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).
I suggest Mullvad as an alternative to Protons VPN services.
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.
True, but privacy conscious people tend to also be wary of concentrations of power in a platform, such as Reddit or Twitter. If you are aware of the issues with a closed system you tend to also be aware of privacy issues, security issues, state censorship, and so on, so the user base is more aware in the fediverse and if they are leaving for Reddit that really does say something. I won’t be using their service, I feel very lucky to have found out about this before shifting as I was in the process of finding a stable email host and blending with the VPN seemed financially reasonable, guess I will stay with Mullvad and get a separate email provider.
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.
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.
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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At least we know where their loyalties actually lie, now.
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
Proton is going boots up.
Is it time to change VPN platforms?
Absolutely. Mullvad is way better.
How so?
it has a cool sounding name, of course!
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”.
Ooh okay thank you.
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.
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?
It’s pretty simple, really. Did you read the original statement? Did you see where Yen said the Republican Party will champion the little people and be great for privacy? End of discussion.
The squabbling over “hE dIdN’t diRecTly prAIse Trump” is nonsense whataboutism distraction.
It’s pretty simple, really.
Context matters. Even if you don’t see it.
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Besides slow responses to support request and handing over info on that
SwissFrench 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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He didn’t even endorse Trump, he agreed with one statement. (And doubled down on that and is really an idiot)
