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).
Proton is going boots up.
Proving that a company is not a person. A person goes tits up when the boots go up.
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.
This is good news. It means we aren’t monitizeable enough.
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At least we know where their loyalties actually lie, now.
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.
What’s Xitter?
Portmanteau of X (current name) and Twitter (former name)
And shit, don’t forget the shit
It’s like Twitter but Xitty (pronounced like Xi Jinping).
which they have full control over
And yet it remains.
which got removed by a Proton fan
They have the ability to moderate their own comments on any platform.
Your account history is public
Do you think there’s nothing that archives the content from Reddit? How do you think they knew it was removed?
The corporation doesn’t have to stifle 100% of their criticism, they just need to disseminate enough of a counternarrative, with PR statements that are technically true enough, to overpower the criticism so that it no longer matters.
(Plus, based on your last comment, I know you already have a “they can moderate anything they feel like” response lined up, if they do start clamping down even harder where they can.)
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.
I get tired of being so right all of the time
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.
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Mullvad
Ah yeah, located in Sweden, country known for the Pirates Bay scandal that may also soon introduce a law requiring apps to have backdoors to access user’s data. Great choice.
You owe it to yourself to research past the platitudes. Then you would know that they already got raided and the police left empty handed because there was nothing to find.
Sweden is also at this moment preparing to pass legislation that will require backdoors into encrypted services.
The government is preparing legislation, Parliament has yet to decide on it.
Looking at other Western countries and their history of privacy invading surveillance laws, how likely do you think it is that Sweden won’t pass it? Are you willing to bet your own money that they won’t?
I don’t hade to look to other countries, Swedens track record for enacting this kind of legislation is quite bad. But the process is still transparent and even if new legislation pass it won’t come into effect immediately. So taking actions at this stage is premature imo.
Yes? It’s a pretty small bet.
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.
The ONLY reason I have Proton email, is because my bank thinks it’s the only secure email in the world…
Is it time to change VPN platforms?
Absolutely. Mullvad is way better.
How so?
it has a cool sounding name, of course!
Lmao a valid point, but I’m a function over form sort of guy
well, in that case, Proton has more servers, and also allows port forwarding. so don’t use mullvad if you’re planning on sailing the high seas.
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Mullvad, lad
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.
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.
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?
I agree with you, and yeah the convenience factor is in fact a huge problem and is highly exploited. The only thing I saw working are in fact laws to make the switch to another “service” more convenient (e.g. you have a messaging app? your protocol must be open source so that other clients should be possible by law, idk how feasible is this, but u get the idea).
Fsck em and feed em fish heads
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.
Yeah I was considering this service. There are a few things that make me hesitant, like searchability of emails and possibly calendar features and integration. But this one is definitely at the top of my list.
Searchability is good, better than Proton even. I’m sure it requires keeping all the emails stored locally but thats ok with me
Yeah I’ve seen people run into issues not finding some emails, but from what I researched, this seems like a really good service. Slowly moving my stuff back into my hands, so email is coming lol
Tuta is in Germany, part of the 14 Eyes, which share intelligence with the US. If you are an American engaged in activism under the current administration, do not use Tuta. They are absolutely obligated to comply with sealed warrants for your data, and nobody there is going to put their livelihood or freedom on the line for you, nor should they be expected to.
Good thing it’s encrypted then.
So is Proton. And Proton is in a country where it’s illegal to give data to the US government.
They don’t encrypt as many parts of emails as Tuta does, tho.
A point that’s largely moot, considering all of nothing is still nothing, which is what the US gets from Proton, while Germany will hand over whatever little information Tuta has when asked nicely.
I would not rely on provider-dependent encryption anyway. If you want actual encryption - use PGP.
Don’t use PGP.
https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
Also read “Why does Tuta Mail not use PGP?” here: https://tuta.com/encryption
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From what I understand, Mullvad removed port forwarding to clamp down on piracy.
iirc, they removed port forwarding because people were hosting CSAM and Mullvad lost some location/internet providers business.
Wow. That is so much worse.
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.
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.
A “privacy-focused” company is choosing to stop using the open source social media site in favor of one run by a guy who gives Nazi salutes. There’s no positive spin to it.
Nope there isn’t, is the owner of Reddit also doing Nazi salute’s? Cause I missed that one.
Protons biggest blunder of being able to pass it off as the opinions of one CEO was doubling down and going further into their thoughts on US politics from their Proton reddit account. Then editing and deleting comments when their attempts at damage control failed.
That’s the most interesting thing about all this. That they felt compelled enough to speak on it and then just dug themselves in further. And that’s their attempt at a palatable mainstream explanation. So it is intriguing wondering about what they actually believe.
At this point they’d be better off saying we don’t know anything about US politics we were out of our depth and trying to market ourselves to Americans saying things that we believed made us sound good. But in the end we are Switzerland based company not a US one.
I have seen that comment as well and yeah they dug themselves further. They where an idiot for doing that if they are trying to stay impartial, heck they are idiot for going into into it in the first place. Pretty sure they just have a terrible communications department.
However, most of the world sees politics differently than the two-party system the US has and it is almost never so toxic as it is with the US. Just because you agree with one statement doesn’t mean you agree with all statements of the specific person/party. I feel like a lot of people in the US are forgetting that.
Rest of the world sees the US as a country that is getting closer to the Russians and alienating their former allies like Canada, Mexico, UK, and EU. So make of it what you will when it comes to whether endorsement of the US would be seen positively in other international markets Proton is trying to reach. There’s a growing blanket dislike of the US with no care for parties.
Protons best move is stopping with US centric topics which looking at their socials has been their main marketing focus. Focus on the fact that they are Switzerland instead of so desperately attaching themselves to the US in a world that is seeing more anti US sentiment grow. Which after their blunder with their CEO is not going to run well at all anyways being perceived as disingenuous by critics.
Let memory of US fade when it comes to Proton. That’s what I’d recommend to their marketing team.
Also got curious and looked more into Andy Yen, and he did schooling in the US going to Caltech and Harvard. It seems when it comes to Switzerland it was chosen as a place to start Proton, so unsure if he had ties to the country before hand. So I don’t think the whole he is some foreigner who is completely clueless about American politics can be used as an excuse, and certainly explains the very US centric approach of the company’s marketing. Background would suggests this is someone at the very least well aware of American politics and spent a significant time there immersed in the culture.
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.
Nobody thinks that they chose Twitter FOR the fascism but they’re absolutely siding with the fascists. Elon Musk makes money off their presence on X.com, end of story.
Crazy how Lemmy went nuts at the thought of anyone staying on Twitter but are tripping over themselves to defend the Proton guy.
Maybe @protonprivacy can post on Mastodon to rebut OP
You’re not required to rebut baseless allegations made by faceless people on the Internet.
You are here doing it so I guess we will never know. Time to move on.
oddly satisfying upvote ratio
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
