Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I will continue to use Proton and their services, not because I support or endorse any political decisions from the CEO/board members (and I don't), but because they provide open source, secure, and private software that I love.
This is no different than arguing about using GrapheneOS based on the behavior of the maintainers.
Oh no... I use Graphene... what's the deal with the maintainers?
This video seemed to have been the start of an anti-GrapheneOS movement. I won't get into details, because it's been explained to death, but it's here for your convenience.
I use and love GrapheneOS as well.
Thanks for the video, much appreciated. Never paid much attention to the project beyond their website... and I'm glad that's as far as I've gone lol
This is amazing. People were perfectly okay with ignoring all the red flags in Proton and their products and really okay with buying all their bullshit, then a tweet saying Trump comes up and that's it. lol
🤷 sometimes people grumble quietly until a final straw is added to the stack. Not surprising.
Sooo, can we not create and/or finance our own? Please be gentle…but…is there not enough of us paying for proton and other privacy apps to fund a floss or non-profit version? I mean there are tech nerds all over this place, along with law nerds and political nerds…etc..(meant with love btw) that would have an instant user base.
I pledge here to sub up to $15usd/month for any lemmy person that starts an entity that provides us with what we need with ethics and morality of lemmy common.
OK I think I will move to Posteo. Great security, privacy focussed, servers in Germany, running with 100% renewable energy. Prices are ok, too. Ticks all boxes.
Damn it my two year subscription just got refreshed...
Misinformation. OP is advocating that you shoot yourself in the foot.
The CEO said something silly on Twitter which revealed either that (a) he shares an exceedingly banal opinion with literally half of America or (b) he's not above a bit of preemptive sycophancy to advance his (positive) anti-trust agenda.
There's nothing particularly scandalous in the offending tweet:
Proton is not owned Zuck-like by its CEO. It's controlled by a foundation with other stakeholders on the board, including the inventor of the Web himself. In its niche it is still by far the best option. Ditching it for a nebulous non-existent alternative because the CEO expressed a dumb and extremely commonplace opinion is just silly and self-defeating.
PS: to be clear, OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything. It's the personal opinion of the CEO that's at issue. It's a major distinction. I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual's right to have their own thoughts.
PPS: to be extra clear, my comments are about the post above, not stuff that people are reading elsewhere. But the substance stands. See discussion for detail.
I largely agree with what you’re saying, except the official Proton Mastadon account doubled down on that personal opinion. That seems pretty clear that it’s endorsed not just by that one individual on the board.
Link to Mastodon thread: https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Archives in case they delete it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Text copy of their post:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
Just puked a little after reading that.
Here’s what I don’t get: if the leadership at Proton believes this shit, why share it on social media at all? It clearly isn’t going to make anyone in the left happy. Are they trying to capture porn-loving MAGA?
Appeasement to the fascists so they don't get banned like they did to tiktok (I assume)
I love how you’re claiming misinformation while posting misinformation. It’s not the CEO, it’s a board member. That said, the company also officially posted these ideas on their Bluesky account.
This isn’t a “CEO” expressing a belief, it’s the board, and now the official company line.
I’m not disagreeing with their post particularly on corporate dems, but this is a company and not a persons sole belief.
Also, if dems are the party of big business then why are all these big businesses donating to Trump? Does that just mean republicans are the party of even bigger business?
Their bullet points are spin-doctoring.
Also the comment got a few dozen upvotes almost immediately. Suspicious.
I was thinking the same thing. In all the threads about it. It just seemed oddly suspicious and not typical of what the digital privacy community has typically believed… I mean, I’m also not going to homogenize a community like that though and Proton has been a mainstay.
It isn't misinformation.
Someone like this board member being a traitor to his species isn't covered by "opinion". No normalizing nazis. It's such a low bar. He couldn't clear it.
He blasted his treachery over the public airwaves. His privacy isn't being violated.
This whole comment feels like an exercise in using all the best words to miss the point. We know, as does this probably-lying board member, that Republicans are only going to go more authoritarian, and the only reason they would pretend to care about big tech abuses is to grab the steering wheel from them to commit far worse abuses. No company that gets into bed with traitors is going to become the new center of my digital life.
Tuta for email, syncthing for photos bc I'm not self-hosting, mullvad for VPN.
Implying that the Democrats are now "the party of big business" is arguably true (and very boring)
While true in some scenarios, in anti-trust Lina khan's ftc has done significantly more than trump ever did. Biden keeping her over the protest of countless business execs and daily articles in the wall street journal on how she's ruining America shows some commitment to prosecuting big tech.
Meanwhile, trump's anti-trust moves were mostly based off petty issues he had with the ceos or the platforms having a "liberal bias". Now that every big tech ceo has fallen in line and given him $1 million for his inauguration I doubt we'll see much movement on that front.
Tweet is from early december. Why is it blowing up now?
I guess on the one hand people are anxious about Trumps inaugeration and on the other hand this is a great opportunity for competitors or otherwise opposed people to launch an astroturfing campaign off of it.
When looking at posts titled has gone "full MAGA" for saying they feel Trump is more likely to enact antitrust rules against big tech than Democrats who let them down the past years, is just absurd.
It is the same line of reasoning like claiming the WHO to have been a chinese asset because they supported some of Chinas anti-Covid measures.
Wow!
Of all companies, this is one I didn't expect.
Damn.
Why would this be unexpected?
Proton already handed over the IP of a climate protester to authorities several years ago, while boasting that they had a no log policy.
https://therecord.media/protonmail-forced-to-collect-an-activists-ip-address-in-police-investigation
Every time, in the past few years, that I bring this up, everyone just acts like I'm setting an impossible standard and no alternative exists.
Proton has been shady for years.
From reading that article it looks like they were only using and able to log the IP address when the person logged in to their protonmail account specifically - not VPN.
They even state that VPNs can not be forced to log under the same legal order and are treated differently so in this case it seems the activists were not using the VPN while accessing their emails.
Although I dont agree with even the logging of the email IP, it appears like the user shot themselves in the foot like that other case where someone used their real name in the username and that obviosly has to be logged in some way.
the good news is this is a lesson to never trust any entity whose role in the world is to accumulate capital
What's insane is that didn't Proton just recently announce they were converting to a non-profit?
Yes, they did: https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
Yea, and Andy Yen is only one of five members on the board of the Non-Profit organization, so you'll just have to gamble that everyone else isn't this weird (if you still want to continue using Proton services, that is, your choice 🤷♂️).
Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.