In an unexpected mask off “secure” email and VPN provider Proton took the stance of siding with the fascist MAGA Reps. Proton’s services are no option for me and many others any longer. Let’s collect and discuss alternatives (E2E encrypted email and VPN) here 🔐👇
Always try to provide:
-Server location (jurisdiction)
-Governance
-Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency
-User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8)
-Pricing and links
If you know alternative setups, feel free to share, too.
#ProtonExodus
Background: https://lemmy.ca/comment/13913116
Edit:typo
using services based on the ceos political leaning instead of actual features and policies of thats service? that’s dumb, tell me when that political leaning reflects in polices of proton then we can talk
I guess the assumption is that over time they inevitably will have an effect and people want to switch before that happens.
In all seriousness, I genuinely feel like the demographics of those making over 250K/year outside of Silicon Valley (proton is from Switzerland which is a center-right country), and outside of the arts industries, is probably bare minimum of lib-center, and probably most likely to be at least fiscally conservative, if not socially as well. Those kind of people are more concerned with maintaining their financial position than the issues plaguing the income classes that the individual has graduated out of.
I don’t think you’re going to find many CEOs that aren’t at least a little right of center or self serving in their business interests.
Tweet is from early december. Why is it blowing up now?
Misinformation. OP is advocating that you shoot yourself in the foot.
The CEO said something silly on Twitter which revealed either that (a) he shares an exceedingly banal opinion with literally half of America or (b) he’s not above a bit of preemptive sycophancy to advance his (positive) anti-trust agenda.
There’s nothing particularly scandalous in the offending tweet:
- Implying that the Democrats are now “the party of big business” is arguably true (and very boring)
- Implying that the Republicans now “stand for the little guys” is dumb but also arguably true, unfortunately - the working classes swung to Trump in the recent election while the Democrats are fast becoming a party of high-earning elites (which is why they lost)
- Saying that the antitrust actions began under Trump I is, well, true
Proton is not owned Zuck-like by its CEO. It’s controlled by a foundation with other stakeholders on the board, including the inventor of the Web himself. In its niche it is still by far the best option. Ditching it for a nebulous non-existent alternative because the CEO expressed a dumb and extremely commonplace opinion is just silly and self-defeating.
PS: to be clear, OP is peddling misinformation because it’s not true that “Proton took the stance” of anything. It’s the personal opinion of the CEO that’s at issue. It’s a major distinction. I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual’s right to have their own thoughts.
PPS: to be extra clear, my comments are about the post above, not stuff that people are reading elsewhere. But the substance stands. See discussion for detail.
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It isn’t misinformation.
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Someone like this board member being a traitor to his species isn’t covered by “opinion”. No normalizing nazis. It’s such a low bar. He couldn’t clear it.
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He blasted his treachery over the public airwaves. His privacy isn’t being violated.
This whole comment feels like an exercise in using all the best words to miss the point. We know, as does this probably-lying board member, that Republicans are only going to go more authoritarian, and the only reason they would pretend to care about big tech abuses is to grab the steering wheel from them to commit far worse abuses. No company that gets into bed with traitors is going to become the new center of my digital life.
Tuta for email, syncthing for photos bc I’m not self-hosting, mullvad for VPN.
Sorry but I won’t participate in this juvenile trivializing of the word “Nazi”. Yes, I know that’s become almost a meaningless slur at this point, but personally I just will not take seriously anybody who throws it around like this. Perhaps because I’m European. Perhaps because I studied history. It’s not serious.
It’s because you’re a centrist.
You say it like it’s an insult! Actually I usually vote green. And in Europe the greens are really greens, rather than just spoilers who help Bushes and Trumps into power.
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I largely agree with what you’re saying, except the official Proton Mastadon account doubled down on that personal opinion. That seems pretty clear that it’s endorsed not just by that one individual on the board.
Link to Mastodon thread: https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Archives in case they delete it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Text copy of their post:
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 coincidently 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.
Just puked a little after reading that.
Here’s what I don’t get: if the leadership at Proton believes this shit, why share it on social media at all? It clearly isn’t going to make anyone in the left happy. Are they trying to capture porn-loving MAGA?
Appeasement to the fascists so they don’t get banned like they did to tiktok (I assume)
deleted by creator
You have to look at their comments/replies or whatever. Someone above already posted the link.
Sorry, their comment hadn’t been posted when i loaded the thread. Much obliged.
Significant if true. But still. Proton has a great product and a lot of stored-up goodwill. I think the reasonable thing to do here is to wait and see, and to judge them on actions before words.
I’m not jumping ship yet and am waiting to see what, if anything, happens from here. Maybe it comes out that the same person has access to that official Mastadon account and echoed their opinion there… and maybe it comes out that his comments/actions are disavowed by the rest of the organization.
I’ll wait and see. But it’s not a great start.
Fair enough. But this whole drama is still completely substance-free. The air of US-style thought-policing bothers me.
I love how you’re claiming misinformation while posting misinformation. It’s not the CEO, it’s a board member. That said, the company also officially posted these ideas on their Bluesky account.
This isn’t a “CEO” expressing a belief, it’s the board, and now the official company line.
I’m not disagreeing with their post particularly on corporate dems, but this is a company and not a persons sole belief.
Also, if dems are the party of big business then why are all these big businesses donating to Trump? Does that just mean republicans are the party of even bigger business?
Their bullet points are spin-doctoring.
Also the comment got a few dozen upvotes almost immediately. Suspicious.
This is all over the place.
My comment concerns the post above. OP cites a tweet and states a falsehood about it. No, “Proton” did not “take the stance” of anything in that tweet. Yes, Andy Yen is the CEO. Yes, that tweet is in his name and not in the name of Proton. I was not responding to other things that you’ve seen elsewhere.
Now, as for those other things elsewhere, I stick by the substance of my point. Sure, it’s more of a problem that dumb things are being said in the name of Proton rather than just it’s CEO. But look at the detail of those things. There is nothing scandalous. People are getting their underwear in a twist about extremely common opinions being expressed on Twitter. Personally I don’t care if a CEO voted a different way to me, or even if a whole board did. This should not have any bearing on Proton’s product or what makes it better than others. This is just another typically American culture-war drama. It’s boring.
Implying that the Democrats are now “the party of big business” is arguably true (and very boring)
While true in some scenarios, in anti-trust Lina khan’s ftc has done significantly more than trump ever did. Biden keeping her over the protest of countless business execs and daily articles in the wall street journal on how she’s ruining America shows some commitment to prosecuting big tech.
Meanwhile, trump’s anti-trust moves were mostly based off petty issues he had with the ceos or the platforms having a “liberal bias”. Now that every big tech ceo has fallen in line and given him $1 million for his inauguration I doubt we’ll see much movement on that front.
From what I remember pre-election news was saying wealthy dems/dem donors wanted Biden (and Kamala in some report I saw) gone primarily because they didn’t like what Lina Khan was doing. There were also questions about whether Kamala would continue to support Lina Khan after receiving donations from wealthy donors. JD Vance praised her work and it sounds like the Trump nomination is going to continue similarly.
I don’t like Trump at all and I know how petty and sycophantic he can be, but this may end up being one case where I end up preferring the result on this one specific issue over what we may have had if the dems had won without Kamala or if she flipped and agreed to drop Khan. I won’t really know how I feel about this selection until I see the result.
(Quick search turned these examples up that I’ve only skimmed, but I need to log off: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/24/kamala-harris-lina-khan-00185345 https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-rich-donors-lina-khan/)
Completely agree on all that.
Not American, but there is this regarding the third point: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7b1wib/
Any thoughts here?
To me this whole demonizing proton ceo thing seems a bit overblown. Sucking up is actually pathetic and funny
If you’ve got an argument, make it.
Well the reddit comment says completely opposite of what you said - that trump didn’t really increase / start with antitrust, but rather did the opposite.
Well it’s either true or it’s not. Did you bother looking it up to check?
I tend to agree. Don’t blow this out of proportion. If you dig deep enough, you will not like the CEO of ANY company… so don’t let some comments from the CEO of Proton get you worked up.
Sigh.
Goddammit. I’m so fucking tired.
This is how they win.
Like zombies, slow and steady, dumb and hungry
Perfect
Be tired with Tuta!
Mullvad is supposed to be a safe and secure VPN.
Unfortunately not a mail or storage provider.
If this wasn’t enough of a wakeupcall to not put all the eggs in one basket then what is? Companies are literally doing this to lock you into their service so it’s harder to switch since you then have to find X new services instead of just one.
Better go with one that’d specialized for each service you need…
Posteo, Mailbox.org, and Tuta are all good alternatives.
Protonmail has been my main email provider for the past 7 years, and unless its CEO decides to sell it to Trump or Musk I honestly don’t see how his stupid private or not so private opinions are worth the hassle of changing my email for the million things I use my main and all the other emails I registered with Protonmail.
Most rich people have very dubious or outright awful political opinions and unless you’re rich enough to have someone build you an alternative or deconnected enough from society/only exist in programmer circles and are able to live entirely on FOSS software I don’t see why the average user should care about the CEO’s political stance. Maybe that’s my ignorant opinion as a European, but would you stop using Linux if you found out Linus Torvalds secretly loves Windows? Probably not.Your analogy/ example is fucked up and beyond stupid. Protonmail is hosted by the organization. Linus has no access to the Linux systems in the world. Also, thousands have contributed to the Linux ecosystem.
I agree that my analogy is fucked up and a little stupid, but I was just applying OPs logic: Andy Yen doesn’t do any more for Proton than Linus Torvalds does for Linux; they’re just stand in figures that people project their love or in this case hate onto. I doubt he personally wrote a single line of code for Proton. In that case Linus Torvalds is actually way more involved with Linux than Andy Yen is with Proton; Andy Yen might have more power over Proton but afaik and like you said Proton is owned in majority by its foundation, which I hope does get a say in what they do.
Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.
If that proton goes nazi, I am going straight to the farm
I thought they were talking about the elementary particle—I was afraid we’d have to find some other way of manifesting our physical existence.
Aww man! AGAIN?!?
Wow!
Of all companies, this is one I didn’t expect.
Damn.
Why would this be unexpected?
Proton already handed over the IP of a climate protester to authorities several years ago, while boasting that they had a no log policy.
https://therecord.media/protonmail-forced-to-collect-an-activists-ip-address-in-police-investigation
Every time, in the past few years, that I bring this up, everyone just acts like I’m setting an impossible standard and no alternative exists.
Proton has been shady for years.
From reading that article it looks like they were only using and able to log the IP address when the person logged in to their protonmail account specifically - not VPN.
They even state that VPNs can not be forced to log under the same legal order and are treated differently so in this case it seems the activists were not using the VPN while accessing their emails.
Although I dont agree with even the logging of the email IP, it appears like the user shot themselves in the foot like that other case where someone used their real name in the username and that obviosly has to be logged in some way.
I wish I had heard of this earlier, that combined with these new political statements is enough for me to find something else.
I didn’t know about this. I haven’t followed Proton closely for a while, but this…wow. Kinda lousy.
the good news is this is a lesson to never trust any entity whose role in the world is to accumulate capital
What’s insane is that didn’t Proton just recently announce they were converting to a non-profit?
Yes, they did: https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
Yea, and Andy Yen is only one of five members on the board of the Non-Profit organization, so you’ll just have to gamble that everyone else isn’t this weird (if you still want to continue using Proton services, that is, your choice 🤷♂️).
Before you decide to go back to Google or close your account, keep in mind that Proton became a non profit organization with the main mission of protecting your privacy. And as a non profit, they’re not trying to profit off of you in any way.
Going back to Google is the worst solution you can use. Remember that Google donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Google also doesn’t care about your privacy. On the contrary, they’re selling your data and using it against you.
While the Proton CEO may be a nut case, he’s only praising the choice that Trump made as the candidate for the antitrust department. While that’s understandably stupid since I don’t believe Trump is going up stick up for the little guy now that he’s got Musk and Zuck in his pocket, at least he didn’t actively donated and enabled Trump either personally or through his platform and spread misinformation.
Think about it.
At least with proton, the fact that you’re different, that you’re 2SLGBTQ+, is safe. Or at least substantially safer than Google.
They have doubled down officially with their official Mastodon account https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503 I therefore consider this official opinion of Proton. Focussing on one aspect and completely ignoring the bigger picture of a luming fascist period in the most militarized economy of the world is just inacceptable. Proton just could have kept their mouth shut, but they decided not to.
This is extremely disappointing. :(
Why are there so many responses like this, saying not to go back to Google? The OP didn’t even mention Google as an option they were considering. I’ve seen zero discussion in any of the other posts around the fediverse where people have expressed any desire to use Google because of this. Why would anyone think that users who had already moved to Proton would find Google acceptable as an alternative right now?
This just feels like you’re trying to discourage actual conversation about alternatives by acting like the only options are Proton or Google, so we all ought to shut up and sit down.
Also, if you think merely becoming a non-profit means a corporation can never exploit people and isn’t interested in making money off of it’s customers, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Because I looked at the discussion threads for this post and I saw a few early comments where people mentioned they would go back or stick with Google.
I’m not trying to shut down or discourage any discussion. Just pointing out to the people who said they’d go back that it’s not the best solution.
Safer.
Well, they handed out activists’ metadata in the past, for the French authorities. In their position of an e2ee provider who controls both ends as a default, they are in a position where the can fuck people over. This is exactly what Snowden described as someone pointing a gun at you while saying “Relax, I am not gonna use it against you.”
So much for safety.
Ah, and my original point was: it is either safe or unsafe, the word saf_er_ means nothing during a genocide.
Yes, proton is about ten thousand times better than google, even with this board member’s stupid fully factored in.
Ive been using proton for a little more than a year now and I think that the service is one of the best out there. That, and their privacy guides in their blog are great as well. I think abandoning ship this early isn’t really a need. I’ve abondonded things like Plex for jellyfin due to Plex starting to feel very commerical. As others have pointed out, the governing of the company may keep one individuals views from interfering with the products. With that said, if your beliefs swing opposite, i see how it can leave a bad taste and make it worth keeping an eye on the direction of the company.
I don’t use proton, but I would be grateful if you could share a link on how Proton sided with fascists.
Also, I use Mullvad for VPN and I host my own email
They didn’t exactly “side with fascists”, but Andy Yen, one of the board members on the Non-Profit that owns Proton AG, has very bad takes on politics, and just has a right-wing “Libertarian” vibe.
https://x.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660 (https://archive.is/l1WYU)
https://x.com/andyyen/status/1812442643726537182 (https://archive.is/ADc8C)
Huh, I wasn’t very concerned with your links… but I googled and found out Andy Yen is the founder. That’s alarming
True, but Tim Brenners-Lee is also on the board, and he historically has generally good takes on tech and politics.
People are often unwilling to go against the positions of the guy who created the World Wide Web.
If his presence at proton is the old thing holding back the stupid, then it isn’t as good a company as we has been thinking.
My personal recommendations:
https://uberspace.de/
- Server location (jurisdiction): Germany
- Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency: About-Page
- User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8): 6
- Pricing: Based on solidarity, but recommend minimum is 5 € per month
https://www.hostsharing.net/
- Server location (jurisdiction): Germany
- Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency: well, you own part of hostsharing if you use it (collective-ownership)
- User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8): 6
- Pricing: 64 € onetime payment + 10 € per month (cooperative)
Other recommendations:
- mailbox.org, systemli.org, riseup.net, posteo.de (as far as I know all of them are located in Germany)
Thanks!
AFAICT, it looks like all he’s doing is praising Trump’s pick for AG in the Antitrust division . . . although if you look over her Wikipedia page, you’re right, it doesn’t look all that encouraging.
Can someone on Mastodon ask the Proton CEO what it was exactly that she did that he likes so much? Anyone who can work at Fox for any length of time, frankly, is complete and utter shite.
