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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It’d actually be super useful if all of the VPN CEOs publicly stated which authoritarian leaders they are a fan of, so that consumers can make an informed choice on how easily they’ll sell you out to the security apparatus of your country.
I guess it’s time to look at self-hosted cloud storage services like NextCloud, OwnCloud, Seafile, CryptPad etc. that can replace Proton Drive, but does anyone have any recommendations for a secure email service to replace Proton Mail? From what I read on r/selfhosted, while you can technically run your own email server, it’s just not worth it.
https://tuta.com/ is pretty good.
Hetzner Storageshare
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
OK let me add fuel to the fire. here in Andy’s response he says the tweet was from last year which is technically true but it was from December 2024.
Also how can he think that Trump stands for little guys when he has elon musk as his pet monkey
I actually thinknit’s the other way round but anyway.
I was just going to start my de-google to Proton. Time for a new plan.
Eventually you will find you want a mail provider that just supports IMAP / POP without some paid middleman application just to use you email with certain clients else me stuck on the slow web UI. Luckily there are alternatives.
One thing that this entire situation has done for me is to make me feel more justified in my posture of never paying a subscription for an online service if I can avoid it. So far I’m using Proton stuff for the free tier only, so I can have some degree of relaxation in evaluating any alternatives withotu also having to worry about banking stuff.
Tuta e.g.
Do you realize that this means supporting an ad-driven business model (in general, for proton your ability to use the services for free is thanks to paying users), which in turns is what incentives data collection and privacy violations, right?
Also mail has a slightly higher moving cost than other services, where “changing” is usually three clicks to cancel the subscription and be done with it.
So my take is that (if you can afford it) paying for services incentivises healthy business models for services, that helps develop tools that don’t harm users (to serve advertisers). The alternative is worse than paying money to a company with a guy who expressed an opinion we disagree with IMHO, but you do you.
Not really, or rather it’s not me doing it. Free tier does not really incentivize data collection, nowadays even the business where you are paying still collect and sell information about you and you can’t trust they are not doing so (or turn heel behind your back) without high level access to their infrastructure.
I use free tier services; that signals that if you want to get my money, you have to do lots more than simply have a mouth to run. Some of those services have managed to prove their worth to my satisfaction, and deserved my payment, such as SDF which is where I have an account on, but even then I avoid subs and prefer one-time payments instead. But they are a minority (trust is not to be handed over freely) and Proton just squandered any chance of ever making the list.
How do you think a company should pay for your free tear service? If you give your marginal market signal that you are not available to pay for services, companies will use business models that don’t rely on that.
Also it’s self-absolution to say that even companies you pay snoop on you. There are many serious companies that offer great services for a price and respect your privacy, because it’s their interest to do so. Proton, kagi but even Garmin for example.
I understand, but this simply doesn’t make sense for services that have running costs forever. A pay-as-you-go model or subscription makes more sense here.
In general
It doesn’t. It only signals you are not available to pay their current price for that service. For most companies the only option is to get the money from someone else, for example selling your data.
As a user who cares about privacy, we should incentivise healthy business models that allow us to pay with out money and not with our data. Stopping to do this in principle (“I avoid paying for a service if I can”) because the CEO expresses an opinion you disagree with seems just fishing for a justification. Of course your money are yours and you do what you want, but don’t be surprised when there are no good privacy respecting services to choose from.
What is a good alternative for Mail? I’m mostly for Proton because of Data security and Mail aliases. But this move is actually concerning.
Yes, I know the background behind it.
Tuta and Posteo are my recommndations for mail.
I registered and waiting for activation. Will probably also subscribe the lower plan.
I use Posteo for their low-emission plan using boring technology that just works. 1€ / to is worth it, but I do wish you could bring your own domain name.
Tuta is pretty nice. Used to be named Tutanota.
I’ve used tuta mail for nearly 10 years. They’ve never let me down.
Just some advice for all of you affected by this.
Begin demanding a response from the ownership of this company.
“Is this Message approved by your board, and owners”
Just leaving doesnt make a difference, and some of you in the comments bought services right before this. That fucking sucks.
We dont have journalists and media on our side to help any more(arguably we never did, but that’s a separate discussion)
I think there are still good bones in Proton, but you know where at least one piece cancer is, and its in the worst spot. Demand as stakeholders that they remove the cancer or admit its not going to happen. Repeat your messages until they publicy respond as a company not just the head of it.
Its a shame if you dont do at least as much as expressing that they owe you an explanation and that you need the company as a whole, to why this had happened
This is a betrayal to many of you, tell them exactly what they need to do
Good luck. It only takes one of you to suceed and we all win
Didn’t the board already post in full support of this fucker, then try to delete the post for PR damage control?
No.
All that happened is that the official social media account on mastodon and reddit reposted what was Andy’s reply as an official message. It was some internal fuck up apparently, and that’s why they deleted it.
Even in the worst case scenario, the board has nothing to do with it, because this would be the Proton company, not the nonprofit (which controls the company).
Please, don’t make stuff up…
Oh missed that totally, thanks for sharing
He already clarifies that it’s his personal opinion and not a company position, which has the policy to maintain political neutrality (whatever that means), which is the reason why they deleted replies from official accounts. See the reddit post he did or his comments.
On what ground anybody should demand his removal? Based on a personal opinion expressed on twitter, which is at most a naive speculation of what the Trump administration will do in the area of antitrust and big tech?
Leftist: fuck the little guy
I went through so much effort to move my small business and team over to proton. wtf.
I have been de-googling for a while and proton was next on my list
Oh FFS, and here I was recently considering switching to ProtonMail… fuck the fuck off.
Dear CEOs: if you’re eager to suck dick, I’m sure you can find someone better than authoritarian shitheads. Have some fucking standards.
“omg, turns out this big tech company is not my friend”
I don’t know if I would describe proton as a big tech company. Even if they were, their whole pitch is “you can trust us”.
Does anyone have links to the dumpster fire of a reddit thread in one or the Proton subs? There was also one of r/privacy but I can’t find either so suspect they’ve been deleted to try to quell the flames.
It was very entertaining drama
If anyone does have a link send it to me too…it really is being covered up aggressively. Makes me want to drop them more tbh.
Somebody had posted the link elsewhere in this thread. I’d been mistakenly searching u/ProtonSupportTeam for the offending comments rather than u/ProtonTeam
https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7ahrlm
Here’s the r/privacy thread which summarised all the drama, including pointing out all the comments Proton mods were deleting and censoring in their own sub. Then true to form the r/privacy mods deleted the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
Thank you so much! Very interesting to see their reactions as well. Really interesting to see the damage control since it can say a lot about their stance
Things are taking a wild turn.
Guy is anti union, anti strikes, anti publically accessible healthcare, anti cheaper healthcare, anti snap, anti helping the homeless, anti paying overtime, and pro taxing the populous via tariffs while lowering taxes for the ultra rich. He doesn’t want regulations on price gouging/increases for food, housing…
For the working class how? Fucking joke that people think anything he does is for them
Edit: throw in, against VA funding and shits on the military just about anytime he doesn’t get exactly what he wants
From one of Andy’s comments on Reddit.
So the target of that sentence is not “the working class”, and the conversation is way more specific about tech/monopolies.
I had a hunch about proton all along but I didn’t care to check into it. Glad I never bought any of their product.
And don’t forget massive deportation efforts that totally won’t hurt a single little guy.
You mean the short staffed construction companies, which means increased costs to get houses built and repaired… Surely that won’t increase insurance costs when repair costs go up. Good job Florida, combat high insurance prices by cutting the labor market of those doing the work. Oops
Was just nuked from Reddit over this comment lol.
What’s the best way to transfer to another secure email provider?
Your email is tied to their servers. It’s not like a phone number that can just be transferred, you’ll have to notify/update everyone/everything that has that email to a new one.