yikes
Stolen from @vmstan
More analysis from @wiredfire:
It’s nothing to do with [difficulties in using multiple platforms]. It’s to do with the massive backlash they got on Fedi for their CEO being all Trumpy and somewhat horrible right wing. So they’ve run away because they were made to feel unwelcome on account of us not letting their BS fly.
Original screenshot is of the bio of https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy and wasn’t a post (that confused me for a sec).
It’s to do with the massive backlash they got on Fedi
That makes no sense, considering the message in question was posted on Xitter, and the backlash they received was far worse and more public on Reddit, where they are directing their followers to go. It won't stop anyone from talking about them here.
The message was on Xitter from Andy Yen, but it was highlight on Mastodon by Jonah from Privacyguides.
The official Proton account also tried to defend Andy Yen on Mastodon (and later deleted it).
Here the link to the thread on Mastodon.
it was highlight on Mastodon by Jonah from Privacyguides.
Leaving Mastodon doesn't make Jonah disappear.
The official Proton account also tried to defend Andy Yen on Mastodon
They also tried to defend him on Reddit. Again, it makes no sense.
You'd think Fedi would be a good place to be active on from a privacy-conscious user-base perspective, but I think this is the second time they leave Fedi? Either way, I guess being on Reddit allows them to moderate all the naysayers away.
There are a lot of advantages to the fediverse, but privacy really isn’t one of them.
True, but privacy conscious people tend to also be wary of concentrations of power in a platform, such as Reddit or Twitter. If you are aware of the issues with a closed system you tend to also be aware of privacy issues, security issues, state censorship, and so on, so the user base is more aware in the fediverse and if they are leaving for Reddit that really does say something. I won't be using their service, I feel very lucky to have found out about this before shifting as I was in the process of finding a stable email host and blending with the VPN seemed financially reasonable, guess I will stay with Mullvad and get a separate email provider.
With ActivityPub specifically, I'm aware. Yet privacy-conscious people tend to congregate there as well, which was my point.
Maybr not exactly privacy, but as long as your instance admins doesn't leak you IP, you have much more privacy than on Reddit. There are no algorithms trying to show you relevent ads, because your account isn't tied to your identity (unless your instance admin is evil).
Also, most Lemmy instances allows Tor. Yay for anonymity.
Nobody thinks it is, but privacy-interested peope are more likely to congregate on an open and decentralized playform not controlled by the privacy-invading corpo megaghouls
Can't have privacy for your speech if you don't have the freedom to speak in the first place.
At face value this is true, but I challenge you to consider the knock-on effects of having a decentralized platform. One of which being that it become increasingly difficult to coerce someone into giving PII (i.e phone number) to signup - they'll just go elsewhere
This effectively makes it more private for everyone.
I made this basic comment about the CEO saying something pro-Trump and my comment got removed by a mod of /r/degoogle on the grounds that it wasn't factual.
Pretty infuriating.
/r/degoogle is total bullshit. That sub routinely and consistently shits on any non-google suggestion, for all sorts of bogus reasons. It's like the sub exists to trick people into thinking google is impossible to avoid, rather than just supporting steps away from google.
It’s engaging, though.
If it draws eyeballs, Reddit admins are happy with it, long term health be damned. That’s someone else’s problem, once they exit with a truck of cash.
You know I was like this close to getting proton VPN before this whole thing started. I've been researching for like 6 months to decide which one I was going to switch to. They were on the short list. Bullet dodged.
I just had signed up to de-Google as it looked like a good suite of drive/mail/vpn but I've just deleted the account citing this ass-hattery as the reason.
I suggest Mullvad as an alternative to Protons VPN services.
Yeah, plenty of good VPN alternatives. Not so much for email though if you want encryption.
tuta.com seems a good option, I switched to them a few months ago and so far so good
I would not rely on provider-dependent encryption anyway. If you want actual encryption - use PGP.
Seconded.
For anyone considering switching though, make sure:
I will say though, I found less sites throttled/blocked me on Mullvad in some cases, since Mullvad's IPs are less widely shared than Proton's, so that's a plus, but a few sites will have hard blocks on some VPN providers like Mullvad that they've made manual exclusions to for larger VPNs like Proton.
Proton is going boots up.
Proving that a company is not a person. A person goes tits up when the boots go up.
At least we know where their loyalties actually lie, now.
Yeah, their Linux dev team consists of two people, who, I believe only handle Linux things as part of their responsibilities and there is no dedicated team. I’m not salty that people have been asking for a Linux drive client for 4 years and the only response came this year saying ‘there’s only two people we’re focused on mail and vpn clients at the moment’.
Not trying to take away from Yen saying dumb shit with the company account or any of the mounting criticisms they’ve earned of late. Just a point toward their explanation not actually being too far out of the realm of possibility. And the likelihood of their PR/Social Media team being similarly small to the point of being understaffed.
Like yeah, is this needlessly antagonistic and blunt? Sure, but that feels more down to bad copy than the actual intent and direction of a companies PR dept, right?
“Due to a need for consolidation in the face of limited resources we will no longer be able to maintain the scope of our current social media presence. This account will remain active and be updated automatically but for the foreseeable future it will be unmonitored. Please join us on Reddit or contact support if you have any questions! Thanks Mastodon, toot on!”
Explains more clearly the logistical need to limit focus without disregarding the importance of the community. Someone hire me, I need a job. Leaves the account open to be reactivated some day and there’s no reason they couldn’t automate posting there.
I use ProtonVPN on Linux and I don't even use a client. There's Wireguard and OpenVPN right there.
Drive was mentioned, not vpn. The vpn client even works.
I'm not on the exit proton bandwagon. All CEOs are awful and I don't have the energy to do the vote-with-your-dollars ethical consumption dance every time we're freshly reminded of that fact. Especially not with the only service out there that packages data integrity, privacy, and ease of use in a complete suite at the level that proton does.
I've said this before and I'll say this a million times again, capitalism is simply not viable. The main mechanism to punish bad business practice (using a different business) also hurts the significantly weaker consumer; meaning it will almost never be used properly.
I point this out here because I agree with your stance and cannot stand the "vote with your wallet" nonsense people pretends works.
This makes it really difficult to navigate the privacy space because eventually a cornerstone like Proton is "corrupted" and we have no way to correct it. We seriously need people thinking about solutions to this problem, or we'll be going nowhere fast.
If you might allow me to disagree with you slightly...
The key to this, as in many things, is balance; in ALL things. Voting with your wallet does work, its a form of influencing and controlling the direction of the capital. It just doesn't work in a long term sense because people stop there; like boycotting. It is hard to boycott a company that has a monopoly on a market that has become a necessity, even if it's only a necessity to a niche community.
The key is, that you spend on smaller businesses, that are closer to the consumer than at large conglomerates. If there is none for the market, create one and encourage people to support your business that doesn't have any political ties yet. For example, I live in a capitol city, and my neighbor a few houses down has started a small chicken coop in their back yard; i began buying my eggs from them as its much cheaper and I don't have to worry about my funds being reallocated in support of something that would harm me or my community as they are a part of my community. Also, I deliver pizza as a third job for a small, mom and pops place and encourage those political minded people to spend money there as the pizza is made with fresh ingredients and made there. Takes a bit longer but we are too small to allocate funds to political matters and organizations; we do small events for the schools in the community but that is about it.
Once said businesses start to grow too big, rinse and repeat. Find another small business and support them. As support dwindles from a company that is growing too large, their options become more and more limited.
This seems not to work due to peoples mindset and preferring convenience over meaningful spending; which is something that I know not how to combat. What say you, friends?
Techies interested in privacy and fairness is just another target/focus group to be marketed to..
But even given that every company sucks(eventually) and every ceo is an asshole. there's something to be said about about spreading out and e.g. using proton over gmail and other google services.they might both suck, but at least if it's spread out, there's not one asshole ceo that controls all our stuff at once. You can't vote with your wallet, but preventing monopolies (the natural end game of a free market) by supporting smaller alternatives can still be worthwile. Not that it solves the underlying issues, but i think it can at least slow the decay a bit.
Yup. If there was an encrypted, federated solution that provided all of the services that proton does, even if half as polished, I'd absolutely consider switching. I'd even consider running my own node. All centralized solutions that see success also become over time the thing you want to flee.
I get tired of being so right all of the time
Proton is dead
fuck proton. finally started moving to it from gmail like a month ago. then the ceo thing happened, now this. good thing i only changed email to a few places so i can immediately steer away...
Any alternatives?
I found this site useful. The list of alternatives is very large.
From my looking around at other info and advice, I'd say that Posteo is the best one if you don't have custom domains; and that mailbox.org or possibly Tuta mail is best if do need a custom domain. Tuta is probably best if you need it to be free.
Another solid option not on that list is fastmail.fm (which is Australian).
gmail
(this is a joke dont hunt me down pls)
Tutanota
I was tempted to cancel after the CEO comments on politics, Reddit is a bit much though.
Reddit privacy policy is dog shit, having a company advertise privacy and use Reddit is comical
Is it time to change VPN platforms?
ProtonVPN has more servers, so its less likely to be blocked than Mullvad or IVPN. When I was using ProtonVPN I see much less "Log in to prove you are not a bot" or the reddit snoo avatar getting mad at me for using a VPN (there are still Movies and TV discussions I'd like to read).
Nevertheless, I'm currently using IVPN, I'm not sure if I'm staying tho.
Also: For people in authoritarian countries (like actual ones that already censored the internet), it would be difficult to pay for a VPN since banks would also block the transaction and cryptocurrency is likely also banned, so ProtonVPN's free tier is their only choice. (I'm not in a country that has censorship yet, but just want to mention that some people are in that situation)
Also Mullvad is slow, I recommend IVPN over Mullvad.
Mullvad, lad
The ONLY reason I have Proton email, is because my bank thinks it's the only secure email in the world...
Are those people who have been quoted supposed to be significant to the privacy community?
I've looked through the links provided and read a couple articles (one is titled "Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis and surprising findings" and it is all very he said/she said with almost nothing to back anything or anyone up...
I'll gladly read more if anyone has info?
The most significant quote is from Proton itself, which made an official statement in favor of Republican and JD Vance.
I haven't seen many people simply post archives to the now-deleted contents of what Proton said, which is pretty damning in its own right. Before Proton realized their mistake, started erasing their original replies, and crafting a much less damning-looking narrative.
I've reviewed the article that tries to ascertain Andy Yen's politics (as if doing this would have been less weird if it was unabashed love of Democrats) and I agree it's pretty bad in several ways.
There are a lot of people misquoting the made comments from Proton. They are just really stupid for making comments like this.
If you use their services, use it with your own domain
No, as far as I am aware these are simply people that got significant traction on Mastodon today. Michael Stanclift is a contributor to Mastodon. This post is more me curating popular sentiment than expert opinion, though I recognize both are important.
It’s pretty simple, really. Did you read the original statement? Did you see where Yen said the Republican Party will champion the little people and be great for privacy? End of discussion.
The squabbling over “hE dIdN’t diRecTly prAIse Trump” is nonsense whataboutism distraction.
It’s pretty simple, really.
Context matters. Even if you don't see it.
This is good news. It means we aren't monitizeable enough.
Not surprising. Proton and their volunteer mods on /r/protonmail quash talk that doesn't make them look good. Plus there are a bunch of fanboys willing to defend whatever Proton does.
It's still one of the best services out there for people engaging in activities the US government disapproves of. Mullvad and Tuta are located in countries that work together with US intelligence as part of the 14 Eyes, and Sweden is also working on legislation to require backdoors into encrypted messaging. If you must use something other than Proton VPN out of some ideological bent, then Njalla or cryptostorm are the better VPN choices.
cryptostorm is a fast VPN that requires no account or other information, and access can be bought from resellers using crypto, making it impossible for cryptostorm to identify you out of all the people using their service, let alone turn over your data. I've used this VPN, and it was fast enough to play multiplayer shooters online.
Njalla is an infamous bullet-proof VPN and web host, that hosts several high profile piracy sites out of Costa Rica. They do not comply with demands for information or to take down services. It's a top choice for people who plan on sailing the high seas.
Both of these services allow port forwarding, something Mullvad does not due to piracy.
proton vpn, is mostly useless against reddit anyways, its not coincidence that the vpns are not working anymore and thier aggressive banning on reddit, or they angling for reddit allow only thier vpn to be used, they are probably getting some kind of deal from huffman.
Besides slow responses to support request and handing over info on that Swiss French activist, is there anything else they've done wrong? And I understand that they had no choice in the Swiss case - they had to abide by the law there.
Yeah afaik their hands were tied with the Swiss incident. No VPN (or was it mail? it's been a while, either way) is going to jail for a user.
Not to mention that the data they did actually provide was very minimal. They didn't have to compromise any of their existing services to provide it.
There wasn't exactly anything Proton could have done from a technical standpoint to prevent themselves from knowing what they did, without making the service itself nonfunctional.
What Swiss activist?
I'm out of the loop- what happened? Recently people were promoting Proton as an alternative to Gmail and Microsoft.
Owner of proton is a huge MAGA Trumper because he "stands up for the little guys".
Ooh okay thank you.
Fsck em and feed em fish heads
Yikes, to using an outrage bait twitter post as the OP.
Also, to the lazy 'they're fascist' criticism based on exactly no facts
Oh do tell me more about how trump and musk aren't fascists!
The CEO agreed with one statement from Trump (which is often misquated as well) and doubled down on it and is generally an idiot.
But that doesn’t mean they support Trump (or Musk). I know the US politics has been changing and removing the ability to look for compromises, but in the rest of the democtatic world agreeing with one statement from a person or party doesn’t mean you agree with their entire political agenda.
Only use Proton with your own domain so you can switch, but there aren’t that many other good options and none of them offer the same protection the Swiss law does.
So, you're so high on outrage that you can't even understand the context of a comment.
From the OP:
apparently we aren't Fash enough for @protonprivacy
Is there literally a single shred of evidence that they stopped posting on Mastodon because it wasn't fascist enough for them.
For the outrage junkies, *them* refers to @protonprivacy and not whatever *them* you want to insert to make outrage farming quips.
So, do tell me how you're so confident that proton left Mastodon because it wasn't fascist enough.
You can't, because it's a nonsense fact-free accusation. This kind of ignorance, where reality isn't as important as spinning a situation to "own the other side", is how we got the MAGA movement.
Rather than engaging in reality you're contributing to the spread of bullshit because it's bullshit that you personally enjoy.
Do better.
This opinion article goes into the situation a bit more
I know the situation. There's more nuance to it than simply 'Proton is fascist'. Posts like the OP do not contribute to people understanding the situation, it is simply promoting misinformation, outrage bait and drama.
The actual piece of information here is 'Proton stops using Mastodon'. That information may be tangentially related to this discussion group, but isn't exactly a noteworthy piece of information that inspires much discussion. Instead, OP is using it as a means of posting outrage bait. The pictured comment that implies that Proton left Mastodon because Mastodon wasn't fascist enough.
This is simply bullshit misinformation meant to inspire outrage that's duck taped to a news item so it can be posted here. This kind of crap isn't about Privacy, it's a way for people to sneak misinformation into the community by dressing it up as a piece of news.
e: Here's an example of a privacy community where they simply posted about the event without any of the extra misinformation, notice how the discussion is less extreme and is focused on the actual thing that happened instead of reacting to the outrageous framing: https://lemmy.world/post/26094433
oddly satisfying upvote ratio
Making quite a few ungrounded assumptions here. Maybe your platform is just shit?