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.
Glad I chose Tuta instead of Proton
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
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.
No. I’m not going to make changes in my personal digital life because of online influencers.
Proton is fine.
Fine until it isn’t.
The CEO is hell bent on turning everything you are paying proton for into empty marketing speak.
I have grave concerns about it being ‘fine’ in the long run, and frankly you should too.
It’s going to be funny watching to say this every single time some terrible thing comes out about this loser. Keep hand waving it away and burying your head in the sand. You could just be honest and say you don’t care about the things he’s saying.
You sound like you drive a Tesla and use Omarchy.
I don’t use Omarchy, but yeah I do drive a Tesla. It was the best car to get when we were getting a new one some 3 years ago. I briefly considered moving away from it roughly a year ago when Musk was doing his weirdo stunts in public. Came to a similar conclusion: not going to make big (and in that case quite expensive) changes because of online influencers. Also keeping your current car is usually the most enviromentally sound choice.
Same reason why I don’t use Omarchy really. Not gonna change distros because of influencers.
try not to drool on your keyboard
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 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 become more and more weary about the absolutist moralizing. Yeah this CEO is nutty, but what I want from him is to protect the privacy of his customers. That is a precious good to us.
I especially mistrust the fuckai fanatics who want to burn down everything and everyone that has remotely to with AI no matter if it’s reasonable or unreasonable. Their tactics are despicable and their strategy leads to unproductive outcomes for all.
Soon there will be no big VPN and privacy companies left and it will be easy to mop up what is left without resistance.
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
Mullvad supporting literal Neo Nazis crosses a line for me but Proton using some LLMs is not that level of massive ethical breach. But feel free to support other smaller VPNs. Only good for alternatives. Proton will probably sell out harder at some point.
Even if you’re morally okay with Proton, the simple fact is that vibe coding the piss out of their product is going to seriously endanger the privacy and security that make Proton an appealing product.
This is true.
I just switched over to Windscribe, I get unlimited data, servers in US and Canada all for 3 bucks a month.
Servers in US and Canada is an issue for a lot of people.
Proton sponsored far right YouTubers.
Is this a reference to this?
We would like to address the recent controversy about one of the owners of Mullvad making a donation to a Swedish political party.
It was a private donation from Daniel the individual. Mullvad or its parent and sister companies did not endorse and were not involved in it. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/donation-controversy
Yes but Mullvad did not denounce it
They did say they do not support it, it’s a private initiative. It still bad in the sense that giving money to Mullvad makes this guy richer, but it’s not as bad as the company head as a whole supporting this party.
Sooo… what VPNs do y’all like
AirVPN
I just switched to Migadu. Super good plans and very good if you have multiple domains.
When I canceled Proton, I put the reason, “Your CEO is a lunatic.”
I already did that lol
I switched from Proton to Tuta a while ago, then realized they both suck for the same reason—walled garden.
Airvpn is a reliable option for torrenting in my experience.
Mailbox.org is a great option for mail, based in Germany. They have some things included other than mail, including a drive.
Name me a VPN that is comparable to Proton and I’ll move to that and Tutamail in a heartbeat.
Really!!! I switched to proton mail for jobs. Fuck!!!
