Summary
Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.
The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.
Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.
Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.
Good news for them, I’m “financially neutral”
I just cancelled my subscription and moved everything to Tuta. Tuta also seems to have a political stance much more aligned with my own: diversity, privacy oriented, and eco friendly.
Yeah Proton already burned that bridge. “Politically Neutral” is no longer an option for them.
Correction; the CEO posted a rather tone deaf message. while this is incredibly dumb, it should be little reason to burn the company to the ground
Having said that, people should start looking at email again how it was designed to be: have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now
gonna quickly post here, since I don’t know quite where else would be good, but I noticed sometime last year that the website, https://standardnotes.com/ (a product owned by proton) seems to use a massive amount of AI generated imagery.
also: I thought I was a fool for not getting lifetime visionary when I could, now a little less so :)
Standard Notes is owned by Proton? I didn’t know it lol
I only found out since I used standard notes before the ownership thing, I suppose I’m gonna have to look for a syncing note taking service again.
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Have you considered self hosting a syncing note taking service?
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-taking--editors.html
it’s worth some consideration I suppose. so long as it’s not too resource intensive, it could be good to spin it up on my vps space
Provided you’re not in need of fully fledged powerpoints, it would be fine to run them w/ little to no resources allocated to it. It just depends on your use-case, I suggest doing a backup of some sort and try out the various options. Unless you’re setup allows you to freely try them all out in which case go nuts
I suppose I’ll look for a decent service (maybe with spreadsheet support this time) and try to spin something up next week
Ah in that case you may want to look into paperless-ngx in the Document Management section:
https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/document-management.html
I don’t actually dislike ai imagery, I think it can produce interesting imagery. However, I must concede that is an excessive use of boilerplate bog-standard AI imagery.
I mostly agree, I think it’s good for individuals and small businesses who just need some free copyright-free (though arguably this is debatable) graphics for things. It’s not like the have the time/money to do it all themselves or get it commissioned.
But I don’t like it when >=medium businesses use it to cut costs or when it’s used for something that is directly meant to make money (like an advert or the core of a piece of content your consuming)
I use it a lot when I’m writing my notes (ie joplin/obsidian), I’ll use flux or stable diffusion for a few iterations until I can create an image that Is consistent with what I’m writing.
It can be really convenient to be able to recognize an image as you’re browsing through notes that are otherwise just filled with code or maybe a recount of the day.
I’m sure most consumers consider excessive use of generative AI to be in bad form. It certainly doesn’t exude professionalism.
What would be a good alternative? I refuse to support this. Thankfully, I have my own domain, so anything where I can use it would be great, and moving shouldn’t be that hard. Bonus points if I can use wildcards, or at least have a few emails, like spam@mydomain and other.
Oh, and it has to support “+” emails, such as [email protected]
I already switched from Proton Mail to Tuta. No regrets
Oh ffs, I just made the move to Proton with some stuff a few months ago. I’m really keen on switching the address out on a load of accounts.
Maaaan, what the fuck?!?
Wow. There’s a whole lot of people here reacting to the headline, and not actually reading the story. That’s important, because the journalist’s headline is (shocker) a huge overstatement.
I was concerned as I’m a Proton user and have been for years, and hard left politically, and despise Trump. But maybe lets just read it before reacting?
Here’s what the CEO posted on Xitter:
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Yep. That’s a bad look. Doesn’t make a lot of sense either because the Republicans are very much the party of big business and corporate handouts and deregulation in oil, gas, energy, mining, manufacture, industrial farming etc.
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit as an explanation and expansion of the CEO’s post (and then later deleted):
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidentally has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
First off, I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party is captured by corporate interests, so I really doubt any disagreement with that section of Proton’s post. My reaction to the remainder is that it’s not at all praise for the Republican party, just the factual statement of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually reign in the big tech companies than the Democratic party - and Proton is in a good position to have seen this first hand. Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans, and there is in fact lament that the Democrats didn’t stick harder with their left-wing candidates, even highlighting Bernie. I can see why they deleted it though, it’s office chatter than never should have left the cubicle.
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post. I’m a longtime lurker though. I felt strongly enough about this to make an account to post, as nobody seemed to be actually posting the content of the article - just reacting. Edit: typos & formatting of the quote.
Lololololololololol, bad look.
How about literally right wing propaganda
Thank you for clarifying!
Sir, this is Lemmy’s. We don’t allow reason here.
Look, reason my ass
Reason is fine, doesn’t mean everyone has to agree.
I don’t get why anyone would stay on a site they thought reason wasn’t allowed at.
I’ve been frustrated several times at what I perceive as Lemmy bias that borders extremism, but on the whole it’s perfectly reasonable. Essentially every response to the parent comment agreed with it (I have yet to see someone disagree but perhaps I haven’t scrolled enough).
Lemmy isn’t big enough to feel you need to stay, as Reddit was when comments like this were plentiful.
It’s just an old lame internet joke.
Yep, a complete drama over nothing that got many people start a witch hunt. We already reached the point in which the guy is now a Nazi for having chosen a username with 88 in it, despite the fact that he is Taiwanese AND born in that year. Basically this is the well-meaning, internet vigilantes version of “bill gates injects 5g microchips with vaccines”.
It’s what happens when politics becomes faith.
Same for me. Was it kind of stupid what the CEO said? Yes, sure, but who the fuck does not do that from time to time?
I also hate this mentality, that if you agree with a decision a party / person made, then that means you agree with everything they stand for. Bitch, no!
Nicely said.
I had my doubts, I mailed Proton and they responded with a statement Yen his opinion isn’t that of Proton, his comment while using the Proton account was a mistake which has been deleted and Proton changed to a foundation so no one, including a CEO like Yen, can change what Proton stands for.
Thank you for the summary.
I knew interacting on Lemmy would be hard but… Common people! Downvoting for a “Thank You”? Reasonable doubt for pulsewidth?
Anyway, pulsewidth PMed me (and probably the other commenters under him) and I think he wanted to point out his good faith. He comes back on the praise point and admits his fault. He is a bit disappointed to have been straight up banned from [email protected] .
Good first post
Good catch. Someone else here in the comments detected a hint of astroturfing… perhaps they were onto something
Edit: they opened a Lemmy acct to make that post, fwiw
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit
are you REALLY asking us to care about their PR damage control? They can literally cherry pick anything and say anything that’s true and try to tie it back into their argument. What stands is his initial heartfelt public statement.
Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans
Great pick by @realDonaldTrump . 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.On Twitter (your know, the fascist communication network)
Tagging Trump directly (ohh look at me, I’m a good boy, give me contracts, invite me over)
your definition of Zero and mine are WILDLY different.
I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party
Yes, the standard far right argument, no no they’re both bad so this isn’t bad.
of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually
There it is, you’re not even going to sugar coat it, No no, the Republicans WHO ARE DISMANTLING DEI AND MEDIA FACT CHECKING
are going to
ctually reign in the big tech companies (more )than the Democratic party
GTFO, or at least come up with a half reasonable argument. That’s serious not even worth the time to post on…
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
If you’re for real, (and I expect you’re just more damage control), sounds like you’re in a good place with like minded friends not worried at all about their safety.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post.
Ahh so more damage control. Gotcha!
Their PR Department can do better
“Tagging Trump” because it was an answer (quote? Not sure what is the xitter term) to the tweer where Trump announced the pick for antitrust.
I do disagree with the person you are answering to, he did praise republicans. He did in a very narrow context and for specific (although opinable) reasons and he praised Trump for having made that specific pick.
Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is.
Nice try, fed.
If by reigning in big tech you mean a cartel style system where companies need to provide funds to Trump to continue existing, sure. But there is no chance that the Republicans will reign in big tech : they are big tech.
You are leaving out the part where Andy Yen said that the tables have turned and the Republicans are now the party of the small people.
Andy Yen’s statement is downright pathetic and misleading. People are right to stir up shit because that’s the only thing corpos understand.
This isn’t a storm in a tea cup, this is the CEO of a company telling us who he really is and people choosing to tell him to get fucked.
Your post reeks of astroturfing.
the Republicans are now the party of the small people
He didn’t. He clearly meant small tech in that context, opposed to big tech\monopolies. Not only this is the only interpretation that makes sense, but he said this himself in a clarifying (personal) reddit comment.
Stop bootlicking
From Andy Yen directly:
“[…]10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today, the tables have completely turned.”
There is no place for interpretation here, the message is clear. If he wants to back pedal because he got slinged shit, so be it, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that he said that the Republicans are now the party of the small guys.
Stop spreading misinformation
I will quote his own words:
Unfortunately that was misinterpreted. If you go back to the original tweet in question, it is clear from the context that that is about “little tech” vs "big tech
I know we are in the internet in 2025, and nobody has the right to clarify their opinion anymore, one strike and you are out, but still.
To me it was obvious from the context to be honest, without even needing his own explanation (that you call backpedaling because good faith is never assumed). But then again, I was not looking for reasons to be outraged.
It’s hilarious though that reporting the authors own thoughts you call misinformation. Instead drawing your own conclusions that are explicitly denied by that person is supposedly objective. If there are no more rules of logic then everything goes.
Also this is not bootlicking, it’s just a timid defense of rationality in the face of people building castles in the air.
Yeah because cozying up buddy buddy with Trump is a castle in the air.
It’s not like the guy was cooked on the spot and spouted an incohenrent sentence.
The guy took the time to tag Donald Trump to show him how he’s not like the other girls , wrote out his message and thought that this was good enough to press send.
There is a lot of deliberate actions that leads to this and takebacksies are a lot more difficult to justify.
In that case, there is a little space for interpretation and Andy Yen is clearly in damage control.
It is not little joe from Arkansas owning a potato farm tweeting that shit, it’s the CEO of a supposedly “neutral” company, that deals in privacy, tagging his buddy Trump. Shit like that can’t get a pass.
Lucky for him, there are enlightened people like you that loves the smell of fresh polish directly from the boot.
Oh no, he tagged trump (did he? Or did he reply to the tweet in which trump announced the antitrust pick?). This 1 second action changes everything. I am glad we have already moved the goalpost. Why tagging trump would change the context of his message it’s really a mystery to me.
Look, for me it’s simple. He has expressed himself in a way that was easy to misinterpret. He clarified his thoughts, I judge him for his thoughts.
You want to judge him for what you think he meant? By no means, go ahead. Just don’t pretend it’s a fact, because it’s literally an opinion. A legitimate one, but still an opinion. The fact is that he said something and clarified that he meant something. Whether he is sincere or not is an opinion, but it doesn’t change the fact.
For the rest I don’t care to convince you or anybody else, I don’t care of Andy Yen either. What I do care is people damaging one of the very few tech companies out there that are positive exceptions to a shitty industry. I think this is way worse than a tweet - even if it praised republicans in a general sense.
Besides this, I also hate this aesthetic of purity. MacCartysm in modern sauce.
He has expressed himself in a way that was easy to misinterpret
Absolutely not. There wasn’t a nuance hard to grasp in Andy Yen’s message. It is a pretty straightforward message.
Look if you want to continue using the service, by all means do, but stop acting like other people telling Proton and Andy Yen to get fucked that they are exaggerating.
Corporations are fucking us over and being outright evil, and when one of their CEO comes out and spout absolute dogshit takes, people like you come out of the woodwork to tell people that it’s fine and people are overreacting. You gain nothing from sucking up to millionaire CEOs that don’t give two shit about you.
What’s the saying, “When someone shows you who they are, trust them the first time”?
Andy Yen showed us who he was and lots of people told him to get fucked.
Due respect, your take is obtuse at best or you’re a shill. The company, with current leadership in place, just cannot come back from the first statement, it illustrates a fundamental detachment from objective reality, to the point that you’ve lost any and all credibility, permanently.
In a business based on trust, this is just so clear. Poop
Curious how so many people decided to ditch them and switch (vocally on Lemmy at least) and now they back pedal/clarify/whatever. Turns out we have power and using it works. Sorry not sorry. Edited: pedal instead of petal.
I am currently entrenched in Google. Slowly digging my way out so I could transfer to proton. I was probably within about a month maybe two or pulling the trigger. Zero chance that happens now. I don’t like Google But I know what they’re going to do. If I’m going to put the effort into move that critical data it’s got to be with some place I can trust or I’m going to have to host it myself.
I’m researching the suggestions that people have made here: tuta, bitwarden, and mullvad.
Main downside of Mullvad is no port forwarding anymore
AirVPN is still great if you need port forwarding (e.g. for P2P services). Unfortunately they limit it to 5 ports for new accounts - used to be 20.
BW is great Chefs Kiss $40 a year for 6 people, it’s a good product made by people who seem to care.
I’m using PIA, it’s not great, but i’m not doing great things nor and I doing them quickly. They’ll give you openssl certs and you can do programmatic crap AND have a dedicated port.
Tuta is pricey for what you get. 8/month/user for email/cal with reasonable storage, No office apps, i need to replace a LOT of google services. Still have a lot tied up in their auth/store. And honestly encrypted email (AAS) is mostly worthless. It’s not encrypted between them and office 365 or google and everyone is already reading those in transit. And Google/MS are already mining/selling the content. If you’re not talking tuta<->tuta you might as well be broadcasting it.
The $3 for the shared box seems like a slap in the face. You’re literally already paying them for service/storage.
You can host thousands of email users on a couple of modest boxes for a couple hundred a month.
yap I’m exactly on the same boat. I am testing the waters with proton to leave google… and then I see this… Can’t find an alternative
Email:
Mailbox https://mailbox.org/en/
Posteo https://posteo.de/en
Startmail https://www.startmail.com/
Runbox https://runbox.com/
Cloud File Storage:
Filen https://filen.io/
Tresorit https://tresorit.com/
VPN:
Air VPN https://airvpn.org/
(sorry, didn’t have time to link more VPNs. I’m at work.)
Personally going with option 2 on an old PC, learning a lot about docker lol
Personally going with option 2 on an old PC, learning a lot about docker lol
Have to be careful in planning, a lot of ISP’s block common ports needed to host dns/web/email
Getting DKIM and SPIF running locally has a bit of a learning curve.
The real pain is SMTP. Even if you set up everything perfectly, a lot of mail providers won’t accept SMTP traffic from a home IP.
I think my longterm plan is to just keep a free gmail and try like hell to never use it.
Was looking into https://mailcow.email/
Haven’t gone past the cursory look tho
At first glance, they check all the boxes for me.
Im so sorry. I tried not to, but the pull was to strong. Ignore me please…
But…
The saying is “back pedal”, not “back petal”. “Back pedal” as in trying to pedal backwards on a bike. Not “back petal” as in trying to pick flowers at the back of a bush, maybe? Trying to not lie down on a bed of roses? Unsure.
I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a respectful and well-intentioned correction.
Oof. Kinda awkward, but…
*too
I'm so sorry but the Harvard Guid to Margin Spacing Standard is very off. Sorry.
I fixed that twice!
Fist Curse you autocorrect! Fist
Protrump Mail?
Swiss company says “Nazi’s aren’t so bad.”
The more things change the more they stay the same.
When they say they’re “neutral” lets not forget what “neutral” meant during World War II. It meant making a fucking shitload of money at the expense of the rest of Europe.
Also, the geography of Switzerland is how they were able to convince Germany to not invade. A few US Nukes dropped from the sky make their geography a moot fucking point this time around.
That escalated quickly
So does their geography!
Not if @[email protected] has their way.
You should open an history book or at least a good one.
Geography didn’t do anything. Switzerland would collapse in a day and many there were not against Nazi.
Nazi didn’t invade because they needed Switzerland to finance their regime. It was an economical decision.
Myth about WWII are legion like Austria being a victim (Austria was actually happy to be part of the Reich).
Yeah this is a masks off moment for them and people better be paying attention!
I was considering signing up, any alternatives?
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For VPN there’s mullvad, for email there’s posteo, for storage I recommend signing up with disroot, for password storage I’d recommend KeePass or BitWarden/VaultWarden depending on your threat models and needs
The real pain is going to be having those services split up so much.
Proton was really convenient for packaging those in a really convenient way.
Guess there’s a business opportunity here?
Some would say that is actually a pro, not a con. You don’t want your entire digital life tied to the whims of a single corporation. Fragmentation trades a bit of inconvenience for a ton more privacy and control over your digital presence.
Yes, it’s a pro in my opinion, don’t want all my eggs in one basket so to speak. And of course the providers want you to do just that, to use them for everything - mail, vpn, storage, passwords, aliases, docs, digital wallets (yeah proton has one now too!) - because that makes it very difficult to leave their service if their CEO turns out to be a Nazi or if you just find a better offering.
For a bundle I’d probably say look at disroot.org
FYI, if anyone is interested in VPN for torrenting, apparently Mullvad’s VPN is no longer good for that. Something to do with port forwarding. Out of the three that are recommended on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/ (IVPN, Mullvad, Proton), only Proton apparently still supports that.
You don’t need port-forwading for torrenting. It’s more like a nice-to-have. Mullvad works fine without it, so don’t let that stop you if you’re on the fence.
Good to know, thanks! Is that true even for seeding?
Yeah, it’s why I went with Proton over other options. :/
I’ve tried Proton mail and couldn’t get comfortable with their UI. Have been on Fastmail for two years now and it’s been excellent.
I’m back with Fastmail too, after having quit to go with Proton a while back. I never ran into a single email where the recipient was encrypted, so I’ve come to see the whole encrypted email shtick as mostly marketing.
I tried proton and I couldn’t get into using their service since it kept asking for personal information. I ended up not using it.
I really like Fastmail’s web client - just the right mix of 1990s web and “reactive” eye-candy web. The phone client is OK as far as I can tell, don’t use it much. The service itself has always been great and I’ve been a subscriber for 10-15 years, long before Proton existed.
I went with mailbox.org for mail, contacts, calendar. Keepass+syncthing for passwords. Still looking for VPN and file storage. I’ve been trying out nextcloud but there is a learning curve to host your own.
Mullvad is great for vpn.
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I’m curious, too. It was the only decent free vpn.
Edit: Why downvote?
