Sus af
So first taking Trump’s side and now that…
Agreeing with one statement doesn’t mean you side with all the points of a person/party.
Andy Yen is an idiot though, not going to lie about that one
After Andy Yen’s endorsement of the orange utan, I would seriously reconsider using any Proton product.
Yen tried to backpedal meekly several times since then, to get out of the pickle he got himself into with his definitely-not-impressed customers, but it’s a bit late for that: either he’s pro-Trump or he’s naive. Either way, he makes Proton sketchy.
Just did the transition off Proton! Most replacement self hosted in my homelab except for email.
Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis
One thing to note is that while on Reddit, people are alleging that Proton is a company run by a fascist, pro-MAGA, pro-dictatorship CEO, users on X are accusing Andy and the company of being anti-MAGA/anti-Trump.
So, in the face of all the evidence I’ve found, to compare Andy to a tech oligarch like Zuck and Elon, who are now bootlicking on display for all to see, is not supported by the evidence. […] However, being disillusioned with one party on one issue doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Andy Yen changed all of his stances and that now he’s actually pro-Republican or pro-MAGA. All of the evidence gathered suggests the exact opposite.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
This whole “Proton supports MAGA” thing is another example of internet mob-think where everybody has an opinion informed by no facts at all, actively ignires or dismisses the larger context in order to protect that fragile opinion from reality, and most haven’t even looked at the original statements that sparked the controversy.
At least personally I agree with the part of his statement about the corporate capture of the democratic party, I don’t think that’s the part most people have a problem with imo. It was saying that republicans are now the party of the little guy, or more likely to tackle abuses by big tech that was dumb. Obviously neither party is going to seriously go after any abuse or anything, but the richest tech CEO is blatantly running the country under the republican president, so saying they’re “more likely” to help is straight up a lie lol. I don’t think calling Andy a fascist is correct either, but I also very much disagree with his opinions of the republican party. Under either party billionaires and corporations are in control, but Trump is definitely not making that better at all.
And honestly all things considered Lina Khan was a pretty great FTC chair tbh, and Johnathan Kanter was pretty decent as the head of the antitrust division too. He was probably a lot better than Gail Slater will be. She’s literally a VP in a few different big companies, so touting her as a champion of the people against the abuses of big tech feels either misinformed or disingenuous.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
The only thing Yen should have done to be credible is shut the fuck up and not take any side, or express any political opinion. I expect no less from the CEO of a company that pretends to sell me privacy from a neutral country.
I’m not saying Yen is a raging magat. I’m saying the moment he opened his trap about US politics, he tainted his company and damaged its credibility.
Ah yes, I too require everyone else to only express views that agree with my own or else keep silent. Of course, I am the only person allowed to have nuanced opinions.
🤡
“10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
Yen said this as our government is being devoured by someone with massive conflicts of interest. In no way is this nuanced. It was in extremely poor taste and the worst time to say something political.
We don’t use real names on the internet for a reason. CEOs that use their own names as platforms should have a department (or at least a publicist) take a look at their posts as it can effect a company.
People are leaving the platform now because of something pretty avoidable.
It’s not “his” company, the company is owned by the Proton foundation (of whatever it’s exactly called)
Yeah Yen is an idiot, but his power is more limited than with a normal CEO company structure and the Swiss law is a lot stricter than the competitors law in like Germany.
Just like with any of these mail servers, buy your own domain just incase the company switches gears and starts selling your data or whatnot
Sure sure. The guy who unprompted endorsed a trump appointment that has deep US Telco ties, bizarrly said “the GOP is the party for the little guy,” had nothing but wonderful things to say about J.D vance, stated that Chuck Schumer slow rolled 2 internet privacy bills because of “quid pro quo” with his daughters working for big tech, used the phrase “triggered” unprompted, and just randomly added “88” to the end of his new user name.
Yeah, that guy is just neutral and disillusioned with the Democratic party. It’s not utterly clear what spaces and politics he aligns with. That would just be wholley unknowable.
It’s not utterly clear what spaces and politics he aligns with. That would just be wholley unknowable.
Well you’re right, of course, his alignment is knowable. In fact, if you read the article I linked, there’s lots of context for knowing his alignment. Maybe you should try reading it.
You’re going to have to bring receipts for those other claims.
It wasn’t unprompted - he was literally replying to the announcement of the appointment on Twitter. An announcement of a person he thought would be great for a role that he’s apparently been advocating for action against big tech in for years.
He’s born in 1988 you dolt.
The ugliest thing about Lemmy I’ve noticed so far is that it enjoys disinformation just as much as Reddit - as long as it fits the circlejerk, updoots this way.
Huh, I noticed you cherry picked two things to try to refute (interesting that you ignored him hiding “88” in binary and the fact he specifically tagged Trump in that tweet) and ignored all the others I listed. Its almost like you want to spread disinfo about how this is a non issue instead of actually digging into it.
Explain his fandom for J.D vance while endlessly criticizing Chuck Schumer, his statement that the GOP “was there for the little guy,” that the GOP was going to take on big tech even while they bent the knee and were donating millions directly to Trump in real time, his use of the term “triggered” to describe offending someone, on and on.
Go on, keep excusing all the clear MAGA mask on indicators. Tell us why a CEO in a foreign country, that keeps heaping praise on one party while using their cultural shibboleths, also “coincidentally” used an in-group dog whistle, is actually totally non partisan. That should be easy, right?
This comment is a perfect example of why I have written https://loudwhisper.me/blog/proton-fediverse-burnout/
The 88 thing is the complete tip of the iceberg for me. I can’t honestly imagine the thought process needed to reach a conclusion that a Taiwanese guy (8 is a lucky number) born in '88 would put that number as a dog-whistle (which is not really part of his own cultural landscape) for Nazis, while dealing with a PR issue.
It’s like looking at a crashed car, tire marks on the ground and suggesting it must have been a sharknado and not a car accident.
Nicely written blog post, it actually sums it up pretty nicely imo
“Hide your power level” mask on behavior from the alt right love to play these plausible deniability games while still signaling their actual intent. You see it with the “my heart goes out to” or “i’m just autisitc” cover for musks nazi salute, or the “he was just waving” Bannon nazi salute. They made a nazi salute, but of course it cant be a nazi salute, wink wink.
I honestly find the 88 to be a faint indicator in this case, but it was a wildly tone deaf one if so. When someone claiming neutrality is making very partisan endorsements for a party that’s steeped in all of the same memetic game playing, you cant ignore the dog whistles.
The problem is that those arguments are not falsifiable. If not one, but two completely reasonable explanation cannot convince you of someone motivations, nothing can. However, I don’t care if Musk did or did not a Nazi salute. His actions speak much louder (in a bad sense) than the aesthetic that he decides to adopt. Proton donation pattern for example would be a strong indicator to measure intentions.
but it was a wildly tone deaf one if so
Maybe. But also maybe people are allowed to have different cultural references, and in a global context (i.e., the internet) we should expect diversity. I - for example - had never heard of this 88 thing, and I would definitely not think about it at all the next time I create a username, and I didn’t think it when I went to a barber shop that has that number in the name. Likewise, I wouldn’t call anybody writing “Merry Xmas” tone deaf for missing the reference to the X MAS of infamous history (and just recently in the news). For some people it’s apparently impossible to see their culture as non-universal (at the cost of sounding stereotypical, folks from US have particularly this problem after decades of cultural hegemony).
for a party that’s steeped in all of the same memetic game playing, you cant ignore the dog whistles
This all happened before Musk/Bannon salute. Just to specify it.
Do you have any recommendations for someone who just uses them for email?
Migadu!
Not OP, but I’ve been using Fastmail for a few years now and have had no issues with them.
Same, I just switched over to them and have had a good experience with it.
I’m a happy mailbox.org user
I use them too. Their web ui and app are totally ugly crap but if you use it with thunderbird or another mail app it’s good.
Just switched and couldn’t be happier. Now I can use FairMail as a client and loving all the extra features.
I used a custom but generic sounding domain name which made the switch pretty seamless.
I’ve been a Runbox customer for many years. Never had any problem with them. They’re located in privacy-friendly Norway.
Been very impressed with Runbox since Andy turned out to be an idiot.
Tutanota
Seconded, but they just go by Tuta now.
I’ve got an account with tilde.club
They even have a newsgroup service for the tilde community. It’s not full on Usenet and there aren’t any hosted files, but it’s a nice community feature.
You get a gigabyte soft cap (three gig hard cap and a week grace period to get back to soft cap) but it actually talks to google, for the time being, and I’ve been making an attempt at migrating to the point of using gmail as a ‘talking ot my republican family’ and ‘spam’ account.
I think im going to try it out. I dont like where proton is going.
https://tilde.club/signup/ https://tilde.club/wiki/faq.html
Remember. This is a hobbiest community. Personal recommendation is using tilde.club for emails, and spread your other needs across other tilde servers.
Yes commandline interaction is required.
Save your SSH keys not just on your computer but in a couple other secure places. If you have to pull them from backup, remember to reset the file’s permissions otherwise SSH won’t like them. Setting up a password backup is very helpful here especially since that will let you use your mail address with apps such as k-9 on android, or claws/thunderbird/outlook for desktop.
oh yeah def. Im going to donate if/when I take a look. sdf also has something similar.
Hotmail. Been using it since high school and every data breach and fuck up taught me something new.
I’ve been using Tuta for more than 8 years now and had one serious issue with their service during this time (longer outage, pretty early on). Other than that I have nothing but positive experience with them.
They’re also based in Germany if that makes any difference.I’m happy Posteo.net user.
German and secure email service.
But unfortunately the web frontend isn’t quite as good, so if you are dependent on something like this then don’t use it.I was debating between proton and tuta, but I was able to get first.last@tuta so I’m happy that worked out now.
I made it, so I’m obviously very biased, but I think it’s better than Proton. It’s got some really useful organization and anti-spam features.
The labeling idea is pretty interesting, an email service with inbuilt proxy, but your website is pretty light on details. Stuff like pricing or custom domain support is absent.
Good point. I’ll add that.
I’m working on custom domain support right now. And pricing is pretty straightforward, since I only have extra storage and sending options. You get 500MB for free, and the ability to receive email. Sending is $1/month. I put that behind a paywall to prevent spammers from using Port87. As a small email service, if you send spam, the big players can blocklist you and kill your service. So, keeping my SMTP servers’ IP address reputation high is really important.
You can join the Discord to follow along with new features and updates:
“…join the Discord…”
Aaaaand I’m out.
Posteo is good. Have been using them for 2 years now.
Idc if I likes Trump or not (even though Trump is garbage); but I do care that he says the Republicans - the party that has spent years attacking encryption and privacy, who has sued to obtain private medical records of women and trans people who see doctors, and who is funded by billionaire big tech moguls - is the better option for privacy.
Also just taking ANY position for a leader of the US - one of the biggest parties to the Five Eyes agreement - just leaves a bad taste.
Any alternatives for their VPN service with port forwarding?
Mullvad (or Mullvad on a router with Adguard)
Mullvad no longer has port forwarding.
Airvpn, or Azirevpn if you’re ok with few servers
Of those I’ve only used Azire, and it worked well. I’ve seen Airvpn recommended often though
There are none of them as good as Proton.
For example, AirVPN hasn’t had any security audits and doesn’t seem too interested in them either due to monetary concerns. That’s a deal breaker for me.
Private internet access is nice
They have port forwarding, but they were bought by a company that has been caught stuffing malware into purchased programs. Basically, it was a company that has a history of buying out otherwise legitimate software brands, and then bulking them with adware as a quick cash grab on the existing customers.
That buyout was like 4 or 5 years ago, but it left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Because everyone expected the PIA client to silently get bulked with adware one day. Since trust is basically the only reason to casually use a VPN, it pushed a lot of their users to alternatives.
There is not and never was any endorsement of Trump. I wish people would stop spreading such wild disinformation.
He also never backpedaled.
Here is the tweet - if that’s not the most flagrant Trump bootlicking, I don’t know what is:
And here is the backpedal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
Believe what you will. I believe what I read.
Here is the tweet
I know exactly what you’re referring to.
if that’s not the most flagrant Trump bootlicking, I don’t know what is
I agree, you don’t know what is. Agreeing with a single decision someone makes is not an endorsement. But that’s exactly the kind of irrational dichotomic reaction I expect from society these days.
And here is the backpedal
I don’t see anything here that could be construed as backpedaling. If he were smart he would have, but if anything, he doubled down several times.
I believe what I read.
You didn’t read that, you made it up.
It’s kind of stupid to say that Republicans aren’t the party of big business anymore. Both parties are parties of big business.
If you want to claim it was a stupid thing to say, I will agree with you 100%. If you want to claim that it was a tacit endorsement specifically of Trump, you are just wrong and spreading disinformation.
“No you don’t get it! Supporting trump isn’t really supporting trump! Just bc the CEO likes Trump’s policy and endorsed him doesn’t mean he endorsed him!”
Normal people don’t jerk off Trump like that Dude is blatantly a Nazi, if you can’t see it that says a lot about you
“Anyone who disagrees with me is a Trump supporter and a nazi!”
See, I too can make up things that you didn’t say and put it in quotes and pretend like you did.
I’ll sometimes agree with stuff Trump does too, like appointing Tulsi Gabbard, but I’m not going to say this means Republicans have become the party of anti war lol
What’s good about the Tulsi Gabbard here? Unless you just mean she (like all the Trump appointees) is the worst person for the job and it’ll make the country collapse faster lol
You agree with Trump about something?! How dare you, nazi!
I wouldn’t call that boot licking. Maybe a misguided opinion.
I think he internet mob went a little hard on this one.
A perfectly guided opinion. You do get why the CEO likes Trump and left the fediverse while staying on Twitter, right?
Looking at the board of directors for the proton foundation, I’d say people are jumping to conclusions way too fast about proton.
I don’t like that they’re ditching Mastodon to focus on reddit. But, it makes sense in a marketing perspective. Reddit has a LOT more users, and potential customers. If they indeed don’t have the resources to manage both then Reddit is the best option if they want to attract more people as customers. On Mastodon they’re pretty much preaching to the choir.
Not even Bluesky, they went straight to Reddit. Shame.
It’s a sad day when “you can find us over on Discord” is a better option.
At least reddits getting selfaware enough that every other post is ppl getting mad at ppl telling them to google since those posts are what they find off google, or they’ve already googled and found nothing.
The immediate assumption that everyone is an idiot who hasnt tried to google is annoying but used to be valid, ppl got lazy there (including me) and would just ask questions that were easily googleable, the issue is those posts are now first on google and none of them have answers lol
I wonder if Andy was watching fuckface destroy Unity, and just thought to himself, What could I say or do to aggressively power-fuck the Proton brand?
Honestly they should be using https://publer.com/ or something similar. Makes publishing and maintenance of social media very easy. If you have a large org it makes sense to publish to multiple platforms.
There’s not much point in “post and ghosting” to platform if you’re not going to engage with its’ users. You might as well just direct people to your blog instead.
I agree!
Other “like” tools to publer have comment/reply options so it just goes to the HR/publicist/etc… I used to be part of a fortune 500. Its the only way to actually keep up with anything. Keyword finding, etc…etc…Its all automated nowadays. Im actually not sure about publer specifically on this so im not going to say its possible or not.
At this point, most have some sort of Mastodon integration since the API was pretty simple to pull in.
Gross. I’m slowly moving from ProtonMail to Port87, which is kind of embarrassing because I made Port87 and launched it almost two years ago. Switching email providers is hard though. You have to update everything.
Unless you use a custom domain. That way you only need to update everything once.
Yep. Definitely worth the ten bucks a year. Also it lets you get your own DMARC reports, which can be useful sometimes.
Is there a free DMARC reports analyzer? I don’t want to pay for a premium service (it’s my personal email, after all), and I don’t like Postmark free service.
I don’t know. I just read the XML. It’s pretty easy to read. I’m sure there’s a tool out there though.
It’s also worth pointing out the fact that they offer free services; most likely, your data is their real product. That’s to be expected with, say, a social media platform, but a VPN? That is a HUGE security threat. I’m just waiting for the proton security leak. The amount of sketchy data will be choice.
Proton’s revenue comes from paid subscriptions.
They still offer free services, though.
Payed for by subscriptions. Protons free offerings (namely, the VPN) are severely crippled. The free tier VPN is almost trial like to sell you on the full product. I also haven’t seen any of those youtuber sponsored -95% off deals other VPN providers have. Proton’s pricing isn’t exactly cheap which signals they do sell it at actual market rate instead of offering a cheap service which may or may not be subsidized by selling your data.
No. They’re a non profit with a specific mission to further the enhancement of provacy. Under Swiss law they’re legally obligated to adhere to this. Which means they can’t collect user data willy nilly and sell it.
Also, it wouldn’t make sense for a non-profit organization to profit from selling user data.
I worked for multiple non-profits that made a profit. That’s not how this works. It’s not the function, it’s the cost.
The bottom line is that Proton does not collect your data to sell it for profit.
Why wouldn’t they? Especially after the lasafare opinions expressed by their CEO.
They legally can’t. Period.
What if you stored the data in an unregulated country? Check out their career page.
Non-profits make profit all the time. The key difference between a for-profit and a non-profit is that a for-profit company takes that money and gives it to its owners, and a non-profit is legally required to reinvest that money in its organization or missions.
Of course, non-profits can also do shitty things like nepo hires with vastly inflated salaries, throw parties and extravagant galas for “fundraising” and spent almost nothing on the charity aspect.
This is why lots of rich fucks setup their own “philanthropy” organizations. They can dump their wealth into tax free and pay themselves and their heirs ungodly sums while paying for villas/jets/etc from the untaxed non-profit.
How about you go read about the foundation before making any judgements.
I’m well aware of the foundation, and the fact that they have left him on the board with zero consequences or controls.
Stating your ethics and then not enforcing them makes the statement pointless.
If your want to be hard headed about this, that’s your problem.
Yan isn’t the only guy on the board of directors. The others are pretty fucking credible and knowledgeable people on the topic of privacy. They all make the decisions togetherness. And im pretty certain they’ll have the last word and steer Proton in the right direction.
And again, no, it’s not because they have a free tier that they’ll collect and sell your private information. That goes against the core value of Proton and its directors.
“State your ethics and then stand by them” is being hard headed?
When the above is a bar too high for you to reach, that’s a you problem, mate.
You said
Stating your ethics and then not enforcing them makes the statement pointless.
Explain to me what ethics did they not enforce?
Hint: none.
Is it only me or is there some bandwagon effect on Proton hate these days?
I get it that everyone, me included, thought that sucking up to donald is a shit move, but that’s about it. Proton is good.
Totally. People are exaggerating. Proton really is a good service and the only real answer to Google where you have everything under one account.
Switzerland is not the us though
While I understand the concern around not wanting to support Maga or far right leaning extremists. I take somewhat of a net neutral approach to this topic. Just because some company isn’t doing something I like doesn’t mean they haven’t produced a good product. For instance people whine and bitch all the time about Apple using child labor but that doesn’t stop most people from owning a. IPhone because we like iphones. Amazon is a crazy huge company that has time and time again treated thier employees like trash and yet we still use amazon prime. What are we going to do if Farmers and slaughter houses all vote for Trump? Stop buying groceries? No. Most people only care when it’s convenient to care. We don’t really want change or progress because to be honest most of us aren’t going to or want to take up arms and start another civil war all over again. The arguments and fighting we have in the states is nothing new. We’ll stay silent and continue are word vomit on social platforms while the world eats us alive because really trying would be too hard. That’s the truth.
techlore talked about this is their weekly livestream
to summarize he thinks it’s got something to do with people on mastdodon bashing hate to the proton account there.
This might sound crazy but this is way worse to me than the CEO simping for orange man. At least for Trump he has a semi plausible excuse.
Reposting stuff on Mastodon or Bluesky barely requires any additional effort. And I cannot think of a good reason to close abandon the free publicity when they already have it set up.
They have tools that let you cross-post effortlessly, so that’s strange.
(Re)Posting and not engaging with the community is not free publicity, is bad publicity. They don’t have the resources (according to them) do to the latter, and therefore they choose not to do the former.
Shows their priorities by not choosing an open platform.
Red flag… Do they tools to migrate ?
And I’d have thought the potential customers segment are exactly the Mastodon users.
I think the reason is that every time they post something, someone there points out the Andy Yen thing. Thats basically the only comments. So its detrimental to their business.
This is most likely what is the issue and they are never going to be able to fix this on a platform like that
Yea this is worse. The politics thing could be brushed off as Andy Yen being uneducated on American politics. Moving away from an already established fediverse platform is contradictory to Proton’s mission. It doesn’t take more than a minute to copy paste their xitter posts to Mastadon.
I cancelled my subscription because of technical reasons, but now I can add political reasons on top.
Any alternative free VPN’s
Nothing good is free.
I’ve been pretty happy with PIA.
If you aren’t the customer, you are for sure the product. Even then, sometimes you are both.
Lately, their posts on Mastodon became full of comments questioning their CEO political views. I guess, this is the answer to those, a clear one.
I agree this is an issue. They move away from a privacy oriented community. Additionally, the reason they give is vague and easily dismantled. What I’m interested in is why this would be a good enough reason to switch providers. They haven’t changed anything crucial in their mail offering, so why should I switch?
kinda wierd for proton to promote on reddit, when reddit doesnt allow VPN usage to most users, mostly for spam/botting/ban evasions.
