- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new “king”
Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it’s an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!
You must log in or register to comment.
Standing up for the little guy. Huh. Is that why billionaires and CEO are throwing literal tens of millions at Trump? Why he staffed his cabinet with billionaires? Why the center of his policy is tax cuts for the giga wealthy, at the expense of everyone else and the national debt, at a time where wealth inequality is literally tearing the country apart?
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/trump-windfall-fundraising-500-million
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/09/trump-wealth-cabinet-politicians-billionaires
These are objective, public facts. Like, I’m way more conservative than Lemmy’s center and willing acknowledge any good Trump does, but what reality is this guy living in? Who is this statement for? Who the heck does he think is using Proton services? He just pissed off his employees and customers for… What?
Probably doesn’t want to get banned in the US… Or so my copium tells me.
Silver lining is that Proton is owned by a non-profit.
I was thinking this for a second, but is this really plausible? Normally when we talk about corporations we talk about how powerful they are and how they use different nations to locate headquarters and offices in order to mitigate legal and tax obligations. We regularly talk about how governments can’t reign them in and how they act with impunity.
But now? “They HAVE to capitulate. They are just doing it to survive.” Really? Do we really believe that? Or is it more likely that this is what they want and if they didn’t, they’d be fighting tooth and nail to stop it? I’m with the second option honestly.
That’s what I don’t get. If the proton CEO was actually raging MAGA, the last thing he should do, strategically, is stoke fires by stirring this up. That’s business 101.
…He must want conservative’s ears for some kind of policy issue, maybe to the detriment of Proton’s competitors. But what?
Let’s not get carried away. The scope of the comment is pretty narrow if you read it closely. This is one member of a 5-person board that also includes Tim Berners-Lee. The foundation structure is also a protection against abuses.
Yes you are right, and no you are not. It is concerning and something to stay vigilent about in the upcoming times.
Can’t you both be right? One it is a very narrow complement and also it be very concerning that the “small tech” is also bowing harder than big tech.
But this may be the price for not donating?
It send a chill down my spine nonetheless
Yes. The “Trump was a good idea after all” take seems almost to be spreading like a meme at this point.
that also includes Tim Berners-Lee
You mean that traitorous piece of shit who sold us out to DRM on the Web?
Actually I ended up coming round to his view on this. If Firefox has stuck to its principles on DRM, then it would have been goodbye Firefox. And then you would have had no decent options at all, and neither would I. The setting is still opt-in.
Sometimes we have to compromise.
Sad. The way tech companies are changing stripes, we are about to hit a surveillance state by summer
deleted by creator
People somehow still surprised by Switzerland being neutral on Naziism
That chocolate ain’t gonna pay for itself!
Been using their paid service for months. I have so many aliases. I’m just surprised. Surely this company knows its biggest user base has to be too educated to let this slide.
Lots of educated fascists. Having a degree hardly guarantees a progressive worldview. If you’re in an extractive industry or a heavily financialized one, it works against you.
I see a lot of good discussion here. I’ve been on proton for years now, using my own domain. While true that Andy is one of 5 board members, and it’s a nonprofit etc, these statements are raising hairs on my neck, personally.
Does anyone have a good guide on problems associated with self-hosting email?
Setting up is a piece of cake but getting your emails through spam filters can be a pain.
Have you considered Tuta?
I think the main difficulty is getting companies like Gmail to recognize your domain as legitimate, as they don’t by default
I don’t think I do this like you’re suggesting, but I have my email hosted at opalstack. I’ve been really happy with them. I don’t have a server-side spam solution yet, though. I just set up spam rules on Thunderbird on my local machine.
If you self host it, do it on a VPS so if you’re out of town and it goes down, you don’t lose a month’s worth of emails
Honestly I’ll still be using Proton and recommending it because it’s just good and a net benefit for everyone, but goddammit Andy you should’ve taken Swiss neutrality to heart this time and not said anything.
1940s Swiss bank neutrality.
Fuck Proton. Use Mullvad instead.
Ahh yes, Mullvad email and drive. Both great products!
deleted by creator
Yes, let’s.
Less maintained? Did you even read the article you posted?
“We take these findings extremely seriously and have moved quickly to patch the identified issues,” said a Mullvad spokesperson. “We’re grateful to X41 for their thorough audit, which helps us continually improve our service’s security.”
Despite the concerning nature of some vulnerabilities, the researchers praised Mullvad’s overall security posture. “The Mullvad VPN Application appears to have a high security level and is well positioned to protect from the threat model proposed in this report,” the audit stated.
I wonder what is the percentage of nuts tech ceos.
Seems to be abnormally high
Rich people tend not be good people in general
I think it’s just really rich people, but tech CEOs are in this terminally online culture so not only does it all end up out there but they seem to feed off each other and try to bizarrely one up each other.
Once you start getting real money, you start noticing how much is going to taxes.
Even though the net income is more money than you’ve ever seen in your life, and the meagre fraction that is going to welfare is abysmally small, yet was a true lifeline to you when you needed it mere weeks ago… it still makes your blood boil knowing you’re not getting everything you feel you deserve.
Imagine that amplified x 10, and you can see how a CEO might feel that they’re throwing tens of thousands a month on what they feel are undeserving recipients. All they see are the zeroes, not the percentage.
TL;DR - we all inhabit the same planet, but we live in different worlds.
Apparently, I’m a minority then. I do not earn “much” in the sens of making billions on the backs of spaghetti-monster-knows-how-many-ppl, but I make enough to comfortably get by, save sth, and donate money to charity (not to get tax exempt, mind ya).
Then again - EU represent, this might skew things a bit
(You can deduct all if not a lot of the money you send to charity in your taxes. Everyone should donate the max amount, as the government practically covers it!)
In the US at least this isn’t really true, at least not in a practical way for most people.
Charitable donations are tax deductible true, but they are for most people covered under what is called the standard deduction, which is a standardized amount that aims to estimate would a regular person would be able to deduct from their taxes. The standard deduction is applied automatically and is $14,600. This means that if you don’t do anything abnormal on you it taxes, your taxable income is reduced by the standard amount. For most people they wouldn’t typically be able to find $14,600 in tax deductible expenses, so the standard is worth it.
The catch is that if you take the standard you cannot itemize, as taking the standard deduction is basically saying to the IRS “yea I donated here and there, bought some stuff for work, did this and that”. Itemizing is listing out your individual tax deductible expenses (and justifying why they are deductible) so if for example you had a single year where you donated $20,000 you could itemize that instead of taking the standard deduction for a total reduction in income of 20k plus whatever you could come up with.
The other reason why that isn’t really applicable is that a deduction is not a credit, that is to say, deductions reduce your total taxable income amount. If you deduct $1,000 (a 1k donation for example) that would have been taxed at 20% you will receive back from the IRS, $200. Meaning that you still had to pay $800 out of pocket for the donation that will not be refunded to you.
Deductions pretty much never result in getting more than the tax that you would have paid refunded. Even if youanahe to deduct more than you make, the resulting negative would just result in a carry over loss for the next year. You can effectively pay an income tax of 0 but it requires losses and other deductible expenses that are greater than your income, which means you didn’t actually make any net income for the year (on paper and practically)
Other countries are different of course, but I wouldn’t want someone going out and donating their life savings thinking they will get it back in tax season.
the ruling class will always support each other to protect their own class interests. they have what we lack - class solidarity. the only path forwards, which is the path of our own liberation, is uniting the proletariat and transitioning away from capitalism.
Sure, yeah, anti-big tech.
Maybe Waluigi will make a prominent appearance at the inauguration too.
God damn it.
Exactly. I just switched to proton mail this week.
Another tech dipshit, whose wealth allows him to exist outside the realm of reality, bending the knee to an anti-democratic felon rapist so he can get some handouts.
Pathetic loser.
Growing up, if you had told me half or more of America would end up elevating a rapist to the presidency and prostrating themselves at his feet, I’d have laughed you out of the room. This nation has sunk LOW.
NordVPN is superior in every way. If you have ProtonVPN, dump it and swap to Nord.
Growing up, if you had told me half or more of America would end up elevating a rapist to the presidency and prostrating themselves at his feet, I’d have laughed you out of the room. This nation has sunk LOW.
Bill Clinton won reelection. Now, granted, he was not Trump levels, he was a piece of shit who at the very least abused his role and power over women. Now, even after me too, he’s a beloved elder statesman. Just saying, the nation has sunk lower, but I don’t know that’s a lot lower than where we were when we were kids.
he was a piece of shit who at the very least abused his role and power over women.
And bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Libya to distract people from the fact he couldnt keep it in his pants
Just saying, the nation has sunk lower, but I don’t know that’s a lot lower than where we were when we were kids.
Definitely disagree. A convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who incited an insurrection against our government, illegally attempted to overturn an election, fumbled his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2, removed women’s rights, and attempts to divide Americans whenever his mouth opens is about to be sworn in as our leader.
framing him as a “tech dipshit” is a mistake, i feel. though it’s definitely true lmao
like all things we should use class to analyse their motivation, and in this case it’s very clear - andy, like mark zuckerburg, elon musk, and jeff bezos, is simply looking after his own interests as a member of the ruling class (that is, the class that owns the means of production under a capitalist system) by ingratiating himself with americas new ruler.
these people will always look after their own class interests before anything else, and it’s through class analyses that we can identify their motivations. here he’s simply trying to raise his own status within his class.
So…piece of shit?
pretty much!
How much wealth does he have ?
The co-founder and CEO of Proton?
Many, many millions of dollars.
I can understand being fine with a nomination that aligns with his personal interests but from there the journey to « party of small people » likely takes a convoluted path.
The little man does some heavy lifting
I fucking love Oh Brother, Where Art Thou
What’s that, Lassie? Another platform that’s not self hosted outing themselves as a chud? Well, I never!
Really disappointing. Never imagined this from Proton. Truly dead to me now.
Yeah this really makes me doubt the security of the service.
