Andy Yen’s values are incompatible with Proton’s mission. He advocates for poor security practices, supports fascists, and he verbally abuses his subordinates. As such, I can no longer in good conscience continue to financially support a company with such terrible leadership.
Unfortunately for me, my subscription just renewed last month on a multi year plan, but it does give me time to browse for and experiment with alternatives.
If you’re able, I encourage you to do the same and cite Andy Yen as the driving factor for your decision. We can’t let these tech bro fascists destroy what little semblance of privacy we have left.
I’m sure in a few days we’re going to hear about an all hands or internal memo where Andy apologizes for his “poor communication” and how hes “committed to being a better leader by being a better communicatortm”
But how he communicates - his tone, his word choice, his inflection - is just an indictment of his character. I honestly don’t give a fuck about the kind of person he is. Mostly because selfishly, I don’t have to.
The main issue is his ideas. The things he’s advocating for are fundamentally incompatible with a business whos only two value propositions are privacy and security.
A.I. is surveillance tech. Period. Every interaction, from keystroke to window focus, is meticulously categorized, logged, and sent back to to a handful of people like Andy Yen; Who then use it to draw conclusions that reaffirm their own cognitive biases. Its a doom-loop for C-level execs that suffer from main character syndrome. Because surely, the only reason the company is successful at all is because of the CEOs hard work and business acumen and any perceived failures come from those lazy engineers that only think about going slow. Like losers.
Im not the biggest fan of A.I. but theres a huge difference between asking it to help spot a difficult bug and using it to spy on your subordinates and determine their individual productivity rankings.
Like, that guy seriously can’t be in charge of the privacy company. We’re fucked.
I keep seeing folks mention that at least it is a good and secure service why should I leave? this should be why: via: https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
I think they’re thinking of how to be securer dumbass. Which is probably smart considering everyone and their uncle is using AI to find vulnerabilities everywhere they can these days.
Yeah, that’s very unfortunate. I just recently moved everything over to proton and I’ll be spending today looking for yet another alternative.
Please do share what alternative(s) you end up with and what you like about the providers. I had a look at mailbox, infomaniak and tuta for mail and airvpn as a replacement. I think I’l be switching to mailbox.
I signed up for tuta right now and I’m currently moving my most sensitive accounts over but I think I’m going to go with mailbox as well. It sounds good for around $13.50 usd.
I’m going to check them (mailbox) out first once I wake up a bit more. I already know I can’t afford tuta on top of everything else I pay for currently. Budget is about stretched to the max but I will update with which one I go with.
GMX is cool.
After briefly skimming their privacy policy and features, gmx doesn’t seem too bad. I’ll do a little more research tomorrow and its on the list.
Definitely decent being based in Germany. Generous storage, no AI, solid interface, some contacts storage and syncing, too… Lot to like. Not a shill for it, but it’s just very simple and good.
I’ve been using Startmail for a while now with no complaints
For email, have you considered Mailfence, Posteo.de, Fastmail
or Disroot?Disroot is currently not operational due to a server failure
I am a mailbox user and have no complaints. It just chugs away. I only use the mail aspect of it though
I’ve been happy with infomaniak. If you host a domain name with them, you get a free email too. I switched from Godaddy, gmail, and protonmail earlier this year all to infomaniak.
I’m also happy with AirVPN, but a lot more sites block it than other VPNs, so be ready to deal with that.
But Infomaniak is an entirely different product to Protonmail.
They offer email hosting and kSuite. It’s an alternative and more.
Protonmail is end to end encrypted. Infomaniak can be decrypted. It’s a less secure product and therefore not an alternative to Protonmail
But I agree that it’s a good product compared to like gmail.
Fair point. I think protonmail is only that way with other protonmail users, and I practically never send personal emails, so I honestly forgot about that feature. It’d be nice if other hosts could integrate with that.
I’m unaware of true feature parity alternatives then. I guess I just tend to use other communication media when I need encryption.
i finally deleted my ~20 year google account last week, finally migrating every single account that used that old email over to proton. and now, this
It’s still astronomically better than Google. People seem to be forgetting this.
True for now. But it seems headed down a path where it will be competing with Google in shittiness some time in the not so far off future (and I use Proton as well).
Better than Google in terms of ethics and privacy maybe, and not shoving ads in your face when you don’t use an adblocker. But it’s behind in features.
And unfortunately Google caters to the majority, who generally don’t care about privacy, even the ones who say they do but refuse to act on their words (and I’m not even going to comment on the “they have all my info anyway” crowd).
To me comparing Gmail to Protonmail feels similar to comparing FB Messenger to Signal. The former has more features and therefore is chosen by most people despite the enshittification.
This. The Proton suite is very convenient in my use case, I wouldn’t like to switch to all saperate services
It’s not better.
It’s fine, at best, and free alternatives are fine too.
The only thing Proton has is their integrity and focus on privacy… Or was supposed to, anyway.
It is. The direction they are going is shit, but only in isolation, if you compare it to Google, they still look like angels. Perhaps you dont understand what Google is doing.
No, you’re the one that refuses to see where Proton is heading with a CEO like that.
The only reason I’m paying for Proton is their supposed values, but clearly under his leadership they’re completely opposite to what they claim publicly.
If Proton is going to use my money to push out slop, I might as well use any other email provider that at least won’t lie to my face about it.
deleted by creator
FUUUUCCCK. SAME.
And a custom domain so there was no automatic transferring. Had to do the obnoxious mbox import rigamarole for two accounts (mine and my tech-illiterate dad) and talk two friends through the same.
Whatever. I’m sticking with it for a couple years, I don’t have it in me to do it again.
You’re good—it’s still one of the best options out there right now. Even if it gets shittier, unfortunately, it’s still a way better option than almost any others out there. Which is depressing. But don’t beat yourself up for staying.
I have yet to delete my gmail account but I soon will make a new one to run on my phone until I can get a new phone with grapheneos or some other OS that uses microg instead. I feel you on that 20 year account thing though. I think I made mine about 20 years ago as well. It was my very first “grown up” email after my silly kid named ones like Skaterpunkxxxxx@aol and such.
I deleted mine several years ago but my employer just added Google dependencies to their app so I can’t install through Aurora anymore and have to go and buy a new phone and a SIM card, and make a new Google account…
After decades on Gmail I finally stopped procrastinating and moved almost everything to proton over the last week. I had made a Lemmy post asking for service recommendations. Almost everyone said proton except two jerks who railed against it but had no interest in explaining and they made no alternative recommendation, just railed against proton.
Reading this article right now sucks.
Yeah, I don’t get why some people don’t elaborate. Just before I deleted tiktok and reddit, Proton and Tuta were the 2 everyone was recommending and I went with proton bc of the easy move feature which didn’t actually work for me for whatever reason so I ended up moving the most important accounts first and then all the ones that mattered one by one. I recall seeing some people do the same as you claimed; railing against proton without explanation but the looks of it and ease of use were what got me. Tuta doesn’t have that “easy move” feature either but it might be my go to. I thought all of their tiers were paid tiers but it looks like they have a free tier with twice as much space as proton.
Yeah, not only do people who do that not elaborate, they often insult you for even considering something they’re judgy about. Proton in this case. That was how both commenters approached it. Telling me I’m an idiot if I go with the recommendation that actually existed. They could’ve at least said what they use. One (non rude) person did mention tuta but I figured the bigger company would be more reliable to stick around 😭
You can probably not worry about this and be fine. Email is insecure to begin with.
I’m not gonna fight anybody about this but the proton ceo is making the right call telling everyone to just spam fixes out there without testing. The security environment has gone from the old way of making sure the hole is patched perfectly to the new way of making patches live immediately.
The reason is that ai automation makes exploitation of a vulnerability incredibly fast. Used to be if you and the opp both found something at the same time they’d have to spend a long while figuring out where it goes, what it can be chained to (this was a big one because they had to carefully interact with someone whose knowledge domain was different from their own to hook their php deserialization fuck up to someone else’s use after free etc), what that gets them and how theyre gonna use it to accomplish what. So there was plenty of time for you to patch the bug while they get their ducks in a row. Now that’s all automatable and they don’t have to deal with a different criminal in a careful and safe way.
Idk how much computer security news you get, but it’s been non stop insane banger one after another and proton has a target on its back. I’d tell people to get in line and ship the fixes too.
The way I see it is that proton’s mission hasn’t changed. I pay for their products, which remain secure and privacy focused despite their asshat CEO.
Security is suspect because the CEO is pushing devs to release code (AI-generated) to production without testing.
Fuck! Me too…
When people show you who they are, listen.
There was a lot of copium flying around after the first red flag. I told people then, best case scenario is he’s a naive idiot to think a Trump cabinet pick is good for anyone other than Trump and his cronies. Worst case scenario he was trying to cosy up to an anti-democratic fascist.
Here we are with red flag
23. How many people are going to keep injecting that copium? Or are we finally listening to the man when he tries to show us who he is?Edit: I was unaware Proton got caught sponsoring Fascists on YouTube.
Emphasis: listen the first time.
And this is red flag number 3. Don’t forget about Proton sponsoring fascist Youtubers.
This isn’t a red flag, it’s a red banner parade, holy shit
You’re right, this is “why did you make me do that” level of warning.
I honestly thought the CEO is a fascist is old news? I’ve been wondering for awhile why Lemmy seems to have forgotten this, despite the fact that it was Lemmy that raised the issue about Andy.
I did this the first time he praised Trump’s cabinet picks.
I canceled my renewal at that time but had just reupped for two years. I was hoping the foundation board would do its job and reprimand him if not oust. Their inaction and silence has been the most disappointing part of this and the real reason I’m following through on ending my 10+ year account with them.
Exact same. Mine had also just renewed for two years. I cancelled the renewal but hoped sometime in the last two years things would have improved. I’ll be losing that in January along with the more than half a tb of drive space I had racked up for being a long time customer.
They’ve got 28 days to oust Yen and make a really good PR statement or I’m gone for good. This damage control by Yen isn’t cutting it.
I had missed that and that’s a failure on my part.
I also cited him back then. Interesting to pay attention to reddit comments but not to your own cancelling subscribers.
Yeah I told them exactly why I was leaving in my cancelation, and I never heard anything back from anyone there.
What Email provider do you use now if I may ask? Do you use password managers and/or VPNs? If so where did you switch to? Because when I look at alternatives it’s damn bleak out there.
I use Fastmail now. I know it doesn’t have the encryption that Protonmail has (what does, aside from Tuta anyway?), but the alias feature is great and integrates directly with 1Password (my PW manager). I chose 1P due to a blog post by Troy whatshisname a few years back and have been happy with it since. I have 15 days left on my Mullvad VPN sub, and I honestly don’t know what I’ll switch to once that’s over (since apparently that CEO is a fascist too).
It certainly is bleak out there. I self-host quite a few services, and I used to roll my own VPN, so I might just do that again.
Heyyy, sorry to bring more bad news. But 1Password is also a fascist company. They donated money to DHH through Omarchy, and the CEO is already known for not being cool.
It’s a shame, because I liked the keyboard navigation on their password manager.
Fuuuuck. This is exhausting. I was already salty about having to move my VPN but changing password managers means migrating my family too. So annoying. Any recs for ethical and good VPN and PW management?
Sadly I’m still looking for alternatives on the VPN front.
As a password manager I use KeePassXC and keep the password file synced between computers using rsync. But the KeePassXC dev is also vibe coding parts of it now, and I’ve heard the same about the rsync dev. I’d still rather stay on vibe coded software instead of vibe coded and fascist supporting software, but I’m looking for alternatives.
My recommendation is that you stop doing that.
The tools you’re using to stay private and secure online need to be chosen for functionality first and foremost. Do not be driven away from effective tools by controversy.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
JFC. That one will take longer to switch away from.
Get something offline-by-default like KeePass, and then if you want to you can backup/sync the database file with whatever cloud storage provider of your choosing
I’ve tried that before (KeepassXC) and the lack of convenience is not worth the added security to me. I totally understand why people would make that choice though.
I had just swapped over to proton at the time so I didn’t want to go through that again but if both ethics and security aren’t priorities then I’m out I’ll probably just self host half the replacement services on my VPS anyway.
That’s when I bounced as well. Luckily that came out while I was still testing it out and before I spent any money.
Does this count or is was this too aggressive? I’ve been known to be a little too angry when it comes to things like this.
On line 4 you opened quotation marks at ‘"re-interviewing’ but never closed them. For that reason, I am afraid it is a failure and must be re-written.
Ahh shit
If anything, it’s not aggressive enough! Everyone is so apathetic about everything compared to 20-30 years ago. Between the rise of Fascism and the cost of living, life has never been shitter yet no one seems to give a fuck. Why aren’t we rioting and revolting until shit stops sucking so god damn much!? Where is everyone’s passion!?
I’ve been on this planet for four decades. It used to not be this way! People used to care! Now it seems like all of society has become emotional zombies, and if you dare to step out of line and speak up about some injustice, you get labeled as “crashing out”. It’s such fucking bullshit! I’m not crashing out; I’m pissed the fuck off that the world is run by evil men and no one is doing anything about it!
Oh I like you
I agree. However, I think the best ways to fix Proton are to send endless complaints until Yen is removed or to establish better competition with stronger morals.
You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore!
See? This is what I mean! People like you are part of the problem. Nobody takes this shit seriously. You just mock me when I get mad for a valid reason. I really hate how apathetic everyone is compared to 20-30 years ago. All you care about is being clever and funny enough to get upvotes while the world burns. It’s fucking pathetic.
It feels pretty balanced, to me. Nicely done.
Holy hell… I was expecting it to be something AI related but Yen is straight up acting like a Musk wannabe. And I was seriously considering a switch to Proton but I think I’m going to bin that idea now
It really does show a complete lack of understanding of his own userbase. We don’t want new useless features fast. We want secure, private and reliable services.
They rolled out lumo chatbot. I just wanted decent linux support for VPN and drive, especially as a years-long visionary-tier supporter. I overpaid for years because I shared the same vision but its was always a second class experience on Linux.
I cant believe yens henchman is named bart butler lol
Proton is fucked if this article is true, andy is so obviously trying to chase profits in a market that isnt in line with protons core, and there doesnt seem to be anyone with enough company power that is willing to stop his psychosis
He would fit in better with company culture at instagram or tiktok
…and when that (or any) archive.org link returns
429 Too Many Requestsbecause of your VPN, pull it up in Tor Browser. Bless 'em for still allowing Tor exits, fuck 'em for blocking VPNs.What the hell is going on? They are a privacy focused company. Why do they need to chase increased recurring annual revenue and ship features as fast as possible if they aren’t publicly traded? Andy Yen can spout his corporate jargon, saying “the company is underperforming” and “not reaching it’s recurring annual revenue goals”, but why does that matter if the company is healthy? Does he want to make the company more profitable to fill his own pockets with bonuses? I would think as CEO of Proton you would be somewhat committed to the cause, but this restructuring and AI push flies in the face of that. It must be a healthy dose of AI psychosis as well.
They can just be like Valve, do nothing while the competition shoots themselves in the foot and profit.
Being a CEO is a terminal fucking disease nowadays.
He thinks he’s not rich enough, so he’s looking at rump, mush, and alt-man, and suck, and going, you know, those guys are really, really rich. What are they doing? Give me all of that. I’m not just going to follow their path; I’m going to trailblaze ahead of them, and I’m going to do it without the trained staff or unlimited funds. I’m just going to do it because it’s magic and my AI tells me I can do that.
I know that because it’s exactly what my CEO is doing.
I use them for email and I’m not moving anytime soon. Thankfully, 98% of my email, probably more like 99.9% if I’m being honest, is just worthless junk. I don’t care if they see it. I was self-hosting my email server for like eight years until Debian decided to just eviscerate itself one day on a system update for some reason. I gave up, moved to them, and I don’t have the time or the energy to move again.
I don’t use any of their other services. I have my own seafile for file storage. I have my own Wireguard on a VPS for VPN usage. Etc etc
Glad I chose Tuta instead of Proton
sadly Tuta is also going down the AI track. Can anyone please recommend AI free email hosted outside the US. And please don’t recommend Faatmail, they too are using AI.
I’m on Infomaniak, the free tier is pretty good. Can hook up a custom domain and multiple domain aliases. And you get 50 email aliases.
If they are making their Drive available for the public, their lineup starts to seriously compete with proton
If Proton is looking for a CEO that’s a) Not an ass b) Has a bunch of degrees and c) Will trust and support experts in the workplace because I don’t know enough about tech to act like a pretentious jerk…
I am looking for work.
You sound cool. I’d vote for you. The problem is that CEO positions are basically incompatible with those values. They are looking for someone who will happily lie to save face, grow and milk their customer base whilst gradually reducing quality and ignore anyone who tells them they are doing the wrong thing. Ideally this person will qualifications but the important qualification is an MBA (a badge of honour for absolutely vile people)
Thanks. I’m alright.
II went a different Under > Grad > Post Grad direction. Morality in tact; lacking a Super Yacht.
I didn’t give them money, so unfortunately I can’t give less than nothing.
You’ve done all you can.
Except, if you’re ever in their area, you could try to get a tour and steal someone’s pens.
Paper clips, Scotch tape, post-it notes are also great targets. just saying.
Oh and don’t forget sharpies!
I have two things to add:
- You all rock. Thank you for all the migration suggestions, and tips.
- Fuck Andy Yen, of course.
EDIT: The thing is done.
Up until recently, I was willing to roll with Proton since the product itself is so good, but who knows if that will remain with the reckless charge into LLM integration? We’ve been watching Microsoft and Google enshittify their products at a rapid pace in order to force people to use their chatbots, so Proton’s likely up next.
I’ll spend part of my day researching alternatives, but for those of you out there doing the same, just keep in mind that your best bet for privacy is Non-US tech services, especially if the country in question doesn’t comply with the CLOUD Act.
I hate the fascists too.
I was looking into Windscribe as an alternative to Proton VPN. I’ve heard good things from others and the fact they threatened to pull out of Canada if meta data collecting legislation goes through is a good sign. They allow port forwarding as well I believe. I haven’t had time to look too closely yet though.
I’m still looking for email providers.
What did you move to?
Have not decided yet. Thankfully there are a ton of Non-US options.
Not many with port forwarding though.
I was looking at PIA: even though it’s USA-based they can not produce logs or any other type of info even if they get a subpoena, and they have port forwarding. Know anything about them?
I wouldn’t trust any company based or heavily operating in any country under fascistic leadership. Even if they’re doing their best to do things right, all it takes is a gag order alongside a subpoena or other “legal” demand, and they’re forbidden to tell you that they actually are required to maintain extensive logs.
Fair point, thanks for bringing it up
