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
If they think Dollar Store Hitler is going to stand up for small businesses then they’re about to have a rude awakening.
I just got settled for fuck’s sake
Why treat Proton like it’s the work of a single person rather than a large team?
The CEO “apologized” this morning (after being duly chastised, I’m sure):
Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.
Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.
The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.
The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.
It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.
The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.
This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.
I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.
Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
Am I being paranoid when I notice that the binary at the end of his username translates to 88?
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement
Not intended to be a political statement? Even setting aside agreement vs disagreement, how is this (below) not a political statement?
10 years ago Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree it’s like a textbook example of a political statement.
Someone in the comments there make a good point:
It is so disingenuous to say “last year” when it was a little more than a month ago.
His excuse that the social media team posted it from the official account instead of his account is farcical. This whole thing is too bad a taste in my mouth.
In the comments of the post, he says that 88 is the year he was born.
…88 is a red flag. Generally that’s a bad number.
Not really outside of the west. He’s Taiwanese i believe and 88 is considered fairly auspicious
Ah, okay. That makes sense. (Fwiw I’ve seen fascist types use 88 and 1488 outside the US, too. “88” is technically German. It can have begin meaning outside the US/The West in general, though.)
Yeah i know the connotations for the west is Hitler and aryan
Not quite the same but if you go to India you’ll see swastikas everywhere. For Indians it means something completely different, Hitler just stole it and changed it. If you see a swastika in the west you generally know exactly what you’re getting
I think I would wait for changes in their mission and policies before I start moving anything.
I have been on Opalstack since they started. I like them. I pay for hosting monthly. I’ve self-hosted several apps there (or tried to, sometimes; I couldn’t make everything work all the time). Nextcloud is dodgy; I like it, but it’s a pain in the ass for someone like me (not a dev, not a coder) to deal with the almost inevitable problems every 2 or 3 times I need to upgrade. And I’ve never been able to get an office suite working well. Much of this could be because I’m trying to run NC on shared hosting; even opalstack’s support doesn’t fix all of that.
Email: opalstack has email. I use it. I don’t actually know what service it is, but I have three or four mailboxes linked to a couple of domain names I own, and several hundred email addresses* Thunderbird does great with IMAP on my laptop, desktop, and phone, with opalstack as the server.
*lots of emails because when I sign up for something I create a new email address just in case they sell my stuff and I start to get spam.
Nextcloud is much, much less trouble by using AIO docker master container. I’ve ran Nextcloud for almost a decade, and the AIO is by far the lowest hassle way to do it.
Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics so they didn’t alienate their customers because they like money? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Remember when businesses stayed the fuck out of politics
That’s never been the case.
Taking a neutral stance is also political;<br> Also when people say that “they don’t like politics in X,Y&Z” they mean politics that they don’t agree with
Is “staying out of politics” even possible for a company?
I feel even just the creation of a company already has political repercussions (and I don’t mean that as in them being necessarily bad).
Truly unhinged that they decided to come out on this. Fellas, you are fucking Swiss why throw yourself under the bus for the US election
Nextcloud is an amazing alternative to things like google suite or Office365. You can.self-host it or rent space on a server with nextcloud preinstalled. It integrates things like file storage, online office, podcast, rss feed reader, photo albums, etc. There’s litteraly hundreds of apps that can easily be installedI was a big user of the G suite, made the change last year and couldn’t be happier. It’s much more powerful than I was expecting and no evil gafam get access to my data.
Abandoning the Proton subscription now. How stupid and irresponsible. In fact, are running away from all your principles.
Been super happy with NordVPN for years.
People will complain about them advertising on YouTube. Why would I care about that? Companies advertise.
People will complain about them not having port forwarding. This doesn’t matter for the majority of VPN users. If it does, use a different one.
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.
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.
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.
No worries!
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.
Implying that the Republicans now “stand for the little guys” is dumb but also arguably true
No, no it isn’t arguably true. It’s just flat out incorrect. 100% of people could vote for him or others like him out of fear of disappearing in the night if they don’t. That doesn’t make him or the party “for the little guy”.
It doesn’t matter that 51% of the country votes for the Republicans. The party has consistently shit all over “the little guy” and made him eat it for over 40 years, telling him he’s eating shit and then said only the party can fix it.
All the while the party’s been giving tax money to their friends and saying “don’t worry, we’re here now. you can feed him as much shit as you want. we’ll find someone cleaning up shit and make the “little guy” think that person was making it instead. that way when you get caught doing it no one will believe it”
OP is peddling misinformation because it’s not true that “Proton took the stance” of anything.
Except Proton’s official Mastodon account made another post afterwords doubling down on the CEO’s comments. They ended up taking down the post due to getting a ton of backlash
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.
I was thinking the same thing. In all the threads about it. It just seemed oddly suspicious and not typical of what the digital privacy community has typically believed… I mean, I’m also not going to homogenize a community like that though and Proton has been a mainstay.
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.
This is all over the place.
If you click the link in this post it takes you to a mastodon comment from the official Proton account stating exactly the same beliefs as this board member. If that isn’t in the name of Proton what is?
People ARE looking at the details of this. If this company starts cozying up to an alt-right “dictator for a day” government then when/where does this stop? There’s nuance beyond just Proton and Andy said something scandalous here. It’s layers of political issues that spell a privacy focused company having an inability to actually keep the government out of my shit.
Culture war would be if they took a stance on DEI. This is political and has actual consequences.
Why are you trying to defend a fucking corporation? When has a company ever not become evil as they look to grow? It’s just the nature of the beast. The people here, and the OP specifically, have called out Proton is over for them. They’re not saying you should do the same. Just that they’re going to take a step back and others expressing they’ll join.
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.
I won’t have a friend who supports Trump, because to do so is to support a regressive, bigoted, jackbooted view of the world and how things should be done. I don’t speak to my Trump supporting family members except when family situations force us to.
WHY ON EARTH would I trust my privacy to a company whose entire board supports that view, much less their CEO?
correct
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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.
Mate they’re mainstreaming fascist rhetoric. Over 60% of Republicans now believe in the Great Replacement theory aka White Genocide, which used to be a conspiracy theory on the fringes of white nationalist propaganda just about a decade ago.
I encourage you to not get hung up on symbolism and instead look to ideology and rhetoric.
Leaving aside the absurd and juvenile “Nazi” slur (“fascist” is less of a stretch), I disagree with your analysis. I think it’s exactly the opposite. I think it’s because mainstream politicians have refused to address the reasonable aspects of people’s concerns (about immigration, in particular), and because progressive activists have gone off the leash in their wild accusations of racism at the slightest contradiction of their opinions, that we’ve ended up in this situation of the far right getting into power all over the place.
Once again: I do not vote for these parties. Anyway, we are now completely offtopic so let’s leave it there.
So yes they’re fascist, but the progressives complained too much about racism, and therefore it’s fine to support the fascists?
IDK what to tell you but your political ideology is privileged garbage. You’re more scared of being called racist than of fascism. The kind of “yes ethnic cleansing but please no mean language” attitude. Please get a political education and your priorities straight.
With your insults and condescension, you’re just proving my point.
Yeah I never doubted you’d have a reason to dismiss being called out like that. Getting your feelings hurt invalidates everything else. I feel like I’m talking to myself from 10 years ago.
You don’t have to take it from me. If you’re a student of history, maybe start with Umberto Eco. He knew a thing or two about fascism, I’ve heard.
The biggest mistake we can make is to assume it can’t happen again.
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Implying that the Republicans now “stand for the little guys” is dumb but also arguably true
How is it true exactly? Republicans do not care about the little guys in any way lol
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?
Trump’s terrible politics aside:
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the Republican party is pushing legislation which requires you to identify yourself to view porn
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you can get around this with a VPN
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proton is a VPN (nonprofit, but still).
I’ll be switching email providers when I can… I can’t remember when my subscription ends.
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If a car company in Germany complemented Hitler on his paintings, would it be still fine to buy their cars? And what if they were a really great car company and only mentioned how cool Hitler’s paintings were and nothing else?
I sort of feel like if I am cool with Proton’s statement, then I also am cool with trans people and Latino people and Gazan people being treated poorly, and I’m not actually cool with that.
It’s unfortunate, because despite Proton not accepting XMR and logging IPs when they promised they wouldn’t and doing other questionable practices, they have a lot of great services. But now, it’s like if I’m using their services, I’m sort of spitting on the grave of every trans person who ended their life out of shame, spitting on the grave of every dead Gazan who simply didn’t want to die, and being disrespectful to all the cool Latinos out there who have been degraded simply out of racism.
:-(
Unlike a car which is bought once and is mostly outside of vendor control once you have it, Proton mail is a service that requires continuous trust in the company since they offer a service. This means I no longer trust Proton as much, which makes me much less inclined to use their services.
car which is bought once and is mostly outside of vendor control once you have it
Well, cars in the 1940s at least. Don’t buy a Tesla.
A car company complimenting Hitler’s painting is nothing compared to making business deals with Hitler. Ford and GM still have subsidiaries that operated and built for Nazi Germany despite the US declaration of war in World War 2.
Things haven’t really changed. Corporations will typically side with fascists when it comes to it.
So, donation supported open source is the way ?
I will continue to use Proton and their services, not because I support or endorse any political decisions from the CEO/board members (and I don’t), but because they provide open source, secure, and private software that I love.
This is no different than arguing about using GrapheneOS based on the behavior of the maintainers.
