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.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
394 points (99.2% liked)
Privacy
34309 readers
1688 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Of all the fuckin places to move to they chose reddit 😭
Because they can control the dialog on reddit
🤨
Ditches fediverse but still use Xitter?
On top of the trump apointee praise?
Sus 👀
That’s not sus, that’s what anyone ought to expect him to do, because it aligns with his bourgeois interests. Why would he stay on a non-corporate, federated social media platform when he and his bourgeois peers can’t control the narrative?
I have Proton email and will ditch it soon.
Aww, is someone booty blasted they can't control the dialog no more?
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.
Yeah. They can't get Mastodon moderators to suppress negative publicity like they can on Reddit and other platforms.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I think this is right on the money.
load more comments
(11 replies)
That's in line with being from Switzerland. Act cool, but be sure to stick with the richer people and do their interest. Never used Proton (I use Tuta instead) for that reason only. You are free to call me racist.
Some of the initial people involved did their university and post grad studies in the US, so they seem more American than Swiss to me and more chose Switzerland to conduct business after starting the company up after meeting at CERN.
I am Swiss myself and I feel like things are changing since Trumps second term, at least my friends seek closer ties to Europe now.
Proton gives me a bad feeling in the stomach, I would encourage people to not trust it. The guy is either a big Trump fan or most of his customers are from that base. The best option for e-mail is selfhost + pgp, the second best option are the various small companies offering email all across Europe.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
So Proton ditched Mastodon but is still on Twitter, aka the Nazi cesspool, and Reddit. Both US propaganda platforms with heavy censorship.
Bad, bad move.
I have been defending Andy Yen's idiotic comments because he's not American and doesn't understand the hyper-reactive nature between US Americans and US politics (because our government is literally run by nazis now), but this decision isn't helping; it will fuel and reinforce the negative image already held by those who have canceled their accounts and those who are on the fence.
Proton marketing itself on privacy while recently calling out the danger of tech oligarchs makes their decision to leave Mastodon and keep using Twitter very confusing. Lot of mixed signals.
Makes it harder to defend with the statement the official Proton account made on reddit which they have since then removed and kept editing. Makes you wonder what do they actually believe and if this is their attempt to be apolitical how much are they self censoring their true views on the matter to seem more palatable.
I have been defending Andy Yen’s idiotic comments because he’s not American and doesn’t understand the hyper-reactive nature between US Americans and US politics
And I could see the point, kind of, even though it strained credulity on substance. He seemed more confused to me than die-hard partisan. But it's really hard to square what was effectively a blanket statement endorsing R's with his subsequent comment that it "was not intended to be a political statement" (paraphrase).
And then also the official proton account doubling down on it a day later.
His whole defense hinged on making people believe Gail Slater being on the FTC meant she fought for little tech, but omitted her history leaving to 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.
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.
That medium article that keeps being reposted from some random user with only that one article intentionally omits this work history after the FTC too.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I’m seriously starting to consider moving from proton to Fastmail. My renewal is coming up in May.
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.
That’s really good to know! This may seem like a dumb question, but can you use any email app with fastmail? I see they have their own, but I’d really like to use Canary with it if I switch.
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
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
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
people were using the vpn to evade reddit bans, but even reddit does not like vpn users anymore.
I switched to StartMail, I'm officially done with ProtonMail. Are you even kidding me, how just how...
I so want to ditch Proton right now, but I have a lot of resumes out and have been using them for ~4 years, so all of my accounts are linked in a sense.
What to do what to do.. I know and fully agree that what's going on is sus, but I think I need to stick with it for a few more months until the job thing pans out.
Edit: I have a free Tuta account, I'll start weaning everything off, then cut free when I don't need to worry about missing an interview opportunity.
I recommend switching to a custom domain in the future so you can avoid situations like this from happening again, this way you won't be locked down onto a single provider.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
@ramenu .... proton recommending communication through reddit was not on my bingo card. 2025 has already been a wild ride... *looks at date*
fml
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.
load more comments
(7 replies)
view more: next ›