I’ve been a paid Proton Unlimited customer for several years now and aside from a few small complaints, I’m generally very happy with the services I’m paying for. I agree that there is too much focus on “sidequests” like Wallet and Meet before core products are fully rebuilt and meeting expectations. I agree that Linux versions and some feature implementations are taking a long time. However, I have a fully functioning suite of Mail, Drive, VPN, Calendar and more that meet 95% of my needs. To be fair, I’m sure the zero-access/zero-knowledge encryption aspect makes development much more difficult.
If you’re worried about political affiliations/interests, I’ll give you that Andy Yen has made a few worrisome comments. I’m not sure what to do there. Assuming there aren’t repeat occurrences, I’m satisfied with their statement about the French political figure sponsorship.
If it’s the FBI cases and subpoenas, it comes down to understanding the difference between privacy and anonymity, and knowing what strategy is required to achieve actual anonymity.
So why (especially on Lemmy) is there so much Proton hate/relunctancy? Eager to hear some non-biased, fact-driven thoughts here!
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It’s a good company now. But that company makes money from its products (and the CEO makes money this way). So they can fund their politics and further it off the backs of consumers.
It’s not about the products themselves. It’s about voting with your wallet. It’s sort of the same as Chick Fil A. People don’t hate the food. It’s very good quality. They pay their workers very well and the business is fine. But people don’t want to fund the political/ideaological leanings and lobbying of the person who owns it.
It’s also sort of the same as Harry Potter and JKR. Most people aren’t worried about the books. Instead they care about giving JKR money to further her ability to lobby against and help others destroy the rights of LGBTQ people (Trans people specifically).
At the end of the day it was never about their services for some of us and all about the political leanings of the CEO who outed himself and then changed what he said to “fix” the record when presented with proof contrary to his belief. Trying to rewrite history to repair your public image because you said the quiet part out loud isn’t okay.
People like to hate.
I’m coming from a position and stance similar to yours, a paying customer for many years, etc… I can completely see criticism of the proton platform for various reasons, such as some feature sets, your mentioned slow to market on what seems like priorities to the community, the security stance of eggs in one basket, etc… I think proton deserves honest criticism on many fronts, and also aren’t the answer to everybody’s threat model. Fine.
The rest? It’s hate. It’s not even stance or opinion. Its hate. The smallest things are taken and the reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Andy Yens comments haven’t been THAT bad compared to the political people he gets associated with. But okay, I can see taking the small concept and saying it’s evidence of a bigger picture behind HD scenes. But then there’s hate. But proton set up their organization to prevent a single person (like Yen) from dominating and taking them in the wrong direction, but that gets ignored. Just hate. Let’s talk about a news article where out of context proton “gave away” user info (when in reality it was all the fault of the user). But we’ll ignore all the times proton didn’t give up information they were asked for. Because that goes against the hate squad.
Again, if somebody doesn’t like proton, good for them. Don’t use them. Think they are the devil, good for them advise people as to why and to stay away from their products. But most of the hate comments aren’t expressing any of that. Its just hate, and if you don’t see it too then you are stupid and deserved to be hated too. That’s the vocal majority. That doesn’t mean its the majority opinion, it just means the loudest voices are saying that.
Sorry, my answer is a bit of a rant saying I agree with you. I’m sure many will disagree and that’s fine. But opinions are allowed to be shared both ways.
Because many (most?) Lemmy users prefer to ignore that - if you look too close - most stuff they use was created by people that they would absolutely hate in person.
In my mind the ideal product maintainer for an Lemmy approved product has to be part of the LBTQ+ community, has to be some people of color, atheist, vegan and must subscribe to the EXACT same flavour of leftism the individual Lemmy user has sold his soul to.
In my mind the ideal product maintainer for an Lemmy approved product has to be part of the LBTQ+ community, has to be some people of color, atheist, vegan and must subscribe to the EXACT same flavour of leftism the individual Lemmy user has sold his soul to.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but as long as the maintainer isn’t a hateful person championing movements I consider grossly immoral (fascism, racism, lgbtq+ hate, hypercapitalism, etc.) or committing acts I consider to be grossly immoral (abuse, rape, torture, human trafficking, etc) I’m happy to support a good product.
most stuff they use was created by people that they would absolutely hate in person.
This is largely true. If it’s a personality thing I don’t mind, but deeply held beliefs and actions are another thing entirely. I’m trying to change where my money, time, and effort gets spent to avoid enriching or benefiting fascists that want to immiserate, harm, or eliminate from existence me or those I care about. Unfortunately, I sometimes have to pick my battles… which is kind of fucked up when you think about it.
Because most of what you said is true but Lemmy is, unlike the most popular platforms, full of very selective individual. The overton window is different here than the mainstream. We half very different threshold and here in the Privacy community even more so on that topic. It might be “good enough” for most but if it’s not entirely open source, or rather free software, and with reproducible builds, and self-hostable, and federated, and built by people with impeccable background, and… and… and… that starts to be quite a bit.
I said this in numerous other posts, IMHO what matters is doing better, not “best” that unattainable. For some people Proton is better than what they had until now, e.g. GMail, but for others who move away from GMail to Proton and now self-host, it’s not good enough anymore.
So it depends on where you are on a multidimensional spectrum that is unique to your needs.
I’ve recently needed a “shared” new account and I’ve tried Proton. I regret it.
- Their calendar will NOT work with open technologies from F-Droid and such. They require the use of their proprietary app, or their web version, or paying. Paying is actually generally fine for me, but not when I have a feeling that I’m just paying for more of their proprietary development.
- Their email system will NOT work with open technologies. Same as above, you won’t get it to work with Thunderbird or K9mail out-of-the-box.
- As an implication of the above, paying them will NOT, in any way, help open standards and open technologies. You’ll be only helping their business.
On the plus side, they have at least not requested my phone number upon registration. That was the only plus for me.
In total, if you want true ownership, open technologies, distributed technologies where the power and infrastructure is split across great many parties, then you should be against Proton. I personally chose disroot for now.
There are still situations where Proton makes more sense to recommend, such as to a political activist. I believe this group is niche though, as 99% of people really want ownership, freedom to share and less money to pay I think. It’s not a business need, it’s a human thing.
you won’t get it to work with Thunderbird or K9mail out-of-the-box.
I use Proton with Thunderbird as my mail client and it works fine. For years now. That was a basic requirement for me to sign up for any mail service inc Proton. If it won’t work with a local mail client, I won’t use it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but, regarding the first point, in what way are the calendar clients proprietary? Unless I am missing something, the clients for iOS and Android are open source and licensed under GPLv3 while the desktop client (part of the mail app) appears to be licensed under AGPL v3.
The email system not working with Thunderbird etc. out-of-the-box is true but that is kind of understandable, considering that the emails are only stored and transmitted to the first-party clients in an encrypted form that other clients couldn’t work with? And you could use the mail bridge (which is also open source, if I am not mistaken) to expose them as a local server to be used by Thunderbird etc., right? Maybe not ideal but I’d agrue it’s “fine”.
I do agree that there are things to dislike about Proton but those two don’t seem like problems in my opinion…
to expose them as a local server to be used by Thunderbird etc., right?
Correct. I do that, to use Thunderbird as my mail app with Proton.
The inability to add the account to a standard email client is why I stopped using them. Electron Mail exists now, which is an improvement, but I still have to download each email and import them into my client.
They’re using full end to end encryption for most things. There are no open email or calendar standards that handle encryption. So interoperability limitations are a natural consequence.
I’ll take private over open every time.
I moved to infomaniak myksute from two reasons, they have better app - proton drive on ios doesn’t allow search, and its less than 2chf per month for 1TB of storage
I’ve always been Antiton. /s
They take governments at their word, and allow those governments to ban people from proton for bogus reasons with no pushback, no review or appeal. They can slander you behind your back, for Israel or whatever, you will get your account frozen, no way to contest it.
Fuck proton.
That’s literally the opposite of what they do. They don’t even entertain information requests from any government accept the Swiss, since that’s where Proton is.
Can you link to any examples?
Bruh they’ve got lawyers on hand fighting subpoenas
You’re an incurious git that thinks you can pay for something contrary to what the market sells. I pay, therefore I believe the marketing material.
A centralized suit of tools sold by one capitalist-company does not make that company a comrade. They fight for their own capitalist-interests and the goal is a market-monopoly that enriches their owners. They are not open. They are not open to inter-network collaboration. They are capitalist and they hate user freedom.
From the drivel you’ve typed Google, Microsoft, et al will ‘meet 95%’ of your needs. “But I pay.” “The marketing material says they’re private.” Are you a child?
Proton: you can have privacy only if you pay us and use our proprietary tools exclusively. Press X to doubt.
You can have privacy now, for free. You’re too incurious to use those tools and liberate yourself though.
Try a thought experiment: Alice and Bob each have computers (super-computers in pocket-form); they also are subscribers that grant them access to the majority of the internet. They want to send each other ‘e-mails’. The market says you can only do that if you pay a third-party (or if you ‘consent’ to electronic-surveillance from a third-party that provides e-mail functionality for ‘free’). Are either option true? How could Alice, with her internet-connected super-computer, send Bob a message to Bob’s internet-connected super-computer. Both computers are functional 24/7/365. Hm… Nope, can’t be done. I need to pay Proton to use e-mail and for my pocket super-computer to have a calendar… oh look, the owner is filthy rich. Learning to use a computer is too hard. Let’s make him richer. Computer users are a joke.
It’s always nice when people let you know to block them for juvenile and petty behavior that would make a redditor blush before they actually manage you get to you.
LMAO right??? I can’t agree more
maybe i’m a bit odd for my reason but i don’t like their price model. that they try to price themselves like a mobile contract where things are cheap initially so you subscribe and then they get more expensive once you are in their ecosystem. no company that really cares to do right by users should do things like that.
and this despite them wanting to be a non profit company? i get that you still gotta make money of course but you can also do that by having one month and 12 month cost the same or maybe mostly the same.
and on top of this then there’s also that? this is the same browser and the same cookies i just once googled for their vpn prices and once i went over their general pricing page that started with mail pricing and then switched over to vpn pricing. i’m not logged in with them or anything.
one tries you to buy into a two year plan and the other into a one year plan but why do they even have two different types of trying to get new customers kind of deals and one is worse than the other? just makes me not like them.
There are a couple issues I’m aware of that tend to make people wary of Proton.
First is Andy Yen’s open support of fascists. Which you mentioned in your post. I know that he has tried to walk back his comments and claim they aren’t political, but anyone claiming the GOP is anything other than fascists and oligarchs is either too stupid to trust, or dangerous because their beliefs are aligned with those fascists.
Second is that Proton continues to expand their suite of services and are trying to get people to buy into all of it, much the same way that people bought into the google suite. This centralizes many services, which is problematic if the company makes changes that do not align with the users wants and needs. So many people push to avoid this. Centralization in general opens users up to enshittification that is difficult to extract yourself from.
There may be more, but that is what I’m tracking. And it’s why I ended my subscription with them, and moved most of my things away from Proton mail.
The big difference, of course, being that you’re paying a not insignificant amount of money explicitly for privacy, not a “free” service like Google. While Enshittification can happen everywhere, they’ve got a pretty direct incentive not to just start selling data and that sort of thing compared to the incentive Google had. The bigger concern is the security risk of all your eggs in one basket, but that’s a convenience vs security tradeoff we make all the time. Each user needs to assess for themselves that tradeoff. But just the encryption at rest alone along with seemingly not reading your emails already puts an average Proton use way ahead of an average Google one, and moving them to a complete suite is a lot more likely than to 6 different services. That’s a hard sell for an average user.
Also, I think the framing of open support of fascists is frankly ridiculous, personally. The way people were talking about it I was afraid we were talking full maga here, but the guy literally just praised a single appointment in anti trust… and she did have some actual bona fides that made her surprisingly (for this administration) qualified for that job, she has actually worked blocking mergers. This wasn’t a Robert Kennedy appointment, this appointment could have been under any admin in the last few decades and nobody would blink, if anything might also have been praised for the pick. Broken clocks, guys, broken clocks, they’re right sometimes.
Everyone can make their own choice here, but praising a rare decent pick from a shitty politician doesn’t nearly reach a divestment bar for me and I think probably all except the most militant.
It wasn’t just praising an appointment. “By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade firsthand,” Yen wrote. “Support for cracking down on corporate monopolies is popular on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, corporate capture of Dems is real, and in the end, money won. It is hard to see how this changes, and Republicans are likely to lead the antitrust charge in the coming years.”
He is praising the party as a whole. The party that is full of fascists and pedophiles. The dems are corporate shills, but in what fucking reality can any sane person claim the Republicans are better? That is why I framed it as open support to fascists. During the controversy, when people had already expressed disappointment and highlighted the problematic nature of his original statement he doubled down.
You can’t remove the context this statement was made in though, which was about the appointment. And let’s be real here: he is not wrong about corporate capture of the Democrats at all. Yes, saying the Republicans are any better is ridiculous, but this strikes me far more like stroking the ego of a guy that likes having his ego stroked and made a rare decent pick for anti trust. This is no different than what Mamdani did visiting the White House… do we cancel him too for appeasing fascists? Or can we acknowledge choosing to try and engage with and manipulate a guy that’s shown to be easily manipulated is probably a strategic choice more than ideological?
And the thing he’s praising here is anti trust. Sure, I think it’s wrong to say Republicans are better on this issue, but literally the thing he’s praising is very much antithetical to fascism. How can we really say he’s supporting fascism then? Where are his posts supporting his ICE policies? Where are the comments supporting overturning a democratic election? He makes one comment supporting anti trust efforts and suddenly he must be a crypto fascist because it came from Trump? Not buying it, man.
I really think trying to portray Yang as something like the My Pillow Guy, which is the level of discourse a lot of this has had around it, is really, really disingenuous and I think only serves to make people take these accusations less seriously even when they’re levelled against people who truly are fascist sympathizers at the very least.
So in 2024 he is praising the republican party about anti-trust, which even you admit he is wrong about. So he is spreading misinformation, or possibly disinformation depending on whether he knows he is wrong. And he really should have known that the republican party rabidly supports mega corporations at that point, with the only exceptions being any that oppose their agenda. And he is ego stroking Trump. Which is what a bunch of other tech billionaires have done as a prelude to climbing into bed with him and going full mask off techno-fascist. So I don’t really see why you’re surprised that this is a giant strobing red flag for a bunch of people that are privacy focused, and largely fall on the left.
I’m not calling for everyone to boycott Proton. I’m answering the original question of why people dislike proton. And I said that it was enough for me to personally cancel my subscription.
So in 2024 he is praising the republican party about anti-trust, which even you admit he is wrong about.
If I divested from everyone I thought was incorrect about something, I wouldn’t be able to do business with literally anyone. And I explained why I think he said this, which implied it’s quite possible he doesn’t even think this is true.
How is this any different than what Mamdani did?
Again, if he was out here stumping for fascist positions I’d have a little more pause. But the issue he picked up here, of all the political issues in the recent years, was anti-trust. Sorry, this doesn’t scream crypto fascist to me. Certainly not enough for me to worry about.
I also didn’t say I’m surprised. I’m arguing that I think it’s wrong and the vast majority of even those on the left aren’t going to care about this.
Mamdani didn’t spout obviously false republican talking points on a public forum, and then double down in defense of the republican party when called out on it. The republicans don’t support the little guy. Anyone that pays attention to anything the party has done since st least Reagan should know that. So what Mamdani did was not the equivalent, and it seems disengenuous to claim such an obviously false equivalency.
And I’m not saying divest from everyone that is wrong about anything. I’m saying that spreading obviously incorrect information that aligns with fascist talking points should be scrutinized. It should get called out. It should make people question your beliefs and motives.
Again, you’ll need to explain to me that if his real goal here is “align[ing] with fascist talking points”, why is the only actual issue he jumped in on anti trust? Where was he regarding the election moves? Where was he regarding the ICE policies?
A decent anti trust pick isn’t aligned at all with fascism, yet it’s that issue that he spoke up on. Why only that when there have been countless issues that are aligned with fascism he could have commented on?
This screams the kind of now typical online left purity testing way more than fascism, to me.
Just adding that Mamdani talks mad shit about Trump both before and after meeting with him. He’s extremely principled in his approach.
I’ve noticed that there’s a peculiarly dogmatic approach to antifascism here, and I think that colors a lot of the discussion around Proton.
Its the same wirh firefox… so much FUD spreads for every tiny missetep. And the result is likely that more people stay with gmail/chrome or people killing upstream by supporting forks
Could you elaborate further or clarify specifically why this approach “colors” the discussion here? Almost all approaches to antifascism kinda have to be dogmatic in my view
I didn’t understand how you’re supposed to be measured about fascism. As if fascists are equally charitable and deserve measure.
It’s really all about proportionate response. You need to do what your situation demands.
People who criticize Proton often have very high standards. Maybe they self-host everything and expect you to do the same. Maybe they live under constant threat of torture or assassination because of their political statements, and they assume you face the same risks. As long as those unspoken assumptions hold true, their advice is actually pretty solid. Next time you see comments like that, try digging deeper to uncover the invisible but foundational assumptions behind them.
Honestly, those are extreme circumstances, and most people don’t need to meet such strict standards. Just check your personal cybersecurity threat model and act accordingly. If you don’t even have one, you’re definitely not in the same boat as those guys.
If you live in a some backwater dictator land stuck in the dark ages, your need to take these things seriously. If your life is at risk, your threat model likely requires you to take security and privacy very seriously. On the other hand, if your threat model is all about giving the middle finger to Big Tech for philosophical reasons, you need something else. For example, switching from being a Google product to paying for Proton products is probably the right and proportionate move, given your your situation and goals.
Security and privacy also involve balancing convenience with your goals. A solution needs to be convenient enough to be practical. Your personal tolerance for inconvenience and your desire for privacy and security should guide your choices. For many people, using Proton for everything is a convenient option, and that’s why it’s the right choice when their threat model doesn’t demand stricter measures.
I’ve also previously written a comment about Proton hate.
It’s little things piling up over the years. I was an unlimited user for several years too. They seem to be more worried about expanding than getting their core services right. That stinks of google’s business model.
They are not open source. The video conferencing app they just launched isn’t chock-full of reasons not to use it, its very framework is full of big tech spyware.
Their email encryption can easily be captured and decoded due to them using cloudflare as the man in the middle.
I’m sure others will chime in…
Could you expand on what in the Meet stack is spyware?
I meant IS* chok-full…
My app isn’t letting me edit my original comment.
I know you asked for facts, but as someone who moved from Proton I can at least explain my reasoning. I like to split my services amongst multiple vendors in general. I felt like they were pushing the suite too hard, so I used that as an opportunity to move the couple of services I had with them to different providers.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with proton, but I like being able to move to a different service without having to move the others.
Honestly, some people just moan. Nothing is perfect but things can be good
