Spyke
lemm.ee

They did, yes.

I'm assuming the next video to be released will be of the Proton CEO and Trump on on some fetish.

104
sh.itjust.works

People on here like complain and will tell that he has his balls in his mouth when in reality all he did was show some hope after the Republicans appointed someone who has a track record of being anti-bigtech. I still think the way the situation was handled terribly, but to say that he is MAGA would be a hell of a stretch in my opinion

-50
Optionalreply
lemmy.world

So it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deleted comment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”

show some hope huh

52
sh.itjust.works

Yeah so uh youre proving my point, he's happy that the nominated person is more favorable to small businesses than the one previously nominated by the Democrats. Wether it's true or false I don't know, but this post (and his other posts form before and after the event) to me don't suggest MAGA

-45
sopuli.xyz

"limited resources" wtf? just copy and paste the content. I guess they didn't like the backslash on Mastodon because of the CEO and Trump bootlicker Andy Yen

195

This is even more ridiculous given they have a bluesky account and all they need to do is follow the bridge and their content will be ported to mastodon. Literally 5 seconds.

97
lemmy.ml

Oh yeah that’s prob it. On Reddit they can delete any negative comments

61
FundMECFSreply
slrpnk.net

Same on Bluesky actually. They can hide comments they don’t like in response to their posts.

18
lemmy.world

Welp. Guess I'm never using that bluesky account I created to pad their growth metrics.

8

It was made because of the rampant harassment problem on twitter.

But I guess it’s counterproductive for companies. Because you want to scrutinise them.

2

especially as it's not even their own body they don't have enough to deal with.

1

On Mastodon, Proton is held to a higher standard. That’s why they left for the dumb masses instead.

110
lemmy.blahaj.zone

I was an apologist for Proton during the whole Andy Yen commentary mess, but this is a really sus choice for Proton to be making.

All that matters under capitalism is growth. I wonder if the thinking here is that Proton has already captured all the geek/privacy enthusiast crowd that it's going to, and Andy Yen's social fuck-up basically killed any future expansion in that space, so this is part of a pivot to new markets and abandonment of areas they know they aren't going to win back.

If so, I'd expect to see Proton making expanded ad buys targeting preppers, libertarians, sov-cit types and other "I'm being watched!!" kooks.

91

They're focusing on platforms that allow them to censor discussion.

54
sopuli.xyz

Looks like I'm leaving Proton. Fucking hell, not even a year ago I migrated from Gmail

68
bfg9kreply
lemmy.world

SAME! I only just finished getting all my servers and custom domain set up, and I already have to look for a new provider.

If someone has any recommendations for a good hosted email, VPN and online storage provider let us know. It seems there's not many good options left.

19
Scrollonereply
feddit.it

Learn your lesson and switch to a custom domain :) that way you will never have to change all your services' email addresses anymore, when you want to switch mail provider.

18

Yeah, this is gonna be my next move I think. I was using Proton VPN for a while and just recently started migrating my emails there, then they started doing all of this.

I wanted to self host my email anyway, but now I have no excuse. I've been burned by the last team I expected it to come from, I'll be self-reliant now

7

That's what I'm leaning towards. Now to think of a domain that's easy enough I can tell my email over the phone of needed

5
someacntreply
sh.itjust.works

How costly is a domain? Also how does one set it up, do you need a DNS server?

3

Most (if not all) domain providers also host DNS for you. After you buy your domain, you'll need to go to the DNS settings and put some records given by your email provider (records are just made of a "type" such as A, MX, CNAME, TXT, a "domain" and the "content").

A .com domain usually costs between 10 and 20 dollars per year. I think it's worth it! There are many domain registrar you can choose from.

I personally like Porkbun, it's cheap and it works great. In the past I used to like the French service Gandi, but it's been recently acquired by a VC and now it's gone to the pooper.

3

Me too. Same predicament. I was a paid user of Proton.

Just got moved over to paid Tuta, and it seemed to go smoothly.

4
sh.itjust.works

I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm kinda done with them. Anyone have any suggestions for a mail provider? I'm not yet willing to self-host that.

48

I just signed up for mailbox.org, let's see how this goes

6
Kaynreply
dormi.zone

But are they on Mastodon? This is a very important factor for my purchasing decision.

3
Scrollonereply
feddit.it

Posteo unfortunately doesn't support custom domains.

5
ShotDonkeyreply
lemmy.world

Yes, for a reason. You have to register with a name and an address to obtain/buy a custom domain at a third party. Your identity could be traced back via this. This is against their very strict and consistent 'zero knowledge' policy.

2
Scrollonereply
feddit.it

Hmm I don't agree. You can always sign up using a foreign mail provider with a domain privacy service.

1
Scrollonereply
feddit.it
  1. I register a domain using a service in a country outside of the EU (since Posteo is German).
  2. I also apply a "privacy protection" service, which means my data won't be visible in the public whois (the domain will be officially registered by the privacy service that I use).
  3. I sign up to Posteo and configure my third-party domain.

This means Posteo doesn't know anything about me, and even if the police raids Posteo they can't find who I am.

Of course they could, in theory, find out who I am, but that means going to the provider that I used to sign up for my domain, which may be on the other side of the planet outside of German police jurisdiction.

2

Thanks 🙏, but what you describe is a theoretical option, right? Posteo doesn't offer to integrate such a custom domain afaik - but please correct me if I'm wrong! Do you use Posteo with a custom domain?

2

It's sad, I really like their UI

If you're afraid of self-hosting, https://mailcow.email/ is pretty great and easy to setup for that if you want to go to this adventure, else, Tuta would be their main competitor but I don't really like their UI

2

While not exactly privacy focused, I've been using zoho for a while. Really happy with it. I distrust most of the ones that sell privacy as their main thing, because email is not designed to be private.

1
sh.itjust.works

It's as if with each passing day, Proton wakes up and chooses to wear a slightly different red flag for a cape than the one they wore yesterday. I'm obviously being hyperbolic here, but I'm also a bit upset with myself for having decided to get an annual subscription with them last November.

I've heard good things about Mullvad for VPN and Tuta for mail. I've got my own domain that I can start using with whatever mail host I land on.

I'm in the U.S. What other mail providers are people using, and what other VPN providers should I be considering?

47
Azzureply
lemm.ee

If you ever want to torrent, some service that allows port forwarding, like AirVPN or PureVPN. A popular alternative of mullvad does not allow this.

5
boydsterreply
sh.itjust.works

You keep posting this and I haven't been using port forwarding at all but torrents keep coming through. What am I missing here? Serious question, because I do not know what I'm either doing wrong or missing out on with port forwarding and I have not been experiencing what I would call a degraded experience as far as I can tell, but there's a whole world of things that I'm entirely ignorant to.

8
Azzureply
lemm.ee

A connection has to be established. That is only possible if one side has an open port.

So you can basically not connect to other people with closed ports, which reduces your available pool of people to connect to.

As long as there are enough people with open ports for you, you and the torrent ecosystem will be fine. But when nobody or very few people have open ports, torrenting simply doesn't work.

7
boydsterreply
sh.itjust.works

Thanks, this is a little difficult to parse while I'm looking at my seeds uploading at ratios well over 1.00 but just the same I'm running a new VPN tunnel with port forwarding enabled to see what difference it makes.

Plex works for the people I share with outside my network. No port forwarding. I just don't get what I am not getting, and every explainer I get is basically what you posted (no offense) and it doesn't match what my experience is showing me.

5

Here is it illustrated by multiple examples:

  • Situation: You are the only one seeding a torrent, with ports closed
    • Another person with ports closed wants to get the torrent. They will never be able to get it since you two can't establish a connection.
    • Another person with an open port wants to get the torrent. Eventually, after some delay, your client connects to the tracker and gets a list of people who want to get the torrent (leechers). You get the IP and port of the person who wants to get the torrent, you connect to them, you start uploading to them.
  • Situation: You are the only one seeding a torrent, but have ports open
    • No matter if a leecher has ports closed or open, they get your IP+Port from the tracker, connect to you, and you upload to them

The situation with more clients is more nuanced, but essentially the same:

  • Situation: There are 5 seeders with open ports seeding a torrent
    • Everything works perfectly all the time
  • Situation: There are 5 seeders with closed ports seeding a torrent
    • For a leecher with open port, everything works perfectly
    • For a leecher with closed port, they will never get the torrent ever
  • Situation: There are 5 seeders seeding a torrent. 4 have their ports closed, 1 has it open.
    • 10 leechers with ports closed want to get the torrent. The only one that can upload to them is the 1 seeder with port open, the other 4 seeders are useless.
    • 10 leechers with ports open want to get the torrent. All 5 seeders seed their torrent equally and everything works perfectly.
    • 5 leechers with ports closed and 5 leechers with ports open want to get the torrent.
      • The 5 leechers with ports closed are only serviced by the 1 seeder with port open
      • The 5 leechers with port open get the torrent from all 5 seeders.
      • The 1 seeder with open port seeds to every leecher, the protocol doesn't discriminate. So in a perfectly equal world, the 1 seeder with port open seeds to all 10 leechers, so each leecher gets 1/10th of their upload speed.
      • The 4 seeders with closed port only seed to the 5 leechers with open port, giving each of them 1/5th of their upload speed.
      • This means that, if you add this all up, the 5 leechers with closed ports get 1/10th (1 seeder times 1/10th) of one seeders' full upload speed, while the leechers with open ports get 9/10ths (1 seeder times 1/10th and 4 seeders times 2/10ths) of one seeders' full upload speed.

as you can see, the people with open ports have a massive speed advantage in this example, literally getting 9 times the upload speed available in the network. But essentially, torrenting still works as long as some people have open ports, just everyone with closed ports is at a severe disadvantage.

Now there are a couple more issues with closed ports (like DHT/pex not working) but they all boil down to the same problem: the ones with closed ports can only get stuff from people with open ports. Thus they are at a massive disadvantage and get reduced speeds or in contrived situations with few seeders even nothing.

7
asretreply
lemmy.zip

I think port forwarding is more important for seeding when it comes to torrents. Someone has to be able to initiate the connection.

4
boydsterreply
sh.itjust.works

Well that is something I'll need to look into. My seed ratios seem to be keeping up too though, so I'm still not sure if port forwarding is a solution in search of a problem on my end. I guess I have more learning to do. Thank you for giving me a direction to start investigating.

5
lemm.ee

If you're not port-forwarding, only peers that are port-forwarding can download from you. And you can only download from peers that are port-forwarding. There can be times where a torrent only has a few seeders, but they are not port-forwarding, and if you're not either, you won't be able to download the torrent.

5

Ah ok thank you, I think the fact that the other party could be providing this capability was the component that I wasn't conceptualizing before. Thank you for this post, I don't know why this was so hard to grasp for me but this landed.

4

I just wanted to follow back up on this helpful comment here and the ones along with it from other posters. After testing and review, combined with what folks explained below, I can say for sure I'm looking for a service with port forwarding. And now I understand how someone could unknowingly offload the port forwarding responsibility to other parties thereby making torrents less accessible than may have been intended while mistakenly being under the impression they were providing equitable accessibility just because "it looks like it's working".

I feel like this should have been more obvious way sooner, but my skull is remarkably thick it seems. Thanks for helping me wrinkle my brain a little more today.

4

I've used Mullvad VPN for almost a year and it's amazing. I only switched to Proton because I use all their services.

4

Posteo is a really good option for email as well. Dedicated to being green too, and not just for show, it seems.

1
bl4kersreply
lemmy.ml

Email export is available in their desktop client

8

what's this "email export" function doing here then?

6

The CDU is right-wing but not far-right and they won the election by a significant margin.

In Switzerland, the SVP has received the most votes every single election since 1999, is further right than the German CDU and shares nearly all positions with the AfD.

In particular, it wants to stop the influence of the justice system on politics and make every foreigner requesting citizenship dependent on receiving the popular vote in a referendum. Also, unlike the CDU, it opposes gay marriage.

2
jaybonereply
lemmy.world

Just curious, what would you recommend for an email provider, or more importantly a VPN for someone in the US? A few months ago I was thinking of switching from BTGuard to proton VPN. But after a bunch of stories came out about them recently, I am no longer so interested.

7

njalla will hold your domain hostage if you used them to register it and if they decide they don't like you as a customer. I do not recommend using them at all, but if you do definitely have a backup plan in case they kill your domain and refuse to give it back to you.

3

Funny how they didn’t make actual post on Mastodon, but just silently edited their profile to say they left Mastodon? That’s pretty cowardly.

Yet another reason to not like Proton.

41
sh.itjust.works

Makes me glad that I procrastinated on switching over, I guess I’ll just ride out my current NordVPN subscription and switch over to Mullvad?

Almost makes me afraid to ask the community, what exactly is wrong with Nord? 😅

35
Azzureply
lemm.ee

Unless you never want to torrent, I would say to not use mullvad, you can't forward a port with them (same with NordVPN). There are plenty of VPNs that don't log and allow port forwarding. I use AirVPN.

13
thatKamGuyreply
sh.itjust.works

I’ve not encountered any issues filling up my NAS with torrented Linux ISOs via NordVPN?

My priority for a VPN has just been no logging and the ability to ‘travel’ internationally.. so if there the case, no need to rush out and switch then?

5
Azzureply
lemm.ee

https://lemm.ee/post/56692320/18526252

A connection has to be established. That is only possible if one side has an open port.

So you can basically not connect to other people with closed ports, which reduces your available pool of people to connect to.

As long as there are enough people with open ports for you, you and the torrent ecosystem will be fine. But when nobody or very few people have open ports, torrenting simply doesn't work.

7

Yeah, speeds are far greater with port forwarding. But, if you're not in a hurry, I suppose it's nbd

2
padgereply
lemmy.zip

They've done other things, but the reason I don't use Nord is that they had a breach where an attacker had physical access to one of their servers, and they tried to sweep it under the rug rather than notify users.

4
thatKamGuyreply
sh.itjust.works

Fair cop; I guess there’s always risks in renting space in a data centre (physical intrusion), and that response definitely isn’t the best.

Not enough for me to be a deal breaker currently, but will definitely switch when my plan expires.

1

Yeah, I don't blame Nord themselves for the breach, but not notifying users was bad

3
Sonalderreply
lemmy.ml

Bluesky is not much better than X despite it claiming to

35
lemmy.world

It's... better in the sense that you don't have right wing weirdos all over the place. But technically? Organizationally? Feels like we're on track to replay the same exact shit over again. It feels like people just aren't learning the lessons they should from the Twitter takeover.

45

Then it's not much better :D

Nostr guys (even though that you'll also find right-wing werdos) are building great things. Open source client side algorithmes that you can choose, value4value and more. As of today it's still clunky and people are not used to not having account and managing cryptographic keys so too early, the fediverse is a nice middleground in my opinion.

2

One shitty CEO can destroy a company the same way one shitty president can destroy a country.

30

The lesser company needs to change their name or add a descriptor. Proton Woken? Proton SaaS? Proton Supreme? Proton x GOP? Protonaz...

5

Can you even use Reddit if you’re running Proton’s VPN? I know Reddit has been actively blocking other VPNs (eg Mullvad) for some time.

28

Yes they have a stealth feature that is helpful for detecting a VPN

7
azaltyreply
jlai.lu

They moderate their own subreddit and can censor things. There has been some drama about them deleting some posts and stuff, and in general, them moderating their subreddit makes it so that you're less likely to express what you really feel

I believe

15
lemmy.world

If you're looking to shake up your email provider in the wake of this, I highly recommend getting a custom domain name, whatever provider you choose. Cloudflare sells domains at cost. Get a not-embarrasing .com of your own, and then you can move email providers in future without losing continuity. Proton allows exporting .eml files, which you can then import into your next provider. Or just keep in cold storage and declare email bankruptcy. Once you have a custom domain, you can use unique emails for all your services by setting up a catchall address. This will at least impede credential stuffing attacks, and let you know who sold/leaked your address if you do get spam.

I personally left Proton a month or so ago after the last bit of drama, in part out of principle, but also because their offering is just really expensive for my use case: I just want email, on a budget, with reasonable privacy. Plus I was tired of not having IMAP support and being locked into their clients. Moved to a Zoho business account (for now) and have been happy for the $12/yr. I already had a domain name, but they typically run <$20/year too.

22
Forboreply
lemmy.ml

Get an embarrassing domain, then give that one out to all the shitty stores that ask you for an email. Bonus points if it will make people extremely uncomfortable.

5

I'm sorry but these domain names are really funny

I attempted to get a similar one in .kids but it got blocked. Sad.

0
lemmy.world

Would I need to do anything with the custom domain beyond registering it for this to work with an email provider?

Because this sounds like a great migration plan: set up a custom domain, add it to protonmail, update emails, export data, and then switch providers.

I’m just a bit clueless on the whole setting up a custom domain part.

2
WFloydreply
lemmy.world

You don't have to do anything else with the domain, it'll work fine for email only.

You could add it to Proton, take your time to migrate all your accounts, then dip. Or you could just go straight to a new provider with the domain, and take your time transitioning accounts to the custom domain over time that way. Assuming Proton's free offering is sufficient, you can always keep it around and set up forwarding to your custom domain.

Regarding domain name setup itself, Proton should provide steps for how to do it correctly, but I found them to be a bit fiddly (might have improved, this was a few years ago) - when I moved to Zoho I found it really easier. If you're using Cloudflare for the domain registration, Zoho can basically do it all automatically (click a few links link and accept the proposed changes).

2

Thanks! I registered a domain with cloudflare and that was easy enough. I’ll read up on some alternative providers and see how this all shakes out.

2
Kng
feddit.rocks

Honestly I would be fine if they just setup some kind of mirror so their posts would show up across different platforms. The biggest issue with then not using mastodon is just not being informed of what is going on. They don't need to engage with people on mastodon just setup some kind of bridge.

20

Everyone doing social media posts to multiple networks from a single app. This is a BS excuse from Proton. Very disappointing.

7

I wish VPS providers didn't commonly block email ports. Self hosting seems like the only way to stay in control

19
lemmy.ml

I was using proton pass but I would like to move on. Is there a good open source password manager that is secure and hosted locally?

19
Vinstaal0reply
feddit.nl

Vaultwarden is the opensourced version of Bitwarden. One of the employees of Bitwarden is allowed to maintain it in their own time

16

Bitwarden premium is crazy cheap anyway. I have proton in limited and still get bitwarden premium.

6
feddit.uk

I use KeePassX. there are android, linux and macos clients. i sync them between devices securely using Mega

12
CAVOKreply
lemmy.world

Depends on what you mean by "good". I use KeePass. Works for me. Open source and free.

8

Same. You can sync your database however you want so it's totally under your control.

3

I'm so disappointed Proton. So sad, but maybe you already live long eniugh to become evil? Time to move on, aah so bad..It was so great piece of software and so great company in this hell capitalist world.

15
plixelreply
programming.dev

I've used Mullvad for a couple of years now and they're great.

12

Unless you never want to torrent, I would not choose mullvad. Torrenting requires port forwarding if you properly want to give back to the community, which mullvad doesn't support.

8

Sadly, mullvad doesn't rotate their IPs so they often get blocked and detected. You're kicked off many websites and services

3

A lot of connectivity issues in some countries, and the app is often bugged when switching servers

1

AirVPN is great, allows port forwarding, 5 devices, and they run very good black Friday specials every year if you decide to buy it after trialling.

2

Another L by Proton. Why would they even say it and just stop posting silently.

Even if you agree with Proton's positions it's clear that Andy is just tanking the company's image with such rookie leadership mistakes.

Incredibly incompetence which makes you wonder how competent the actual code running everything is?

11

I can see a company not wanting to invest resources in a social media platform without critical mass. But for a company that itself is trying to gain critical mass, moving away from a similarly situated privacy focused platform is idiotic. It signals to potential Proton users that the company cannot be trusted and it’s very hard to recover from that.

10
lemmy.world

due to limited ressources

Is it that hard to post the same thing on various social media? Maybe it is, I wouldn't know. But that sounds like a shitty excuse.

It looks like they're not up to date on X tho, hopefully they drop that shit. And they're on Bluesky, which, if not Mastodon, is a little bit better I guess.

I really don't get the hidden idea behind leaving Mastodon.

9
AkashicOwlreply
lemmy.world

Their last post if from 14 days ago, not sure how often they usually post tho

1

I really dislike these commercial "private" solutions to surveilance issues we have but people always seem to prefer them because of strong marketing around.

7

I mean, I don't have access to a personal international VPN array. For that kind of service, you pretty much have to get a commercial product.

3
feddit.uk

Does anyone know of a good alternative to simple login? They're owned my proton too and I have about 150+ aliases to move

7
azaltyreply
jlai.lu

I like the shorter addresses but addy is blocked from many websites

Sometimes they also block the MX server so even custom domains don't fix it. But for most services, it works great

I often whine to the website's support and sometimes they allow my email

1
lemmy.world

Interesting, what sites have you experienced that with? I haven't gotten blocked from anything so far.

1
azaltyreply
jlai.lu

Things like linkedin, epic games, canva, patreon, stackoverflow, github, and some websites that sell videogames like joybuggy and gamesplanet

1
lemmy.world

Weird, LinkedIn works for me with Addy and a custom address. Same with GitHub.

2

Free addresses are blocked for the services I listed, premium ones work (except stackoverflow and patreon probably)

I can’t remember the name of services that don’t work with addy premium as well. I have Indiegala on top of my head but for others…

1
lemm.ee

Anyone know any good vpn alternatives with port forwarding?

7

I'll second this. While it doesn't have a track record like mullvad, it doesn't have a bad track record so far and I have not had any problems with it since buying.

3

so the social media manager has time to clean the toilets in the afternoon

6
lemmy.world

Honest, stupid question: Why exactly is this such a big deal to so many of you? (I don't use Mastodon.)

6
lemmy.world

Proton recently got shot in the foot when one of their board members said some stuff that made it sound like he was somehow not certain that fascists are bad for privacy. The guy responded and clarified and made some good points...and still very clearly did not realize or did not feel it important to mention or even imply that fascists are very definitely bad for privacy. This is still post-record-scratch for Proton.

So leaving what's basically the only social media of the future, such as it is, and sticking it out in the garbage heaps, makes two data points that make a line that goes in the direction of "definitely going to enshittify". It's possible this could be wrong, because two data points isn't huge, but these are also things that were extremely easy to get right, and require an oddly large amount of effort to fuck up like they have.

16

Thanks for the reply! I was only aware of the CEO's X comments regarding Trump's politics. I JUST moved away from Google and have been quite happy with Proton, especially Mail and Pass.

7
Midgardreply
framapiaf.org

To me, the federated social network (Fediverse, which Mastodon is one portal into) offers some distinct advantages for pluralism. No single entity can control the whole discourse. When you don't agree with your mods, you can go elsewhere without losing your connections with people: just move to a different instance.

Furthermore it's not controlled by corporations, so there is no incentive of trying to spread things like the plague just to get you addicted and make as much money.

14

In practice the design of the Fediverse leaves some problems open (notably, moving between servers comes at a cost to the online identity you built, and getting bootstrapped if you don't have real-life connections who are interested is more difficult) and it even creates some interesting problems of its own. But all in all it's better already than the mono-idea, "there is one norm everyone should stick to" culture we see on commercial offerings.

7

I only use their Drive, I need a privacy focused alternative with a browser version in case I can't convince my family to download an app, any recommendations?

6

Filen.io is decent. Client is open source and storage is locally encrypted. They claim to use zero knowledge tech on their end.

Additionally, look into rclone to upload and automatically encrypt data to cloud providers. This way, cloud providers can't access your data regardless.

3

What ashame, I thought the CEO should be poked in the eye with a blunt stick for his Trump support but I would've kept with Proton if the business and his personal views were kept seperate

It appears this is no longer the case, at least proton provides a lot of decent services I don't mind abusing for free now.

5

I believe I'll need to move to mailbox.org with custom domains.

5

Just another nail in the coffin that hopefully convinces those who thought Proton was maybe still okay after CEO licking Trumps toes.

4

Not that they'll care but I bought for two years but will find something else when that runs out.

4
lemmy.world

I’m a proton user but I’m out of the loop. Please paste link or give me the tl/dr?

2
sh.itjust.works

Whoo boy. The Proton CEO posted a deeply troubling remark praising trump and republicans as the champions of the little guy, and lambasted democrats for being in the pocket of big tech. This, understandably, seemed rather... icky to a great many people, who dislike the idea of the service they trust for privacy kissing the ring of the Fascist in Chief/Putin's Towelboy/Elon's Hamberder Carrier. This might have been more palatable if it was made clear that Proton itself does NOT endorse the policies of Melon Husk's puppet administration and the MAGAt Horde, and that the original post was made by the CEO in his capacity as a private citizen, and not as the CEO of Proton.

So when, in the face of backlash from the federated community, Proton decided to just leave the fediverse, rather than clarify its position, but stay on Reddit & the Xitter, using the half-baked excuse of "it's too expensive for us to cross-post on this completely free system", people, understandably, took this to indicate that Proton, previously one of the most trusted privacy companies, may not be as independent as its swiss headquarters leads one to believe.

4

Here's one archive reddit thread proton responded with that has since been edited to remove the comment.

https://archive.ph/quYyb

There's also a medium article from a random user that keeps being reposted to defend him. https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

But, it leaves out that Gail Slater left the FTC 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.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/lawmakers-must-not-let-internet-association-weaken-california-consumer-privacy-act

Which is a pretty big omission if the argument the founder/CEO made hinges on trying to make people believe Gail Slater having been on the FTC means she fights for little tech.

1
Geishtreply
lemmynsfw.com

Uh while i dont disagree completely... most votes is for cdu (riding the strongman train hard these days)- that would be right wing dems by US-standards . Most votes for NSDAP (read:afd) since 1933 however.

5

This is a genuine question : how Proton stopping using Mastodon for communication make them bad ?

0

They're supporting commercialized, walled-garden social media platforms instead of ones that are publicly accessible

11

Because it sends a message that they do not support community-driven projects and will instead support large, corporate social media.

It would not have meant anything if they were never on Mastodon in the first place.

7
atrielienzreply
lemmy.world

My understanding is that their users were calling them to account pretty heavily on Mastodon. This is a way for them to curtail that (and save face) without answering to the users there over the CEO's pro-Republican/pro-Trump statements. They can't control the narrative on Mastodon so they're running away.

This is despite the fact that a lot of privacy focused potential customers aren't using Twitter or Bluesky or Threads. In fact, the userbase on Mastodon that followed their account was larger than that of both Bluesky and Threads.

6

Because they are exclusively on the Nazi social media now. You do the math.

1
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I understand. Why use resources on a platform that is so badly designed for new users that isn't used but to post manga and linux memes from tech nerds? If this is your reason to drop Proton then you're priorities seem a bit off imho.

-5
sh.itjust.works

I mean, it makes sense for a company to focus on a platform with a large user base. Social media managers aren't free.

-5
archchanreply
lemmy.ml

I disagree, Proton is a privacy company with more followers on Mastodon than on Threads and TikTok. Should they also drop what Linux support they have to focus only on Windows because it has a large base? This feels alienating to their privacy conscious users if anything.

73

Yeah, this is what's kinda worrying me about this move. Proton's got a pretty good name with folks who are security conscious. This move feels more like they are kinda trying to pivot, to cash in litterally years of good reputation for something else. That'd suck at the best of times, but in the second Trump era? Really just ain't any good answers to what they might be cashing that in for.

16
Ulrichreply
feddit.org

It doesn't make sense when that company is founded on concepts of privacy and they axe the (relatively) private platform instead of the exploitative one full of Nazis and anti-consumerism.

35
lemmy.zip

Setting up some basic bridge functionality is probably not that difficult either, so they could just mirror their xitter posts.

21
lemmy.world

Playing devil's advocate, someone has to moderate replies on the mirrors though.

8