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).
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.
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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.
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Do you think there’s nothing that archives the content from Reddit? How do you think they knew it was removed?
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What’s Xitter?
Portmanteau of X (current name) and Twitter (former name)
You’d think Fedi would be a good place to be active on from a privacy-conscious user-base perspective, but I think this is the second time they leave Fedi? Either way, I guess being on Reddit allows them to moderate all the naysayers away.
There are a lot of advantages to the fediverse, but privacy really isn’t one of them.
At face value this is true, but I challenge you to consider the knock-on effects of having a decentralized platform. One of which being that it become increasingly difficult to coerce someone into giving PII (i.e phone number) to signup - they’ll just go elsewhere
This effectively makes it more private for everyone.
I made this basic comment about the CEO saying something pro-Trump and my comment got removed by a mod of /r/degoogle on the grounds that it wasn’t factual.
Pretty infuriating.
/r/degoogle is total bullshit. That sub routinely and consistently shits on any non-google suggestion, for all sorts of bogus reasons. It’s like the sub exists to trick people into thinking google is impossible to avoid, rather than just supporting steps away from google.
Proton is dead
fuck proton. finally started moving to it from gmail like a month ago. then the ceo thing happened, now this. good thing i only changed email to a few places so i can immediately steer away…
Any alternatives?
gmail
(this is a joke dont hunt me down pls)
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”.
I was tempted to cancel after the CEO comments on politics, Reddit is a bit much though.
Reddit privacy policy is dog shit, having a company advertise privacy and use Reddit is comical
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.
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.
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.
Proton is going boots up.
Proving that a company is not a person. A person goes tits up when the boots go up.
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.
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).
Is it time to change VPN platforms?
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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.
Besides slow responses to support request and handing over info on that Swiss activist, is there anything else they’ve done wrong? And I understand that they had no choice in the Swiss case - they had to abide by the law there.
CEO came out in support of Trump and criticized Democrats.
If a business chooses to take a political position that isn’t strictly policy related they should expect blowback.
Honestly that’s just silly. Some random CEO enforcing Trump shouldn’t be the thing to break the camels back.
How is the CEO of the business that makes the product in question “random”? Regardless, supporting Trump in this day and age is support for all the very worst things. You’re way off base thinking it shouldn’t be influential, few things mean more these days.
To add, it’s a CEO with a lot less power than a normal CEO because of the Porton Foundation that’s above it. Some countries (like Swiss) also have more rules and regulations in place to keep people to help consumers
I care about the product feature set and price. Other considerations include environmental and societal impact as well as company billing reputation.
We should stop treating CEOs like celebrities
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Are those people who have been quoted supposed to be significant to the privacy community?
I’ve looked through the links provided and read a couple articles (one is titled “Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis and surprising findings” and it is all very he said/she said with almost nothing to back anything or anyone up…
I’ll gladly read more if anyone has info?
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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.
tuta.com seems a good option, I switched to them a few months ago and so far so good
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.
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
Not surprising. Proton and their volunteer mods on /r/protonmail quash talk that doesn’t make them look good. Plus there are a bunch of fanboys willing to defend whatever Proton does.
It’s still one of the best services out there for people engaging in activities the US government disapproves of. Mullvad and Tuta are located in countries that work together with US intelligence as part of the 14 Eyes, and Sweden is also working on legislation to require backdoors into encrypted messaging. If you must use something other than Proton VPN out of some ideological bent, then Njalla or cryptostorm are the better VPN choices.
cryptostorm is a fast VPN that requires no account or other information, and access can be bought from resellers using crypto, making it impossible for cryptostorm to identify you out of all the people using their service, let alone turn over your data. I’ve used this VPN, and it was fast enough to play multiplayer shooters online.
Njalla is an infamous bullet-proof VPN and web host, that hosts several high profile piracy sites out of Costa Rica. They do not comply with demands for information or to take down services. It’s a top choice for people who plan on sailing the high seas.
Both of these services allow port forwarding, something Mullvad does not due to piracy.
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.
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.
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
