHe PrOducT
So they’re openly admitting that they’re using Reddit for astroturfing now? I didn’t click the link because fuck reddit, but no doubt they have armies of shill accounts boosting their PR image. They probably even have reps inside PR to manage all of it, and might even be paying them for that privilege.
It’s hilarious how both Reddit and Proton keep digging deeper into the holes they created for themselves.
Reddit just sells bot access to advertisers. The whole thing now is instead of seo is ai search optimization. Which in reality is just a bunch of Israeli companies who use ai to AstroTurf posts for other companies many of which are political, or for PR companies. They also do product placement type stuff but that’s less interesting.
Basically if there’s a unique sentence on the internet and you Google something close to that sentence google will present it as fact, also google prefers to show latest search results so the idea is you just constantly flood the internet with similarly worded ai written articles, reddit bots, etc and you own the search result. They did it with the whole open ai hacked huggingface controversy, that was ran by a Israeli ad company that just shits out ai articles in mass to manipulate our search algorithms.
And you cant talk out against it, reddit, tiktok, etc all owned by Israel interest now so you get censored.
Basically GW from mgs
If they were given permission then they were given a script as well, pos CEO can’t stop posing.
No comms professional would approve of them doing this, and no professional wrote that script. I’d put money on this coming direct from Yen or another executive.
The guy is Proton employee #5. He used to share a desk with the CEO. Hes a high level exec and a personal friend of Andy, so yup.
He also called his 8 coworkers who were brave enough to whistleblow “cowards.” This is exceptionally rich from Proton, which has bragged about being safe for whistleblowers to use.
Somehow, he didnt post much more after people roasted the fuck out of him.
Migrate your stuff, cancel your subscriptions, be completely ready to be banned from your account when you then get a credit card chargeback from your bank.
That’s what I did, years ago when Andy Yen was praising fascists on social media.
Get that chargeback. Just be fully migrated away first because they WILL block your access to your account whem it goes through.
So where now, any suggestions?
I use proton for email and password management.I’m happy to pay for a product so long as it isn’t lining the pockets of abhorrent people.
Getting real tired of seemingly having to sit down and research who I’m give my money to, can’t we just stop being hateful bastards for a while?
Go piecemeal. Proton is a good deal if you actually use all their services, otherwise it’s overpriced.
For mail, mailbox.org, posteo.de, and fastmail.net seem to have good reputations. They’ll all allow you to bring your own domain (edit: not Posteo, my mistake), which I highly recommend so that it’ll be easy to switch providers again when whichever one you choose turns to shit (yes, I say when, not if, because I am just that jaded at this point).
For passwords, there are a lot of choices, but the most future-proof is probably to keep a local Keepass DB and sync it across devices any damn way you want. Bitwarden used to be good but I don’t know anymore. They’ve backed away from open source a bit recently, and I can’t even tell at a glance what their free plan offers anymore. Maybe look at https://vaultwarden.com/ instead.
For VPN and storage…I dunno. There are a lot, and most of them seem kind of shady tbh. I’d be interested in hearing others’ advice on this since I’m not sure what’s good these days.
Edit: I’d REALLY like to hear recommendations for Docs and especially Sheets. Everything else I’ve used is a UX nightmare, particularly on mobile.
Just a small note, afaik posteo doesn’t support custom domains
Oh, looks like you’re right. Thanks for the correction.
For VPN and storage…I dunno. There are a lot, and most of them seem kind of shady tbh. I’d be interested in hearing others’ advice on this since I’m not sure what’s good these days.
Personally, I’m on PIA for VPN and Mega for storage. Both not without their controversies, of course, but they work well, have native Linux GUIs, and seem solid enough for my purposes.
Fastmail is great for email
I also use them for contacts and calendar. Fastmail even syncs with my work schedule online.
Do it yourself is really the only way. Password management yourself is easy, email self hosting…not as much. But it is do-able.
The email middle ground is using your own domain and finding a decent host that runs an Imap email server. But who that is these days is a guess.
Some of the long time mostly trusted hosts have begun to add AI and raise prices.
Getting your own domain is the important part. If you’re ever unhappy with your provider you just swap your DNS records and boom, move it to the new provider in seconds.
I can’t find a domain name I like that isn’t annoying to try to tell people 😭 My first world problems are insurmountable.
Common enough that it’s taken already. Not counting crazy TLDs. It’s even taken in reverse which doesn’t spell anything.
How would you suggest this password management is done and synced across devices?
I know of KeePass, though haven’t looked into it too closely.
KeePassx saves its database as a file. Keeping that file in sync can be done by only using it in one place and reference only that one from your devices, or use something like syncthing to sync the file.
Keepass and syncthing if you want have full control. Keepass and something like dropbox if you don’t mind some cloud
Keepass and syncthing if you want have full control.
This is what I do. It works well.
I never understood why someone would use a 3rd party for “password management”
You wrote your own password manager? Bold, as its a vault that contains your whole digital life and cryptography is notoriously easy to fuck up.
Even things like keepass are 3rd party password managers. You have an issue with a well audited, decades old, “the vault is an encrypted local file,” 3rd party password manager as well?
No one existed before password managers
So… you just remember all of them? Or is this a ******* situation?
yes, would you like me to list them? /s
Just add the name of the site/service to your usual password.
If your usual password is “Password123”, then your Google password is “Password123google”, your Lemmy password is “Password123lemmy” and your ebay password is “Password123ebay”, etc etc etc. (Obviously, you’d want to use a better base password than that. This is just an example.)
That way, it’s super easy to remember because you only need to remember one password, but you still have a unique password for every different service, so you won’t get burned when one inevitably leaks it.
ಠ_ಠ
This is horrible advice, one of the reason you should have different passwords is that if one site has bad security and your password gets leaked your other accounts are safe. If this password gets leaked your other passwords are easily guessable. A LLM will hack your other accounts without a problem…
