- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
Proton: “We’re consolidating our social media presence due to limited resources and no longer posting on Mastodon. Follow us on Reddit for the latest updates”
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“Privacy is important, so you can follow our latest updates exclusively on the platforms that don’t give a shit about privacy”
Privacy isn’t particularly good in the fediverse. Any federated instance can track you as much as they want without you ever knowing or consenting.
Self hosting Lemmy is straightforward. Then subscribe to all communities and now you have a treasure trove of data to mine. If you modify the code a bit you can do more like keep deleted posts around or surveil user activities in real time.
That’s not what privacy means. Mastodon is incredibly transparent that everything you do publicly is public - the threat model is very clear here.
Also you can’t compare public tool used for tool interactions to a suite of private tools that is Proton or any other service.
Finally if all of the data is available public for anyone to access this means it’s not exclusive to bad actors like ad machines, government spies etc.
Exactly. The Fediverse is transparent to all the bad actors and they don’t even have to pay for access.
If you post something publicly on a clearly public platform and expect people not to collect or look at your explicitly published information then that’s really on you. No amount of privacy or protection can help you at this point.
Only if you use privacy as the opposite of public. “Privacy”, though, generally refers to counter/non-surveillance. It’s not surveillance to be able to access data that you explicitly publish publicly.
TBF, they push the same content via their email newsletter.
On a platform, that will ban you if you look at it wierd
Moving all my shit across Outlook to Proton took forever, I swear I’ll shoot a mf if I have to move email providers AGAIN
I was subconciously always thinking “man, imagine if Proton screws up some day and all the people who switched to it have to switch away, that would suck” but didn’t think it would actually happen, but man, with enshitification, it’s actually possible lmao
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
due to limited resources
Either:
- We have lost our password
- Our C and V keys are broken and we can not copy paste our social media messages anymore
It might be the Control key which broke.
“We hate that our CEO keeps getting called out and slammed by our followers so we’re gonna stick our fingers in our ears”
Also good time to remind everyone Tuta exists :) https://tuta.com/
I’ve been using Tuta Mail for a few years now. No complaints. Most of the features you would expect. Lack of IMAP support is kinda disappointing but survivable. Their email security is very strong though — they encrypt every part of your email, including subject (some providers only encrypt the body). They’re also rolling out post-quantum encryption of email data at rest, which tickles my crypto nerd side.
They’ve still a loong way to go to match Proton’s product suite though, as they only offer Email, Contacts and Calendar for now. They’re working on Drive storage next, which is the main reason I currently use Proton.
Tuta is great, I will start from that. But they encrypt the subject line, in addition to the body afaik. It is technically impossible to encrypt “every part of the email” because that would break delivery (e.g., metadata such as recipient or timestamps).
This also has the cost of a nonstandard protocol (not plain PGP), with all that implies in terms of compatibility, maintenance needs etc.
That’s a fair point about the portability of their protocol. And yeah, you’re right that they don’t encrypt everything. I’d meant to say “they encrypt everything you can encrypt without making the email undeliverable” but my fingers decided to type something else.
They’ve still a loong way to go to match Proton’s product suite though, as they only offer Email, Contacts and Calendar for now
honestly that’s a plus for me, I’d rather they focus on a small set of products and do really well with them. before I left Proton I was wary of their scope creep, and then the crypto wallet shit
This is the first time hearing about Tuta, Thank you
Would’ve switched in a heartbeat with IMAP support but that’s not in the cards. Stuck with Proton for now.
Tuta is fantastic.
How does this factor in to all this? https://archive.ph/xoleo
Does this have anything to do with the CEO expressing his support for Trump? I can’t imagine how, but there are some odd decisions being made at Proton lately.
Almost certainly, yes.
People on Mastodon are not happy about those statements, and called Proton out on it relentlessly with every post Proton made. This is Proton running away with their tail between their legs, back to platforms where they have more control and/or are already full of right-wing nutjobs.
If anyone’s looking for secure email, look at tuta.com instead. The email service is very similar in terms of UX and offers better encryption. They don’t offer the rest of Proton’s suite, but…maybe that’s a good thing? I mean, do you want to get locked into an ecosystem?
…“the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
Like doge having our social security and Treasury wallet+keys? >.>
He can suck my ass and nutts.
From a historical perspective, he wasn’t wrong. The republicans were looking more at big tech cause, in the past, big tech was very left leaning. Things have obviously changed but your quote misses that he was hopeful that Trump would do something for big tech. His hope is obviously miss placed after big tech started sicking his dick but doesn’t mean he couldn’t be hopeful
It was still a completely naive and idiotic thing to say and doesn’t show the forethought and strategic thinking that comes with being a good CEO, especially one of a service that could literally put people’s lives in danger if jeopardized.
So it’s naive to voice his opinion on what a Trump presidency could mean for the tech industry? Looking back to trump’s previous term big tech shunned him and Twitter even kicked him off the platform by the end of his presidency. Back then it pissed Trump off and he threatened all sorts of shit. I don’t think it was that crazy to think that he would still be upset about it and try to do something at the begining of December when Proton’s CEO made that post.
If you look at what proton is trying to do in terms of becoming a complete non-proffit that would have many safeguards in place to undo that change. I think it does show he has some level of forethought. The one caveat being that they have not completed that process and implemented everything yet so we’ll have to see if that promise follows through
big tech was very left leaning
complete bullshit.
Their damage was already done with that CEO statement (for me), since after those remarks I cancelled my VPN plan with them. I’m not someone who’s going to then follow them around and post negative comments on their Mastodon, X, reddit account whenever they post. I’m just going to walk away.
So, they will move to where their base is, just like trump did and they can sell there stuff to a smaller percentage of the market if they want. I will never understand why a company would actively try to cut their sales base in half or whatever.
They also can’t control the narrative on Mastodon like they do on Reddit and Lemmy through “volunteer mod” Nelizea. I’m glad I quit using them — they are becoming tech bro chuds (or maybe always were but just hid it better)
Especially since reddit is quite ban happy about political narratives right now, gearing the site like with Facebook, who only pushes right wing.
How do they control the narrative around here?
Reddit allows more control and is much aggressive in banning people sitewide as of recently. If you attempt to report a comment on reddit, you can get banned instead by the mod
They control moderation, as they also do on Reddit. I don’t know about Lemmy but I have personally been shadowbanned on their Reddit sub. They can’t do that on Mastodon.
Tuta is really good. The push notifications work perfectly without delay on de-googled devices. top.
In what way is Tuta’s encryption better?
Proton does not use end-to-end encryption for email headers. That includes the subject lines, senders/recipients, and other potentially sensitive information.
Tuta uses E2EE for email contents AND headers.
Consider for a moment what someone with access to your contacts and subject lines would know about you. For me personally, they would know which political campaigns and causes I donate to, and when. They would know when I see various doctors, and who they are. They would know my travel dates and destinations. They would know what newsletters I read (many of which are also political). Etc.
Sender and recipient can’t be encrypted e2e. How would the server know to whom deliver the email if those are encrypted and not visible to it?
AFAIK tuta encryption extends to the subject line only.
Still a nice addition, don’t get me wrong, but I believe you misunderstood something.
From their own doc:
The only unencrypted data are mail addresses of users as well as senders and recipients of emails.
Contacts and everything else is encrypted similarly in all “secure email” providers, including Proton.
Thank you for the correction.
Sender and recipient can’t be encrypted e2e. How would the server know to whom deliver the email if those are encrypted and not visible to it?
“End-to-end” is a bit of a misnomer in this case. Both Proton and Tuta apply encryption after receiving email in the general case, since email is not sent with E2EE across different providers (in general). Both Proton and Tuta can see your incoming email (body and all) from external servers in the general case — they just don’t store it that way. (This is different when sending email between two Proton users or two Tuta users.)
Yes, that’s absolutely true. Assuming a full PGP flow, (e.g., proton to proton) even in that case the recipient and other metadata (in tuta, excluding subject line) is still visible to the provider.
Hopefully the more people move to secure providers, the more the general case will be transparent PGP, but we are a long way from there…
Tuta it is then.
I used tuta for a while, while they are working the best they can, I ended up leaving the platform. The app, ui, desktop app are really annoying to me. I found their antispam really lacking too.
However their work is still very impressive and they were always honest.
Imo it’s more like leaving the town full of bullies… completely understandable, I would do the same. Insane amount of hate, for one mistake. People can only see black and white these days…
“One mistake” would be if he didn’t double-down on it, and if Proton addressed their customers’ concerns in any meaningful way. Instead, they deleted posts and are now withdrawing from the community entirely, and directing users to three of the worst corporate hell-holes on the internet.
With US aligning with Russia and North Korea and their party taking Kremlin talking points of refusing to say Russia is the aggressor it shows a huge lack of foresight that you’d expect from a CEO. Not like the party hasn’t been accused of being pro Russian years prior or stuff like Project 2025 plans to kill democracy.
This is some amateur stuff.
Agreed. I don’t support their decision to leave mastadon but I totally understand why they did it. Proton is on our side (as much as a company can be) so I don’t get why people keep ripping into them for something that isn’t true. He wasn’t saying he supported Trump, he just hoped the republican party would do something about big tech. Not gonna happen but we can all agree we hope it’ll happen
If you read the whole thing again, he is supporting Trump and the Republicans.
Here is the CEO’s post along with a link to an article with the twitter link.
Great pick by @realDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
He is supporting Trump’s pick for a roll, fair enough. But the rest of the post, he is talking about how he hopes the republicans will do something about big tech. He isn’t endorsing Trump himself or his stance of policies. Far as I’ve seen he never has. He it literally just stating what the republicans used to be about.
No, he literally STARTED by stating what the republicans used to be about and then added a wildly inaccurate statement about what the republicans are about now.
But Trump was the first president (since the US tried to break up Microsoft) to seriously start thinking about fighting big tech. Obviously for dumb reasons (they hurt his feelings) but still, I don’t think that statement is inaccurate. However, it is true he isn’t the first politician to say something against big tech. Even so, he was in a position of power to potentially do something about it (even if he never did and likely won’t now given how much they are bending the knee)
And he didn’t even need to say anything at all which is the ridiculous thing lost in all this. It was amateur hour showing a huge lack of foresight you’d expect a CEO to have when it comes to things as simple as PR.
You must be new to the internet. People make a drama out of every little shit.
Little shit like praising literal hitler for some other things he did, besides the genocide.
Lol, here comes the drama. And I say that as a person on the opposite spectrum of Trump.
Your words, they smell of lazy deceit.
Just FYI, I’m not a Proton supporter (I find the way overrated), nor an American citizen, nor a MAGA supporter (quite the opposite, actually). I just use common sense. If you’re so stupid to believe otherwise it’s exclusively your problem. Keep crying and jumping from service to service for every little shit. Have fun.
:D apparently yes. it’s still sad to see. There wasn’t a single post done by proton that didn’t immediately derail into people blaming about “the issue”, and they just couldn’t stop. Not a fun time, and there isn’t anything the company can do to convince these people otherwise, they are just a lost in hate
Did he directly express support for trump? I only saw something along the lines of “the Republican party is better than the Dems because they will address big tech”. Albeit that statement itself is misguided in many ways, but curious about what his actual post said?
because they will address big tech
That aged like milk.
Yea agreed
I don’t think I’ll be renewing
Check your renewal date. Mine auto-renewed today without any prior notification that it was coming up.
Since I have found it historically hard to engage on this (broader) subject around here, just yesterday I put together my own thoughts at https://loudwhisper.me/blog/proton-fediverse-burnout/
Personally, I did not see the value of their Mastodon presence, it was write only marketing communication, no engagement with the community anyway. That happened only ever on Reddit, which I think is going to continue being the case.
They push the same info via email newsletter, if someone really wants that stuff.
Either way, the post above covers my take on the whole drama, not just this last small chapter.
Read your entire post. You claim people will say you come off as an apologist and you do.
As a person who was seriously considered switching to Proton this just reminds me of why I should not. It is clear no matter what corner of the Internet we run to as long as it is into the open arm of corporations it is a mistake.
Blue sky, Proton, etc. are not a solution to a problem. They are just the newest version of putting lipstick on a pig. We need to move beyond corporate control and it is clear Proton, even being a nonprofit, is no solution.
I find your hand waving of the CEOs position particularly distasteful. There are a lot of CEOs out there that don’t decide to get all political. They don’t do this because they have an image or brand to protect. Maybe I just like a good illusion though.
In this respect I am glad he opened his ignorant mouth and showed he has no business commenting on politics. He is no political scientist, just another person drunk on his accomplishments trying to pretend he knows fuck all about anything.
Thanks for the response, despite the fact we disagree quite substantially.
I think it’s OK that different people have different points of view. Everyone’s opinion also should fit within a broader (political) praxis and strategy that they support.
There are a lot of CEOs out there that don’t decide to get all political. They don’t do this because they have an image or brand to protect. Maybe I just like a good illusion though.
This is something I particularly disagree, as you probably have already read. Ignorance on once’s position doesn’t mean that position doesn’t exist. I appreciate Jeff Bezos for example writing that memo (just yesterday’s published), compared to acting the same way without my full knowledge.
He is no political scientist
If this was the criteria to comment on politics, honestly we should shut down everything (including Lemmy) :)
Your don’t really have much of opinion except as an apologist. A devil’s advocate defender of corporate and political nonsense without stating your actual thoughts beyond, “it is more nuanced that that” is pretty disingenuous.
It is okay to have differing opinions when someone’s opinion smells like shit. All the while you pass out the verbal/written clothespins is really just your version of carrying water. I know, I know it is more nuanced than that. Only it really isn’t.
And yes, you should have a degree or really just some critical thinking skills before deploying your wanna be political commentary on the world when you are in a leadership position. Otherwise please keep that shit to yourself and keep it out of your business if you ever want my money.
I felt that was really uncalled for. The whole post elaborates quite a lot in thousands of words, and I feel like your summary is not really accurate. Unfortunately, I have no way to debate accusations that follow a circular logic, so I won’t attempt to do so.
Otherwise please keep that shit to yourself and keep it out of your business if you ever want my money.
I reiterate that I find curious that you seem to prefer ignorance of those positions, as if the reality is suddenly better if you don’t know a problem exists. You would rather pay for Proton not knowing that Andy Yen thinks what he thinks than having more information so that you can choose to stop paying. Obviously just an example, same thing applies to the WaPo or Tesla, or any other similar case.
There is nothing to debate because my summary and all your replies just reinforce my opinion of you. This is just my critical opinion though and it is not meant as an attack, but a wake up call. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this even if it is misplaced at best
We all know problems exist. We all know speech has consequences. A leader, particularly in business, has a special fiduciary responsibility to their business. If they choose to expose themselves as politically ignorant and supporting positions that are indefensible the consequences are they will lose business. This is all I am pointing out.
You conflate two things here which are a person’s right to speak their mind and their responsibility to bigger issues. I get you want to hear their opinions and then play devil’s advocate about them because that is just what you do.
You are clearly technically minded but you are also clearly not politically minded. Much like our errant CEO and reminiscent of when a US congressman tries to grasp web technology. They say a lot of ignorant things about tech just like Andy says ignorant things about politics.
Clearly you feel a kinship with this man because you are also heavily invested in the tech world. You defend him because you also admire him. No amount of debate or hand waving will change this immutable fact.
If they choose to expose themselves as politically ignorant and supporting positions that are indefensible the consequences is they will lose business. This is all I am pointing out.
Very easy to understand. But why should we (the customers, citizens, etc.) care? My interest is to have that knowledge, it’s the shareholder interest to have the business succeeding, and they take care of that. So why from your words you seem to imply that it’s “better” if they keep their mouth shut (and therefore protect the businesses)?
I get you want to hear their opinions and then play devil’s advocate about them because that is just what you do.
Unnecessary ad-hominem, which is also easily proved wrong. I hear the opinions of Musk, of Bezos (but also of Zuckerberg, of the Nvidia guy, of Altman and many others) and I am happy because with that information I can (and do) distance myself from their companies. In this case, I feel differently and therefore I take another decision. I like to think that I can critically evaluate situations, but if the conclusion I end up with is different from yours it doesn’t mean that mine is wrong by definition.
You are clearly technically minded but you are also clearly not politically minded.
You are clearly wrong about this. I have nothing to prove obviously, but you can easily also see that by just browsing through other posts on my blog, for example this. I will even go a step further and say that the purism and localism (as defined in this book) that emerges from your words is something I explicitly want to distance myself from, because it has proved to be a complete failure in terms of political battles.
I am referring at things like:
It is clear no matter what corner of the Internet we run to as long as it is into the open arm of corporations it is a mistake.
Clearly you feel a kinship with this man because you are also heavily invested in the tech world. You defend him because you also admire him.
I don’t. I actually can’t care less about him, and I barely know anything about him. My involvement is very limited to this case, and that is because wanting to understand inevitably forced me to learn certain things and inform myself. Please don’t assume other people’s positions.
You can only see better from your point of view that you want more knowledge. Keeping their mouth shut is what leaders do everyday to protect their business, their profits, their coworkers, etc.
I suppose you have to be a knowledgeable leader to understand this. We often thrust people into leadership positions and we end up with people like Andy as a result.
I don’t pretend to the arbitrator of what is right or wrong, but I have learned a lot in my lifetime and calling a spade a spade is something I believe is important. You take all this so personally and thus show a certain level of immaturity as you probably feel I display as well.
Your proof of your political commentary only supports my assertion that you are very technically minded. Your critique of cloud computing shows your technical understanding is profound, but does little to forward a feeling that you are politically minded. You state yourself you are just learning about this which is very clear.
Follow us on Reddit
That’s where you lost me. Not for now, for good.
Yeah damn that hurts. Just signed up for tuta. I will be leaving proton soon I guess. A shame, I had just finished moving all my communications there…
Smells like non technical reasons
Wonser if the media manager there got fired or something. Should look at their jobs board
Btw, their Mastodon account has more followers than their Bluesky and Threads accounts combined, both of which they are keeping. What a stupid decision.
They will leave Blue sky for twitter once , people find out as well, mark my words, and they will add Facebook eventually, since it’s still the place where right wingers flee to have more administrative control over their groups, of they get ousted from reddit
Lmao that second paragraph. This guy is not just a tool, he’s the whole toolbox.
If Proton does not refer to the Steam’s Windows adapter layer for Linux, I don’t care.
Fuck Proton.
Damn, reddit, really? That sucks 🙁
Proton just dropping the ball over and over again these days. That’s why I’m working on migrating from their sevices, then deleting my Proton account.
Whats the problem with creating one message and using the APIs for posting it on all social medai? With optional formatting per platform?
Because these bridges are one way only.
They will get spicy replies on niche platforms, not see them until they go viral in a bad way.
Ohh that’s a fair point! Maybe there’s a way of fixing that by adding some “post your concerns over on reddit” or something similar, but idk.
Even so. It’ll be an unmoderated by them section of conversation about their company. Probably a hard pass from any company with an HR department.
I think you mean PR department.
They wrote that they don’t want to “write and forget” but engage with people (as they do on Reddit, for better or worse). I think it’s opinable, but it sounds reasonable to me. What is the value of having an official account which just reposts one-way communication already published on the blog and on the newsletter? Anybody can build such a bot, but it’s not “presence” the way I interpret it.
Twitter API costs $$$ to use
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